| by rogerringer |
“THE BEST WAY TO HAVE A GOOD IDEA IS TO
HAVE A LOT OF IDEAS.”
Linus Pauling
I am constantly getting ideas and sometimes it is a good thing and other times it is a plague. The trouble with ideas are that when you have one everyone expects you to be able to follow up on them. I am stating right now that I AM NOT VOLUNTEERING FOR THIS ONE but I would really like to pass on my ideas to someone who can take it by the horn and do something with it.
Many of you from the south-central Kansas area know the Rausch family. Pretty good chance you know a Rausch but the ones from the Garden Plain area are who just sparked my idea. Actually they brought it from the back of my head and hit me with it.
I have had a lot of fun over the years teasing them about being Oliver tractor lovers. Old iron fever is a disease that can affect anyone at anytime but it has a tendency to affect rural people the worst. The Rausch family had the fever long ago because that was the color of tractors and equipment that they grew up with and used. Unlike many who think that you have to get rid of the old tractor when you get a new tractor, they kept a lot of them.
This weekend the boys all got together and hooked up plows to 5 of the Oliver’s that they have kept and had a family plow in. They put up the pictures on Facebook and it hit me in the head. We need to create a Gas & Steam Engine Show in South Central Kansas. One along the lines and scale of the 50 Years of Progress Show that is held every two years in Rantoul Illinois. There are others like this where collectors get together and show, use, and pull the old iron.
The last one that was close was the Terning Steam Engine Show that used to be near Valley Center. I really liked that show and it has been years since it closed. there are other shows in Kansas but not close to the area. In the Fall the Poppin Johnnies Show was at the Coliseum and it was mostly a swap meet and show. I don’t know where it is going to be held now.
There are a lot of problems to put together something like this and I am putting out the idea but I am up to my ears getting the work done on my book, working with the Cowboy Storytellers, and the Western Music Association. I am happy to give my ideas but I am not stepping up to organize it.
There should be a lot of education that would go on when the old iron is not only shown but put to work. Plowing, cutting, baling, chopping, digging, parading, and pulling. Steam engines, tractors, combines, stationary engines, threshers, cars, trucks, equipment, and how all the things that were used to advance farming from draft animals to the 1980’s advent of big power. And all the brands that were used on farms.
I have to admit it I kind of like the Oliver Green. but I have gotten to the point that I cannot afford to own the real thing and have to collect the toy versions.
What do ya think?
