Canada collection

For one merchant at the 35th annual Tri-State Gas Engine and Tractor Association Swap and Sell Meet, the secret to finding good picks is to leave the country.

Al Hann has been coming to the swap meet in Portland for about 20 years. He sets up shop in the same place every time — the end of a row of RVs and tents, with a tall tree providing shade and his friends’ lot right across from his. He and his wife Myra travel eight hours to Portland from their home in Oregon, Wisconsin, every spring, just one trip that contributes to a hobby that takes him all over North America.

It all started when a friend told him Canada was the prime place for picking because some farmers lived too far from salvage yards during the World War II scrap metal drives to donate their equipment. So Hann travels north of the border each year to look for old engines, car parts and tractors. Last summer he went to a farm in Quebec to hunt down a flywheel engine collector.

“I went out there, I thought I had the wrong address. It looked very abandoned. I pulled in, there was no vehicles,” Hann said. “It was August (so) the grass had grown. I knocked on the door, geez I heard a noise.”

That noise came from Reuben, the elderly man who lived on the farm. He sold Hann five engines housed in a shed on the property, and said he had more on another farm 40 miles away. So Hann drove him to the other farm, and inside one shed was a 1924 motorcycle. Hann bought it with its accessories for $400.

“I turned around and he had two frames, 19 wheels and rims, and three shelves of parts for that 1924 Indian Chief Motorcycle,” Hann said. “Well I couldn’t get the money out fast enough.”

After looking around the farm some more, Reuben became tired, so Hann took him to dinner at a local café and then home. Back in the States, Hann sold the motorcycle and its parts for $47,000.

“So I sent (Reuben) a check,” Hann said. “He called me and he was very happy, and says, ‘I’m happy about this, but you know what made me the happiest? Taking me to supper.’”

Reuben asked Hann to come back to Quebec this spring, but unfortunately the hospitable Canadian host didn’t live to see that visit. He died around Christmastime. But Reuben’s sister called Hann and offered him whatever he wanted from Reuben’s farms at any price, because of how nicely he treated him.

Making connections like that has helped Hann in his hobby, which he started in 1985 after retiring. He had another friend who took him to visit a gold mine in Canada that had been left untouched since mining stopped. He took several small bags filled with gray powder that turned out to hold trace elements of gold and silver. And later this year he’ll be heading hundreds of miles north of Winnipeg to visit another friend who has been collecting old engines for decades.

“When I first started getting engines, I got quite a few of them and I knew I would never get to restoring,” Hann said. “So then I found out about these swap meets and shows and I could turn them over, make some money.”

And the Portland swap meet provides a venue for that, but also for the friendships he’s formed over the years. Hann sees plenty of people he knows while waiting for customers: a couple he calls “the flatlanders” from Illinois who he chats with about their respective grandsons’ graduation from college this spring; another Wisconsinite named John, who “you just can’t beat” at picking; and two men on a golf cart who stop by to talk about how business is going.

After this swap meet, Hann has one show left to go to in Iowa, then more picking and wrapping up with shows in the fall, including the Tri-State Gas Engine and Tractor Show back in Jay County.

“I keep busy,” Hann said. “I’m 77 years old, it just keeps me going.”