Road Trip

An abandoned road grader.

 

Okay, so we aren’t unlike any other grandparents, and when the grandkids come to visit it’s sometimes a challenge to keep them interested and learning new experiences.  On this day, we took a road trip through the country here in NW Oklahoma, and just stopped for pictures at those things we found interesting.

In the days before hydraulics and push-button controls, the operator

had to rely on the power of gear-ratio to crank in the settings he wanted.

 

The first stop was a road grader.  While progress has made these machines more efficient, they are still the backbone of the transportation system in Oklahoma.  About 75% of all roads in Oklahoma are unpaved.  Of the two-lane roads that are paved, about 80% of them have no shoulders.  Many also have no guardrails, and the edge of the roads often drop off into deep ditches, gullies, and ravines.  The Department of Transportation is really behind the 8-ball.  Constant budget cuts leave DOT with fewer personnel and fewer resources for maintaining, let alone upgrading, the state’s roads, so road grading is still a vital job.  Here, the grader required two men---one on the tractor to pull the unit, and one on the grader to operate its controls.



All steel ride, when it was felt the farmer already had God-given

cushioning for a comfy ride.  Take a good look at the wheels.

 

A short distance past the abandoned grader, we came to Burrell Implement Company, where they still have a large collection of antique farming implements.  While the old engines are interesting enough, we were fascinated by what passed for tractor wheels before the advent of rubber tires.  The huge tractor wheels were steel, and depending on the amount of traction needed, multiple rims could be bolted onto the wheels, and teeth, which are called spades, could be bolted on in almost unlimited numbers until the needed pulling power was achieved.

 

Here you can see the spades through-bolted on the wheel rim.

 

And finally, a selection of as many rims and spades as any

farmer could want.