Sole Survivor?
By Dick Wells

Most gas engines spend their entire work lives ... working. They were purchased as labor saving devices to replace the hard work of pumping water, shelling corn, grinding grain or sawing wood around a farmstead. If they're lucky enough to survive to the present time they may end up looking better, but they still work at pumping water, shelling corn, grinding grain or sawing wood at a gas engine show.

Not so with Kenny and Joyce Lage's 1912 3HP vertical Root & Vandervort marine engine, serial number CM2084. Eighty years ago, this engine was set up powering a 20-foot, wooden Chris-Craft style of boat that motored along the Mississippi River. Today, it still supplies power, but now for a kid's merry-go-round that a loving grandpa built. This is an engine that gets to play.

Finding the R&V

Kenny has a wonderful collection of prairie tractors, a 1919 Avery 14-28, a 1930 Hart-Parr 28-50 and a very rare 1930 Baker 42-67. The Baker tractor was missing its small, Alemite grease fittings, and Kenny thought there might be some in an old two-story building in Wilton, Iowa, a few miles from where he lives. One of those places you could barely walk through, the old building had been a dealershi.. Reunion
Slated For September 12-14, 2003

Root & Vandervoort engine owners are gearing up for the R&V 100th Anniversary Reunion in East Moline, Ill. R&V owners from around the country are making plans to attend - Patrick Livingstone and Peter Lowe plan on making the trek all the way from Australia.

Nebraska R&V engine owners are challenging any state (excepting host state Illinois) to bring more R&V engines to the reunion than Nebraska owners. Over 100 R&V engines are already signed up for the reunion.

Registration packets are set to be mailed in February, and R&V registrar Peter Lowe's web site (www.oldengine.org/members/plowe/) has more information, or you can contact Dick Wells at the address listed at the end of the main story.