OBITUARY
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AmeyCherlandObituary.htm
Amey Cherland gave
this to me in a hand-written notebook when my father died in January of this
year. I promised Amey
that I would type it up and put it on the Internet. By a very strange coincidence, I finished
typing it up on the day he died, but I did not learn that he had died until
several days later when I got a message from David and Lynn Jenson.
Bob Jensen at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ rjensen@trinity.edu
Amey Bernie Cherland
was born January 26, 1907 to
At eight years of age he moved with his parents to a farm
northwest of
After graduating from High School, he worked at various farm jobs for several years till, together with his brother Odey, rented a farm in the area and later purchased.
He married Ella Naomi Jensen
He was a member of
Amey Cherland
died
History and Things
I Remember
by Amey Bernie Cherland
Algona,
All of my grandparents were immigrants from
My mother’s parents came in 1870 and settled near
The children attended country school and grew up and
married. Ellen went to third grade and
she got sick and quit school and stayed home and knitted and sewed and
babysat. My father,
He had to get out and work for other farmers in the
area. After many years and many jobs he
went to
On his 32nd birthday,
They rented her parent’s farm and lived with them. The next spring there was two more rooms added to the house, and then they each had their own living quarters.
In January nineteen seven I was born. In the spring of nineteen nine my parents moved to a bigger farm; from 120 acres to a 200-acre farm. My grandfather died in January 1909 and grandmother moved with my parents in the spring. She was in poor health and wanted to be with her daughter.
Odey was born that year,
I started to school in the fall of 1913 in a country school. The teacher had too many pupils to pay any attention to me, so I spent most of the time playing and learning the English language and cutting out pictures. The next year in the fall of 1914, I did what the other first graders did. In the spring of 1915, I moved with my parents, two brothers and a sister to a farm northwest of Burt.
We left our home in
They had to put the wagons together which had been taken apart for loading. There were two wagons with boxes and one with a rack. They loaded the rack on one box wagon with household things. Dad drove the team on the rack, Uncle Tom the other wagon and the hired man followed on horseback with the cows.
It had quit snowing, but there was still a cold northwest wind. The roads were badly drifted with big hard drifts. When the men arrived at the farm, they were pretty cold and the horses were exhausted and they to make another trip back to Burt after the sows and chickens and the rest of the household goods. They unhitched the team from the rack and put them and the cows in the barn. They unloaded the box wagon and set up a stove in the living room and started a fire.
They headed back to Burt with the box wagon and led the horse that had been used to drive the cows. One horse was left in the stockyard and they hitched them on the other wagon and loaded both wagons; the sows in one and chickens and whatever else would fit in the other. What was left on the train had to be unloaded on the ground in the snow beside the track to be picked up later. While the men were making their first trip to the farm, mother and us kids came in on the passenger train.
My Uncle Jake, mother’s brother, came to our Humboldt home and helped us on the morning we moved out. When the household goods were loaded he took mother and us kids to his house for dinner and we stayed overnight. In the afternoon it started to snow and it got worse as time went on. By night it was a real blizzard, it kept on all night and the next day. In the middle of the afternoon, Uncle Jake took us in a bobsled to Charley Foster, which was closer to Renwick and we stayed there overnight. The next morning Charley took us to Renwick to board the train a little after ten. It had quit snowing but was drifting a little.
We arrived in Burt shortly after
Mother had two suitcases and a lunch box besides the kids. Julian was one year old, Everene was three years, Odey wad five and I was eight and she was more than six months pregnant with Myrtle.
After we waited a half an hour or more the man came with a sled that didn’t have high sides so we had to sit up in the cold wind. He brought some blankets but there was a strong northwest wind. We even covered our heads but we got awful cold. We got to the farm just before sunset. We didn’t meet dad and the men they took a different road.
Dad had set up a stove in the living room and started a fire but it had gone out, there was just cobs to burn and they don’t hold very long. Dad and the other fellows had to hurry back to Burt to get the sows and chickens and the rest of the household goods.
The renter that had farmed the land had moved out before Christmas and two bachelors that were hunters and trappers had moved in without permission. They had a bed built of two-by-fours in the bedroom, a stove in the living room with a table and two chairs and a big jar of sauerkraut. The kitchen had a big pile of cobs on the floor with some traps and guns and furs and harnesses on top. There was also a shovel and a pick ax.
Dad had put their stove outside when he put up his stove, and then he left. When we got there, mother started a fire again after dad’s fire had gone out. We stood close to the fire with our caps and coats still on till we got warm, then mother said Amey will you help me get some of this junk out of here. I looked around and found a hammer to knock that 2x4 bed apart. We both worked on it till we got it apart and threw it out. There was a bag filled with cornhusks for a mattress.
