This interview took place on the morning of Sunday, July 22, 2001 in Adams, Tennessee. This was the last day of the Threshing Show. Kay-Gee 1875 had been pulled away from the separator the day before and left to cool down. We set up behind the engine for the interview. There was a row of campers to the camera's left and the noise of their air conditioners can easily be heard in the background. This interview was edited for some content (I cut out most of my "uhs," "umms," etc.).
Remembering Wheat Threshing
Joe: You saw all of this in operation when you were growing up.
Jackie: Yeah. Right. I used to follow Dad [Paul] around.
Joe: Now, um, and if you want to jump back to a kid's perspective…
Jackie: Okay.
Joe: …you're welcome to. What kind of things do you remember? What was it like?
Jackie: I remember the heat, the food, and the camaraderie of everybody that followed these things around. Basically, what happened back then, Dad would go from farm to farm and it was kind of like a club. You may have 10 or 15 farmers that was in this particular club. And all these farmers would help one another. So Dad would go to one farm and thresh all of his wheat and all of the neighbors would be there helping him. Then he'd leave there and go to another farm and start threshing wheat.
Of course, they had two separators. And uh, one separator was pulled by a tractor and one was pulled by an engine. Your dad, I called him Nig, he'd take the tractor and one separator and go one way and Dad would take this one and go the other way. Your dad would go toward Gallatin and my dad would go toward Springfield.
Basically, that's how I remember it — lot of hard work.
Crew Required to Thresh Wheat
Joe: So, what all did it take to, like people and what kind of jobs they had, what all did it take to make the operation work?
Jackie: Well, basically you had two people, Dad and my Uncle Tarver to operate this one. Uncle Tarver would be on the separator and Dad would take care of the steam engine. And uh, the people who brought the wheat in were area farmers and all they did was haul wheat and put it in the separator. Basically, just like we do it down here.
Meals at Wheat Threshing Time
Joe: You mentioned the food….
Jackie: Oh yeah, see the women, all the women in the neighborhood, too, would just bring food there, you know, they'd eat. It was just a big community gathering is what it amounted to. Kind of like a…. And the food, you know, they eat well. It was all country cooking.
Joe: Yeah.
Time on the Road Doing Custom Work
Joe: How many weeks would it take?
Jackie: Uh, he'd be on the road. I'm thinking probably four to six weeks. And then they'd come back and; of course, tobacco would be ready to strip then. [Actually, it would be time to top and sucker the tobacco. Tobacco is stripped in the winter.]
They threshed wheat a little earlier than they do it now. See, what happened, you had to cut the wheat while it was just a little green to keep from losing all the wheat out of the head. And they'd shock it and let it dry in the shock and then they'd go and start threshing.
Kay-Gee 1875 — History and Uses
Joe: Tell me about the engine, I mean things like the make, the year….
Jackie: Well, the engine was built in 1924. And Dad and my grandfather bought it from a fellow by the name of Mr. Dee Freeman who owned a farm up around Milldale. He bought it from the factory, which it was sent back to the factory two years after it was built to have a new boiler put on it.
This engine, for the first two years, threshed wheat out west on a circuit out there. And the boiler evidently wasn't big enough and they sent it back to the factory and reworked it and put a new boiler on it. And Mr. Freeman bought it after it had been reworked at the factory.
Mr. Freeman, all he used it for was to steam plant beds with and thresh his own personal wheat. He had a huge farm, up around a thousand acres, up close to Orlinda. And Mr. Dee Freeman was a very unique person. He never married. And him and his mother lived together in this farm house. And he was kind of a little peculiar but Dad was one of his closest friends.
Dad asked him one time, he said, "Dee, I'd like to have that engine if you ever want to get rid of it." And he [Dee] said, "Well, I don't really need it and I wouldn't sell it to anybody but you." And so, they bought it, put it on the [saw]mill, threshed wheat and steamed plant beds.
About Steaming Plant Beds
Joe: Now, what was involved in steaming plant beds?
Jackie: Had a big pan that was about a foot deep. And it was the width of a plant bed which was about twelve by twelve [31 cm x 366 cm x 366 cm]. It had handles on each corner. And you'd work your ground up and put this pan down on it and take a pipe from the steam dome and stick under the pan and then take a hoe and hoe [the dirt] up around the pan. And they'd turn the steam on and leave the steam on for approximately twelve to fifteen minutes underneath this pan. And that would kill all the seeds and everything in the ground. And then they'd have four men there, one on each corner, and they'd pick the pan up and go and set it down again and just keep on doing that.
He steamed plant beds for the public too.
