Old Iron # 4 reveal-Case 200

Bob Shippert had a Case 200 with a loader on it.   He always let us borrow it until we got a loader for the 4010.  He was our closest neighbor and lived about a mile down the road.   There are so many stories about Bob.  He was your “Country Bumpkin” stereotype.   He wore striped bib overalls, the ones with the little front pockets and they always had a worn circle from his chewing tobacco can.   He had big bushy eyebrows, a big beer belly and false teeth, which he usually kept in the other small pocket of his bibs.   Bob loved his cigarettes and beer.   He always smelled like a chimney or a brewery.   And boy could Bob tell stories.  If he got you cornered, it would be a good half hour before the story was over and you could get away.  He had a laugh that is impossible to accurately describe.   When he got a good roar on, his “Heh, Heh, Heh” turned into a hiss and got so high pitched that you couldn’t hear it.   His head and belly would be a bobbin,’ his mouth was open but nothing was coming out.  Thinking back on it, I’m pretty sure he laughed so hard he was hyperventilating.  When something did finally come out, it was a gasping sound like he couldn’t breathe and he would hold his sides until he caught his breath.  Then he would go on with the story until he got to his next laughing jag.  He was the “best-est” good old boy I ever knew.   

Bob was also a piggy bank to all the kids.   We didn’t get paid for working on the farm.   When we asked about getting paid or an allowance, Dad would always say, “Room and board kids, room and board.”  Bob would give you a shiny new quarter whenever he was packing his little coin purse.  It was a little round rubber pouch. When you squeezed the sides the middle opened.   Bob was also the guy who hired out the kids in the neighborhood.   When hay-baling season came around, it was fifty cents an hour for the little kids, buck and a half an hour for the big ones.  If you were lucky you could get two to three days out of it for ten to twenty bucks.   It seemed like a fortune back then.     

Bob also gave me my first taste of beer.  I never saw my parents drink, pretty much teetotalers on both sides of the family.  But after a long day of baling hay, in the hottest part of the summer, Bob would say,  “Go fetch us a beer.”   His beers were kept in the milk house so the wife didn’t catch him drinking.  Guess she couldn’t smell it on him???  The milk-houses were little white buildings with cement “bunkers” for holding water. You put your milk cans in it for the milk truck to pick up.  The cold water coming up from the well acted as a cooler for the milk cans.  Well come the middle of July the milk-house got as warm on the inside as it was on the outside and that cool water was probably 70-80 degrees.  That nice cold beer was warmer than the beer they drink it in England.  My first sip of beer was a 75-degree “Schlitz” malt liquor.  I think it was more foam than liquid.  It might as well have been cow piss.   Trying to swallow that first sip nearly gagged you.   But boy did old Bob get a hoot out of watching the expressions on your face. He would start laughing again so hard he’d nearly pass out.  Don’t think I ever asked for a second sip.  Every summer he would offer one to all the boys, “Take a sip, get a little hair on your chest.” 

And I wonder why I never developed a taste for beer.