M. L. Scholl & Sons, Collectors

That all changed one Saturday when Dad and I went to the Washington Court House Gun Show and Flea Market. We were roaming among the many displays when I discovered a 34 HP Ideal Air-cooled. The crank-shaft was broken, valves were stuck, and part of the governor was missing. I bought it for a whopping big $6.00. Dad assumed it was for my brother's collection. He didn't realize that the engine bug had just bit me. He found out on the way home that I was keeping the Ideal. Dad encouraged our engine collecting, and the three of us restored the Ideal.

Through the show ads in the Iron-Men Album, we kept up and planned our summer shows for 1965. This was just one year from the beginning of Gas Engine Magazine. During 1965, we operated and displayed our engines at Urbanna, New Concord, Lancaster, Dover and Mansfield, Ohio; Fort Wayne, Indiana; and Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. Our mother and sister also attended most of the shows.

In the spring of 1966, we moved our family and collections of lanterns and engines to the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. Today Dad works as a maintenance engineer at Watauga Hospital, and he is still collecting and restoring lanterns. Don works for 'Tweetsie' a narrow-gauge tourist railroad. He helps maintain two steam locomotives and still collects gas engines and watch fobs. I work in the mechanical maintenance department at Vermont American, Boone Division. My collection consists of gas engines, a portable steam engine, a Bremen hot-air pumping engine, and a 1932 Caterpillar '20'.