While we were doing that the other kids started to fuss, they wanted something to eat and drink so mom dug out some bread and jelly and gave us. She told me to take the bachelors water pail and get some water; we didn’t have any milk until they milked the cows. It was getting dark and we needed a lamp, mother knew what box to look in. It was a strong wooden box with a lid nailed shut; she had to use a hammer to get it open. She got a lamp out and lit it. Dad had put a mattress in the living room up against the wall, and we pushed some stuff away and laid it down on the floor so we could lay on it, we were all tired out, we couldn’t really do anything till the men came.
The bachelors came before our men and mother told them they couldn’t stay here; to take their stuff out of the house, we were living here now. They got busy; they took a few things with them and set the rest outside to be picked up later. Before they left dad and the other guys came with two wagons and more stuff. Dad came to the house to see what had to be done; Tom and the hired man unloaded the chickens, and sows and put the horses in the barn. The hired man fed the horses and cows and milked and Tom came to the house to help dad carry some boxes and stuff in. They set up a bed and dresser and baby bed in the downstairs bedroom and two beds upstairs. The hired man brought some milk in and they ate something, I don’t know what and everybody went to bed.
What a mess, some stuff in the house, some outside in the snow, some in the wagons, and some in Burt by the railroad track. The kitchen was such a mess we couldn’t put anything there till it was cleaned up. It was too late to do anymore that night.
They waited till morning to take on that job. There was a big cob pile all over the kitchen floor; there must have been almost a wagonload they cleared away so they could set up the cook stove and heat some water to wash the floor. After they got cobs piled up against one wall as high as the stove and eight feet long. The kitchen was big 16x16 and was used as a dining room and kitchen. After they got the floor washed they set the cupboard and cabinet, table and chairs, pots and pans and dishes. Dad helped mom unpack and put away some things that had to be done so mom could cook meals and care for the family needs. The rest had to be taken care of later whenever it would be possible to work it in.
Dad had to organize things outside. The water tank was froze up and broken, the pipes were under ground they were froze and broken. The horses and cows had to be watered in a washtub and hog trough at the pump near the house. There was just a few forks full of hay in the barn, no straw for bedding he needed to buy both.
The men did chores and worked around the place all day and they needed to bring more stuff home from Burt but they gave the horses a day to rest and went the next day, there was more than they could take in one trip. Dad wanted to buy a small water tank and some coal and groceries besides what ever they could take of the stuff left by the railroad track. There were two buggies, one two-seater and one small one-seater. They led two horses behind a wagon to Burt and then hitched them on the big buggy and tied the little buggy behind. They brought two wagons and two buggies home and I don’t know what else. I know all the machinery had been left by the railroad track. There was a gangplow, corn planter, two cultivators and cart built with a short wagon box on the hind wheels of a wagon with an oat seeder on it, and a disk and drag. I know they had to go back the next day to finish the job.
Dad had to locate some hay and straw to buy and get hauled before the hired man left. There were several stacks of prairie hay on what is known as the Kirby Smith farm. Herb Vollentine owned the hay, dad bought one stack but it wasn’t that easy to buy straw. If somebody had straw they needed it themselves.
The weather got a little warmer so they could repair the cow yard fence that was badly wrecked; that was a big job that couldn’t be done right till the snow was gone and the ground thawed out, but patched it up the best they could. Dad bought a roll of barbed wire when he got the tank, it was just a small steel tank 5x2x2 and he set it by the well, which was about 30’ south of the kitchen door. We drove the cows to the tank and when they had a drink we drove them back to the barn.
The horses and cows were in need of bedding so the men went after a dab of hay the spoiled stuff on the top of the stack that was dark and moldy and used that for bedding. Dad wanted a telephone and there had never been a line built out this far. So he went to Lone Rock to get the telephone company to extend a line out to our place and install a phone. They told him he would have to wait till the frost went out of the ground, they couldn’t set poles in the frost but they would keep him in mind. In the same trip he saw a good stack of straw at Ed Blanchard that was the place that Steve lives on now and asked Blanchard if he would sell some or all of that stack of straw. He told dad he had just sold it to Ole Johannesen, maybe he could make a deal with Ole for some of it, so that is what he did. I think he had the buggy so he drove up to Ole’s place and bought two loads that day.
Ole said he was going to start hauling the next morning if
it wasn’t too windy. Dad said he would
come at the same time so they could help each other load. The next day Ole brought two racks and his
two oldest girls Christina and
Dad wanted to get a school going. There was a deserted country schoolhouse at the corner south of our place. Dad hitched a team to the buggy and drove to all the places in the district to find out how many pupils there were to come to school. He found three that had been in school before and might be three beginners. Dad had noticed there was a school a mile and a half north of Burt that was running. He saw pupils inside and outside so he stopped in at the first place north of the schoolhouse and that was Dick Hawcott, he was director.
Dad asked him how to go about it, to get a school started in his district. Hawcott told him to contact the county superintendent, dad told him he didn’t have a telephone and was new in this area. So Hawcott said I will call him right now and let you talk to him yourself so that is what he did and the county superintendent told dad he would have to be director and clean up the building, check out the stove and chimney, replace broken window panes and see that there was fuel and he would get a teacher.
