Thirteen

I liked winter time as there wasn’t so much little jobs to do during the day and I’d get to go along when Father took some logs to a saw mill about six miles away to have them sawed into boards and it back home. 

He’d put three fare sized logs on the bobsled which was a pretty good load for the team.  It would take most of the day and some times it would be awful cold before we got home or we had to sit right on top of the load and all the weather would hit us. 

When we stopped the team for them to rest I’d go up to their head to see the frost and ice on the long hairs all around the nose and mouth from breathing and the steam would be coming off their body where they sweat. I often wondered why they were never cold. Father said they got a lot more hair in the fall and it would keep them warm then shed a lot of it in the spring and summer.

Some days in the early part of the winter I would be thrashing some beans by hand in the barn. We would let them get ripe and dry in the garden then pull them up, put them in a pile in the barn, then as we had time we spread some out.  I had a three foot stick with a shorter one tied to one end and we’d hit the beans with it.  The dry pods would bust open then we used a fork to pick the stalks up and shake them out and all the beans went on the floor.

Mother used to soak the amount she wanted to cook overnight then put a gallon crock in the oven.  I guess it took three or four hours ‘til they were done.  We always had enough ‘til we had new ones the next fall.

Father left some of the parsnips in the ground over winter and we’d dig them up early in the spring. Most of the other vegetables Mother canned. A lot of the apples was dried and kept in pillow cases.  We used to have some pop corn we raised.  We had to plant that a ways from the sweet corn as it would be mixed on the ears if it was side by side. Father planted some sweet corn as early as he could then one month later he’d plant more that way we had sweet corn longer.

I used to pick a lot of the dandelions in the spring.  We had a lot of them for greens.  Mother used to pick some greens in the woods that we ate.  I don’t remember what they were called but they lasted about three weeks.  They were used like dandelions then toward the end they had roots on, big enough to use too.  We had a lot of rhubarb to use for pie.  Mother canned some of that too.  There was a lot of all kinds of things but it all had work to it, to pick and clean and get ready to use.  I spent a lot of hours helping to get things ready for Mother to can.

We had ice cream once in a while. We had an ice cream maker I had to turn by hand.  It made about two quarts when it was done and it sure tasted good as we didn’t have that only about two or three times a year.

Mother used to skin some of the thick cream off the milk in the milk house that was from the night before. I used to like to drink it as it was good and cold. Some times we just put cream in a two quart jar, about half full, and I’d shake it until it was butter.  The buttermilk from it sure was good.  The butter and maple sugar was good on pancakes for breakfast.  The maple sugar made the oatmeal good too.  We used a lot of that when Mother got it for a change once in a while. I used it on raspberries, blackberries and blueberries.  There was a lot of them to pick every year.

Twelve

There used to be a lot of the gliding squirrels around at that place. I called them flying squirrels but when they jumped from a tall tree to a shorter tree the spread their legs and the skin would act as a glider.

In the winter it used to be dark when I got home from school and one night one jumped and missed the short tree and landed beside me and I took off.  I had about a mile to go and didn’t stop until I got home.  That was the first time I knowed about them.  That’s why I thought there was some kind of animal after me.  I seen and learnt more about them as time went by.

I used to shoot at a lot of crows in the spring when we planted corn.  When no one was around they’d scratch and dig the corn up and eat it in the garden. I made to scare crows with sticks and used empty grain bags to hang on for cloths; it helped to keep them from the sweet corn.  Groundhogs, rabbits and coon would sneak in anyways.  Father showed me how to make a box trap. I made five or six of them and put something they liked on the trigger for bait.  I caught all kinds of small animals.  The only thing it was a while before I know how to kill them.  Then I hated to as there was certain kinds I would like to keep as pets but most always I had my twenty-two rifle with me.

One morning I forgot to take the shells out of my pocket and leave them home when I went to school.  I had nine of them along during the day.  I began to wonder what one would do if I threw it in the stove.  It was winter time and there was a good hot fire in the big iron pot belly stove.

When it was break time I watched when no one was looking at me and I opened the door, all the shells was in one hand, instead of taking time to pick one out I just tossed all nine in, shut the stove and hurried out the door.