About the Sawmill
Joe: Now, they operated a sawmill. How did they get into the lumber business?
Jackie: Pardon.
Joe: They operated a sawmill with engines.
Jackie: Right.
Joe: How did they get in the lumber business like that?
Jackie: Well, actually most of the mill work that they did was custom work. The farmers around there, if they wanted to build a barn or a house or something, they'd cut their own timber and bring it to the mill. And they would saw their lumber for so much a foot. Now I don't know how much a foot they got for it.
Basically, that's how they…. They really never was in the lumber business per se, they did custom work for all the farmers in the area.
About the Separator and the Swann Brothers Partnership
Joe: The separator, what kind of things can you tell me about it?
Jackie: That separator was purchased, I don't know exactly the year, in the middle or late [19]40s. They bought it brand new.
In fact, Dad [Paul] said something to Father [Caner] one afternoon. He said, "Let's go to Mt. Vernon in the morning."
He [Caner] said, "Well, why are we waiting? Why don't we just go now?"
And so they went to Mt. Vernon with no intentions of buying anything and when they was up there they decided to buy this thresher.
The people from Mt. Vernon delivered the thresher to the farm. It was on rubber at that time. They had wheels that they would attach to it that was on rubber and they pulled it from Mt. Vernon, Indiana, to the farm. And when they got to the farm they put the steel wheels on and carried the rubber wheels back.
In fact, at that time my grandfather was in partners with Mr. Will Swann in farming. And that's why the name "Swann Brothers" is on the separator because at the time they were in partners and they were the ones who purchased the thresher.
After the partnership broke up the thresher, this thresher, went to our side of the family and the other thresher went to the Will Swann side of the family, along with another steam engine [Kay-Gee 1824].
Output of the Separator
Joe: Okay, what uh…like how much wheat can it handle in a day?
Jackie: Oh, it could probably thresh 800 to 1000 bushels [28-35 m3] a day if you have enough manpower. And they got a dime a bushel when they was threshing for the public.
Joe: That was for their custom work?
Jackie: Right.
Joe: Wow!
Operating a Steam Engine
Joe: When you're running a steam engine…now I'm asking this from the perspective of getting on a tractor, turning the key and it starting up and everything. When you're running a steam engine what kind of things do you have to keep in mind as you're operating it?
Jackie: Well, it takes about an hour in the morning to get the steam up. And after you get the steam up you've got to keep the steam up and under pressure when you're working a heavy load. You've got to take into consideration your water, and your coal or wood (if you're burning coal or wood), your damper on the bottom, and you've just got to watch everything. And if your steam pressure starts to go down you've got to put more fuel to it. If it gets up and it starts getting ready to pop off you've got to put more water to it and close your damper. And it's just a matter of kind of like juggling rocks and trying to keep the hottest one in the air all the time.
Joe: It takes a while to learn how to do all of that, huh?
Jackie: Well, its not really that hard. It's just…you just…. Everybody's not suited for it because some people are liable to forget one thing or forget the other thing and that's what makes these things so dangerous. If you get the water down below the crown sheet it's going to blow up, so you've got to make sure you've got water in your glass, in your sight glass, all the time.
The engine basically is not really that hazardous if you've got a good operator on it. I've never seen one blow up. I've seen this one and several more spring leaks and spew but you've got time to get your fire out and get it cooled off.
Restoration and Upkeep of Kay-Gee 1875
Jackie: Of course the upkeep on this thing is pretty hard. You've got a lot of upkeep. I've had to reflue it and I've put coal bins on it; now, this makes the third set of coal bins and the third set of water tanks. So, you know, it's something to do on one all the time. I've had to retube all the outside and redo the flues and….
When I started restoring this engine it was sitting up there in that field at that little barn. It had sprouts growing up through the wheels. It had a beehive in the boiler. I finally got all of that cut out and drug it home and started restoring it.
The Mule Story
Joe: What kind of funny stories can you remember from wheat threshing days?
Jackie: Well, I was so young at the time I can't remember too many. I can remember my dad would sometimes be on the separator and he would take a little BB pistol and shoot one of the mules in the rear end and, of course, they'd go crazy. He told me one time that they had an old farmer there that had a little team of mules in a harness that was about three times too big. He did that to them and they backed out of the harness and went home. (Laughs.) Left him there at the separator with the wagon. (Laughs.)
But uh…
The Loose Boiler Plug Story
Jackie: …they had a…it wasn't this engine, it was another engine that they bought new that I remember him telling me the deal about they drove it from Nashville to Cross Plains. And when they got up around White House they started steaming plant beds and it took them about two months to get the engine home.