The first thing dad did was get some coal and kindling wood, some new stove pipes, and window panes. Then he had to wait for a nice day to work on the windows. There were at least twenty panes broken. Somebody must have had fun breaking windows. There were big dirty snowdrifts on the floor and desks. I saw it with my own eyes. What a mess, they were frozen hard like dirty chunks of ice. You couldn’t shovel them you would have to chop them with a pick ax or wait for them to thaw; couldn’t heat it up in there till the windows were fixed.
As soon as there was a nice thawing day dad and the hired man put a ladder and window panes, a hammer and chisel in a wagon and went to the schoolhouse to work on the windows, they thought they could pull the wagon close along the wall and work from the wagon, but they couldn’t reach the top, so they had to use the ladder for the ones up high. When they used the ladder one man had to steady it while the other stood in it and worked. They only got the south side done the first day. It’s very time consuming; they couldn’t chisel the old putty without breaking the wood so they had to use a pocketknife. When they put the new panes in they just tacked them in with those triangle tacks. They had to wait for warm weather to putty them and there were other things that had to be done. They got back to it as soon as possible and it took another half day of nice weather to finish the windows. Then they built a fire after they put up the new stove pipes and kept heat in there for a day or two to thaw the ice on the floor.
There was chores to be done and hey to be hauled. As soon as they could get around to it they loaded the new water tank in a wagon and filled it with fresh water and took along a shovel, a hoe, a broom, three buckets and some rags. I went along and we drove the horses and wagon to the schoolhouse and parked the wagon close to the doorstep, unhitched the horses and tied them on the side of the wagon. The wagon was parked so we could step off the doorstep into the backend of the wagon to dip the water out of the tank; it took a lot of water. Where the deepest snow had been, it was a thick gooey mud and where it hadn’t been so deep the dirt was dry enough to sweep it with a broom.
I started to sweep in the front of the room and swept it back toward the door. I think dad put a kettle of water on top of the stove to heat up to wash the windows. Then he took the broom away from me and swept real fast and told the hired man to throw some water on the floor and he swept as fast as he could, it took a lot of water. It leaked through cracks in the floor. We had to scrape some of the thickest mud with a hoe and shovel before it could be swept. We continued to scrape and throw water on the floor and sweep till we got to the door and shoveled and swept it out. We got rid of most of the mud but the floor was far from clean; we needed to repeat the job. It couldn’t be mopped; the floor was in too bad of a condition.
We were almost out of water so we started on the windows. The hired man stood on the teacher’s desk and worked on the top and dad worked on the lower ones. I was tired and walked home. Dad and the hired man worked a while longer but they had to go back another day with more water and worked till they finished. There were other things that had to be done; they hauled the hay home before it got too muddy. It thawed every day and it rained, the ponds got full and stayed full all spring. Dad went to Burt after some boards to build gates and hog panels and doors in the hog house. He had the hired man work on that and he went to Burt and hired a carpenter to put in a new kitchen door and frame and platform doorstep.
He hauled that stuff and a few other things home in the wagon. When he was at the lumberyard he inquired about a painter and paperhanger. They told him there was a guy that lived in the hotel that did that kind of work. I don’t know if he talked to him on the phone or in person, but he had about three days work to finish before he could come. Then they would have to pick out the wallpaper and get it bought. Then dad would have to come and get him and haul his stepladder, sawhorses, boards, planks and buckets. Mother wanted to get papering, painting, shades and curtains before we had a schoolteacher staying with us. It was only a day or two till the carpenter came and put in the new door and step.
Everene was sick; she was running a temperature and had a
bad cough and one knee was swollen. My
folks took her to Burt to a doctor; he put some salve on her knee and put a
bandage on it and gave her some cough syrup.
He told my folks to take her to
While they were in Burt I think they looked at some wallpaper samples and it wasn’t too many days till dad brought home the man and all the stuff needed to get papering done. My folks helped him and gave him his meals and he stayed overnight. It took him about two days and dad brought him back to town and they did the painting themselves. I think they just painted the new door and frame and left the rest till later. There was so much work to do while the hired man was with us and before fieldwork.
Mother wanted a kitchen sink but there was no way to put in a drain until much later. So dad bought a sink, some 2x4’s and ceiling boards and he and the hired man made a simple cabinet just the size of the sink so the rim would fit right over the ends of the boards that went to the floor. They made a door in front so they could use a five-gallon pail under the drain and carry it out to empty it and shut the door so little hands couldn’t play in it. It set loose on the floor and could be moved anyplace. Then they cleaned up the outhouse and fixed the door so it opened and closed.
They built some chicken nests and roosts and worked on mangers and stalls in the barn and stalls in the hog house. There needed to be new fences around the yards and pastures but couldn’t dig postholes until the frost was out. It was time to get some new posts home before the roads got too bad. The men took two wagons to Burt and they only put about thirty posts on each wagon but they were big heavy cedar posts that were plenty load for the horses.
