Machines have always fascinated me. I think my interest in machines started when my dad took me to a saw mill driven by a steam engine. It had two large flywheels and one cylinder. The boiler was placed about sixty feet away and fired with waste wood and sawdust. To me it seemed to go at the same speed all the time, and when they put a big oak log to the saw, it would �Puff-puff!� loudly. I watched to see who opened the throttle when more power was needed, and discovered two fly balls on the end of a vertical shaft. When the engine slowed the fly balls moved down, opening the throttle. When the engine no longer had load, it would speed up and the fly balls would move upward, closing the throttle. Wow! An automatic throttle man!

The stranger or bigger the machine the more it fascinated me. I traveled to west Texas one time to see a very huge engine in operation. It was over twenty five feet long and weighed more than twenty five tons, yet produced only eighty horse power. It burned oil, just as it came from the ground, and turned at thirty revolutions a minute. My car engine does not weigh as much as the one piston in that big thing, yet produces over two hundred fifty horse power. But, my car engine will turn up to four thousand revolutions a minute.

Near the town of Mansfield, Arkansas, there was many coal mines. Most were open pit and had large powered shovels to dig out and load the coal. In late 1938 they brought in a huge machine in pieces on flat rail cars. They assembled it in a field near one of the open pits. It was some eighty feet long and twenty feet wide, and the top of the �house� was at least sixty feet from the ground.

I watched as it was being assembled, and once climbed over the fence to get a closer look. The foreman asked me what I was doing there and I told him I came to watch. He said that if I would stick with him I could stay, but if I got in the way, �Out you go.� I promised, and followed him around until I could hardly walk. My saving factor was that it began to get dark and I had to go home. Believe me, that three mile walk home was very difficult because I was really dragging.

I wondered how they would move the huge machine to the coal pit and asked the foreman. He showed me how. Seems it sat on a large ( I mean BIG) bell shaped base and could turn like a lazy Susan. When they wanted to move, there was a large hunk of iron on each side that would move to the ground, raise the entire thing up about six to eight inches, and move it forward as much as five feet. Then the two feet would lift up and move forward and the cycle would be repeated over again. In other words, it walked, one giant step at a time.

When I got home I told my mom that the big machine had feet and walked. She thought I was fibbing. When the assembly was finished , I insisted that we all go up and watch it �walk� to the edge of the coal pit. Mom knew I was not fibbing then.

That machine had a shovel that needed only three scoops to fill a freight car! It also was run by steam and had multi cylinders. Of course, it burned coal. (What else?)

Train engines were the largest engine common to everyone when I was a kid. There was a Frisco Railroad spur line from Ft. Smith to our little town where it connected to the Rock Island Line. A couple of times a week Frisco would pull some freight to town , some to join a train on Rock Island, and some for local use. I would try to meet that puffer-belly and watch it.

The three man crew would often leave it sit while taking lunch at the local beanery. I would spend that time walking around and looking at all the different parts that made up that relative small locomotive.

The engineer noticed me and told me that if I would �watch� their engine while they had lunch he would pay me a nickel. Boy, what a sweet deal! A nickel for doing something I loved to do! But, he told me, I had to sit in the cab! In the cab, yet! Wow, what an experience!

Then one day he handed me a long snout oil can and had me oiling the drivers and shafts . I was in heaven!!!

One Saturday the locomotive came and I happened to be in town. The engineer knew I did not have to go back to school that day so he asked me to help him turn it around and hook up some cars. I could not pull the throttle lever but I sure tried. It would not go unless someone was sitting on the seat holding it down, and I was not heavy enough to hold it down, so, the engineer sat in the seat. But I got to drive the train. At six years old.

I don�t know what my mom would have thought of that deal, but, I suspect she would have had a real fit if she had known I was doing it. Later I told her and she said I should stay away from that dangerous thing.

When the new �streamliner,� a diesel locomotive, came through in 1940, I begged my dad into taking me to town to watch it go streaming past. I remember how exciting that was. It did not �Puff-puff,� but just hummed as it went streaking past. I think the operator saw me, for he blew the horn, a long �Blaaaaaa,� not a shriek like the steam engines.

I studied locomotives and never had a job working on or with one, other than the security watchman for Frisco Lines.

I would be amiss if I did not mention the farm machines. Most were powered by mules and/or men. They were used to till the soil, cut trees and lumber, mow hay and bail it, and many other chores.

Since my dad was a blacksmith, he had a number of strange machines, like the thing that �shrunk� a wagon tire when it became loose. And, the machine that chopped fodder to make a dandy cow feed.

Then there was Lyle�s cotton gin. The cotton was sucked up with a long, expandable pipe and went through one of several devices to remove the seeds. The seeds were sacked and the cotton was bailed for shipping to parts of the world I had no knowledge of.

I became friends with an engineer who worked with a food processing company. They made peanut butter, mostly under the Circus brand name. They had a machine, more like many machines connected together, that they put peanuts in one end and jars of peanut butter came out the other. He allowed me to go watch the machinery at work when I wished, and I spent many hours trying to figure out all the functions and how it was accomplished. It was a fascinating experience.

I even improved the thing. It seems that the device that applied labels to the filled jars had to be constantly watched and adjusted, otherwise it would over lap or under lap the labels.

I could see that the timing device was an air dashpot type, so when the air changed density, it changed the timing.

I suggested that he put in an electronic timer instead that did not change timing. He did, and they never had to adjust the labeler again.

When I joined the Navy in 1947, I was determined to work with the large engines that made the ship go. Of course, after a few months down in the engine room listening to the pounding of those engines, it got boring.

I found that the command would allow me to �Swap� duties with someone on another ship when we were going to the same place, and that way I could see many different machines in operation, and even get to �drive� them. I rode every thing from a battle ship to small boats.

Even now, when I can not walk, I go out on my power wheelchair, a great machine in itself, to watch any machines at work I can, They still fascinate me..