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Powered Bath Tubs Draw Big Crowds
"My niece was in charge of a small town parade and she told me that every year they kept getting the same old cars, tractors, horses and fire wagons and that she wished she could find something new to liven it up," says Bill Crain, Helena, Okla, who took that as a challenge and headed out to his shop.
"I'd seen
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Powered Bath Tubs Draw Big crowds AG WORLD Ag World 18-1-21 "My niece was in charge of a small town parade and she told me that every year they kept getting the same old cars, tractors, horses and fire wagons and that she wished she could find something new to liven it up," says Bill Crain, Helena, Okla, who took that as a challenge and headed out to his shop.
"I'd seen the story in FARM SHOW's Vol. 15, No. 1, 1991, about Rick Clow's powered bath tub so I set out to build my own. The motor is the only part that's new. Everything else came from the junk pile.
"The front caster wheel came off an old corn binder elevator and I used a fork lift rear end on back, driven by the hydraulic system off an old Deere combine. I used the engine starting controls from an R diesel Deere tractor as brake levers. The rear wheels on the powered tub came off a Ford Fairlane 500. The bolt patterns fit the fork lift hubs.
"The rear, non-powered tub is mounted on the frame of an old Graves bale elevator.
"I tried to rig up a bubble machine to blow bubbles out of the tubs but never got that working right so I settled for a little yellow rubber duck that's mounted on a coil spring so he looks like he's swimming when we're moving. The squirt can in my right hand in the photo holds my "deodorant". After I scrub good under the arms, I give myself a couple of squirts. My wife scrubs in the back tub and powders her face using a tin pie pan for a mirror.
"I give the announcers instructions to say, `What in the cat hair is this?' when they see us coming and then when we get closer, to yell, `Oh my gosh! Don't look now Ethel.' Then after we get past, he says it was an educational float so all the old maids in the audience don't have to wonder now what a man looks like in the bathtub.
"We went to 1 1 parades and got fast prize at 6 of them, second at one, and the rest didn't have judging but we got a lot of standing ovations.
"The one big mistake I made after finishing this project was not buying Kodak stock because I'm sure it went way up considering how often our pictures get taken."
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Bill Crain, RR, Box 126, Helena, Okla. 73741.
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