When he was in Burt he left word at the lumber yard, grocery
store and barbershop if anybody was looking for a farm job to send him out, the
man he had was starting another job the first of April. Uncle Tom had left for
There was some more work to do on the schoolhouse. I think they washed the walls and desks and scrubbed the floor again. There were no single desks, they were all double desks made for two pupils. They were arranged in two rows six on each side of the isle like church pews; the low-down ones for the little kids in front and higher ones in the back. The stove was in the middle of the isle toward the front. It took a long stove pipe to reach the chimney on the front wall, each joint had to have a hole punched in and a screw put in on the bottom of each joint. The stove was terribly rusty, the fire pot and grates were burned out. The fire fell down in the ash pan but it had to do for that term. Before school started the next fall there was a new floor laid on top of the old one, and a new furnace type stove with an insulated jacket about five feet in diameter around it and didn’t need half as much stove pipe because it was up front in the northwest corner.
When dad went after more fence posts he put four horses on the wagon and he stopped at Hawcott and called the county superintendent and told him he was ready for the teacher and she could stay at our place. They decided to start the first Monday in April and dad should notify the pupils’ families.
We had school two months that spring term. The teacher was Mildred Schenck, a gal in her thirties. She expected a lot more from everybody than they were able to produce. I don’t think she was very happy with the whole deal.
There was Julia Long, she was fourteen years old in eighth
grade and very smart girl; and then there was
Somehow we got started to jump rope; each family brought a rope and we had a lot of fun learning to jump individually then we tied two ropes together and two people would swing the rope and a third would jump; that was harder but it was fun.
The teacher stayed at our place and we were a house-full. The hired man left and grandpa came about the same time the teacher did. He was seventy-eight years old and wasn’t able to do heavy work but was a good baby sitter. Julian was a year old and getting into everything and needed constant watching. Mother had her hands full with housework and Everene had poor health and needed a lot of attention.
When I came home from school I filled the stove reservoir and teakettle and water pail. Then I helped dad with some chores like driving the cows to water and back to the barn. When the weather was nice they didn’t want to go back in the barn.
The water was the highest the first part of April, it went over the grade north of the schoolhouse. Dad or grandpa had to take us and the teacher to school with the team and buggy. Dad brought rubber boots for Odey and me. You couldn’t buy rubber overshoes in those days. Even the teacher bought boots and carried her shoes because we had to walk most of the time.
Miss Schenck had a lunch box with a thermos bottle for coffee and she packed her lunch. My mother had bread and something to make sandwiches; eggs, summer sausage, jam, jelly, ground leftover meat or a small jar of sauce, a cookie or cake. Odey and I carried our lunch in a half-gallon syrup pail and we brought water in a one-gallon syrup pail.
Two men came and set poles and extended the telephone line to our place and installed a telephone, there were nine families on our line. When one person talked the other eight could listen to the whole conversation. Dad was lucky a drifter came to Burt looking for a job and dad hired him. He was a big good-looking young man, good worker, always happy, good with animals and nice to visit with. His name was Glen; I don’t remember his last name. He didn’t smoke or drink or use foul language; he was super…everybody liked him even Miss Schenck.
Dad bought a new cream separator, the old one was shot and we couldn’t hand skim when the weather got warm. He had never had a manure spreader so he bought a new spreader. Dad told Glen to put four horses on it and try it out. They soon found out it wouldn’t unload if there was too big a load it would just slide the wheels when it was put in gear. So they had to pitch half of it off by hand before the wheels would unload it. They learned to load small loads.
Glen continued hauling small loads of horse manure till we finished the horse manure. That doesn’t freeze like cow manure. When it is in a pile it ferments and heats, cow manure won’t do that, it stays frozen much longer. The renter had piled cow manure as high as the windows on the outside of the cow barn and moved away from it. Glen hauled a little that was thawed and had to leave the rest till later.
Dad wanted to build a new fence along the road from the driveway to the southeast corner of the farm. They started with a big-heavy eight foot gate post and brace post at the south edge of the driveway and seven foot cedar posts one rod apart going south from there till they passed where the hog yard was going to be. Then they set posts all around the hog yard and fastened new woven wire on all the new posts. Now there was a good fence for a starter; the rest would have to wait. There was oats to seed and plowing to be done; there had been no fall plowing done. Dad seeded oats in the mud but it couldn’t be disked so he used the drag to break down the corn stalks and the rain covered the seed. There was another field to be seeded to oats but they waited with that and bought a new wooden tank eight feet in diameter to replace the old broken leaky one. The water pipes were thawed out and dad thought it would work all right. The water came through so he let the windmill fill the tank.
