At the Farms of my Uncles

I spent nearly every summer at the farm of one or another of my uncles. I don't know if it was because I was so badly behaved at home or because my uncles wanted the company. Maybe a little of both. Most of my uncles were married, with a couple small children apiece, and all seemed to enjoy having a half-grown boy around. Every one of them always treated me as an adult.

That first summer I went to Uncle Paul's farm near Lizard Lake, about seven miles from Gilmore City. Paul was married to Rita, and they had two little girls. Paul was an ex-marine. He was tall and strong and barrel-chested. Rita was small and petite, very pretty, with a good sense of humor and a pleasant disposition. Rita's younger brother, Jerry, was there during much of my stay. He was just a year younger than me, and we immediately initiated a friendship that would last all our lives. Jerry and I spent much of the summer teasing Aunt Rita, shooting Uncle Paul's new air pistol, and helping with the chores. One hot July day we were promised an evening at Lizard Lake if we would pull some ragweeds out of the corn. We had no sooner began pulling than my chest grew tight, my eyes began to swell, and big red blotches began to appear on my arms and chest. Uncle Paul rushed me to the doctor in Gilmore City, who diagnosed allergies and mixed up a bottle of thick red medicine. I don't remember if we ever made it to Lizard Lake.

After Jerry left for home, Aunt Rita promised me the hatchlings of one old brood hen if I would help her gather the eggs every day. The hen finally hatched out seven chicks. All seven went home with me to Bayard in late summer. As they grew up, I caught one a week and sold it to the chicken dealer in town. He paid me in cash - usually about 70 cents - all of which went towards the purchase of candy. It was many years before anyone else in the family found out what happened to my poor chickens.

That fall I began to help Uncle Erwin on his farm near Bayard. Erwin would pick me up on my days off school, and we would gather up a few of his neighbors before finally getting into the fields. I always liked Uncle Erwin. He was heavy set and jolly, never out-of-humor. One side of his forehead was somewhat sunken in, a result of my Dad having sat on his head when he was a baby.

Uncle Erwin was a great storyteller. As I worked the fields alongside him and his neighbors, he would tell of his days in the Army during WWII. He had been a supply truck driver in France after D-Day, and one of his favorite stories was of the time his entire convoy had come to a screeching halt at the sight of nude French beauties bathing in the North Sea. One day I overheard him joking with his neighbors about their annual watermelon parties. After every party his wife had gotten pregnant. "Must have been the seeds," he said. For a couple of years afterward I was firmly convinced that babies came from watermelon seeds.

On my last day of work Uncle Erwin gave me two dollars. Everyone already knew I planned on buying a B-B gun with my wages, so one of the neighbors also gave me a box of B-B's. That afternoon I skipped down to the local hardware store to get my Daisy rifle. It was a single shot and had to be cocked by pulling the stock halfway from the barrel and inserting a B-B. I at once proceeded to shoot all the glass bulbs encircling the lighting rods on the barn. Before long, birds weren't safe within a half mile of the house. And my poor sister Bonnie - her job was to hold the granary mice by their tail so I could practice my target shooting.

The following spring I joined some of the town boys in games of war. We would all gather at the old stockyard to choose up sides. Everyone had a B-B gun of his own. We would hide and shoot, and the one not hit by a B-B would be declared the winner. Most of the contestants fired multiple-shot, lever-action beauties, but none could sting like my single-shot Daisy. We carried on these games for several weeks, until finally some concerned do-gooder insisted we stop, scaring us with horror stories about kids losing their eyesight from well-aimed B-B's.

I don't remember much about my school life in Bayard, maybe because I wasn't really that interested in studying. I was always a "C" student at best. During bad weather my sisters and I had to walk the mile-long lane to the highway in order to catch the bus. Some rainy days we got there too late, and had to walk back home. Bayard school was one big building that housed both the grade school and the high school. The principal was a small weird guy, who salivated when he talked. Sometimes, when he got excited, he would almost choke on his own spit. The high school coach was an ex-Hawkeye football player. At every rally he would spell out the word "Iowa" and use every letter of the word to illustrate how he wanted his players to perform.

I wasn't much into football, but did love marbles. My friends and I would always bring our bags of marbles to school. At recess we would dig a hole near the school wall, each put in a marble, then roll our shooters to see who could come the closest - winner take all. If we got too noisy the seventh grade teacher would lean out the window and attempt to drown us with a jug of water. I was in fifth grade at the time. Our teacher was a little nicer, but extremely fidgety, constantly putting a hand down her blouse to pull up a bra strap.

