Hi there! My name is Luke Tonneberger, I'm 34 years old, and live in Rockford, Michigan. I'm married to a great lady, Shirley, for about 10 years. We have a daughter together and her name is Brooklynn, who is 6. Our house is in the country but not on dirt roads. It sits on 10 acres of land and 5 of that is wooded. I have a 24' x 24' pole barn that I keep my junk in. My Dad and I opened up one wall and added a 13' x 24' lean-to, so now the barn is about 37' x 24'. You can see the addition here: http://www.oldengine.org/members/luket/trailerloaded3.jpg
I work at a company called Steelcase in the Specials Engineering Department where I design office furniture. Here's a picture of the building I work in.
I got started in antique stationary engines with a 3hp John Deere my Dad bought. He restored it and ran it a few times but never showed it or anything like that. All I remeber as a young kid (maybe 10 years old or younger) is my Dad launching tennis balls out of the exhaust stack. My Dad and Brother didn't really take a liking to it so it just sat around for 15 years or so. During the summer in 1997 we were sitting around talking one afternoon and I remembered the 'tennis ball launcher' for some reason. I asked what ever happened to that 'thing' and they said it was in my brothers garage, I could have it if I wanted it. I told them I had room in my garage for it I'd take and play with it. So my brother took almost an entire day to dig the engine out. He moved the stuff out of his garage, hauled all the junk off the engine, and pulled it out of the back corner. My brother loaded it up and brought it over to our house where we got it running in no time at all. A buddy of mine stopped by after work one day and saw the engine running in the drive way. Says, "hey I saw a big billboard with one of those 'things' on it advertising some antique tractor show or something. You should go check it out." Shirley and I went to that show and were amazed at what we saw. I had no idea that the hobby even existed. We now go to several shows in our area and enjoy hauling some of our stuff along with us. Take a look at some of my pages to see a few of the things we've dragged home.
