Ralph Davis

Ralph Davis

Ralph Davis Continues to Collect Antique Machines on His Laurel Run Farm

A Trip Back in Time

By Kent Spellman

Ritchie Gazette

August 9, 2001

When Ralph Davis runs his hands over a piece of antique machinery, a look of reverence comes across his face. He holds primitive assemblies of gears, chains, and belts in awe.

"Just imagine the work in creating something like this," he said. "Think about the ingenuity, the handwork. These are things of beauty. Hard to figure how they made this stuff back then."

Davis, of Macfarlan, who turns 73 in October, has an affection for the tools, machines, and household items of the past. That affection has grown from a hobby into an obsession.

"I've collected all my life," he said, "but I've been collecting pretty severe for about 30 years."

His 119-acre farm at the end of Laurel Run, which Ralph moved to when he and his wife were married 55 years ago, shows the results. The neatly-mowed yard has a wide range of farm and lawn equipment lined up along the fence lines. His sheds are full -- really full.

"An old man told me a while ago that he had something he wanted to give me for my collection," Ralph said. "I told him, 'No, I've got to quit. I've run out of room." He said to me, 'No, you're not going to quit. You're going to build another building.'"

Unlike some collectors, Davis doesn't just store a bunch of junk. He figures it out, he finds out about it, he fixes it, he paints it, he gets it running. If he can't find parts, he makes them, or has them made.

"I make everything run," he said proudly. Well, almost everything.

Last Monday, a large flatbed truck labored up the hill to Davis' farm. "I thought he was lost," Davis said. "I couldn't figure out what else he would be doing here."

But instead, the driver asked him where he wanted it unloaded. On the back was an ancient tractor that had been customized for oil field use, perhaps to pull rod or swab a well. Rust had frozen most of its moving parts. The rest would only move with the most arthritic reluctance. Most of the engine was missing, the rest was cast in rust.

Davis looked at the tractor and shook his head sadly. "I'm afraid this is one I won't be able to get running," he said.

The tractor had arrived, unsolicited and without forewarning, courtesy of a Grantsville man who had once visited Ralph and his remarkable collection. It was a gift. It was given with the knowledge that the unappreciated piece of worked-to-death equipment, which the Grantsville man had found rusting in a field, would have a good home with Ralph Davis.

Ready to Work -- Ralph Davis, a retired Pennzoil employee who lives on Laurel run in Macfarlan, stands next to a two-horse road grader that is "ready to work."

Davis has an extensive collection of antique engines, including these water-cooled engines he purchased recently. He uses the engines to operate antique equipment from his collection. Davis is a regular and popular exhibitor at Volcano Days.

Davis has one of the state's largest collections of antique tools, farm machinery, and other "old stuff."

It's been that way for many years. Ralph began working for South Penn Oil, which later became Pennzoil, in 1958. In 1962, he went full time, and stayed with Pennzoil until he retired.

"The boys from work would find stuff for me while they were out in the field," he said. "I'd came back at the end of the day to trade trucks, and my truck would be full of old stuff that they found along the way."

The "old stuff" accumulated, until, today, many believe Ralph Davis has possibly the largest collection in the state. It's a quirky collection, with large selections in areas that interest him. Take walk-behind tractors for example.

In the sheds attached to his barns, Davis has a total of 19 walk-behind tractors, dating from the early 1900s.

One of his favorites is the Rototiller tractor, manufactured by the Graham Paige Car Co., in the 1920s. The tiller has unique spring tines on the tiller itself. The company was soon after bought out, and the tractor became known as a Frazier.

Another unique tractor is his Suburbanite, which has the motor mounted in the front wheel. "You can't find parts for that anymore," he said.

Another interest is horse-drawn farm equipment. Ralph's newest acquisition is a two-horse-drawn grader. It sits with the other equipment, carefully kept off the ground with boards of wood. The grader is rusty.

"I would normally have it all cleaned up and painted by now," he said. "It's complete. It usable." But keeping up with his collection has become more difficult over the past few years. Ralph's wife has been ill for approximately three years, and has been getting progressively weaker. She is now bedfast.

"It takes about all my time," he said. "She was a woman who was always active. She took care of things. All of a sudden, that quit. It made it hard on her."

Not all the items in Davis' collection are mechanical, or farm related. He has the butcher block from the Kesterson Ice company on Seventh Street in Parkersburg. The cutting block is four feet by six feet, and more than a foot thick, deeply dished out from use. He also has a unique table from the restaurant below the Chancellor Hotel in Parkersburg.

"The table was hinged," Ralph explained, "so the help could raise it and sweep the mud out from under it when the workmen were eating there."

Ralph is a collector, but he admits he's not much of a dealer. "I never sell anything," he said, "although I might trade if I have two things alike." He keeps in touch with several "antique people," saying that they are all "really fine people."

"Antique people are almost all that way," he said. "They help each other out. They're not in for a profit. They just like this old stuff."

Davis is one of the more popular exhibitors at Volcano Days on the last weekend in September. He brings a variety of old engines and hooks them up to different pieces of equipment. And then he talks about them. It's an education.

"I try to take different engines and equipment each year," Ralph explained. "I like to keep them guessing about what I'll have. "They're always asking me, 'Where do you find all that stuff?'"

The Meter Man -- Ralph displays a clock he fashioned from an old gas meter. He has made a total of 144 such clocks, many of which have been sold to men with a history in the oil and gas business. Davis himself spent his career with Pennzoil. This particular clock on display is in the lobby of the Ritchie Gazette.

He also likes to collect items with a local connection -- a shoe horn from the H-P Store, an ice scraper from Keith Esso, and an ash tray from Dils Bros. in Parkersburg. He also has a few mysteries.

In his collection of antique milk bottles is one from the Wood County Dairy. "I haven't yet found anyone who know where the Wood County Dairy was," he said. He also has what appears to be a fuel settling bowl for a car, that was manufactured by Justus Manufacturing Co. in Parkersburg.

"No one seems to have heard of Justus," he said.

This wringer washing machine is unusual because it has a copper tub. Davis has been unable to find any brand name on the machine. But he knows everything about how it works.

Some items have a personal connection -- for example, a tool used to sharpen churn drills that was made by his wife's father. "He had a blacksmith shop at the Dutchman bridge," Ralph explained. "There was a prison work camp at Cisco in the '30s. We used to watch them play ball on Sunday. The drill was driven with a sledge hammer."

The long list of items from our past goes on and on: a working Victrola, potbellied stoves, hand-cranked ice cream freezers and butter churns, a collection of Avon glassware, six-foot-long blacksmith bellows, a candle-powered lantern from the B&O railroad, railroad and automobile manuals . . .

His latest interest is antique riding lawn mowers, and he is starting a pretty good collection of them, including one of the earliest Craftsman riding mowers made. Then stand in formation along the fence around his manicured lawn with its two foundations and bright flower beds.

Ralph loves showing off the "old stuff" he's collected and is willing to do so by appointment on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

A visit is like a trip back in time. As you enter the main shed, two gasoline pumps lean against each other, tired from their years of work. Frozen on the face of one, is the gas price on the day it ended its service: 30.9 cents per gallon.