Green Straw Stacks
By Wallace E. Wood
3510 Laurel Dr. Holiday, FL 34690
Just a note about green straw stacks. My father was a thresher and I went with him two years as water boy and blower boy. When we were at the end of a job, Dad was always there to tell me to get it off the stack. He always finished with slower speed. I remember once we were threshing with an Aultman-Taylor machine, barn threshing, and I fell asleep and fell in the barnyard, never got hurt, went around, got right back on, and no one knew I had fallen off.
One thing I never liked was when someone would throw a rotten egg at you. One time we lost a soft plug in the 22 HP Peerless. Dad pulled fire, put some boards in, and I had to crawl in the firebox and replace the plug.
I remember one time the man stacking straw was smoking a corncob pipe. I ran and told Dad. He shut right down. I remember also at that same place, during the first World War, the pickers in the mow were Bloomer girls, and we never had green stacks.
I was the first president, for four years, of the New York Steam Engine Show, which I named the "Pageant of Steam". I came to live in Florida in 1968.