County Music Ticket

Aug. 28-31, Midwest Old Threshers Reunion, Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. Aug. 28: Leroy VanDyke, Gene Watson, Charley Rich Jr. and Rex Allan Jr.;

Aug. 29: Jason Michael Carroll;

Aug. 30: Little Big Town;

Aug. 31: Mark Chestnut.

Free with paid gate admission.  $12 Daily, $20 for 5 Day Pass

www.oldthreshers.com

319-385-8937

Midwest Central Railroad & Case Partnership

Per CNN-Money.com……

Case Donates Loader/Backhoe to Railroad Preservation Group

Case Gift Reduces Need for Volunteer Labor for Track Maintenance

August 05, 2008: 12:50 PM EST

Case Construction Equipment has donated a Case 590 Super M Series 2 loader/backhoe to the Midwest Central Railroad (MCRR), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to preserving the nation’s railroad heritage.

“We will use the loader/backhoe primarily for track repair and rebuilding projects,” said Matthew Crull, president of MCRR. With volunteer labor risking sore backs when working by hand, Crull stated that they can replace two or three ties in a day. “With the Case loader/backhoe, we should be able to replace up to 100 ties per day,” he said.

According to Crull, the timing of the donation is significant because the railroad plans to perform a total tear out and replacement of the eastern half of the track next spring. The project will involve moving many tons of dirt and rock, as well as replacing the thousands of railroad ties. When completed, the restored section should last 15 to 20 years.

MCRR owns a fleet of steam locomotives and rolling stock that it operates along a circular track approximately 1.25 miles long. The railroad is located in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, about 30 miles from the Case Burlington plant where Case loader/backhoes are manufactured. The donated machine came from the Burlington plant.

The railroad is open to the public as a working museum that holds several events each year. The biggest is the annual Old Thresher’s Reunion, an educational gathering held every August that includes demonstrations of antique farming equipment. Among the highlights are the restored Case steam-powered threshers that served as a mainstay of American agriculture during the early years of the industrial age. Case also will display a 580 Super M Series 3 loader/backhoe, the newest generation of this versatile machine.

Approximately 35,000 to 40,000 people visit MCRR each year. It is administered, operated and maintained by an all volunteer group.

“Case is proud to support the hard work of the many volunteers who serve the Midwest Central Railroad,” said Jim Hasler, vice president, Case Construction Equipment, North America. “Their preservation of steam-powered equipment is consistent with our own commitment to conserve America’s industrial and agricultural heritage for future generations.”

The donated Case loader/backhoe is equipped with four-wheel drive and ExtendahoeTM along with the standard loader and backhoe buckets.

Case Construction Equipment sells and supports a full line of construction equipment around the world, including the No. 1 loader/backhoes, articulated trucks, excavators, motor graders, wheel loaders, vibratory compaction rollers, crawler dozers, skid steers, compact track loaders and rough-terrain forklifts. Through Case dealers, customers have access to a true professional partner–with world-class equipment and aftermarket support, industry-leading warranties and flexible financing. More information is available at www.casece.com. Case is a division of CNH Global N.V. (NYSE: CNH), a majority-owned subsidiary of Fiat S.p.A. (FIA.MI).

Contact:
Tom McLaughlin
262/636-7498
Email Contact
Jane Cooper
630/377-2555
Email Contact

Midwest Old Threshers

2008 Old Threshers Reunion
ALL COUNTRY MUSIC SHOWS ARE FREE WITH PURCHASE OF A GATE ADMISSION TO THE 2008 OLD THRESHERS REUNION KIDS 14 AND UNDER ADMITTED FREE LIMITED NUMBER OF RESERVED SEATS AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE
featuring www.oldthreshers.com
Tractors & Traction Steam Engines
Where Memories Are Made!

Gus Macker Deadline Extended

Gus Macker 3-on-3

World’s Largest 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament to Make Stop in Mount Pleasant, IA – Player Registration Deadline Extended through Monday, July 21

 

 

Mt. Pleasant, IA (Tuesday, July 15, 2008) –  The Henry County Convention and Visitors Bureau is pleased to announce that the World’s Largest 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament has extended the team online registration deadline for Iowa’s Gus Macker to midnight on Monday, July 21.  Iowa’s Gus Macker 3-on-3 basketball tournament will be held in Mt. Pleasant August 2 & 3.  Teams may also hand deliver their registration forms to the Henry County Convention &Visitors Bureau and to the City of Mt. Pleasant Park & Rec. Department in Mt. Pleasant.  Teams may also mail in their registration forms but they must be received by Monday, July 21.

 

The MACKER will be making its third trip to Mt Pleasant and will be held around the historic downtown square. 

 

“This is not your typical 3-on-3 basketball tournament.  The MACKER is a family basketball festival that’s really youth oriented,” said Eric Rawson, Executive to the Henry County CVB.  “If you have children who enjoy playing basketball or just enjoy shooting baskets, you should treat them to a Gus Macker tournament.”