We all were happy that we wouldn’t have to drive the cows up to the pump anymore. But after the windmill had run and pumped the tank full, water came up through the ground in two places between the pump and the tank, that indicated leaky pipes, but that would have to wait. It was time to seed oats so dad hitched to the seeder, which was a two-wheel cart that would only hold about twenty-five bushels. He could go through pretty muddy stuff so he seeded a fifteen-acre field with hopes that it would dry enough to disk it, but it rained and got wetter. Before it got dry enough to disk, the seed sprouted so Glen used the drag to break the stalks down and let the rain cover the seed.
It was still too wet to either disk or plow. There was about five hundred feet of county tile ditch to be filled so the men got a twelve or fourteen foot pole and hitched a team on each end and a walking plow chained to the middle. Grandpa drove one team and Glen the other and dad balanced and steered the plow. It didn’t push much dirt but they went back and forth many times till they got the job done. Dad went back to seeding oats. There was another twenty-five or thirty left, he finished that and Glen disked what was dry enough and turned for the wet spots. When he had done what he could with the disk, he drug it, some of it twice.
Before he got started to plow there was a heavy rain. Glen told dad he knew how to blast rocks and if dad would buy some dynamite he would blast some of the big ones that you would have to farm around. Dad said that was a good idea, I’ll get some dynamite and we will see how it works out. We don’t want to blast anymore than we can pick up. They blasted when I was in school, I could hear the boom of every blast. When I got home from school they had made a sled out of two posts and some planks spiked together making a platform about three feet by five. Dad told me that was a stone boat. They tied a chain on the front and hitched a team of horses on it and hauled the broken pieces of rock home around the water tank. They made many trips; the horses couldn’t haul a very big load. The men hauled more around the tank, they started a pile in the grove, and they could haul rocks when it was too wet for fieldwork, but couldn’t haul rocks after the crops were planted. I wanted to see how they blasted, but dad said he didn’t want me around when they blasted it was too dangerous.
Dad wanted Glen to plow as soon as it was fit to work the soil; the grass and weeds were getting green. Dad helped Glen get hitched to the plow and went with him to the field to see how it worked. It was hard to get the plow to score; they had a spade along and cleaned off the plow pretty often. The first few rounds Glen carried the spade with him on the plow. Dad wanted him to keep the plow going as much as possible. It took five horses to plow so there was only one horse left to drive on a buggy. Dad wanted to go after the car that was left in the shed on the farm that he moved from at Humboldt. He had grandpa take him to Burt to take the train to Humboldt. He arrived in Humboldt too late to do anything with the car that day, so he stayed overnight with a friend. The next morning he arranged to have a man from the garage bring him to the farm to get the car ready and get it running. They had a can of gas and some oil and tools. They had to pump up the tires and put water in the radiator and some fresh gas in the fuel tank.
They took the carburetor apart and cleaned rust, water and dirt out of it. They took the timer apart and wiped moisture, dirt and grease out of it. The Model T Ford had a different ignition system than other cars; it had a coil for each spark plug. The timer did the same as a distributor except the ignition points were on coils instead of in the distributor.
After they had checked and worked on everything, they tried to crank it but it didn’t start that easy, it made a few pops and died. They cranked till they got tired and disgusted before it started. When it did start they had to race the engine for a little while till it warmed up some and ran smoother. They had to be careful when they put it in gear, that it didn’t die. Dad finally got it to the garage in Humboldt and changed the oil and filled the gas tank and bought new tire chains.
He ate dinner and headed for home. He said he had good luck till he got to Algona, the hills were steep and long and wet. He got stuck and was pulled out two times by farmers with horses and log chains. When he got to our road he got stuck again and walked home after horses to pull the car home. After spending all day he got the car home but he couldn’t get anyplace unless somebody pulled him to the corner. That was the way it was all summer.
There was a new county tile that was supposed to drain that pond but it wasn’t working. There must have been a poor job of laying the tile. The road needed to be built up but it was never dry enough that year. When we went with the car we had to pull it through the mud with horses and someone had to stay home to take care of the horses and pull us when we came home.
Grandpa and Glen were there; I don’t know how we could have gotten along without them. Dad had so many other things to do besides planting the crops. The sows were having little pigs and special attention was necessary and Everene had T.B. and mother was looking forward to having a baby. There was about a foot of water in the cellar and that wouldn’t settle into the ground as long as it was so saturated. There had to be a drain dug to take care of it.
Dad hadn’t planted any corn. Glen had plowed the driest and best ground. Dad planted and Glen dug the ground a head of the planter and hauled some manure because there were only four horses left for Glen when dad had a team on the planter. It was a slow job when using wire to plant with.
Mother talked to the Johanesens on
the phone and made arrangements with
Dad planted most of the corn after Myrtle was born. He planted all that was dry enough. Glen dug post holes and dad put four horses on the wagon and brought home another load of posts, but couldn’t build a good permanent fence where it was supposed to be on account of the pond so he built a temporary fence across the pasture north of the pond. They spent a couple days on that to get it to hold the cows.
By then the first planted corn was up so they cultivated that and still it was too wet to finish planting. Dad had talked to a tiler but he said he couldn’t connect onto the county tile till it was working. There had been some men working on it but they couldn’t find the trouble.
