The Tuesday Crew-- Volunteers keep things running at Ag museum

UNION GAP, Wash. -- The old outhouse hadn't looked this good in years.

It got a new roof and a new floor. The two cracked concrete stools were replaced with new wooden ones. The old doors were refitted with handles. It was hosed off, inside and out.

"It's ready to go," Bill Driskill declared after the wash job, adding, "You can move it with a forklift and put it anyplace you want."

Working on Tuesday mornings, Driskill, 75, and Royce Baker, 83, finished the job in three weeks at the Central Washington Agricultural Museum.

They're part of what's known as the Tuesday Crew at the Union Gap museum.

Most Tuesdays about 30 men -- many more than 70 years old, some 80 or more and at least one over 90 -- gather to do what needs to be done to keep the museum going. They include retired farmers, a tire salesman, a carpenter, a roofer, a sawyer and a farmer-turned-neuropsychologist.

The projects may be installing toilets or making a rusty 80-year-old binding machine work. A decades-old sawmill was reassembled and put into working order so they could slice logs into boards. Antique farm equipment is made to run again. Picnic tables are painted. Outhouses are repaired.

"I don't know why we picked Tuesday. It just kinda grew over the years," says Bob Eschbach, 84, the only surviving founder of the 30-year-old museum. "The first volunteers here were farmers and they would show up any day they had a free day. We just ended up concentrating on Tuesdays. It seemed to be a convenient time."

The Tuesday Crew's pace is unhurried. They start drifting into the museum meeting room for coffee and cookies about 8 a.m. The conversation ranges from farm equipment to fishing to who's in the hospital.

Work begins about 8:30 with people dispersing to their respective projects. Few walk; nearly everyone drives the couple hundred yards to where much of the work is done. Most drive pickups.

The projects may be something of their own choosing. Ray Kempf, 83, has been restoring a century-old silo for the past 16 months. Ken Matthew, 82, works on the sawmill he helped reassemble. Or, volunteers may be asked by museum president Nick Schultz to do a particular job. On recent Tuesdays volunteers have been sought to install toilets, hoe the corn patch and paint benches.

Tuesday Crew members may work slowly, but they work hard and expertly. Baker easily builds a new floor for the old outhouse. Out in the nearby hayfield, Alvin Oswalt, 67, bucks 70-pound bales of hay. Dick Drew, with advice from 93-year-old John Schilperoort, revives an 80-year-old wheat binder. ("All it needed was a new canvas," Drew explained later.) A week later Drew, 73, loaded bundles of wheat onto a tractor-drawn wagon.

At 10 a.m. they break for more coffee, cookies and conversation. The cookies, brought in by the crew, are mostly store-bought but sometimes homemade. A half-hour later, the Tuesday Crew members again clamber into their pickups for the drive back to the job site. They knock off for lunch at noon. Some may head home then, but some work until midafternoon. "At 3:30 the joke is they get homesick," says Eschbach. By 4 p.m. most everyone is gone.

Drew -- a farmer-turned-psychologist specializing in neurobiological brain disorders -- recognizes the measured pace of work at the museum. "We're there to enjoy what we do. There's no big push. There's no time pressure. If you don't want to do it, you don't."

He's been a part of the Tuesday Crew for 15 years. His stint started when he needed help repairing an old binder he'd bought. Appealing to the museum, he met Schilperoort, who helped him repair the binder. Drew has turned out for the Tuesday Crew ever since.

"A huge part of (the Tuesday work days) is the camaraderie," says Drew. "Farmers enjoy each other's company. I never laugh so much as I do on Tuesdays."

Though summer is the busiest time of year for the Tuesday Crew, they get together year-round, says Eschbach. "Rain or shine or snow, it doesn't much matter. Vacations or hunting season sometime interfere, but not much."

But, says Drew, "sometimes in the winter we just sit and drink coffee all day."

Don Frederick, 79, is a 12-year veteran of the Tuesday Crew. A retired Boise Cascade worker, Frederick says he just likes agriculture and being around and working on the old farm equipment. And, he says, "This is my grand outing each week. A person has to have something to do when he retires."

About the museum

Central Washington Agricultural Museum contains a diverse collection of old farm equipment inside covered buildings and in outdoor displays. Its biggest annual event, the Antique Power Show Expo, will be Aug. 15-16, featuring a tractor pull, parade, wheat harvesting, a flea market, food vendors and live entertainment.

Where: 4508 Main St., Union Gap

Info: 509-457-8735, www.centralwaagmuseum.org

Hours: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and 1 to 4 p.m. Sundays; walk-through visitors welcomed during daylight hours. Call ahead for tours.

Museum admission: Free, donations welcome. Admission to the Antique Power Show: $5.

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