Farm machinery where it should be

In regard to the Jan. 26 letter to the editor from Glen Hendrick about old farm machinery display on 32nd Street, my family has donated to the display. We gave the old “iron wheeled wagon” which has a wooden bed and sloped sides. Originally we had two identical wagons; however, one was later stolen.

This type of wagon was used primarily to haul mowed alfalfa and some other crops to a stationary thresher. The last time it was used was in 1953 on the Roy Loosier ranch in the south Gila Valley.

If we wanted the Cloud Museum or anyone else to have our wagon, as suggested by Hendrick, we would have donated it to them. In 1969 we donated our wagon to the Historical Society of Yuma. They did not have a place to put it, so it was stored behind the “old hospital” at Avenue B and 28th Street. When the hospital was demolished, it was moved to the 32nd Street garden site by the fairgrounds.

The equipment displayed at the site will have many more viewers than it would at the Cloud Museum in Bard, Calif. The wagons were used here in Yuma from 1923 to 1953 and have no connection to California.

I have a photo that was taken in 1943 of me at age 15 waiting for the wagon to be unloaded. It was taken on the Loosier farm, and several Italian prisoners of war who worked as farm laborers are standing in front of the tractor in the same photo.

Bill and Katherine (Loosier) Dunnam

Yuma