Mother had arranged with Aunt Lottie to help her with the
girls to make the trip to
Odey and I got on everybody’s nerves, it was warm weather and we went barefoot and we played in water and went to the field where the men were working. Dad planted some corn real late and there was some that never got planted.
The grain binder was left at Humboldt and dad told Glen to take care of things at home and he hitched a team on the buggy and drove to the Humboldt farm, which was forty miles away to get the binder. It took him one day to go down and two days to come back. He had to stop at farm places along the road to water and rest his horses. He stopped overnight at one farm and he said the mosquitos were so bad that neither he nor the horses could rest or sleep. It took him all of the next day to get home. The horses got pretty tired, the binder pulled pretty hard on the rough dirt road up and down big hills with the buggy tied behind. When he got home he decided to let Glen go. He couldn’t afford to pay him any longer.
She wanted to be along to do the chores so her and I could do them in the evenings when dad was busy
with other things. We all learned to
work together.
He wanted to cultivate some more and then start on the cellar drain. That was more than he had anticipated. Going through the grove there was a lot of tree roots to dig through and by the house the ditch was six feet deep and it was hard to throw the dirt that high and far enough so it wouldn’t fall back in the ditch. So I shoveled some of the dirt away from the edge of the ditch and threw it farther back so it wouldn’t roll back in the ditch. We worked on that many days.
Dad used four-inch tile, they were too small; they plugged up before very many years. It was July and dad mowed around the oat fields to put it up for hay. It had been real hot and dad took the stovepipes down and set the heating stove over in a corner of the living room to make more room. It got so cold on the Fourth of July everybody about froze up. We all told him he should have left the stove set up. So he got busy and moved it back and put up the pipes and fired it up. There was a cold northwest wind and misting. It wasn’t fit to be outside.
Dad telephoned mother, there wasn’t a telephone in all the rooms at St. Mary’s or at the rooming house. She had to be called to the phone and he finally talked to her. She didn’t know when she would get to come home. Everene’s incision was draining so the bandage had to be changed more than twice a day, they were hoping to take the rubber tube out before they released her. Mother had called home after the operation and told us they removed about two inches of rib in the left side of Everene’s back to drain the fluid and puss from in and around the lung. They inserted a rubber tube a half-inch in diameter and two inches long with a safety pin though it about a half-inch from the outer end so it wouldn’t slide in too far and get lost. I don’t know how much longer they stayed but it must have been the middle of July or later. When they came home Everene still had the tube in her back with the safety pin taped to her skin above the hole. It was still draining and mother had to dress it morning and evening. There was also a sore on the back of her right knee in the joint that was draining and had to be dressed.
When Everene was in Rochester she got so scared of doctors and nurses that she screamed when she saw anybody dressed in white. My parents didn’t think she would live long and she lived almost twenty-three years. She had that tube in her back for more than a year. Mother had to take the tube out either everyday or every other day and boil it to sterilize it. When the tube was finally discarded the skin had healed around the hole and left an opening the size of a man’s big finger and she always had a patch of gauze taped over the hole. She also had a sore on the back of her knee that never healed. Mother would swab iodine on it and taped a patch of gauze on it. She could never straighten her right leg or put her weight on it. She had to be carried or hop on one leg. When she got older she used crutches. When she went to church dad or one of us boys would carry her on our back up the steps. It was the same when she went to school; somebody carried her up the steps. She was a good student and always got good grades even with her handicap and days missed on account of sickness. She graduated from Lone Rock high school in the spring of 1930 and she was nineteen November 21, 1930. She lived till August 13, 1934.
I’ll go back to the hay that dad mowed around the oat
fields. The hay was dry and dad raked it
with a dump rack in piles ten to fifteen feet apart so it was easier to pick up
with a pitchfork. When dad hitched the
horses on the rack,
It wasn’t long till the oats would be ready to harvest. There was water standing in ponds in the oat
field when dad harvested.
She started the shuck by setting two bundles on end tops
braced against each other, we set eight or nine bundles in a shuck braced
against the first two to make a nice round pile that would stand in wind till
they could be threshed. I carried one
bundle at the time and
He hitched the horses on the stone boat;
Dad said something had to be done to the road for the threshing machine to come to our place. There was a law that all men of legal age were required to work their poll tax or pay a certain amount of money to build and maintain roads. Dad inquired how to go about it to get some work done on his road. He was told to talk to Chaffee, he was the road boss and he would arrange for three or four farmers with teams of horses to work together and he would supervise the job. He would bring the slip scraper scoop and walking plow or have a farmer bring them. They were owned by Burt Township and anybody could use them. Dad did get some neighbors to come and work; they hauled some dirt from the corner and some from the east side of the road north of the pond. They plowed the ground loose to make it easier to fill the scraper scoop. It took many trips with a scoop before you could see you had done anything.
