31st Annual Huron Pioneer Thresher & Hobby Association 1992 Reunion, 1992-09-09, Page 11THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9,1992. PAGEA-11.
Social aspect important part of early days
Continued from A-10 fresh air and sunshine made it a lot easier to
threshing. In those days farmers hauled their
sheaves to the bam and stored them in the
mow until a threshing crew could arrive. It
was a dirty business when the threshing was
done; sheaves were taken out of one mow
and passed out to the threshing machine;
then the straw was blown back into a straw
get men to help with harvest, Simon
recalled. Those harvests also made a
neighbourhood more neighbourly, he said.
Today, with the faster pace of life, with each
farmer having a combine or hiring someone
to do the combining neighbours don't visit
each other as much as in the old days, he
feels.
mow in another part of the barn. Men
working inside the bam would be spitting
black, dusty residues for days. Work began
at 6:30 a.m. and continued until dark. For the
threshing crews, who moved from one farm
to another, the harvest season could start in
late July and continue until November.
That same social aspect was an important
part of the early days of the Thresher
Reunion too, he recalled on the occasion of
the 25th anniversary of the Reunion in 1986.
It was easy to get work done by calling a
"bee" and the members would turn out to
There was a social side to even the
business meetings in those days. After the
business had been attended to, they would
adjourn to Frank Wong's Huron Grill (now
the Village Restaurant) for food. Simon also
recalled many happy times spent in the old
race horse bam at the fairgrounds where the
members would party.
In the early years there were no
memberships and bookkeeping was so
elementary records were kept on the stubs in
the cheque books.
The wives of the threshermen provided
real threshers' meals in the early years when
the reunion was a smaller event than it is
By about 1935, Simon recalled, stook
threshing had become popular. Sheaves were
lend a hand. There was lots of work to do on
today.
Many of the people who shared those
early memories are gone now, people like
Hugh Chisholm, Harold Turner, John
Hallahan and Dr. Charles Toll who brought
his band to the Reunion for many years. A
few like Simon himself, Dan Hallahan and
Russell Wilson of Blyth remain to tell the
stories of those early years.
The men who knew the* life of 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
big started back in his farm home in 1962.
the grounds back then. The old grandstand
had to be tom down. Years later, the old
agricultural show hall was tom down and
replaced by a modem storage bam at the
back of the lot.
no longer hauled into a barn, but were
loaded on wagons and taken right to the
threshing machine. Working outside in the
Waterloo Manufactured
Joining in the sainte
to the
31st ANNUAL
THRESHER REUNION
in Blyth
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31st Pioneer Threshers' Reunion to
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Craig's Sawmill as seen about 1950
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