Mike Shilling Estate Auction

http://www.mcmillenauctions.com/

Two days worth.

Mike was a dear caravan friend to all of us.  He will be missed.  It didn't ever take much arm twisting to get Mike to join a ride.  Will never forget the first caravan ride myself and my dad went on where we joining the group from Walloon Lake that was headed to Hickory Corners for the 2003 Gathering of the Orange.  We had rode south out of Ionia, Michigan and there was a definite dark cloud bank in the western sky.  We continued south and about the time we turned west and probably 10-15 mile left on the ride, we drove into a "wall of water".  It was raining so hard you could hardly see and ahead of me was Mike on the ol' WC.  We were traveling down a gravel road with what were small rivers of water running down both sides of the road along a corn field.  Something happened that we needed to slowdown fast.  Next thing I knew, Mike had the WC out in the cornfield with the front end down to the axle.  He had grabbed the right hand wheel brake which put him out in the mud.  Remember it's raining hard, Mike was going to be cool about it and just put it in reverse and back out, but the rear wheels started to slip.  Next thing I see is Mike hitting the throttle and the ol' WC seemed to JUMP out of the mud.  We stopped in Hickory Corners before getting to the Gilmore show grounds, dumped the water out of all the areas it had worked it's way into, and naturally had to rib Mike about what the trip into the cornfield was all about.  All Mike said was "what cornfield"?  

Should be an interesting auction, we have been able to see Mike's collection of A-C and Cockshutt stuff as a couple of our tractor caravans happened to stop in Charlotte for the night of which Mike fed us and made of feel very welcome.  Plus we were able to fill his yard with Allis Chalmers tractors for the night.  Without hesitation, he jumped on the offer to lead us out of town as the lead tractor.  Hope to see many of the A-C gang at the sale.

snowman(MI)

Dusty