{"id":220,"date":"2017-06-16T20:11:59","date_gmt":"2017-06-17T00:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=220"},"modified":"2017-11-13T20:19:30","modified_gmt":"2017-11-14T01:19:30","slug":"nobody-loves-me-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=220","title":{"rendered":"NOBODY LOVES ME ANYMORE"},"content":{"rendered":"

(sad story of a machine that decreased labour and increased our food supply)<\/p>\n

Risa\u2026here it is much reduced<\/p>\n

alan skeoch<\/p>\n

\u201cAlan, maybe you would like this old machine we are throwing out,\u201d \u00a0said Stephanie,\u201d
\n\u201cWhat does it look like?\u201d
\n\u201cLong, faded orange\/red, with faded marking\u00a0saying\u00a0\u2018Simson Merner, New Hamburg, Ontario\u2019\u2026\u201d
\nI HELD MY BREATH!! \u00a0THIS WAS MY MACHINE! I GAVE IT TO THE CITY OF MISSISSAUGA DECADES AGO!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cStephanie, I gave that threshing machine to the City of Mississauga, more than 20 years ago, long before\u00a0you worked there. \u00a0They did not give me a receipt. \u00a0Why is it\u00a0being dumped?\u201d
\n\u201cSo sorry, Alan. \u00a0Hate to do this. The \u00a0‘powers that be’ want the space\u2026no one seems to know why the machine is sitting in the Bradley Museum barn.\u201d
\n\u201cI gave it to the city\u2026A very early Canadian made\u00a0thresher\u00a0probably the only surviving machine of its kind.\u201d
\n\u201cWell, it has to go. Not\u00a0my idea.\u00a0Embarrassing! \u201d
\n\u201cGive me a few days. \u00a0I’ll arrange something.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Canada is 150 years old this year. \u00a0Same age as the Simson Merner Thresher\u2026or damn close to that.<\/p>\n

\u201cDad, how do you know Simson Merner made the machine?\u201d
\n\u201cTake a look\u2026he signed his name\u2026used a stencil with black paint. \u00a0Still readable.\u201d
\n\u201cWho was he?\u201d<\/p>\n

Why do our sons grin so sceptically at times?<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me tell\u00a0you about Simson. \u00a0First \u00a0is that he was Samuel Merners son. \u00a0The Merners left or were pushed out of Switzerland in 1823.\u201d
\n\u201cPushed?\u201d
\n\u201cReligion does strange things to people. \u00a0A lot of Swiss became followers of a Dutch Protestant by the name of Mennon. \u00a0Other Swiss did not like this new Mennonite religion so they drove the believers out of the country. \u00a0Nasty time. \u00a0The Merners kept on the move and by 1837 they arrived in Waterloo County,\u00a0Ontario, \u00a0along with a bunch of co-religonists we call the Pennsylvania Dutch. \u00a0German speaking Swiss origins.\u201d
\n\u201cDad, just tell me about the machine\u2026the Thresher.\u201d
\n\u201cSamuel Merner opened a blacksmith shop in New Hamburg in 1844. \u00a0He spent his\u00a0working days making tools to clear land, to harvest crops and to build houses. \u00a0Axes, hammers,\u00a0scythes, sickles\u2026small things.\u201d
\n\u201cThis Thresher is not small, Dad.\u201d
\n\u201cSamuel\u2019s\u00a0older son, Simson, had bigger ideas. \u00a0He designed and built\u00a0various small threshing machines. \u00a0Demand was big. Fields of Waterloo County had rich soil\u2026great crops. \u00a0High prices. Spare cash. All these pushed the demand for bigger, more modern, machines by farmers.\u201d
\n\u201cOne guy could not build these machines\u2026\u201d
\n\u201cRight. \u00a0Simson Merner persuaded a machinist named John Beam to help.\u00a0Along with many others, they built a few threshing machines like tis one. \u00a0A series of\u00a0crank shafts, spur gears, a movable deck\u2026all combined here.+
\n\u201cDad, what is a spur gear?\u201d
\n\u201cYou must\u00a0think I am some\u00a0kind of genius. \u00a0I have no idea what a spur gear is. \u00a0I\u00a0only see the big picture.\u201d
\n\u201cHow did this machine thresh grain. \u00a0Where did the power come from?\u201d
\n\u201cSee that big wheel on\u00a0the side? \u00a0Merner hooked the machine to an endless rope\u2026later an endless belt.\u201d
\n\u201cHow can a rope be endless?\u201d
\n\u201cUse your head. \u00a0The rope became endless when one end was attached to the other end. \u00a0A great loop. \u00a0Endless. Wrap one end of the loop around the thresher cylinder wheel and the other end to a power source.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat power source?\u201d
\n\u201cA team of horses going in a circle\u2026turning\u00a0sprocketed gears.\u201d
\n\u201cTractor would be better.\u201d
\n\u201cRight. \u00a0The machines were eventually hooked to big steam engines via the endless belts. \u00a0That may be the reason\u00a0only this machine has survived.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d
\n\u201cThose steam engines\u00a0shook the hell out of the Threshers\u2026shook them to pieces. \u00a0New\u00a0machines came along just like new cars do today.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat would happen if we hooked this Thresher to a big electric motor\u2026or a hundred horsepower diesel tractor?\u201d
\n\u201cAndrew,\u00a0you would want to get of the way.\u201d
\n\u201cWhy?\u201d
\n\u201cBecause there would be pieces of iron and shards of wood\u00a0flying in all directions. \u00a0The machine would disintegrate. \u00a0Do not get any fancy ideas.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat happened to Simson Merner?\u201d
\n\u201cHe became a successful man\u2026in 1897 some money people invested their wealth with Simson. They\u00a0created the New Hamburg Manufacturing Company and got into the making of steam engines along with a few threshing machines. \u00a0This is the lone survivor.\u201d
\n\u201cIf it is so important, why does nobody seem to want it, Dad?\u201d
\n\u201cBeats me, Andrew.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat are you going to do with now, Dad.\u201d
\n\u201cBeats me, Andrew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(sad story of a machine that decreased labour and increased our food supply) Risa\u2026here it is much reduced alan skeoch \u201cAlan, maybe you would like this old machine we are throwing out,\u201d \u00a0said Stephanie,\u201d \u201cWhat does it look like?\u201d \u201cLong, faded orange\/red, with faded marking\u00a0saying\u00a0\u2018Simson Merner, New Hamburg, Ontario\u2019\u2026\u201d I HELD MY BREATH!! \u00a0THIS WAS […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=220"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220\/revisions\/225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}