Johnny Burger knows just how to get the attention of high school boys. When they weren't sure they cared about visiting the Tired Iron of the Ozarks living museum in Gentry, Burger pointed out a collection of hit-and-miss engines.
"Do you have a car?" he asked one. "A truck," the boy said proudly. "Do you work on it?" Burger continued. "I do." "Well, that's one cylinder of your truck," he explained. "If you look at it, you can understand yours better."
FAQ
Tired Iron of the Ozarks
Show
WHEN — 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Sept. 11-12; until 3 p.m. Sept. 13
WHERE — 13344 Taylor Orchard Road in Gentry
COST — Free
INFO — 524-0450 or tiredironoftheozark…
"This is our past," Burger says in the telling of the story. "It's history, but it's also how things began."
Tired Iron of the Ozarks will open its gates Sept. 11-13 to showcase what's preserved on the club's 15 acres and what collectors bring to share. Burger's list sounds like an all-day proposition, including:
• A building dedicated to antiques that would have been found in the home -- butter churns and treadle sewing machines, for example.
• A blacksmith shop, manned on Sept. 12 by members of the Blacksmith Organization of Arkansas.
• A 1907 fully functioning sawmill.
• An early 1900s log cabin, complete with furnishings.
• And a 90-foot-long building filled with machines -- tractors, a horse-drawn version of a brush hog, a horse-drawn road grader once used in Benton County, corn and oats binders and a stationery hay baler.
Plus, there will be tractors galore. "It's hard to tell how many, because they come and go and come from different clubs," Burger says.
"It's a fun show," he adds. "We work hard to keep it free so people can bring their families."
-- Becca Martin-Brown
NAN What's Up on 09/04/2015