cook car

plural cook cars

1. A horse-pulled wagon used to provide food for threshing crews.

   These cook cars were homemade and made to suit the particular needs and size of the crew.

   1988, T. Eugene Barrows, “Thrashing in Montana at the Turn of the Century”, in Montana: The Magazine of Western History, volume 38, number 4, →JSTOR, page 66

   3 more examples

   I was once marooned for two weeks in Dakota during a rainy spell on a farm, slept in a leaky barn, ate in a cook car and shivered the rest of the time.

   1929, Intui Layman, “The Birth of the Hobo”, in Social Science, volume 5, number 1, →JSTOR, page 32

   Fortunately the cook car was close to the bunkhouse or we might have gone hungry during the three days, marooned by snow and cold.

   1930, Robert L. Yates, When I Was A Harvester, The Macmillan Company, page 138

   In a good season we put in as many as 50 days on a cook car. Threshing machines and cook cars are a thing of the past since combines have taken over in the big wheat fields.

   1986, Elizabeth Yoder Woodiwiss, “Homesteading on the Prairies”, in Mennonite Historical Bulletin, volume 47, number 4, page 2