Winter evenings at home were anything but cozy. Going to the bathroom meant trudging through the snow to the outhouse and baring our bottoms to the icy elements. Without electricity, we had to rely on gas-wick lamps, which did not put out much light. Our living room was a big drafty place with seven doors. In the middle stood an oil-burning stove. Since we never had homework, we would gather around the stove to listen to the battery-powered radio. "Truth or Consequences," and the "Groucho Marx Show" were our favorite programs. Once in awhile we'd play the crank-style phonograph. Among the records we had were "Money, Marbles, and Chalk" and "Give Me Five Minutes More." Everyone was off to bed by 8 P.M. In the morning we'd awake to the sound of the WGN radio station from Chicago. The announcer would always open his news program with the words: "It's as beautiful day in Chicago. I hope it's the same wherever you are."

Dad worked long hours at his job, but on occasion would take me with him for a Sunday outing. One weekend we borrowed a fish seine and went down to Willow Creek to net some fish. Dad, four or five of his friends, and I each grabbed hold of the top of the seine and walked through the water, driving the fish before us. After we had gone a short distance a small plane flew over and circled back around. Everyone dropped the seine and scurried out of the water, afraid that the plane belonged to the Fish and Game Department. Needless to say, we brought home no fish that day.

On another weekend Dad and I went coon hunting with an old fellow from Missouri. The Missourian had three coon hounds, big long-eared mutts with soulful eyes and such lusty brays that it seemed they would wake the dead. We took the noisy trio down to the river bottom. Ole Blue, the leader of the pack, soon sniffed out a raccoon and we followed the animal several miles through the frozen snow. When finally treed, the raccoon hid among the branches and the old coon hunter was forced to climb up and flush him out. On the way home he talked of nothing but the delicious coon dinner he would enjoy the next day.

Our house near Bayard seemed surrounded by animals. One day I found a long gray animal with a pointed pink nose stretched out in the driveway. I thought it was dead, so I put a cardboard box over it. Next morning it was gone. It had not been dead but was simply playing possum. Once, after a prairie fire had swept over the swampy area below the house, I came upon a cottontail crouching under a clump of burned-out grass. I yelled at Dad, asking what to do. "Grab him by the ears," he yelled back. But before I could react the rabbit was gone. Another time I caught a skunk in a trap near the barn. When I poked it with a long stick it raised its tail and squirted out a stream of four-smelling liquid. I thought I was safe because the liquid never touhed me, but as soon as Mom got a whiff of it she made me take off all my clothes and burn them. In the winters, Dad and I ran a trapline along Willow Creek. We caught a dozen or more muskrats and one mink. The mink pelt was worth $25, the muskrats' only $2.50 apiece. We did not skin the animals ourselves, but simply sold the carcasses to a trapper who lived near Coon Rapids.

We had two dogs while we lived on the farm near Bayard. The first, Jack, was a large mongrel, who eventually had to be shot because he was biter. The second was a little scruffy female, whose name I have forgotten. She was the cause of my initial lecture on sex. When she first came into heat the yard was overrun by town dogs, all looking for a piece of the action. Mom finally locked our female up in the cob shed. But she whined and howled so much that I took it upon myself to let her out. She was immediately set upon by the males, and I watched in amazement as the natural breeding process unfolded. Mom decided that it was a good time to tell me about the birds and the bees. "The man plants a seed in the woman," she explained, "and after nine months a baby is born." So, I thought, Uncle Erwin was right. Babies do come from watermelon seeds after all.

By now I was ten years old and felt the need to earn some spending money. For a time I helped deliver the weekly newspaper, then worked for an old farmer pulling nails out of a stack of used lumber. Winter afternoons after school I usually stopped off at an elderly spinster woman's house to bring in buckets of cobs and coal for use in her cast-iron stove. She paid a quarter a visit. Once in awhile she'd have me shovel the snow off her sidewalk for an extra two bits. Every Wednesday afternoon during the summer my sister Lois and I would prepare a large batch of popcorn to sell in the Bayard city park to the crowds who gathered for the free outdoor movies. We charged ten cents a bag, and could usually count on making a couple of dollars.