It was a cold day and the teacher and about two thirds of the kids stayed in.  I waited outdoors and in about one minute it sounded like giant firecrackers gone off and it scared everyone so bad the teacher and everyone else came running and screaming of the door.  I could hear the shells hitting the inside of the stove hwe4n they went off.  It kind of scared me too as I didn’t know it would sound so bad as it did.

The teacher made us all stay out doors until she looked what happened. She found one of the busted shells after looking about ten minutes and then she knew what happened but nobody knew who done it and I sure kept that one to myself.  I could tell when the teacher looked up she had a funny look on her face and didn’t know who to trust after that.  She was a young teacher and she sure was scared too.

Then a few days later I had a rope and I tied one end to a small desk, laid it across the one step outside the school house door, covered it with a little snow.  I took hold of the other end and waited.  When the kids all came running out of the door I pulled it tight which made it about six inches high.  The first one or two fell and the rest fell over them.  Boy, what a pile of kids! A couple of the little ones was crying and they went and told the teacher.  I had to stay after school two nights and had to clean the blackboards both days and she gave me a good talking to. I couldn’t get away with very much in school as there was too many tattle-tales.

Eleven

            I was getting older and had more of the chores to do in the morning and evening, like giving the cows their grain, the horses too.  Then there was the chickens and we always raised a pig, sometimes two.  We butchered and sold one.  We always raised a beef or veal calf for our meat.  There was eggs to gather every evening.  We always had about twenty or twenty-five cows to milk so I got so I could milk four or five. 

Then there was about eight or ten dry cows that wasn’t giving milk and would soon give birth to calves.  They had to be cared for too.  After two or three days they would be taken away from their mothers.  Then they had to be taught to drink from a pail.  We put one finger in their mouth, they would suck the finger and at the same time we pushed their mouths down into the milk in the pail so they would be sucking up milk too.  After once or twice we would ease the finger out and they would soon be drinking milk themselves.

I didn’t like the job of cleaning the cows and horses about every other day with a curvy comb and brush.  They didn’t like to have their bellies and legs cleaned and would do a lot of kicking.  I used to get kicked a lot and had some sore places on my legs where they hit me.  The horse stepped on my feet sometimes and they would be sore or lame for a couple of days but the job had to be done because every once in a while the inspector would come around to the farms to see if the barns and animals was kept clean and the milk pails and strainers too.

Once a year we had the truck with a big tank and hose come to white wash the cow barn inside.  One time the man let me hold the hose and do some of the wall, and as always, leave it to me, I turned the hose on the cat.  Boy, he took off and didn’t come back.  He was white fur for a month before it all came off.

We never had a dog.  I used to ask for one quite a few times but for some reason my Father and Mother never liked dogs and didn’t want one around.  Father used to say they chased the chickens and the other animals too much, but I could tell when they were around where they was dogs they didn’t care for them at all.

Father used to do some trapping on the farm.  There was a small brook and he set traps for muskrats and there used to be some beavers around the brook and a lot of gray and red foxes.  He used to get up at four in the morning to go look at the traps.  He asked me if I’d like to go along and learn how to set them.  I used to like to go but it was so early in the morning I got tired of it after a few weeks but I did like to help skin what ever he caught and stretch the hides over boards he made.  The foxes was hard to catch.  There couldn’t be no tracks or human scent left any where near where he set and covered the traps or they wouldn’t come around any more.  He had some stuff in a little bottle he used to drop around and it took all the human scent away. 

Father caught a lot of coon and weasel.  He had to send all the hides to the company in the spring, when trapping season was over.  He made out pretty good every winter.  I used to like it but it was too early in the morning for me to come back and do my work and get ready for school. 

Father used to have a pair of snow shoes he let me try but I never could learn how to use them just right and I kept getting them tangled up and falling more than I could walk.

It was always real dark at that time in the morning.  Sometimes the moon was out but then I’d see all kinds of shadows up ahead and would think it was some kind of animals.  I’d always stay behind Father all the time.

He caught a lot of skunk but I didn’t care about them because of the smell.  They came out and traveled around when the weather wasn’t too cold at night.  Them and the foxes was great for getting into the chicken house if they could find any place to get in.  Father always had traps set around with bait.

