Recently grandpa Leroy had his 89th birthday.  We brought all the kids down to his farm in the southern foothills of Colorado to help him celebrate. Born and raised in the mountains around Pikes Peak and Black Forest, he finally settled down in the southern foothills of Colorado.

After the pizza was eaten my son and our youngest daughter retired to the outside to play a game of catch before the cool Colorado air turned cold as the sun slipped behind the mountain peaks.  During one of the tosses one of baseball’s rolled under what looked like a wagon with a 55 gallon drum on the top.  My son asked me what it was…I did not know.

We asked grandpa Leroy what it was used for. This led to an impromptu tour of some of the old relics around the farm yard.  Here are some of these rusty gems.

Post-WWII ingenuity shone in this manure spreader fashioned from a Model T differential, bucket blade, and 50-gallon drum. No store-bought luxury, this farmer-conceived marvel spun cow scraps into field-fertilizing gold, a testament to resourceful minds and spare parts magic.  Notice the small Ford hubcap on the wooden wheel proudly made in the USA.

As we walked around the farm yard he pointed out other objects that had been made out of old car or truck parts.  A stunning example of this is the old Hudson truck axle that was repurposed as a wagon.  The wagon had long since rotted and disappeared, but the axle was still there. My son recognized the name Hudson from the movie Cars that had old ‘Doc Hudson’ in it.

Then was the saw.  The pulley was made from wood as you can see in one of the pictures, the wood had disintegrated yet could still make out the fibers.  A belt could be attached to a tractor pulley system and the wood pulley that would run the saw.  The bottom picture is an old archive photo of how this could have worked.  This is not very different from what is used today.  A farm tractor’s PTO is hooked up to a hay baler which gives it its power.

We listened to his explanation of the greatest generation having to make due with what was available after WW2. These weren’t just tools; they were extensions of the generation grandpa came out of. He did not make them, he collected what his parents’ generation had conceived.  They stand for a century gone by when each dent and scrape wad a testament to hard work and ingenuity. They spoke of a time when necessity was the mother of invention, when you made do with what you had.

©️ Rocky Mountain Dispatch 2024