pictures and paintings

A while back, Cyn posted a photo of her grandfather and his new tractor, in 1936. I sent it to my dad, and he mentioned his uncle's tractor. He told me it was a 1927 Rumley Oil Pull. I Googled it, and found this page. The tractor in question is the fifth picture down. If you click on it, you can see a video of it running. About the tractor, he said,

Also, you can see in the video how erratic the firing is of the Oil Pull. White smoke, black smoke, irregular etc. It was only 2 cylinders and ran on a mixture of kerosene and water. Not sure how all that worked. It had a four ft. flywheel. That's how it could get away with only firing occasionally once that thing got spinning. The carburetor had to be primed by hand, and then the flywheel had to be spun by hand to start it. Pretty amazing, and scary.

He had something interesting to say about the webpage too. The day I sent him the link to the webpage, the picture in the upper right was of a church. My dad is an artist. He started painting watercolors professionally in 1968. The first painting he did in 1968, and sold at his first art fair, was of that church. His second painting was of his uncle on the tractor (same model as in the fifth picture - and the same "color").

It's amazing how things like this come together, sometimes.