Remembering the Green River Threshing Club
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| Neal Drummer of LaMoille remembers the days of the old Green River Threshing Club through these old photographs. Drummer said the club began in 1918 and finally disbanded in 1945, the last of its kind in the area. (Photos contributed) |
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LAMOILLE — They’re old pictures — black and white, of course, and they’re creased and slightly faded.
But in the hands of Neal Drummer of LaMoille, they’re a time machine, taking him back to the days when he was a boy, his father was strong, and threshing was a community affair.
Drummer said the Green River Threshing Club of LaMoille was started in 1918. The year’s threshing was a big project, and Drummer said it was necessary for the farmers to cooperate to get all their fields harvested.
A group of farmers, including Drummer’s grandfather Greg Drummer, and Elmer Beatty, Walter Johns and Anson Field, to name just a few, decided to form the Green River Threshing Club, named for the nearby river and the Green River Road, now known prosaically as Illinois Route 92. The men would provide the labor, and a big 19-horsepower Port Huron compound engine provided the steam and the power. The Port Huron was common for that day, Drummer said, but a big engine by today’s standards.
The Green River group cleared a lot of fields during the years to follow, mostly oats, but also some wheat and timothy. Each year’s harvest took about three weeks, give or take a few days, depending on the fickle northern Illinois weather.
There were many other threshing groups in the county, and as time went on, many of the groups put away their steam engines. But the Green River Threshing Club continued on.
Part of the reason was practical. By the early 1940s, World War II was going on, and gasoline was seriously rationed, making the steam engine more attractive.
But there was another reason to keep on going.
“Well, the organizers just loved it,” Drummer said. “It was the high point of the summer.”
In August 1943, after 25 years of successfully clearing the fields of northeastern Bureau County, the day came to put away the big steam engine. The harvest was done, and the last field belonged to the Ezra Faber family, two miles north of LaMoille.
Drummer’s father, Eugene, stopped back home for a minute.
“My dad came in the door and said to my mother, ‘Get the camera and come out. Today’s the last day,’” Drummer said.
And so she did. Putting aside whatever housework she was working on, Lenore Drummer took the family’s camera and went outside. She went to the Faber farm and saved the images of the big steam engine for posterity.
The Green River Threshing Club didn’t end after that. Drummer said Glen Faber came along with his big Allis Chalmers tractor, and the threshing continued.
But it wasn’t quite the same, and the big ring broke up after 1945, when the new combines made the threshing process not so labor intensive.
But today, more than 65 years after the steam engine stopped after the last round about Ezra Faber’s field, Neal Drummer can look at his pictures and remember ... remember the days when his dad was young and strong, and when threshing the fields was the high point of the summer.
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