HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe 25th Huron Pioneer Thresher Reunion, 1986-09-03, Page 8PAGE A-8, THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1986.
Simon
Hallahan
MAC ARMSTRONG SEED
Continued from page A-7
to provide more interest for the
people attending. For many
years Earl and Martha Hey
wood headed up the entertain
ment part of the event.
Back when Blyth started its
thresher reunion there was only
one other steam show of its
kind, that down at Petrolia.
Simon, among others, visited
the show to learn what he could
before the Blyth show started.
Most of the members in those
early years had been threshers
themselves, he recalls. Simon
had run a threshing outfit for
Geordie Jordan for a few years
then was with the Silver Creek
Threshing Syndicate, a gang
made up of many members of
the Hallahan family, for 15
years.
When he started out, he
recalls, there wasn’t much
stook threshing. In those early
days a farmer would haul all the
sheaves to the barn and store
them in a mow then the
threshing crew would arrive
and the sheaves would be taken
out of the mow, fed into the
separator and the straw would
be blown right back into
another part of the barn. It was
terribly dirty work and men
working in the barns would be
spitting up black, dusty residue
for days. Work began at 6:30 in
the morning and continued
until dark. For the threshing
crews, that moved from one
farm to another, it was a job that
could start in late July and
continue into November.
Stook threshing began to
become popular about 1935,
Simon recalls. Working outside
in the fresh air and sunshine
made it a lot easier to get men to
help with the harvest, he says.
And those harvests made a
neighbourhood more neigh
bourly, Simon feels. Today,
with the faster pace of life, with
each farmer having a combine
or hiring someone to have the
work done, neighbours don’t
visit each other nearly as much
as in the old days.
That same social aspect had
an importance in the early days
of the Thresher Reunion too, he
says. It was easy to get work
done by calling a “bee” in
those days and the members
would turn out to lend a hand.
There was a lot of work to be
done on the grounds in the early
days. The old grandstand had
to be torn down, for instance.
Later the old agricultural hall
was taken down and a new
storage barn was built.
Meetings too had their social
aspect. After the business part
of the meeting they’d adjourn
to Frank Wong’s Huron Grill
for food. And he recalls many
happy times spent in the old
race horse barn at the fair
grounds when the members
would party.
In the early years there were
no memberships and book
keeping was so elementary,
records were kept on the
cheque stubs in the cheque
bocks.
The wives of the thresher
men provided real threshers’
meals in the early years when
thereunion was a smaller event
than it is today.
Many of the men who shared
those early memories with
Simon are no longer with us.
Hugh Chisholm, Harold Turn
er, John Hallahan and more are
gone. A few like Don Snell of
Waterloo, Russell Wilson of
Blyth and Dr. Charles Toll the
Blyth native now living in
Seaforth who brought his band
to the reunion for many years,
still remain.
The men who knew the life of
the threshing gangs first hand
are becoming rare and a new,
younger generation is helping
keep the reunion alive. But
people like Simon Hallahan can
sit back and realize something
pretty big started back in his
kitchen in 1961.
HONDA
•Lawn tractors
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LYNN HOY
ENTERPRISES
HWY. 86 East, Wingham
PHONE 357-3435
Congratulations
to the Pioneer Thresher
and
Hobby Association
on your 25th Reunion
September 5-6- 7,1986
MAC ARMSTRONG SEED
620526 Ontario Ltd.
R.R.2,Teeswater 519-392-6721
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