Marion Gunderson Art (and the Farmer's Daughter)

This steam engine photo is from the October 2, 1959, Fort Dodge Messenger and Chronicle.* I don't know for sure, but assume that this steam engine is similar in concept to that of my Great-Uncle Art (mentioned below).

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Click on image to enlarge.

In the previous post I included a photo of what my father  (Deane Gunderson) said is a steam engine crankshaft oiler. I don’t know if that is the official name for the item or more of a descriptive name.

On Independence Day in 2005 my dad and I were cleaning out the furnace room of the basement at Gunderland. We ran across two steam engine oilers, both of which my dad later passed along to me, including the one in the photo at the left. Below are my notes from asking Daddy questions that day about the oilers.

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Daddy guesses the oilers are from the 1920s during Uncle Art Gunderson’s (Aunt Ruth’s and Grandpa John’s brother) time.

They are an oiler for an old steam engine. Daddy said, “I’ve always associated them with Uncle Art Gunderson because he owned a steam engine. You take off the cap. Pour oil in and put the cap back on. If the engine was running and you wanted to lubricate the big shaft, you would pull the lever up and the oil would drip. At night you would close (it) because the machine would not be running. Otherwise it would drip and waste.”

I asked Daddy why Uncle Art had a steam engine. Daddy said, “It went with the threshing machine. It furnished the power for the threshing machine.”

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Art Gunderson is the tallest man, third from the right. L to R are my grandfather and his siblings with their parents: John Gunderson (my grandfather), Martha Gunderson Boggs, Charles Lewis (my great-grandfather), Dena (my great-grandmother), Arthur (the great-uncle who owned the steam engine), Ruth Gunderson VandeSteeg and Naomi Gunderson. About this photo my mother wrote, "Golden Wedding Anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. C.L. Gunderson in 1934."

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*I’ll post the full Fort Dodge Messener and Chronicle article within the next month.

(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

I’m curious to know if you know what the item in this photograph is, and how it was used. I do know, but only because my father, Deane Gunderson, told me.

If you prefer to not comment below, but would like to email to tell me your guess, or your in-the-know answer, feel free to do so. mariongundersonart@gmail.com

Clicking on this photo will magnify detail.

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(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

Tonight I was going through some super8/8mm movies that I don’t know if I’d ever even seen. I ran across this shorty (21 seconds) from my days of teaching home economics at Mallard, Iowa. The video is of the students in the senior Home Arts class as they were escorted into the home ec. room for their mock weddings.

The Home Arts curriculum was set before I started teaching at Mallard. It was geared 100% to getting married. The administration’s expectation was that I follow the curriculum of the previous home ec. teacher…probably because it had always been a popular class, and, face it, at that time, there was more focus in society on being married as opposed to not.

If I were teaching a similar class today, I’d have the students concentrate more on things like family finance, compatibility, and commitment than on choosing a wedding cake or the four Cs when shopping for a diamond.

When I started teaching at Mallard I was 20 years old; some of the seniors were just a year younger than I at the time. I might have had more growing up yet to do than many of them did!

Oh, yes…I remember the “boys” class when they cooked a turkey for Thanksgiving. They got their clean-up done awfully quickly. Sort of. I didn’t discover until the end of the year that those boys put the turkey bones way back in the corner of the lower cabinets! (How I didn’t discover those turkey bones before then, I’ll never know!)

Those same boys had a home ec. lesson in mending/patching jeans. But, the laugh was on me…or rather on Bill. The boys practiced their mending on Bill’s jeans. After I took the jeans home to Bill and he went to step into a pair, he discovered that those boys had sewn his pant legs closed!

Back to the video. After the Home Arts students graduated in the spring of ’77, Bill and I had a get-together for them at our home. (I.e., all or almost all of the students in the video showed up at our house.) We had no idea what to expect, but to cover our fannies, we made sure that the students were of legal age. (All were except for one girl.) There did end up being some “adult” beverages brought by at least one student, which made me quite nervous. But, in talking with the parents afterward, they were just glad their daughters and sons were with us instead of who knows where.

Fond memories of the days that were. Just like yesterday, today and tomorrow will one day turn into the fond memories for our futures.

(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

To enlarge the résumé text, click once on the image. Twice for further magnification.

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The year: 1940. My father’s (Deane* Gunderson) résumé most likely played at least a small part in his landing a job with the John Deere Tractor Company in Waterloo, Iowa. He was an engineer for John Deere from 1940-1945.

Can you imagine the looks on the faces of human resources personnel if this résumé came across their desks in this day and age? Forget the looks. What about the potential law suits if in 2011 they did hire him…or if they didn’t?!!!

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*My father’s legal first name is “Deane.” For a while he dropped the last letter and went by “Dean.”

(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

The red background in the above banner is a cropping from the photo of strawberry pretzel salad in this post. The post includes a link to the salad recipe, as well. If you’re looking for a yummy salad for Valentine’s Day, or anytime, I hope you’ll try the recipe.

(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson  Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

The aircraft in the distance is being deiced at the Dallas/Ft. Worth International Airport Thursday morning. You can see the part-glycol fluid somewhat pooled on the aircraft. I took this photo from inside the aircraft that was next in line to be deiced. (Click on image to enlarge.)

Yesterday I flew from Dallas to Minneapolis to Des Moines. After boarding Delta’s Embraer 175 (twin-jet) at DFW, passengers were told that our aircraft needed to be deiced. It had picked up ice en route from Detroit to Dallas earlier yesterday.

The following is a video* of one wing being deiced. I’m wondering how many gallons of deicing fluid were needed for just this one wing, and how much fluid in total for this aircraft.

A pilot friend told me tonight that in 2001 he had a Beach King Air deiced. The King Air was an approximately 10-seat plane with a wingspan of approximately 50 feet. It had severe icing about 1/2 inch thick. In 2001 the cost for deicing the thick ice on his small aircraft was $3,000…300 gallons of deicing fluid at $10/gallon. If there had been just frost on the wings, the deicing cost would have been much less.

So…that was $3,000 in 2001 to deice a small aircraft. With deicing fluid prices being higher** a decade later in 2011, just think how astounding the cost of deicing must be on aircraft with much larger surface areas (i.e., huge jets) than the Beach King Air.

I want to get this posted tonight, so am not taking the time to research about different types of deicing fluid. However, some basic information about different types of fluids is included in this 2001 article.

*I am wondering if the drain-looking circle in the concrete at the lower right of the video is part of some sort of deicing fluid recapture system. DFW has dedicated deicing pads. The aircraft I was in departed the terminal and was deiced at one of these pads before taking off.

**according to a few online forums

(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

Recently my brother-in-law Jeff revealed to me, via my sister Peggy, the Urban Dictionary meaning for the term “Shatner commas.”

The meaning is at this link: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Shatner%20commas&defid=4307935

If you didn’t already know what “Shatner commas” are, now you do!

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I haven’t been working on the blog much recently because I’m catching up just a little on my to-do list. However, I’ve got another manure spreader post coming up soon.

(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)