Submitted Photo A cook car from the 1920s, donated last fall to the Ward County Historical Society, is on display at Pioneer Village Museum.

This past fall, Pioneer Village Museum received a donation of a threshing crew’s cook car originally used in the 1920s. The cook car’s history is centered around a Lansford area farming family by the name of Milkey.

Hank Milkey and his brother, Mike Milkey Sr. decided to offer crop threshing services in the Lansford area. Running gear was ordered, consisting of a large wagon type frame with steel wheels. The brothers built a pitched roof on a large box with a door on one end that became a familiar sight as their cook car, providing meals and a place of respite on hot harvesting days.

The brothers married sisters, Hazel and Hilda, with a third sister, Nellie, hired to do the cooking for the crew. The crew generally consisted of 6-8 men. A threshing crew component consisted of a large steam engine that powered a threshing machine that separated straw and chaff from the seeds of the crop, such as wheat or oats.

Horse drawn bundle wagons brought shocked, bundled grain to the threshing machine and grain wagons pulled by horses hauled the grain away to the place the landowner wanted the grain stored or sold. A cook car for meal preparations and a bunkhouse, all on wheels, completed the threshing crew.

Times were not always abundant in the ’20s and ’30s so Nellie would sometimes make a tomato soup for the crew using just ketchup and water. Nellie also was known to make tent sandwiches by cutting the sandwich bread diagonally and setting the four slices on their crust thereby resembling little tents on the plate.

Sometime in the 1950s, with combines becoming more available, the Milkey Threshing Crew ceased hiring out for threshing of crops. The cook car was parked on Mike Sr.’s land and in 1961 Harold and Marilyn Sauer, of Lansford, bought that land from Mike.

The cook car was moved to Mike Milkey Sr.’s son Jimmy Milkey’s place. Nellie, who never married, would spend a number of summers living out of the cook car, now having been converted into living quarters. The cook car sat by a machine shed hooked up to electricity for a refrigerator and lights.

In 1969, Richard Walker, a Milkey son-in-law, became the caretaker of the former cook car. The roof was redone and the cook car became more of a playhouse for his daughter, Wendy, and son, Rod. There was a time when the cook car was used also for hosting informal parties, where couples were invited to spend an evening socializing with their favorite desserts brought as part of the activities.

The Ward County Historical Society thanks Rod Walker for donating this cook car to Pioneer Village Museum. It is nestled among our other buildings and displays various artifacts for you to enjoy and possibly reminisce about the bygone era of threshing.