Fourteen

            One day Mother told me they were gone to sell the farm. I didn’t know why or where we was going. I just couldn’t understand why we were leaving everything and all the good things we had. Mother just said Father said he could make more money in the mines in Ohio and that someday maybe we would have another farm somewhere.  I thought of all the other kids I knew in school. This was the fourth school already that I was in and I hated to start in another one, but I couldn’t do anything.

            I had a lot of little things I wanted to keep but we could take only the things we really needed in the car. I hated another long trip in the car too. All I knew was that Mother said it was a long trip from Vega, NY to Ohio and that we would be on the road for about a week. To me it seemed like riding forever. Father was getting things together and trying to see what he could get in the car.  The other people came one day. He had to show them about a lot of little things so they would take over and get things gone their way.

            I think I spend a couple of hours going around to all the animals saying good-bye and petting some of them. Some of them was pets to me and I hated to be leaving them for good. Most of all I hated to leave the little bull calf I used to chase and catch. He was the one I used to ride. He always run and kicked when he seen me coming but then he’d quiet down and come to me, then we’d start. I use to take a lot of spills off his back till I got so I could stay on a while. I think he liked it as much as I did the way he acted sometimes.

            By now he was about two-thirds grown and almost ready for the ring in his nose. Those days most all the bulls had them to lead them by and tie them up outdoors. Talking about rings, it reminds me, one time I pushed my finger into a bottle and just couldn’t get it out. I thought if I broke the bottle the neck of the bottle would break too and I’d be all set but the neck didn’t break as I still had it on my finger. I was afraid to tell anyone and I couldn’t figure out how to get it off. I kept my hand hide when I was around the house but after the third day my finger was swelled and started to hurt. Mother happened to see it. She told Father. All he said was come here, I’ll take it off. When I see him get the hammer and told me to lay it on a stone, I was afraid. I thought for sure my finger was gone but he gave it a very light tap and it cracked and fell off. What a relief! I didn’t stick my fingers in no more bottles after that.

            I don’t remember how long it took to get from Vega, NY to a small town near Canton, Ohio but he would only go around 25 miles with the 1927 Model T and it had an awful load to haul too. I remember Father used to stop along the road and he had to change the bands in the transmission when they started to slip a bit. There always was a lot of places those days along to road to stop and set up the tent. Father had a 12 x 12 tent with sides to sleep in and keep us dry when it rained at night. Sometimes if it rained long or hard the water would come running through the tent. We would all wake up soaked. Our blankets were laying on the ground anyways. Mother hung them up on the tree limbs or rope between trees till they dried so we lost no time there when that happened.

            Sometimes he had a flat tire and he’d change it and pump it up by hand. If there was a thin spot on the tire that might blow out he would put a big patch inside the tire before the tube went in. It would keep it from blowing out and those days we didn’t go fast enough to cause it to bump so there was no balancing tires like today.

          We got to Lindentree, Ohio, a small town near Canton, Ohio. It was mostly all housed owned by the mining company and they would rent them to the help that worked in the mines for them for ten dollars a month. I had to ride a school bus into a larger town eight or ten miles away. The first year I went to the country school house that the company owned just for people in their houses and what few people that lived near by but then it closed down se we had to ride the bus.