Ten

            I only ever saw one Mulberry tree.  That was in Pennsylvania on the farm where we lived before.  They looked just like big blackberries to me.  I used to call it the blackberry tree and I spent a lot of time up in it after the berries.  It was a big spreading tree and had only about eight feet so it was easy to lean a board against it and get to the first limbs.

            That was the farm me and my brother was alone one day and decided to take my Father’s Model T ford for a ride.  We didn’t have the keys so we took a jackknife and stuck it in the switch and got it turned.  There was no starter but we managed somehow to crank it and get it started.  We couldn’t steer it straight and was all over the road.  We only went a couple of miles until we run off the road and over the bank steep anyone could’ve lifted on the upper side and tipped it over. 

            We were stuck and we had to show Father where it was.  He hired a farmer with a team of horses nearby to hitch the team to it while he tried with the motor and between the two of them he got the Model T out.

            When Father first saw it he asked us how we started it.  We took him to show him the knife in the switch but it had shorted the wiring and melted the blade off.  Boy, we both sure did get it that time.

            For a while it was back to the every day life.  Nothing different to do.  Nothing new happening.  And that’s what got to me.  I was always trying to think of something to do and when I couldn’t think of anything it sure got to me.  I could always think of things I was supposed to do but I just seemed to be hunting for things I wasn’t to do. 

            I know in school the teacher seemed to always be picking on me for some reason.  It seemed every time she looked at me she sent me to stand in the corner or made me clean the blackboards.  I had to stay after school a lot of times.  She made me sweep the floor or carry some wood in for the next day.  Sometimes I thought our school must be the cleanest school in the country because I was always cleaning it.

            At one school there was a couple of older boys that always picked on me.  I was always fighting with them.  Sometimes I’d get in the school before they did and I set a lot of carpet tacks on their seats.  They came running in and jumped in their seats and boy, did they holler and jump up with some of the tacks still sticking in the seat of their pants.  They never did find out who did it.

            Once I had a big toad and I carried him around for a couple of days wondering what to do with him.  I put him in a drawer in the teacher’s desk.  I saw her open the drawer and shut it quick.  She didn’t open it no more all day.  She must’ve been afraid of it jumping out on her.  I never did know what she done with it.  I think she got it out after we was all gone home.

           I used to stick a soda straw in the back end of frogs and blow them up like balloons.  I threw them back in the water but all they could do was swim around on top of the water.  The next day the air leaked out and they were ok.  I wanted to take them to school but they made too much noise.  They kept croaking and wouldn’t be quiet long enough so I gave that idea up and went back to being good for a few weeks.

Nine

            I guess that kind of gave me enough for a while.  It seemed bees always did quiet me down for a little while. 

            Anyways, the summer went by with the regular farm work and my rifle.  I always had that with me when I went out to the pasture after the cows in the evening to bring them in at milking time.  I got good enough so I could get quite a few groundhogs while they were running for their holes.  I never had any one to teach me about the gun.  When Father gave it to me he showed me how to sight with it and to never point it at anyone.  From then on I was on my own.  I guess that’s what made me become a pretty good shot in years to come.

            I was getting big enough so one day Father told me to take hold of the other end of the crescent saw, told me not to push, just to pull it my way and he’d pull it his way.  But I found out pretty quick just to pull it my way was hard work and I couldn’t do it very long but he took it easy and didn’t squeeze down on it.  It took me two or three years before I became a pretty fare partner on a crescent saw but we had to do it as it was the only way we had to cut trees down and cut them small enough so the horses could drag them to where we had the big saw set up.  Today it’s called a circular saw.  When we got it there we had to cut it small enough so we could lift it up on the saw table to cut it into stove lengths.  Then it had to all be split and put into the wood shed in the fall before it snowed.  Then all winter I had to help carry it into the kitchen and living room to the stoves then carry the ashes out.  Boy it was work all the way but back in those days it was the only way anyone knew, so it was, do it or freeze.

            We always cut quite a bit more then we needed as Father sold some during the fall and winter.  This farm had a lot of maple trees and we put up a lot of wood at the sugar house too.  Some days, if the weather was right the sap would run so much we had to keep the fire going right on through the night.  Mother would come to the sugar house and help a lot of the time but the sugaring season comes only once a year and lasted only a short time so we had to get what we could while it lasted.  I used to make a lot of taffy on snow when the syrup was down just right then we kept some to boil on down so we had maple sugar most of the summer, hot cakes and eggs or some kind of meat was always breakfast on most all of the farms but the maple sugar was good any time.