 

Last year, the MACKER hosted over 90,000 players and nearly 1.7 million viewers in 55 cities.  Over $3 million has been raised for various local charities through Gus Macker Tournaments the past five years. 

 

Whether you’re just a beginner, seasoned pro, a weekend warrior, or an ageless amateur, the MACKER is for you!

 

 “It’s a game anyone can play, young or old, male or female, and at any experience level,” said Rawson. “You don’t have to play organized basketball to play in the MACKER.”

   Participation in:

Entry fee is $116 (mail in) or $122 (online) per team of four.  Teams will be guaranteed three games with the MACKER’s “Toilet Bowl” championship for those that drop their first two games.  Teams will walk away with tournament t-shirts and the opportunity to win trophies, as well as an invitation to the National Championships.  In addition to the MACKER tournament, there will be Slam Dunk Contest and Three Point Shootout.

 

You can get more information and sign-up your team on the official MACKER website – www.macker.com .  There are male and female divisions, as well as junior divisions for kids ages 10 and under, 11-12, 13-14, 15-16 and 17-18, plus the highly competitive open division. 

 

If you have any questions or comments or would like more information about the Gus Macker, please call the Henry County Convention and Visitors Bureau at 319-385-2460, 127 North Main, Mt. Pleasant, IA 52641

Gus Macker 3-on-3 Basketball in Iowa

Iowa’s only Gus Macker 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament held August 2-3 in Mount Pleasant, Iowa is accepting mail-in and online registrations.  The early registration deadlines are July 11 and 14. 

This is the third consecutive year the Gus Macker will be held in Mount Pleasant, located in the southeast corner of the state at the intersections of hwy 218 and hwy 34.

“We have a great tournament site that is very easy to get to,” said local organizer Eric Rawson. “We are less than a tank of gas from Quincy, IL and Cedar Rapids, IA – two areas we like to see teams draw from.”

Last year’s tournament brought in teams from seven different states.  Local organizers are looking to build on the previous two years.

“We are still a young tournament with growing excitement,” said Rawson. “We feel this year’s tournament will be the best yet.”

Mount Pleasant’s Macker will include division of all ages and skill levels, along with a Dunk Contest, Three Point Contest, Free Throw Contest and a Spot Shooting Contest.  New for 2008 is the Mount Pleasant Corporate Division.

For more information, call 800-421-4282 or online at http://www.macker.com/mackertown/MtPleasant_IA/

Midwest Central Railroad

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Video of the some train footage in Mount Pleasant on the grounds of Midwest Old Threshers.  Midwest Central Railroad puts on two seasonal events, other than the one during Old Threshers, with a Ghost Train in October and a North Pole Express in December.

Midwest Haunted Rails (October)

Midwest Haunted Rails offers ghostly rides on a steam-powered train and trolley, a haunted house, children’s activities, and a wide variety of foods and snacks.  This event is perfect for all ages!  For more information visit http://www.oldthresehrs.org or www.mcrr.org.

 

North Pole Express (December)

North Pole Express brings the classic children’s story book, The Polar Express, to life.  Take a magical train ride to the North Pole for activities, cookies and cocoa, and a visit with Santa.  A perfect family event for the holiday season!  For more information visit http://www.mcrr.org.

 

Mt. Pleasant Iowa 40 Most Beautiful Communities in Iowa

Mt. Pleasant is one of the 40 most beautiful communities in Iowa, according to a list released by the Keep Iowa Beautiful organization.

* Man-made features such as buildings, streets, landscaping, signage and community layout
* Physical geography, like topography, trees, bodies of water and unique features

Less visual factors were not evaluated: neither economy, nor cultural opportunities, nor crime rate nor educational levels.

 

Great Eastern Iowa Tractorcade

Mount Pleasant will be parading more than antique tractors June 8 – June 11, the City’s streets and surrounding County roads will proudly display America’s Rural Heritage by way of Tractorcade.

For more info, contact Old Threshers at 319-385-8937 or www.oldthreshers.com

By BARRIE ALAN PETERSON

 

Published: April 20, 2008

WHAT do you call 460 antiquated farm tractors clattering across the highways of rural Iowa, covering 140 miles at the killer pace of 11 miles an hour over three days of June?

Some people might call it a traffic jam, but to the folks who look forward to it every year, it’s the annual Great Eastern Iowa Tractorcade, and it brings out an eclectic collection of old farm tractors, along with equally old farmers and collectors of all ages nostalgic for the days before big agribusiness put eight-wheel monsters into fields of corn and soybeans.

“You can take the boy off the farm,” said a plaque wistfully affixed to the hood of a shiny red McCormick Farmall dating to the 1940s, “but you can’t take the farm out of the boy.”

 Photo by: Barrie Alan Peterson for The New York Times

Reflecting the good-natured rivalry among owners of the participating machines, the Farmall displayed a tiny replica of a green John Deere tractor, on its back like a dead bug, inside the glass jar of the air cleaner, where it would be covered by dust filtered out before it could contaminate the tractor’s fuel system.

