Patent details are emblazoned on the side of Tom Streets steam engine.

Welcome to Tom’s world.

Where life’s an epic adventure, and massive iron industrial-grade machinery seems to sprout from the front lawn. Where boxes of collectible Hot Wheels cars and full-size vintage motorcycles threaten to overwhelm his place of business. Where summers mean throwing horseshoes with friends, winters mean racing slot cars with friends and every day means making new friends (and that’s not even the half of it).

Tom Street has lots of friends.

Which gives you some idea of the kind of guy he is. Which may or may not help to explain why I’m standing in his front yard out on the Old Bend-Redmond Highway, amid a jumble of metal parts — a car-size flywheel, bolts as big as a Deschutes River steelhead, an old cylinder, pistons and assorted thoroughly useful widgets — nodding while Street explains the finer points of steam engine technology as his carefully considered phrases float over my head like so much incomprehensible vapor.

This much I know. Street, 60, plans to put this old beauty together again, get it up and running right there for all the world and passing motorists to see. He’s enthused about this project and so is his wife, Susan, which is a good thing because he spent $5,000 to transport this conglomeration of parts all the way from Mitchell.

“I have a wonderful wife,” says Street (finally a concept I can wrap my mind around). “Most women would say, ‘No, you can’t have that in the yard.’”

I nod in agreement.

The 29-ton steam engine once powered an entire lumber operation, the Bridge Creek Mill in Mitchell.

The engine last ran in 1961, when the mill shut down.

“For 35 years, I’ve been keeping an eye on it,” says Street.

Then, six months ago on his way to La Grande, he drove by and it wasn’t there. It turns out, the owner had taken it apart and was planning to sell it as scrap.

“It can’t go to scrap,” Street recalls saying. “It’s the only one in Oregon of this magnitude — 29 tons.”

So the owner gave him two weeks to arrange transport, which he did with a little help from his friends.

“It’s all here,” he says, gesturing around the yard. “Lots of this stuff is in incredibly good shape. That’s Central Oregon, a nice dry climate.”

Street says it should take him about two years to get the old engine up and running, which he plans to do occasionally for passersby.

“When I put steam to it, it will go,” he says.

I believe him.

Street is glad he snapped hundreds of photos of the old engine over the years because they will help him reassemble it.

He says he came by his love for old machinery from his grandfather, who gave him an antique portable sawmill when he was a kid. He still fires it up and cuts wood from time to time.

The steam engine is a front burner project, but by no means Street’s only one. For many years, he’s operated a slot car racing club from an outbuilding on his property. Every Thursday evening during winter, members gather to talk shop and race their scale model cars on an elaborate track replete with realistic pit areas and even a scale model woman waving a starter’s flag.

During summer, the focus shifts outdoors, where friends converge to throw horseshoes at two pits in Street’s back yard and several others at friends’ places scattered throughout Central Oregon.

His Bend shop, Tom’s World of Wheels, which sells motorcycle parts and “the largest die cast collectible cars selection in Oregon,” also keeps him hopping.

And, one evening a week, Street closes for business but opens the shop up to his friends — and there are many — for a bull session that’s always marked by plenty of food and beverages of choice.

Then there’s the motorcycle competition, slow motion trials ridden on vintage bikes.

“Tom never grew out of the sixties,” says old friend Fred Milton.

So it’s fitting that his newest toy — the steam engine — is a product of days gone by.

“I think it’s going to be pretty neat,” says Susan Street.

Her husband is grinning ear to ear.

His parting words to this reporter: “Drive fast, take lots of chances.”

Which in Tom’s world roughly translates to “good to meet you, have a nice day.”