With the threat of war, the hop farmers were concerned that they wouldn’t be able to get their hops picked because the government wouldn’t let the Canadian Indians come across the border to work. A local farmer, Bill Gamache, heard about a hop picking machine being built in California. He went down and talked the manufacturer into selling him two machines and had them shipped to Yakima. They worked fairly well, so when the designer was in Yakima, Bill talked Jesse into getting the manufacturing rights. There were no drawings, so Jesse took one of the machines and cut it down the middle and laid it out on the showroom floor so that drawings and welding fixtures could be made.

Jesse would tell us a story about the the hop picker.   There was a local hop rancher that wanted to buy 12 crawlers and 10 hop pickers.   At the bank he had a reputation of not paying his bills on time.   Jesse had mentioned to the banker, that the rancher was wanting to buy the machines.   Mr. Wrightmeyer, “the banker”, said “don’t do it, he won’t pay”, but the rancher was a long time customer at Lindeman Power, and they had never had any problems.   So, Jesse took the order with a down payment of $500 dollars on each pair of machines.
Every time the banker would see Jesse, he would needle him about it.   Once they were delivered, the payment was due, the rancher ask to see Jesse.   He said “a payment is due and I need to talk to you about it.”   Jesse could foresee the banker could be right. When they met he told Jesse he had just received a big payment.   Jesse was told to go to the banks back door at 9:30 the next morning, pound on the door until Joe Rutter, who knows about this, comes to the door, and will have a cashers check for the amount he owned. Jesse got the check and hung around the bank to see Wrightmeyer and show him that he was wrong, but he never came in.   He did see him at a dance and told him he had been paid, an Wrightmeyer said “he is still not paying his bills” and  Jesse told him I don’t give a dam, we got ours.