When my grandfather, a struggling grocer in Keokuk, IA, married a young milliner from neighboring Warsaw, IL, in 1880, their lives changed considerably.

No longer would William (called “Willy”) take a small packet boat (the “Ploughboy,” down the Mississippi River to court Mary, his fiancée (called “Molly,”) but the couple would settle in to two decades of marriage, becoming the parents of nine children as they struggled to keep the family grocery going at 12th and High streets in Keokuk.

One of their marriage gifts was a large and imposing Bible, leather-bound, measuring 10 by 12 ½ inches, three inches thick and weighing 10 pounds. In addition to its large print and numerous illustrations, a section between the New and Old Testaments included special pages for families to record marriages, births, and deaths.

The first recorded death was William, born in 1882 and named for his father. He barely survived infancy, succumbing in 1884 to one of many childhood diseases that ravaged families in those days. Births and marriages of their eight surviving children, including my father, would be recorded.

Willy and Molly didn’t get to see their family grow up. Molly died in 1897 of what her doctor called “consumption.” After marrying Lucy Cochran in 1899, Willy died the next year of what his doctor called “nervous prostration.” Their eight children were “farmed out” to relatives, with Lucy taking in the girls. All the siblings eventually were able to attend area colleges.

The Bible was published in 1880 by A.J. Holman in Philadelphia. The date and city persuades me that it was likely given to the couple as a wedding gift by Willy’s father, also named William, who lived in Philadelphia and served as a “missionary” in the German Methodist Church. William supplemented his meager earnings by buying and selling books, including the History of President Grant, published by Mark Twain.

As a farm kid who grew up in the days when farmers were transitioning from horse-drawn equipment to tractors, a part of my brain still remembers when a threshing machine, powered by a steam engine or gas tractor, was a summer highlight on neighboring farms. It was the early 1940s, when horse farming — including steam-powered threshing and silo-filling — was being phased out, and the age of gas-powered tractor farming was well underway.

Two large draft horses lived in our ancient barn that had been built before the Civil War. My dad taught me to drive them, and I was always eager to take the reins. The mare taught herself to unlatch the barn door with her teeth, and the pair occasionally had the run of the barn-lot before my dad and I herded them inside, where they would be harnessed for their day’s work.

In the early 1940s, my dad sold the horses. Along with updated equipment, he bought an International Harvester Farmall Model H, a row-crop tractor that could do farm work much better than the horse team and didn’t have to be harnessed. My feet barely reached the pedals, but occasionally I was allowed to drive it, pulling the wagon forward while my dad and a hired man shucked corn.

A few tractors – and many farm experiences later – I attended the recent 70th annual Tri-State Antique Engine & Threshers’ show at Bird City, KS, and got reacquainted with steam and gas-powered farming that was part of my early years. The three-day show was held on several acres located east of town, with permanent buildings, exhibit areas, and a large parking area.

In addition to a variety of steam and gas-powered machines, there was a Farmall tractor that was a near-twin to the one I drove as a child, along with other tractors that helped farmers transition from horse-farming. Tractor manufacturers included John Deere, Allis-Chalmers, Case, Massey-Harris, Ford, Oliver, and a few others.

For truck and car enthusiasts, a museum on the exhibit grounds houses old cars and pickups. A few old vehicles, including a Ford Model T coupe, also were parked near other buildings.

Show events included sawmill and blacksmith demonstrations, steam engine races, a tractor rodeo, tractor pulls, and a parade. I noted that several of the tractors were driven in the parade by youngsters, some not much older than I had been when I got my first taste of tractor-farming.

There were also plowing and threshing demonstra-tions, kiddie pedal-tractor pulls, a player piano demon-stration, a band concert, and a lot more activities during the three-day event. Several locations provided a choice of food.

A comb-bound book was recently unearthed among my old files – a reminder of how far Discover Vintage America has come since my fledgling efforts as a journalist/publisher in the 1970s. “Recipes and Stories of Early-Day Settlers” was a collection of history articles and family recipes that had been published in the old “Discover North” since shortly after its introduction in 1973.

Back then, “family recipes” were a part of the paper’s content. Contributed by readers who were rewarded with free subscriptions, the recipes continued to be published for several years. The “Woodsmoke Series” actually evolved from the original comb-bound book to a softcover version a few years later that focused on “Steamboat Adventures” – some contributed and others that I wrote (or adapted from other sources) – about settlers using steamboats to settle much of the wilderness that would become America.

I remember that the books sold fairly well, and also served as inducements to subscribers. We even rewarded a lady from Alice Springs, Australia, with a subscription – although we lost money on the deal. She had picked up a copy from a relative who flew for Qantas Airlines, and sent us several “outback recipes,” which we published in the early 1970s.

We had no official “test kitchen” for the recipes, although my wife and I tried a few with good results. Obviously, the use of lard and other “natural ingredients” made it impractical to duplicate many of the older ones. Plus, many of the oldest recipes were vague about exact measurements, calling for a pinch of this or that, and “bake immediately in a quick oven.”

Probably the most unusual recipe was submitted by F. Maxine Adams, from Fulton, MO, entitled “How to Cook a Skunk.” Earlier she had gotten the recipe from her grandfather, then 81 and a Civil War vet, and copied it in his own words: “I recall a feller worked for me saying of all the wild meat he ever ate, skunk was the sweetest meat. Now I was willin to take his word for it without proven it. Me, I couldn’t get past the idea to try it. I reckon they aint no reason why skunk meat shouldn’t be as good as any. Skin clean, remove scent glands from under front and hind legs. Put in strong salt water and boil about 20 minutes or so. Boil off this here water add fresh and seasons: pepper, bay leaves, sage. Steam till tender. Larpen’ good eaten! Baked tater and wild greens go good with yer skunk.”

The recipe caught the attention of James L. Fisher, a columnist for the Kansas City Star. His “Midlands” column of Dec. 26, 1988 featured the headline: “Cooked a skunk lately?” Along with the skunk recipe, Fisher also described a few of the other recipes in the book: “vinegar pie, boiled dandelions, dried corn, castor oil cookies, suet pudding, cheap fruitcake, mush biscuits, and a dish called simply “meat substitute,” which asked the reader to “boil a quart of water, add a pint of corn meal, cook until done, then add a can of chopped salmon. Let cool, eat, cook or fry.”

Fisher also described some of the book’s “old settler stories,” including a tall tale about a farmer digging potatoes when a monstrous rattlesnake bit his spade’s wooden handle. The poison swelled the handle, broke the ferrule and kept on going. Finally the handle swelled to a point where it was seven feet thick, 163 feet long, and just right to be sawed up into enough lumber to build a tobacco barn.”

Fisher’s review certainly didn’t hurt sales any, and has been framed and hanging in my house ever since – a reminder of my early attempts at publishing. Although the days of “recipes and stories” are over, they helped start a newspaper that has evolved and served the Midwest collector community for fifty years.