Volume 11 , Issue 26

Harvesters & Prairie Skyscrapers

What are Prairie Skyscrapers? Up in Kansas they are referred to as Prairie Skyscrapers (a.k.a. grain elevators). In most areas of the Heartland, you can see at least one elevator off in the distance. Every town has at least one and, in some cases, the elevator is still standing (and may even still be used) even if the town has been abandoned.

You won't find Godzilla perched on the top of these skyscrapers swatting off airplanes, either. You might see a few flying farmers and harvesters flying low to the ground scouting out the golden, ripe, waving wheat fields from south to north all through the Heartland region. The man with the whiskers and airplane got the job in those earlier harvesting days of flying farmers. This is the hectic time of year for allot of farmers. They are looking towards the skies and praying for Mother Nature's cooperation with sunshine instead of rain, hail and storm.

Have you noticed more activity springing up around all the prairie skyscrapers in the small, rural, farming communities? Small towns are awakening and becoming alive again with harvesters moving down the road, buying necessities, supplies and groceries. Wheat trucks line up to unload their grains into the grain elevators in each of the rural communities where they will be cutting wheat.

The harvester's will have gathered their combines, grain carts, wheat trucks and crew and will be working from south Texas and moving north through Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, and moving towards Canada. They will be hitting all the Heartland and Wheatland regions in between. My dad (Gene McGill) made a similar route in the 1940s "wheat harvesting" for other farmers from Oklahoma to South Dakota with his three (3) Baldwin combines outfits, an airplane and a crew. He was known as the "full-bearded flying farmer".

Gene would start his crop of whiskers about the time it came to wheat harvesting for the other farmers. As he went northward with his three combines outfits his beard grew more luxurious. He had a picture taken during one of those trips when he found a "father figure look-alike".

Gene and his older look-alike are dressed in similar clothing; same expression and both have a fully-bearded. There is no relationship other than friendly farmers shooting the bull, as some might say.

Gene would use his airplane to spot wheat fields which needed cutting even far off the beaten roads followed by other outfits -- "And the man with the whiskers and the airplane got the job."

This picture was taken some time on June 20, 1942, 5 miles South (think it was south of Alva, Oklahoma. But I'm not sure. The photo shows Gene (on left) standing in back of wheat truck with another crew member and wheat spilling out the back of the truck. On the back of the photo it shows the date and 30-bushel wheat is written.

On this same day on June 20, 1942, 5 miles South of who knows where three (3) Baldwin's Combines are working behind one case tractor out in the wheat field.

If you look closely into the field with this photo you will see Gene's three Baldwin combines outfit out in the field at work. Those combines now have a permanent home nestled far back in the pasture near Two Buttes, Baca County, Colorado.

Another photo shows Gene standing on back of truck that hauled the Case tractor nd a combine hitched on to the back of the wheat truck. Other crew members are in the background. That old Case tractor and truck may also be permanently rooted in the pastures out at Baca County, near Two Buttes, Colorado.

Here is another shot of Gene's harvesting outfit with a Phillips 66 fuel truck to the right and the outfit crew standing and posing for the cameraman in the 1940s.

Another view of some old photos shows the Case tractor loaded on back of truck that my dad used in his combine outfit. They were either unloading or loading after or before a job. I'm not quite sure.

Here is an "Old Time Harvesting Wheat Binder". Some farmer told me this was a picture of a "wheat binder" pulled by four horses. I'm told it was the next step up from the hand scythes and hand binding days. I suspect it was in the early 1920s before the first tractor. The first tractor, I'm told, came out around the 1929 era sometime.

My father was born December 1914. My best guess is that he may have had an opportunity to work on this binder as a young boy during his young harvesting days. I suspect it may be an ancestor, but I'm not for sure on that. It was nestled amongst my Grandmother's old ancestral photos.
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