I used to like it on oatmeal.  We used to stir it until it went into sugar and made some into cakes like we do fudge today.  It was good and a lot better then most of the maple things the stores sell.  It was the pure thing and nothing added.  All the food on the farm was good.

Eight

            I remember when the chestnut trees were still around before the blight killed them.  How I used to get a lot of nice big fat gray squirrels with my 22 rifle.  I’d sit and wait, keeping real still, if I moved a little they’d all hide or keep to the trees and limbs between me and them.  But when they stuck their head out to see if I was still there I had them.  The hickory trees were the greatest place to sit and wait too.  I used to think to myself, as I sat there waiting, boy, a tree that grew meat and nuts.  The black walnut trees where very few.  I remember only seeing one of them, but I always had trouble getting the meat out of them and the hickory nuts too.

            I used to think I was safe and nothing could hurt me as long as I had my little old 22 rifle but one day I found out different.  I found a yellow jacket nest hanging from a little limb.  It was about as bit a 2 qt. jar and as always I got the bright idea of shooting it down.  I sat down about thirty feet away and shot once or twice in it but nothing happened so I decided to cut the little limb off.  After three or four shots it was jarring the nest so the bees were coming out but they stayed close to the nest.  I thought, boy, I got you now.  After about seven or eight more shots the limb was cut, the nest hit some other limbs on the way down and broke apart.  When it hit the ground it looked like there were a million bees in the air all around, including where I sat.

            Man oh man, did I move, rifle, or no rifle, I found out it wasn’t safe no more.  I forgot to grab my box of shells I had sitting on the ground.  I must of run 500 or 600 ft before I run out of bees.  They just kept following me for a long ways.  I ended up with an empty rifle and no shells but I sure was a little more wiser than when I left the house.  Just another lesson learned.  I had to wait two or three days to go back and get my box of shells.  Things were quieted down by then, and I never did mess around with any more bees.  

Seven

            One day Father let me help shoe the horse.  My first time.  Boy, I was scared.  He showed me how to pat the horse, talk to him and slide my hand down the leg toward the foot.  But I was too much afraid that first time.  It seemed every time I put my hand on him I could see that horse kick at me and something must of told me I just didn’t want to die yet. 

            Anyways, it wasn’t long after that I did manage to pick the front foot up.  I was pulled back and forth, dropped his foot time and time again.  At one point he jerked his foot and picked me off the ground.  Boy, I soon worked just to hold it up and get my own feet out of the way every time I dropped his, but it was a while before I had enough nerve to go near them back feet.  Father said I had to know more about it so the nail would go only in the hoof and not the tender part of the foot.  So it was a couple more years before I done it myself.

            We used to raise some cauliflower and I used to tie the leaves up on each one so the white head would be covered from the sun.  The sun would cause it to turn a dark color.  We put it in crates and shipped it on the train.  Father told me if I saw a big white worm on any of the heads before I tied them I should knock them off but I wasn’t about to touch them things.  I used to tie them right inside and let them keep on eating their way to Market.

            I used to go out in the hay field at night with a glass jar and catch fire flies.  Sometimes I caught seventy to seventy-five of them.  Then I’d find a dark place and dump them all out at once and watch them light up the place enough so I would almost see my hands. 

            I used to have fun with the old rooster we used to have.  He was a mean one.  He would chase any one and fly on to their backs.  I used to let him chase me.  I’d run towards the house or barn and just as he’d jump and fly at me I’d jump to one side and watch him slam into the building.  A couple of times I thought he’d broken his neck because h fell to the ground and flopped around a while.  I though he was kind of stupid because he never did stop doing it until one day he landed on the back of my Father’s neck and we had chicken for dinner the next day.  What a mistake he made that time and I lost my fun too. 

            We had to cut and split a lot of fence parts every spring to replace the bad ones.  I used to hold the wedges and drive the staples while my Father stretched the wire tight with the hammer.  I was glad we didn’t have any rail fences.  We had a lot of stonewalls and that’s where we put the stones that we picked off the fields.  Boy, I never see so many jobs as was on a farm.

