These pictures are from the sparks show at the Old Threshers Reunion in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa during Labor Day weekend 2009. The would hook these old steam tractors up to a belted load and get them chugging up to full steam, then shovel saw dust into the fire box to produce the sparks out of the smoke stack.


The pictures of the tractors in the parade are only an example of the ones they used at night and may not be the actual tractors they used. What looks like a solid flame was how the camera took the shots. It was really more of only an accumulation of the sparks that made it look solid. Sometime in the future I want to go back and re-photograph this and play with my camera to see if I can get better pictures. I was going to go this year but was short of funds for the trip!