By Ronald Ahrens

Editor’s note: I found this old story and photo for the Toledo Blade in my files–my first attempt to apply a poetic touch to a grain elevator. 

In a bay where grain hulls and residue fire out of a chute, a 43-year-old Reo Gold Comet crouches behind its own long snout, awaiting the next call to duty. 

A coating of dust on the cab gives the truck a ghostly look. The blue paint on the hood needs to be polished, and the chromed grille hardly sparkles. One windshield wiper is missing, and a door won’t open. 

But the dump box still goes up and down in back, which is the main concern of Charlie Steffens. That and the fact that the flathead six-cylinder engine still runs. 

“There’s a lot of spit and sputter in it,” says Mr. Steffens, co-proprietor of Atlas Feeds. “But it runs good. You just have to use a little more choke than usual.” 

Mr. Steffens bought the truck “a couple of years ago for $600 or $700” from a man in Tecumseh. The seller had to choose between the truck, which he intended to restore, and his wife, who presumably suffered from a little neglect of her own.

Once Mr. Steffens got the Reo to the feed mill, he was promptly offered more than the total purchase price for the hydraulic hoist alone. He wasn’t interested; the truck was too useful as a utility vehicle, with its main function being the disposal of leftovers from the milling process. 

The sour-faced truck holds a certain appeal for customers. They pass it on the way inside the store for hardware items or a packet of seeds. Most people ask the truck’s age, Mr. Steffens says, although some may remember it as the truck whose brakes “cut loose,” injuring a former owner. 

But around the busy mill, there’s neither time nor energy to imbue this everyday object with exotic qualities. 

“We’re just a country elevator,” Mr. Steffens says.