54th Annual Threshers Reunion a trip down memory lane

By Kelly Terpstra, kterpstra@charlescitypress.com

From tractor pulls, to pounding iron, to a parade of power, the 54th Annual Threshers Reunion, hosted by the Cedar Valley Engine Club, had a little bit of everything.

Activities also included threshing oats, baling hay, shelling corn and sawing lumber.

“You can’t see everything that’s here in one day,” said Tom Palmersheim, a Cedar Valley Engine Club member.

Just off Highway 14 on the way to Rockford and 7 miles west of Charles City, roughly 7,000 people show up to the three-day tractor show over Labor Day weekend.

“Everything out here is a learning experience. From the sawmill to the milking barns to the tractors and stuff. This is the place to learn stuff,” said Vince Tiso, owner of Dragonslair Forge in Iowa Falls.

Tiso, along with Gary Knipfel, have been coming to the Threshers Reunion for the past eight years.

Knipfel, who owns Gary’s Twisted Iron, was forging iron at the blacksmith shop on Saturday. A  piece of iron from the forge can reach anywhere from 1,300 to 1,700 degrees Celsius. The heat is needed to make the metal soft enough to shape, and the color of the metal changes with heat, from red to orange and then white.

“White will start burning,” said Knipfel. “You call it burning iron.”

Knipfel and Tiso hit about 12 shows a year, from county fairs to the annual Rendezvous in Prairie du Chien along the Mississippi River.

“This here crowd’s big enough that I just pound all day long,” said Knipfel.

They conduct demonstrations at certain shows and fairs, and teach classes at their shops back home.

They said they like coming to the Cedar Valley Engine Club’s annual gathering.

“The county fairs have always treated us well, but we have a personal attachment to people up here,” said Tiso.

For the past six years, Tom Palmersheim has cranked up a 1925 three-cylinder diesel engine at the Fairbanks Build and Machine Shop on the engine club grounds. The 3,000-cubic-inch engine was purchased by the club from a salvage yard in Wisconsin where it was used in a quarry. It was rebuilt by club members.

“There is nothing automatic. Everything it does you have to do. It’s strictly operator controlled,” said Palmersheim.

Cedar Valley Engine Club board member Steve Montag stopped by the shop and explained how threshers reunions are changing across the nation.

“The generation that worked on that machine, they’re fading away,” said Montag, about the diesel engine from almost 100 years ago.

Montag said old timers that used to collect Farmall F-20s or John Deere A’s, now go after a “new generation” of 806s or 420s.

“The era that grew up on that, they’re either in the nursing home or in the cemetery,” said Montag.

Kelly Barnett, past president of the Cedar Valley Engine Club and current board member, said during the early 1980s the crowds at the annual event were larger.

“Those people could relate to everything,” Barnett said. “Now we’re one to two generations at least disconnected from families understanding it.”

That’s why Barnett loves to see families with their kids walking the grounds and wanting to learn about how things were done in the past.

“The older generation, it’s memories. The younger families and stuff, it’s making memories,” said Barnett. “A lot of us like to look at this show as our extended family.”

Barnett said many exhibitors who bring their tractors or machines here will go out of there way to explain how a part works or make a visitor feel at home.

“We always try to interact with the crowd. We’re always trying to get feedback from the spectators, but we’re also trying to make them feel like a part of the show,” said Barnett.

Jennifer Ryder, who lives in St. Louis, makes it a point to attend the threshers reunion almost every year. She grew up in nearby Riceville, and said her family was looking forward to tasting the homemade ice cream in what is just another trip down memory lane at the threshers reunion.

“We spend time with family and come enjoy the festivities,” said Ryder. “Everyone is so friendly and so patient with showing the boys all the tractors. They love it. They light up every time we talk about coming to Iowa.”