There’s a fair amount of such rivalry, along with pride of brand, among the men and women who run the tractors, and most of the machines are painted the original colors chosen as trade dress by their manufacturers. There were red Farmalls, green John Deeres, gray-and-blue Fords and Allis-Chalmers, and Minneapolis-Moline machines in orange. The early Case tractors were orange, too, until that brand switched to beige, then black and red. Among the fanciest were the Olivers, with Art Deco paint schemes in gray, green and red.

But along with the rivalry, there was a strong sense of cooperation, as participants shared tools and expertise with one another to overcome rare but inevitable breakdowns along the route.

Each year, a somewhat different route is selected for the Tractorcade. Last June, the parade started in Oelwein, a Fayette County town of about 6,400. Over the three days, it wended along a roughly rectangular route through the northeast Iowa farming towns of Strawberry Point, Elkader, Gunder, Clermont and West Union, before returning to Oelwein.

This year over June 9-11, for the ninth annual event sponsored by the local radio station WMT (www.wmtradio.com), the tractors will follow a route through the southeastern part of the state in a roughly cloverleaf pattern, returning each night to a park in Mount Pleasant.

It has been some time since most of the tractors in this lineup have seen the dust of an actual farm field or pulled cultivating equipment; these are decked out as parade machines, with fresh paint and restored running gear.

Most of the tractors have had a few amenities added that would not have existed in their working days, like passenger seats, picnic coolers, fancy canopies and stereo sound systems.

Gene Bender, a 72-year-old retired aerospace worker, found his old Farmall Model BN in a junkyard in Colorado in 1987, he said. He restored it, added a passenger seat, a rear-view mirror and a picnic cooler and has participated in the Iowa parade for each of the seven years since he retired to Wellman, Iowa.

A special category is reserved for tractors tricked out with luxurious passenger compartments salvaged from trucks, keeping their riders in air-conditioned comfort.

An example is the 1949 Case Model LA tractor that Allen Kraus of Shullsburg, Wis., used on his farm until he retired in 2000. He had added the cab of a 1948 Ford F-5 in the early 1960s, just to make it more comfortable in the fields, and then decided to stretch it out with the old Ford’s fenders and hood as well, for recreational purposes. The tractor, a hit in last year’s Tractorcade, has been a parade machine ever since. Mr. Kraus’s daughter Kathie and son-in-law Steve Schwartz now grow corn and soybeans on about two square miles of his old farm, but the Case LA leads a far more genteel existence.

“The way it’s been, we barely qualified for the 10-mile-an-hour group,” Mr. Kraus said, “but we just changed the sprocket on the chain drive, and now it’ll do about 19 and a half, right up there with the fastest of them.” The cab already has a radio, he said, and next on the list of improvements is air-conditioning. “It doesn’t even need to work, but I just want to say it has air-conditioning.”

Mr. Kraus is a little reluctant to say how much he has spent on the project. “Let’s just say, I don’t need a Jeep Cherokee, but I could have bought one with what I spent on this. Anyway, you see a lot more Cherokees around than these.”

People with less money and more space than classic car collectors have been discovering old farm tractors in recent years, and magazines like Farm Collector (www.farmcollector.com) are available to help slake their thirst. A number of restoration services, like Kuhn’s (www.antiquetractorsrus.com) in Oxford, N.Y., are ready to turn a rusted barn discovery into a working showpiece.

Bob Kuhn, the owner of Kuhn’s, said a fully restored Farmall 450 dating from the mid-1950s would sell for about $15,000, but that the same tractor in good condition would carry a pre-restoration price of about $3,000.

Mount Pleasant’s Great Gobble

The Mount Pleasant Great Gobble festival is the area’s celebration of turkeys.  Yes, turkeys, in June.  The event runs from June 5-7 around the town’s square.  West Liberty Foods is the primary sponsor of the event.

Carnival Rides start June 5 and run through June 7.  A street dance for local youth will also get things started the evening of June 5.

In addition, you find:  Live Music Entertainment, Turkey BBQ Contest, Turkey Bowling, Turkey Call Contest, Turkey Drumstick Eating Contest, Turkey Trot/Run or Walk, Kids Games, Peddle Tractor Pull and Crafts!

For more information call, Main Street Mount Pleasant at 319-385-3101

Greater Iowa Swap Meet

For those who are always in search of a buy of a lifetime, this weekend has been designed just for you. The Midwest Old Threshers Classic Swap Meet will be taking place in McMillan Park. The swap meet and flea market will begin at 6 a.m. on Friday and Saturday and last each day until everyone leaves.

Lennis Moore of Old Threshers said the annual event has been expanding each year.

“We usually have cars and car parts,” Moore said. “There will be tractors and tractor parts, steam engines and parts, and more recently we have gotten motorcycles.”

Moore said people have started bringing crafts and flea market items, and last year there were a selection of plants.

-Mount Pleasant News, Jeff Hunt