The Rubber Tired Wagon

 

The old Wagon some years after it was built.

Roy Gene Owen and Christine Brooks

 

The name “Rubber Tired Wagon” was a name that stuck to this wagon from the beginning. Most of the wagons of the day had wheels with wood spokes and steel rims so this wagon having car tires was named because of that.

 

Sometime around 1940-45 my father and grandfather obtained an old car frame and built a wooden wagon body on it and thus the Rubber Tired Wagon was born. The box was painted a bright red and black or it could have been green. It had a tailgate that could be removed and the box bed was about 16-20 inches deep. This wagon was on my grandfather’s farm for many years. I don’t know what eventually happened to it but it was probably sold at the auction when my grandparents retired and moved to Como about 1960-65.

 

When the wagon was built the brakes from the rear wheels was linked to a mechanism on the side of the wagon which when pulled back would apply the brakes. The harder it was pulled the more breaking power it had. Also the tires were left on as mentioned above and had to be maintained with the proper amount of air.

 

The wagon was used on the road and also in the fields. It had a short tongue in the front that was attached to the original steering mechanism so only the wheels turned instead of the traditional wagon where the entire Axel turned. This was somewhat more efficient for turning because it could turn without the wheel coming into contact with the body of the wagon.

 

The short tongue made it possible to pull behind the tractor or a truck or car and also could be pulled by a single horse or a team of horses. Of course when it was pulled by a horse or horses someone had to man the brake constantly. In order to keep the wagon from running into the heels of the horses it had to be slowed when it began to go too fast. There was no way for the horses to hold the wagon back because of the short tongue. The breaking job usually fell to my brother or to me.

 

This wagon was a very important part of my grandfather’s farm equipment.

 

It was used to haul hay.

Granddaddy had his hay bailed most of the time and normally hauled to the barn on a truck. Sometime the old wagon was used to haul hay to the barn. Most of the time the wagon was pulled behind the tractor.

 

We used it to gather corn.

Probably one of the most important jobs that the wagon was used for was gathering corn. Granddaddy would hook up the old mare “Stella” to the wagon and we would go gather corn. The loads were pretty heavy and the old mare had a hard time pulling it when it was full of corn, especially up the hill. The horse would walk along between two rows of corn. These two rows would be knocked down by the wagon. As we would pick the corn from the stalks on the two downed rows we would also pick from the two rows to the right and left of the wagon. This made six rows we would pick at a time. Granddaddy would tell the horse to move and she would pull the wagon a short way and he would tell her to stop and she would. She was pretty well trained to work in the cornfields. The wagon was only filled to the point that granddaddy knew the horse could pull it. When it had reached that point we would head for the corn crib with the load. There was a small hill at the place where we turned in to go to the barn and corn crib. The load was pretty heavy for the old horse to pull up that hill but she made it every time. One of the fields of corn was a small patch of ground beyond a drainage ditch with very steep sides. We could hardly keep the wagon from running over the horse on the down side and she had to give it all she had to get up the other side.

 

When a load of corn was brought to the corn crib the wagon was pulled up behind the crib and a door at the top back of the crib was opened and corn scoops were used to throw the corn into the crib. By the time the crop was gathered the crib was bulging. Some of the corn was sold to other people so granddaddy could have some cash for other things. There was also an old hand cranked corn sheller in the crib. Outside the crib was a corn meal grinder which was powered by a horse walking around the grinder. All the corn had to be put in the grinder while the horse was on the other side.The corn that had been ground fell into a box under the grinder. This had to be emptied at various times also.

 

It was used to haul corn to the mill to be ground into feed.

Some of the corn was gathered  with the stalk and hauled to the feed mill to be ground into feed. Most of this feed was for the old horse as her teeth had been worn down to the point where she could not chew corn from the Cobb. I suppose some of this feed was fed to the cows also.

 

 

Hauling wood was another job.

 

Granddaddy splitting “stove wood” for cooking

All the heat to keep us warn in the winter was from wood that was cut and hauled to the house and stacked. All of the cooking was done also with wood. Most of the “stove wood” as the cooking wood was called was split after it was hauled to the house.

 

Also it was a recreation vehicle for us kids as we would pull it up a hill and then ride down the hill with someone standing on the front of the wagon moving the tongue to steer it.   We spend more energy pushing this wagon up the little hill that leads to the barn than we did working. We would push the wagon up the hill and then everyone who wanted to ride would pile into the wagon and get ready for the ride. After everyone was in a couple of us would push to get it going as fast as we could and then jump in and ride down across the road in to the yard by the house and as far across the yard as it would go and then do it all over again. I sometimes wonder how we avoided getting hit by a car while we were crossing the road because the drivers of the cars could not have seen us in time to stop. There were not many cars and they were not going very fast. These were all old dirt roads and the cars that did come by were probably not going over 20 miles per hour even if that much.

 

You can see from all of this that the wagon was a valuable asset on the farm. Many of my days were spent in some way connected to this old wagon. That was more than 50 years ago but it seems like yesterday.