EPISODE 189 NEW HAMBURG THRESHING MACHINE

At the Thompson sale no one except for me seemed interested.  I cannot remember how much I paid for this beauty but

it was around $100.   The other three  were about the same price give or take a bit.  When I drove home from the sale

I had one thought.  What was I going to do with these machines.  First off, how could  I move them from the sale.  Then

where would I take them?  Then how could I care for them?

Let me put this in modern terms.  Imagine you bought four tractor trailers at a sale.  What would you do with them.  Write a  list of

all your friends  who  would  gladly take a threshing machine in their back yard and then build a driveshed around it.  The list is likely

very short.

This machine is the most stunning and enigmatic of the four I bought.  Painted with unusual images…a crocodile,  a lion, a bouquet 

of tulips.  At the close of the 19th century it was the custom to paint machines as if they were Christmas presents.   A kind  of

advertising.   But this New  Hamburg Machine was really made to appear unusual.   What is the significance  of the crocodile?

The  answer?   Threshing machines had  teeth that chopped up wheat sheaves like a crocodile did with dogs, cats or people

if they inadvertently got in the animals mouth.    The lion?  Stood for courage, perhaps endurance.   The tulips?  Now the bouquet of

tulips is hard to explain.

What was I to do?   At the time we were involved with Riverdale Farm which  is located in the centre  of the  City of Toronto then managed

by Judy and Mark Spurr.  Both of them were enthusiastic about my donation.  So I hired Gordon Hume to load the machine on his

flat bed truck and take it to Riverdale farm where it sat majestically on the threshing floor for a decade or so. 

 En route to the farm Gordon Hume drove along the Gardiner and up  Parliament Street startling anyone walking.  At the time there

was a CBC radio station on Parliament Street and by chance David Shatsky or Christopher Thomas, hosts of Radio  Noon, were  out for a walk.

Think ti was  David.

He gawked at the machine.  He knew there was a story on the move and  eventually traced  the story to me.  That led to my

career on CBC Radio for several years.  

Story telling about rural Ontario or anything else that touched my fancy.  Several years

doing stories every Friday until one day I was told, “We don’t need  you anymore.”   Not a nice ending to my radio career but

I had  been prepared for that when another radio journalist told me privately that “we all have a shelf life, Alan, be prepared.”

On air personalities get the chop often.

It was  not just me that got the  chop a  few years later.  The New Hamburg Threshing machine also got the chop when some opinion laden bureaucrat

decided he or she did not like the thresher.  I got a call  from someone.  “Alan, the Thresher has been moved out of the barn and is sitting

exposed to the weather.   It will not last long that way.  Will you take it back?”

Of course I said  I would come and get it. But where could it go?   Someone suggested Doon Pioneer Village just outside of the City of Kitchener.

The thresher was made in  New Hamberg…close to Kitchener.  The Village manager was receptive.  “Yes, I think this machine would be a 

star in our exhibit hall”, he said (something like that).   

How could  I get the machine from Toronto to Kitchener.  As luck  would have it our son Andrew and his partner Nick had  just set up

a creative landscaping business.  Working with huge boulders…making gardens look like mountain streams…big scale stuff.  They

had a flat bed truck and  one day the thresher was  loaded and hauled to Down Pioneer Village where it sits today.  (I hope it still

sits there…I have heard  nothing about it for decades.)

Did I hear you ask, “Alan what happened to the other three threshers?”