Douglass High School senior Spencer Linville loves a mental and mechanical challenge.
If you want a chicken plucker for less than retail, Spencer is your man.
If you need a decorated Christmas tree that rotates and hangs from the ceiling, call Spencer.
Do you need a dump truck rebuilt or painted purple? Call Spencer.
Douglass school officials will tell you that all children of Jeff and DeAnna Linville have been among the brightest and best in their school system.
Spencer is only one-sixth of the offspring in the family of five sons and one daughter.
This 18-year-old is the fifth oldest, having been delivered four minutes later than his twin brother Colton.  Eric, the eldest, and Savannah, the youngest. flank two sets of twin boys. The first set was Michael and Daniel.
Eric is a pre-medicine student at Mid-America Nazarene College, Daniel is in law enforcement. Michael is a student at Barkley College and Savannah is a freshman at DHS.
He’s a modest high schooler who has a knack for visualizing, designing, and creating items that may present problems for others his age as well as many adults.
Making things better
“I enjoy thinking of ways to make things better,” says the senior class president who has been named valedictorian for DHS Class of 2008 graduation in May.
Douglass gifted education teacher Marjorie Landwehr-Brown points out that Spencer makes things in an efficient manner and at less cost.
At this point in his young life, his conversion of a diesel engine to operate with vegetable oil may be one of his best achievements.
He neither invented the concept nor bought a kit from the internet. He did, however, use written material from the internet and other research to modify a 1983 Mercedes Benz automobile. Brother Michael now drives it back and forth to Barkley in Haviland.
“If you drive 15,000 miles, you could save $6,000 on today’s price of gasoline at the pump,” he speculates.
After purchases of diesel fuel, Spencer collects, with permission, vegetable oil thrown out by the high school and the Triangle Cafe in Douglass.
“I filter out the impurities,” he said. “Normal oil is too thick. We have to heat it to thin it out so that it works in the diesel engine.”
After heating up the engine with the diesel fuel, a switch is thrown and vegetable oil from a 30-gallon tank in the trunk enters the engine system.
At that point, Spencer admits there’s a “smell of french fries” that hits one’s
nostrils. But it works!
He’s thinking about performing a similar bio-diesel procedure with a truck.
He has blended natural hands-on, fix-it-at-home abilities peaks with education
Loose ends cleanup
Back to the mechanical chicken plucker.
Responding to his grandfather’s desire to buy an inexpensive one for his farm at Hugoton, Spencer looked up CP information. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas last year, he developed one with materials purchased from area stores.
After drilling 121 holes into a plastic drum, plugging them with h ard rubber fingers, he attached a one-horsepower motor to the construction in a frame of wooden 2x4’s.
“You dip chickens into hot water and scald’em. Then you toss two in the drum. They bounce around a lot and the feathers come off,” he said.
Grandpa likes it.
Spencer spent about $400 on the project. A commercial chicken plucker of similar size reportedly sells for $12,000.
And, how about the hanging-rotating Christmas tree. It blew  a breaker in the high school classroom.
Even with a bright future ahead of him, Spencer already has a fall-back plan already in place.
When he’s not bending is brain on a project, he’s a excavation businessman. Have skid-loader and backhoe, will travel. It’s called Linville Excavation.