GERING — It's a brotherly matter of Beauty vs. The Beast at the Legacy of the Plains Museum.
Dick Kuxhausen is of the mindset that an older piece of equipment should be fixed up and painted to make it look like new again. Al Kuxhausen prefers the equipment not be restored, left to look worn and show the years of use and experience it's had in the field.
Museum board member Kevin Sandberg needles the brothers about the competition between Dick's beauty and Al's beast as both were on display as part of a sugar beet harvest demonstration during the recent Harvest Festival. On display at the museum was a 1944 M International that was restored top to bottom. To contrast that is an Allis Chalmers model with a Marbeet digger attachment. The Allis Chalmers has been made to run and operate properly, but is otherwise untouched from the condition it was in when the museum acquired it.
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"(Al) said he was going to have a contest, the beauty and the beast," Sandberg told . "(Dick) likes to paint everything, so he said, 'We're going to throw some paint on that (Allis Chalmers),' and Alvin says, 'No, we're going to have a contest, the beauty and the beast.'"
Dick said he's always been of the mindset to get equipment looking as good as possible.
"I'm just used to kind of fixing everything up," Dick said. "I like it looking better, but it's not really a rivalry."
Al recalled the days of using the machines, and he likes the equipment to reflect that use. He remembers growing up with the machines in the 1950s and selling the Allis Chalmers equipment for an implement dealer.
"Naturally, we started with the horses," Al said. "Later on, as it became mechanized, we grew into the easier part of it. "
The M International has seen hundreds of hours of restoration by the staff and volunteers at the museum. Dick said a lot of pride goes into that work, bringing back memories for those who grew up with the equipment.
"I remember that from when I was a kid, and I was running around, to see that back out there and listen to it, there's nothing like it," Dick said. "When you first start down the field, when the first big beets go in and they hit the back of that cart — if you were around these, you could tell whether they were running an International or a Marbeet from the sound of the beets hitting the cart when they first started. It's a different 'bang' it made in them. You hear that 'boom, boom, boom,' and on the International it was one way, and the Marbeet it was different."
For Al, the look of a used piece of equipment reflects the history of the machine.
"My theory on that is, folks that are not familiar at all, or young folks, look at that paint job and think 'That's a new unit,'" he said looking to the International before turning his attention to the Allis Chalmers. "This they look at and they know this is an old timer. This is what we're trying to emphasize, I think, is the old-time stuff that they were using."
For both men, it's a love of the equipment and a desire to preserve history that keeps them working to keep the machines running.
"It's a challenge to keep it running and try to show folks what we had to work with besides hand labor," Al said.
As for the best way to show that history, the Kuxhausen brothers will continue to agree to disagree.