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July 23, 2006
By JOHN CHARLES ROBBINS
Staff writer
With an over-sized John Deere cap backwards on his head, 5-year-old Jacob Berkenpas gripped the side of a rusty red trailer,
mesmerized by the waterfall of grain filling its belly.
As an antique threshing machine whirred and hummed, Jacob was having a blast, shouting over the music of the machinery.
"Come up here, Dad!"
His father, Mitch Berkenpas, 43, was busy playing a trick on the little guy, who he'd hoisted up a small ladder so the
boy could see the grain.
Using a long piece of straw, Berkenpas was sneaking up behind Jacob and tickling his ear.
Jacob casually swatted at the side of his head but never took his eyes off the rising cavern of wheat.
"Dad! Come up here," he shouted.
The threshing demonstration was part of the 38th annual Riverbend Steam and Gas Association Antique Tractor & Steam
Engine Show in Allendale.
The three-day event ran through Saturday.
The tractor show is a high sensory experience, the kind of event that gets in your eyes, ears and nose.
The aroma of gasoline, diesel fuel and oil mixes with the heavy smell of burning wood. You get dust on your face, grit
in your teeth and straw in your hair.
Berkenpas, of Byron Center, decided to check out the show Saturday afternoon with his son and father-in-law, Harold Assink
of Grand Haven.
"I didn't think it was this huge," said Berkenpas, looking out over the large field covered with hundreds of
tractors.
The brand names of yesterday and today peppered the field: Allis-Chalmers, Farmall, Massey Harris, Leader, Ford, Greyhound,
Eagle, Oliver, John Deere and others.
The old Huber thresher was a popular stop for the large crowds. The machine was busy shaking loose the grain from the
slender blond stalks, spraying the straw into a growing mountain nearby.
Antsy children were eyeballing the mound of straw, itching to dive in.
"It's been a fun afternoon," said Berkenpas.
Jacob said he liked watching the threshing machine, but one towering tractor really captured his attention.
"The one I liked the best was the one with the big wheels," said Jacob excitedly, throwing his arms up into
the air.
The boy's favorite tractor was a bare-bones monstrosity called a Rumely Oil Pull, a Model K built in 1913 and owned by
Bud Rosema of Allendale.
Oil Pull tractors of the early 1900s burned kerosene for fuel and used oil to cool the engine instead of water.
"These archaic looking tractors were slow speed but powerful machines," said Rick Gilder, of the Riverbend association.
Controlling the throaty gurgle of a slowed John Deere, Cal Dyke, 56, of Coopersville waved as he inched around a corner.
The engine on his 1929 tractor was chugging and punching the air with its hot and powerful exhaust.
He bought the tractor when he was 16.
"It was running ... it needed a paint job," he said. "I paid $150 bucks for it."
About two years ago he rebuilt the entire engine, which is designed to start up with gasoline then switch to kerosene.
Dyke was encouraged to see so many in the crowd with children.
"A lot of families don't have connections to farms anymore," he said, "This is a real learning experience."
Near the back forty, a working sawmill was turning out planks and shingles, with the help of a sharp-looking Peerless
steam engine.
The steam engine, with its long flat belt, was powering a horizontal saw blade about 3 foot round, cutting shingles from
small logs.
Dale Sonke, 72, of Rockford, was keeping an eye on the water level and pressure gauge of the 112-year-old Peerless.
Coal black with countless red knobs and handles, back in the day it was drawn by two horses.
"The governor is the heart of the whole steam engine," Sonke tells an interested visitor.
The Peerless can burn wood or coal, he said. Coal burns hotter. "Wood is a little more forgiving," he said.
This day, with a worn ax and splitting maul near his feet, Sonke says he's burning hard wood.
After working for MichCon for 43 years, Sonke retired in 1994. He first attended a tractor and steam engine show about
40 years ago and got hooked.
He enjoys tinkering with the old machine.
"I love it -- love it!" Asked why, he said he's not sure he can explain the attraction.
"It comes from within ... some innate thing. You take an interest in something and follow it," said Sonke.
"One of the most satisfying things about the shows is when somebody takes an interest, especially the younger generation,"
he said.
"This one little kid today, man, he wanted to know everything. What was movin'. Why it was movin'. He went on and
on," Sonke said with a laugh.
Contact John Charles Robbins at (616) 546-4269 or john.robbins@hollandsentinel.com.
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