After hauling many trips and dumping it in piles, somebody had to hitch a team on a blade grader somewhat like a maintainer and level out the piles of sod and pack and smooth it. The road boss took down the name and time that everybody worked and when they had worked enough to pay their tax. He also said how wide, how deep and long to make the grade. He was responsible for the equipment where it was kept or if it needed to be worked on.
If the county tile had been working the pond would be drained and the road would dry up. There was a crew that had worked on it but didn’t find the problem and they left. After a while somebody came back and found the trouble. There was a bunch of broken tiles and plugged tight with mud. It was a fourteen-inch tile and that was too big to lift out of the mud by hand so they broke more tiles and threw the pieces out and dug the mud out with a spade. When they got it unplugged, the water rushed in so fast the men got their boots full before they could get out of the ditch. The water rushed in one side of the hole and out the other side carrying the mud with it. It kept running for many days, the pond was drained but the water was still running. That hole didn’t get fixed up till after school started. It was on Marvin Tigges land, Clair Winkey lived there in 1915. If they would have had machines like they have now it would have been a simple task.
Dad was thinking about who he would get to thresh for him, and he talked to Hawcott and Chaffee. They wanted his job but they already had about a dozen jobs. He didn’t know where else to go so he promised to go with them. They had a big threshing machine and steam engine. Chaffee took care of the engine and his son Wilfred hauled water. I don’t know who took care of the threshing machine; I was more interested in the steam engine than anything else. When they threshed at our place I wanted to be right there so I could see everything. I watched them set the machine and put the big drive belt on the engine. When they were threshing and everything was going good I liked to sit on the engine seat and watch the big belt run the machine and men pitching bundles into the feeder and straw coming out of the blower into the stack. When there was a full load of oats, dad had a job for me. I had to drive the team on the horsepower that ran the grain elevator that unloaded the oats into the granary. I didn’t like that because I couldn’t see or visit with anybody but the grain hauler. I hadn’t mentioned the grain elevator before. My dad bought one of the first all steel grain elevators. He bought it in the fall of 1912 for corn picking,
It was a 30’ elevator with an overhead hoist and horses power. It had been used three seasons when he moved it to the Kossuth county farm. I remember when the men stopped for dinner they unhitched the horses and watered them and tied them to the back of the rack where there was a box to feed them oats. Then the men went to the house for dinner. My mother had set a bench in front of the house by the windmill with a bucket of water and a washbasin for the men to wash up. After some of the men had washed and gone in the water bucket was empty and somebody refilled it and Fred Genrich came all sweaty and dirty to wash and Pete Shuck threw a dipper-full of cold water inside of Fred’s shirt collar in the back and Fred grabbed the water bucket and threw water all over Pete. Pete hit Fred in the face with his fist and that led to more blows. Fred was a little bigger than Pete and he took Pete by the neck and marched him down to the water tank and threw him in and Pete pulled Fred along and they both fell in and got soaked.
They were mad; they were ready to kill each other. Dad and several other fellows had to part them after they had given them a good talking to and they calmed down. Some food was carried out to them; they were too messy to come to the table. Fred Genrich lived on the Von Stienberg place in 1915. I don’t remember if he lived there the next year or not. Pete Shuck was a hired man. I don’t know whom he was working for.
After dinner everybody went back to their jobs and I didn’t have to drive the horses on the power anymore. They went by themselves when the grain hauler told them to go. Then I ran around and watched everything and asked questions. That was the first time I could remember about threshing. It was interesting to me.
Dad stacked the straw and there were two men that hauled and took care of the oats and there were ten bundle haulers. I rode on the water wagon with Wilfred Chafee. He went to the dredge ditch after a tank full of water. He had a long 2” hose with a strainer screen on the end that he dropped in the water and pumped a hand pump to fill his tank. Our windmill couldn’t pump enough water for the horses and cows and the steam engine too.
They got done with our job for early supper and moved to the next job but I don’t think they threshed anymore that day. There were some more jobs left and it was late into August. Everything was late that year.
Dad and grandpa went to Bancroft to the Swedish Lutheran
Church with a team and buggy two or three times. I went along one time, mother and the other
kids stayed home. That was before dad
brought the car home. Dad and grandpa
went to Blakjer one time with the team and buggy but
that was too far, it took too long. That
was before
When school started in the fall of 1915 Lulu Hawcott was our teacher and she drove a horse on a buggy to school from Pat Bradley’s place that was where King George Hawcott lived. She only taught three months; she said it was too cold to leave a horse tied up with no shelter in the winter. She only signed a contract for three months. She got a job in the post office and she worked there the rest of her working years. She never married.
For the winter term Lillis McKeever came after Thanksgiving and taught till Christmas vacation. Some friend or relative came after her and brought her back after Christmas. I don’t remember the name of the town, but it was west or southwest of Fort Dodge. She stayed at our place and when she came back after Christmas she cried and worried about her mother. She was seriously ill and she died later on in the winter or toward spring. Lillis went all to pieces and quit and told dad to get somebody else to finish out the year. Dad went and asked Lulu Hawcott if she would finish out the year. She wasn’t much in favor of that, but after the county superintendent coaxed her and dad told her she could stay at our place, she finally accepted the offer if she could have the postal job back when school was out. That was taken care of and she finished out the school year and everybody was glad to have her back.