            One summer three or four of the farmers went together and bought a second hand threshing machine so we could all use it to thresh the grains we grew like wheat, oats, barley and buck wheat.  It would be fed to the cows, horses, pigs, chickens or whatever animals the farmers had.  I used to watch them try to move the threshing machine around.  It was so big and heavy they had to hitch the second team of horses ahead of the first one to pull it.  Sometimes the other men would get hold of the wheels and try to help turn them.  I used to try to help but I was too small and not strong enough.  I got caught on the wheel one time and went half way around.  Boy, did I holler for them to stop.  One of the men got me loose and straightened out.  Then they wouldn’t let me help any more.  They told me to grow up first before I died.

            We had to cut the corn by hand.  It was hard work to chuck it up until we could take the ears off and husk it and put it in the corncrib for fall and winter.  I used to take about six ears and go sit down, start shelling it, and I’d soon have all the chickens around me, then the ducks, and three geese.  There used to be two squirrels but they’d come only so close.  I had to toss it a few feet to them.  They used to fill their cheeks then take it some where to hide it then come back for more.  I used to use it to catch the horses when they were out to pasture.  I’d hold it out and they’d come to me.  The coons liked to get in the cornfield too and Father showed me how to make a box trap to catch them.  They were good to eat.  I used to get a lot of groundhogs that way and rabbits too.  Always had some kind of meat through the summer then had the beef and pork during the winter when we could keep it frozen.  The squirrels and groundhogs were always chewing their way out of my box traps if they were in too long before I got to go back to them.

Six

One day in school the bigger boys told me the reason girls took small steps was because their legs were growed together up above their knees.  I sure wondered about that but didn’t know how to find out.  I couldn’t ask Father or Mother as no one ever spoke about such things in the family so I didn’t know anything.  I was about 8 or 9.  We had a young woman teacher.  I sued to keep on eye on her when she sat at her desk up front of the room but she wore big baggy bloomers that came down to just above her knee.  They reminded me of an empty grain bag.  She used to catch me watching a couple of times and turned sideways.  She’d give me a funny look and shake her head ‘no’ at me.  Boy, I could feel my face get red.  I was bashful anyways.  I remember once I hid my face with hand but I was sure them bloomers were hiding something.

There was one girl I used to chum around with at school and eat lunch with.  I stayed way from the rest.  She was about my age but she wasn’t bashful.  I guess at home her family was told about everything.

Anyways she could never keep up with me running.  I told her if her legs wasn’t growed together she could.  That’s how she found out I thought that way and she teased the heck out of me.  There was a big field of grain that came up close to the schoolhouse.  During break and noontime we used to run and run and play hide with each other.  One day just before school ended for the year she asked me to go out in the field, that she wanted to show me something.

After we got a ways in the field all of a sudden she fell down on her back, pulled her dress clear to her hips and started kicking her legs all around and said, “See, my legs ain’t growed together.  Them boys was just fooling you!” 

Boy, she sure stopped me in my tracks!  I was so bashful I felt like digging a hole in the ground to hide.  I was going to run back to the school but she got me to sit down after a while and told me a lot of things her Mother told her.  After that she used to ask her Mother different things and then tell me all about everything but it still took some time till I got over being so bashful around her.

But anyways, her Mother was teaching the both of us and never knew it.  We used to laugh about that. 

Her and I played hooky from school a quite a few days during nice weather.  We had our lunch pails so we used to meet just before we got to the schoolhouse and go off alone for walks in the woods.  We found different berries to pick.  We used to share our lunch.  Sometimes we just lay down and slept for a while.  We found a brook but we couldn’t swim so we just waded or sat in the water.

One day we ended up in the next little town but there wasn’t anything much there for kids, just farmers, horses, wagons and buggies.  We used to open the gets to pastures and let the farmers’ cows out then watch the farmers get them back in.  Anything just so we could stay away from school till it was time to go back home.

        One Fall she didn’t come to school.  I found out they moved away.  As the years went by I used to wonder if she thought of me and missed me like I did her.  For a long time I never did take up with anyone else after that, just kind of a loner.