These days, unless you drive by an Amish farm, it's likely you won’t see many shocks of oats punctuating the golden stubble alongside the road. Self-propelled combines took care of that years ago.

Last week, my wife returned from a family reunion in Blue Earth Minn., so named because its topsoil is so black it’s blue and flat as a landing strip. Perfect for corn and soybeans, which we most certainly got our fill of once we arrived in Southern Minnesota. Where, oh where, are those amber waves of grain honored in one of America's most popular hymns? It was green, green, green all the way. When we finally arrived back in Pierce County, we spotted one field of ripening oats, ready for cutting and shocking. Horse country.

When I was an 8-year-old during World War II, I saw plenty of shocks just across Highway 95 from our farmstead between the little villages of Blair and Taylor. All of them expertly put up by Pa and our hired man, Leroy.

Threshing time was a new experience for me, a tenderfoot recently arrived from the metropolis of Eau Claire, Wis. With the war on and gasoline rationed, our coulee would be threshing with a steam-powered rig.

Pa announced that Oscar Peterson had been hired by the neighborhood to provide the thresher and steam engine for the job. Pa was worried about a fire erupting out of the steamer box. Ma worried about feeding the threshers. She got out the church recipe book and prayed for guidance.

The next morning Pa said I should pick up all the scrap lumber and old fence posts that were lying around and pile them neatly “right here, next to where the firebox of the steamer will be. One thing good about steamers is you get to clean up the junk that piles up around a farm.”

A week later, grizzled Oscar Peterson came chugging into our driveway at about a quarter mile-per-hour, sitting atop the biggest machine I'd ever seen. A Case steamer of uncertain vintage, pulling a big old Advance separator with a 36-inch apron that would carry our grain bundles into its bowels. There the oats got separated from the straw. Following him in a black Model A Ford pickup with a water tank on its bed was his son, “TBone” Peterson who looked hungry already.

“Poof-poof-poof,” said the Case, barely working, while our neighbor's little John Deere GP said “pop-pop-pop” whenever Luther Chappell dropped by for a visit. Oscar Peterson wheeled the behemoth around, dropped off the separator, poof-poofed it around and lined it up so the long leather belt that connected the two machines fit perfectly on the first try, not missing a trick even though his Case had been obsolete for years.

That night Ma and the hired girl kept busy in the kitchen and Pa just looked out at the smokestack of the Case hoping the screen would keep the firebox sparks away from the barn and straw stack.

By morning, neighbors were rolling in with their teams and wagons ready to get to work picking up bundles of oats. T-Bone raced over the golden stubble past the shocks to fill his Model A's water tank with water from the Trempealeau River so there'd be no delay when the Case boiler got low. Finally, the teamsters headed out into the field to drop off the field pitchers and pick up their first loads of bundles. The Case was snorted away and the teamsters parked their wagons close to the apron which began to gobble up the bundles. These were swallowed up by the separator, which spewed oats out of one side and straw out the other onto a stack that was being put in shipshape order by my pal Chuck Knudtson's father, who knew what to do with a pitchfork.

As Knutson's stack got higher and higher, Oscar walked around his rig, officiously squirting oil here and there and shaking his fist at young hired men who tried to clog up the separator with too many bundles in hopes that the Case's smokestack would belch and send up smoke rings.

My father kept watching sparks dancing in the smokestack and fretting as I tugged at the hammer loop on the leg of his Oshkosh B'Goshes and asked what I could do to help.

“JUST STAY OUT OF THE WAY AND FOR GOD'S SAKE DON'T GET NEAR THAT MOVING BELT!”

And then Oscar Peterson blew the whistle on his steamer and the Greatest Show on Earth—or at least in Preston Township— came to a halt. Time for dinner in our big old kitchen. Eating. Eating! I could help with that.

Next week: What did we have for dinner? Did the barn go up in smoke? For answers to these and other burning questions, tune into Dave Wood's column next week.