The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1922-07-29
Is Always Something of,
An Old Fashioned Nature
To See When You Motor
The Lads the Farm the Weed Grown Yards the Plump
Chickens, the Greetings the Highways-An Appeal
to v. E. B., Who Takes Little Run Out of Topeka.


which took the place or n whip
showed little sign of having been much
used. His livestock looked to be IN
better condition than himself. The
fellow voyagers with whom he chatted
were of a different stripe. The man
who shared the spring seat with a
woman, looked to be one of those who
is always seeking a little greener pas
ture farther on. In proportion as his
nose extended forward, shifting the
air of the promised land Just over the
next rise, so his chin retreated rear
ward, appalled, at the difficulty or
ascending the grade. The woman be-
side him looked a fit mate for him.
She seemed vastly weary, and as II she
had ridden Joltingly up very many
rises, and peered with watery eyes
over their crests, to find on the other
side naught but. "holler." And. the
children who peeped out from under
the Hopping canvas cover of the wag-
on-the less of them, the better for
the optimists of the race. They looked
less attra ctive than the ours who
snarled and snapped between the
wheels of the wagon.
Chickens are VIGOROUSLY and ira
ditionally- the bane of the motorists
life. They are as senseless and trou-
blesome as human. beings. But there
is one certain age at which they are
more bother Than at any other. Grown
patient and unruly under the fussy
and brainless guidance of their mother
hen; just the color of the earth road,
and so quick that they can cross the
road four times and arrive at precisely
the same point they started from be-
fore a steering wheel can be twitched.
nothing could be harder on the nerves
of a driver who has any 'scruplcs
about killing them And they in
variably choose for their maneuver-
inc which SLOWED
down to allow them to escape. will
stall, and gears will have to be
switched. The driver killed his engine
once, under these circumstances, ami
had to be forcibly restrained from get
ting out, invading the farmyard and
doing bodily injury to the owner of
the wandering poultry.
Shawnee county farmers don't take
Jake Mohler and his preachmen:s
threshing it from the shock. very
seriously. In a wide radius about To-
peka, the majority of the wheat
raisers are threshing from the shocks,
or else their wheat is still in shocks
and has not been threshed at all.
In all the rambling about the coun-
tryside, only one old fashioned steam
threshing machine engine was encoun-
tered. 1t was putting grimily, COM
road, running light" and making
some three miles an hour. Two men
were on it's quarter deck, one at the
throttle and the other at the steering
wheel. The huge drivers rolled ma
jestically, and pillows of black smoke
formed a canopy over the machine
and protected it against the hot sun.
Behind it, drawn by a team of horses,
was a water tank under the command
of a boy, heir apparent to such jobs.
Aor IN hn od int yhn1
field threshing was in progress, with
the power furnished by small, noisy,
sputtering, gasping, smokeless gas
tractor. Beside the chattering, ex-
plosive, busy ard excited gas tractor,
the steam engine seemed a leisurely,
courtly, cultured, hut hopelessly out
of date gentleman of the old school,"
in comparison to neurotic, highly
cake eating young business
man of today. But the gas tractor
was getting the work done.
World history is written in sprawl |
ing heiroglyphics which man runs too
fast to read as they are written. But
the history of n community, or OF a
single generation, is sometimes printed
in type sufficiently condensed for the
eye to note its mutations. There is
paragraph of the history of Kansas
and Kansans-of all middle western
toilers of the s~I, for that matter-on
every 1dTI0 Kansas II con-
sists of two houses. one the "old
house." the other the new house."
The new house" stands blatant and
raw. usually on an elevation. with u
few spindling young trees arranged
with geometric accuracy about it. 1t
is big and roomy, but has an air of I
angularity and self con-
which graphically ex-
presses the thought complex of the
builder who found himself with the
dc rr-H7 nil
slave the rest of his life living up to
its pretentions. The "old house" which
was the home of the farm owner when
he started his fight to wrest g. liveh-
hood from the earth. usually stands
near branch" If there be one on
the farm. u is battered, and the
square, straight lines of it have been
softened and curved into beauty by
time. Its paint is long worn off, ana
its neutral shade blends into its sur
roundings. 1t has comfortably re-
Taxed, and adjusted itself to the
ground on which it stands. 1t has
settled little at one corner, and
tilted little at another. 1t is no
stiff upper lip. to present a front to
the world. 1t has done its duty. and
it sprawls comfortably on the scene
of its labors, peacefully waiting for
total dissolution. And sometimes you
see the farmer father of the pushing
young "agriculturist'' who bosses the
big house on the bare hill, pottering
about the old place which served as
his headquarters when he fought his
lifes battle with nature. There is
nothing much 20 be done there. but
somehow he likes to sneak off and
just potter around. And the old house
seems to welcome him, after its long
lonely wait. peopled only with the
shadows of young. high-hearted pio-
neers and their offspring.
When. a Kansas farmer starts to
fix up his house and yard. he has
finished every other possible chore
and task about the farm There is
nothing else he can possibly turn his
hand to. and he can neither sleep nor
go fishing.