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Serial #0022

No Place To Hide Tall Case

The old J.I. Case threshing machine had been scavenged for parts, used to sight in deer rifles, and scoured by sand from the storms of the 30’s and 50’s. Belly to the sky, the husk of the great machine lay at the edge of the caprock overlooking Palo Duro Creek in the northern Texas Panhandle. The dented shaft of the thresher’s auger could be seen poking out of a draw just below the caprock.

The shape of the No Place To Hide Tall Case is determined by the radius of the slide gate pulled from the inner ruins of the threshing machine. Cut from the main machine body, heavy gauge tin panels are now top, side, and door panels for the Tall Case. The faint outline of the upside-down J.I. Case emblem can be seen just above the bullet holes in the main door panel. The door latch hardware is reworked auger parts. On some of the smaller cast parts the Case “eagle on the globe” symbol is visible.

Several miles south of Palo Duro Creek sits the old Easley place. Lines of idle Case tractors and other odd machinery and cars surround the abandoned farmhouse. During World War II, the Easley brothers would dismantle a Case tractor and use the parts to keep a handful of tractors running. None of the little orange tractors plow the fields now. All are silent witnesses to the slow passing of the old house. Wind and weather whipping through paneless windows have given the interior trim a faded and crackled patina that is a perfect match for the thresher sheet metal on the tall case. A bedroom door, cut apart and reworked, has become the arch-topped door.