Steamy

The ultimate in three-year-old fun: the Oregon Steam-Up at Antique Powerland.

Highlights included:
Two toddlers screaming along to Tom Petty singing "American Girl"

The earsplitting noon whistle, when every steam engine on the property screams at the top of its' iron lungs. Five-year-old Devan (our guest for the day) was also screaming along but was inaudable above the shriek. Poor Shea had BOTH his parents' hands over his ears.

Cool steam traction engines of all shapes and sizes, tractors, gigantic steam cranes, and best of all (from the Sheadonious point-of-view):

The Willow Creek railroad! Ohmigod, the sheer exstacy of riding the rails again...and again...and again. Especially the part where Daddy's great big ASS made the train car derail and caused a titanic eruction of assistance from the Wilow Creekers. Even better was the Nice Man who showed Shea and Devan the whole nut-roll, from maintenance sheds to Old Smokey in the roundhouse.

Way too cool.

For a kid, the big machines and the color and the noise is the best. But it was fun for us, too, watching the little guys get their steam on. It always makes me think that we have it waaaay too easy here in our post-industrial age. The idea of spending a blazing August day in a five hundred acre field somewhere outside Canby, riding the footplate of a Case steam tractor (essentially an immense boiler on wheels) that was itself radiating heat like the heart of hell; dust swirling from the plow with another four hours to go until sundown and a third of the field yet to break. Mmmph. Makes me glad as can be that I'm slave only to a Sears 3.5hp power mower...

So anyway, the Steam-Up definitely qualifies as an Outstanding Oregon Thing.

Back tomorrow with yet another entry in Why Oregon is a Great Place to Live.