I spent the summer months of 1950 and 1951 at my Uncle Albert's farm north of Gilmore City. Albert was renting the old Wendl farm we ourselves had lived on six years previously. He was in a 50-50 partnership with my Grandfather Henry. Henry owned the land and bought the seed. Albert did all the work. Both shared in the profits equally.

Albert was my Dad's youngest brother, the same who had been part owner of the service station at Bayard. He was a big burly guy, a hard worker, with an enormous appetite and a constant boyish grin. He was also a great teacher. Everything I learned about machinery or farm animals came from him. Albert was married to a woman named Lois and together they had a little girl named Sheila Jo. Lois was a thin woman, pretty and blonde-haired. She was also a town girl, who never seemed to adapt well to farm life. She was always extremely nervous around machinery, and scared to death of dirt or manure. Uncle Albert and I had to change our clothes before coming into the house. We also had to wash our hands before every meal and bathe at least once a week - practices quite naturally repugnant to a boy of ten or eleven.

Albert had renovated the north end of the old barn, installed stanchions and gutters and acquired a herd of milk cows from a dairy in Wisconsin. The cows were all Guernseys and Jerseys - good natured creatures with coarse hair and liquid, brown eyes. A small Jersey named Lady was my favorite. Every morning and evening I would gather the cows from the pasture and drive them into their designated stanchions. While I doled out a quart of oats and a half bale of hay to each, Albert would begin the milking. He would hobble the hind legs to prevent kicking, pull up a three-legged stool, and squirt milk into a bucket with both hands. After each milking the frothy liquid was poured into a ten gallon can, which was in turn placed in cold water to await pickup by the Humbolt Dairy.

Every other week or so we would have to spread the accumulated cow manure on the fields. First Albert would go into town and buy a package of Redman chewing tobacco. This we would chew while we cleaned the barn and scooped the stinking mess into the spreader. Then we would hook up the tractor to the spreader and take it to the fields. Albert would drive while I sat on the spreader seat, making sure that all the manure made it through the tines onto the ground below. I remember often looking at those swiftly turning tines and wondering what would happen if I were to slip and be caught in those fingers of steel.

While on Uncle Albert's farm I learned to milk cows, castrate hogs, butcher chickens, drive a tractor, bale hay, and chop cockleburrs out of the corn. Once he allowed me to build an electric fence without his help. Another time, while he and the family were in town, I did the evening milking by myself. On his return home he milked the cows again ("stripping," he called it) to make sure I had done a good job. He was very complimentary when he found there wasn't a drop of milk in his bucket.

Uncle Albert was more than a teacher. He was a friend and a substitute big brother. He gave me advice on girls, made me understand the value of money, and insisted that I always remember that the last two syllables in the word American spell "I can." Above all, he taught me to laugh at myself. He loved to tease me about my freckles. My face was covered with them - hundreds and hundreds of little brown blotches that faded in wintertime only to return again with the summer sun. "Mare's milk," Uncle Albert said, "is the only cure for freckles." But before trying to remove them, he wanted to enter me in a freckle contest. He was sure I would win hands down.

One hot July day I decided to make some money off the steady stream of traffic that passed Uncle Albert's farm on their way to town. I mixed up a jug of Kool-aid, grabbed some glasses, and set up a cardtable next to the road. On a nearby tree I hung a sign: "Kool-aid, Five Cents a Glass." All afternoon I sat out in the hot sun, but no one stopped. Finally, towards evening, I spotted Grandpa Gehling's old pickup coming down the road. I was ready to start counting my profits when I saw him simply wave and drive on by. "Didn't want to encourage the boy and have him get sunstroke." he later explained.

The incident merely confirmed my earlier impressions of Grandpa as a distant figure, always stern and authoritarian. "As bullheaded as old Henry," everyone had always said. My namesake was then in his late fifties. He was somewhat portly, with receding white hair and dark-rimmed glasses. Although not yet an old man, he was already semi-retired, spending most of his time driving around to check on the crops and visit the local sale barns.

As the summer wore on, Grandpa warmed towards me and started taking me along on his daily rounds. Together we would drive the country backroads. He would joke and laugh and sometimes point out likely-looking spots where wild Indians might by lying in wait for us. We would always return to his house in Gilmore City by 4 P.M. - nap time for him. If I stayed overnight, he would wake me by 4 A.M. and, after breakfast, would deposit me back on Albert's doorstep, there to await my uncle's rising. "Remember, Dickie," Grandpa would say as he drove away, "early to bed and early to rise will make any boy healthy, wealthy and wise."