Farm Day Meets Rube Goldberg

A week ago, Bells Bend Park, Farm Day:  Our farm and Kevin's had produce for sale, we had Friends Of Bells Bend information, baked goods, barbecue, hayrides, a horse, a goat, and slides shows of the farm. 
Beautiful day, with folks trickling in all day--a total of about 500, picnic lunches, and great music by a lineup of teen bands. 

I heard, down by the antique tractor display, a noisy pff-pff-pff-pff-PUTT-pff-pff sound and had to check it out.  Might have known! 

Mike Flowers' can-crusher was hard at work, and I just had to laugh and laugh.   Mike had found the engine, an old rusted block of iron, in his front pasture, and had carefully restored, repainted, and etcetera, until the 1921 Hercules ran again.  Somebody told me it is called a "hit and miss" engine, and fires only when the flywheel slows down, therefore very economical to run.  (Somebody else said all one-strokes sound like that:  I don't know enough about engines to tell, but would rather have a "hit and miss" engine than a one-stroke, and so would you.) 

This was connected to a maze of SQUARE gears--yes, they work!--machined at Nashville Tech, and all that power eventually jammed a piston into a coke can, which, obediently crushed into a tidy package, fell into a bucket. 

Rube Goldberg, eat your heart out.

Gotta tell you--the best entertainment, a fabulous day in the life.