Gathering of the Green

 

The bi-annual Gathering of the Green conference was attended  by several members of the Greater Kansas City Two Cylinder Club. Wes Storm and Glenn Ratzlaff left very early on Thursday Morning and arrived around 11:00AM. Bary and Ann Porter were checking into the conference at the same time. We spent the rest of the afternoon looking at the swap meet and variousstatic displays that were assembled by the participating clubs. Later that evening we attended Ken Buell's evening session where his topic was "Demonstrating the Deere Difference". Ken used old advertising litature and photo's to show how Deere management helped dealers demonstrate and sell their equipment. The evening was very interesting and informative. It was well attended. On friday, we took a tour to the John Deere Debuque works. There we watched them assemble skid loaders, back hoes and small to mid sized crawler tractors. This is the plant that formally produced the Debuque line of two cylinder tractors. They had on display the first "M" that came off the assembly line and was in the possesion of the Weiman family. When we returned from the Debuque tour we caught the last half of Don Duffner's talk. There was standing room only as Don is a very interesting speaker and quite a home grown engineer. Later that evening we attended the fun auction where every vender contributed something. I bought a nice set of coulters there and other stuff. Saturday morning we used the time to tour the John Deere Pavilion and other sites. Some of the drop-in sessions that we attended were; John Deere Powr-trol systems, description, testing and overhaul and Magnetos; theories and problems. Both sessions were very informative and interesting. Too bad there wasn't enough time to attend more. We ran into the following club members there; Bary and Ann Porter, Ken and Julie Buell, Stephen Foster, Herman Sachse and his wife along with Kenny Read. If there was anyone else who was there and we didn't see, we apologize. Can't wait for the next conference.

Glenn Ratzlaff