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DRAKE - Watching the wheat flow from the threshing machine into the grain cart brought back memories for John Haugen and Walter Volochenko.

The two Butte men had a chance to reminisce at the 41st annual Drake Threshing Show that opened Saturday,

Volochenko said he was about 12 or 13 when he first went to work with a threshing crew.

"This is nothing new for me," he said. His last time threshing was in 1952, not counting his long-time involvement with the Drake show.

"I pitched a lot of bundles in my time," said Haugen, who remembers long days in the fields and the work crews that would come on the train from Minneapolis, looking for work.

The overcast day that brought a morning drizzle didn't stop the harvest Saturday. Two machines were threshing winter wheat. They will be at it again today as the show continues with a noon parade of antique tractors, a children's pedal tractor pull, flea market and other activities. The threshing grounds are located just west of Drake along U.S. Highway 52.

Joe Coblentz, visiting from Michigan state, was pleased to be in the area for the show.

"This is the highlight of the trip," he said. "I grew up with this. This was my livelihood."

Coblentz, who grew up Amish in Indiana and now is a casket maker, was helping fork wheat into the thresher Saturday. Except that his family used horses rather than tractors, it was like old times.

Albert Bossert, one of the original founders of the show, said horses had long been part of the events. These days, there are few places that have the draft horses, and people haven't been bringing the animals in the past few years. Although the horses are missed, the threshing otherwise is much like it used to be.

"There's a lot of history here. You always listen to the older folks because there's so much information there," said Terry Anderson of Butte.

Anderson, helping with the tractor events, said there's continuing interest in the restored equipment.

"I have been in it for 30 years, and my boys are starting to get into it," he said. One of his tractors at the show was an Oliver recently saved from the scrap pile. The tractor runs with the help of the old GM engine put into it.

"They really make noise. That's what people want," Anderson said.

The antique tractor pull provided some smoke and noise at times, along with a display of power that might not seem much by today's standards but which must have looked pretty good in the old days. The lighest tractor in the contest at 3,890 pounds pulled 5,225 pounds.

The tractor pull was something new to Stuart Williams of Ireland and Liam Burke of England, who along with a visitor from Wales are working on area farms. They found the threshing show to be similar to vintage shows in their countries.

The vintage shows feature threshing but the leftover straw is baled rather than piled, and classic cars and livestock typically are part of the events, they said. Another difference is the large number of John Deere tractors at the Drake show compared to the vintage shows.

"They are war-time tractors," Williams said. "There was a shortage of them back home."

The Drake show emphasizes the antique tractors. One of the main attractions is a 1902 Hart-Parr tractor provided to the threshing association by Art Miller, whose family acquired it in 1912 while living in Butte. Bossert said there was no crop in the Butte area that year so to get the money to make the payments, the Millers drove the tractor to Bowbells to do custom work. Miller had related the story of how his sister walked in front of the tractor to alert the driver to slough holes during the cross-country trip.

Art's brother, Raymond, had built an early four-wheel drive using two tractors, which is on display. A fully operational steam engine built in 1915 also is part of the show.