[Lowfer] BCY

[John Davis]

> They are no longer manufactured here anymore

Sorry to hear that.  I have grudgingly fond memories of Big Brutus, for a
brief time the largest Bucyrus Erie shovel in the world, when it used to
strip  what mine operators dismissively refer to as "overburden" from the
coal seams near my childhood home in southeast Kansas.  (The same stuff we
benighted farm folk lovingly called TOPSOIL.)  It was a wonder to watch at
work...and had the interesting side-effect that in a statewide geography
competition, only the kids from our two-county area knew how to pronounce
"Bucyrus, Ohio" correctly.

Brutus' labors did leave us with some nice recreational land, and he himself
is now retired as a museum piece just outside the hamlet of West Mineral.
If you ever visit there, you may find it difficult to make the distinction
between "inside" and "outside" the town.  But if you should think West
Mineral is too small to even be called a hamlet, then I defy you to find
Mineral itself these days.

And finally, just so this post is not totally off-topic, the tip of Brutus'
crane usually sports a ham antenna on Field Day.  And there are occasional
historic commemorations marked with special QSL cards from stations at the
site.

John