In the fall of 1916 Rose Krause started to teach in our school. She drove a horse from Lone Rock and she would like to have a barn to put her horse in. Her dad was a mail carrier out of Lone Rock and he didn’t want his horse to stand outside in all kinds of weather. Dad talked to the county superintendent and other directors, they told him to go ahead but not to spend more than fifty dollars. He built it out of cedar poles and shiplap boards on the sides, six feet to the eaves and ten feet to the peak. The roof was rough boards and there were three four-foot stalls and a door on the east wall behind the middle stall. There was a feed box in the front of each stall. Dad donated his labor, I was along and helped all the time, there need to be two. We got it built before school started and for less than fifty dollars.
Rose was a good teacher, well liked and knew how to get the
pupils to work and learn. She had a good
horse and she drove every day. I don’t
think she missed more than a day or two on account of the weather. She was a big-boned muscular built athletic
person. She always played with us. We had a lot of fun. She also got everybody to work hard on their
studies. I was ten years old that
winter. When it was real cold I started
the fire so it warmed up some before the teacher and other kids came. I sometimes helped unhitch the horse when
Miss Krause was about frozen stiff.
Several more teachers used the barn and when Everene started to school
we drove a horse most of the time. When
the weather was favorable and the road smooth enough, Odey and I would haul her
in a coaster wagon or sled. Everene
started to school in the fall of 1918.
I remember there were kerosene lamps the first year I went to high school. We had our initiation party and several other parties by kerosene lamplight. There were chemical toilets in the basement but it was pretty dark there was one little window. My second year in high school, 1923, the building had been wired and there was electric lights all over but the chemical toilets were the same as before, only electric lights. A year later they worked on the septic tank and drain and water system and got flush toilets.
In 1915 and 1916 there were kerosene lamps in Blanchard’s hardware store and both grocery stores and pool hall. I don’t know the exact time that Lone Rock got their light plant but it must have been in 1917 because Rose Krause talked about it when she taught in our school. She said they were trying to decide how to raise the money and who was going to take care of it. I remember they put it in the pump house east of the alley behind the café. I don’t know if they had to add on or if there was enough room but the light plant was in the same building as the pressure tank and well pump and Glen Burt was hired to take care of it. They had the electric streetlights and electric lights in all the business places and in as many homes as wanted to wire up for it. Somebody got a hold of a used movie projector and they tore out living quarters and made one big room above the pool hall into a theatre. They put a screen on the east wall and projector in a cage in the middle of the west wall high up to the ceiling and plank bleachers like at a ball diamond. There were planks wall to wall around the projector case. Everybody had to crawl over the planks; the top plank was so high that a grown man with a hat on would touch the ceiling. There were a lot of folding chairs that could be arranged anyway they wanted to in front of the bleachers.
George Pettit took care of the projector and films and Marrie Krause played the piano. Everybody paid ten cents for a ticket. Sometimes it got filled to capacity and people got worried about it being a firetrap. There was only one long narrow stairway from the street along the north. Nothing was done about it. So some people quit because they were afraid of fire and some people quit because it got so warm and steamy. The town people wanted the farmers to town on Saturday night so they put up some bleachers south of the garage and a big screen east of the alley and showed free movies every Saturday night that the weather permitted. Sometimes the mosquitoes were so bad you had to have a jacket or blanket to cover up or you couldn’t stand it. The older folks liked to visit with neighbors or friends or get acquainted with some more people after they got their shopping done. Some would go to their cars to visit till the movie was over. This became routine for some and was carried on for many years.
Irene Whittford started to school the same time that I started to high school and her father Finn Whittford wanted me to take Irene along. So he furnished the horse and buggy and I took it home and put the horse in my dad’s barn at night. In the morning I would hitch her up to the buggy and on my way to school I would stop in and pick up Irene. I did that till Whittford was done picking corn, the he had time to take her himself and I took his horse and buggy back and I rode horseback after that. Estella Angus taught in our country school that year and Harold and Gerald drove a team and buggy to Lone Rock to high school and they brought Estella to the Richard corner and she walked that mile east to the school house. I rode horseback and came to that corner the same as they did. Sometimes I would ride with the Angus boys and Estella would ride my horse back to the schoolhouse and turn her loose to go home by herself. We did it that way for a while, but it was hard to keep on schedule and I had to walk from Richard’s corner at night. When it was stormy or bad weather Estella’s dad would take her and get her. I decided I could just as well ride horseback all the way as to bother anybody else. I could leave my horse in Joe Elvidge’s barn. The Angus boys left their horses on Cotton’s barn; there wasn’t room in the school barn.
The Nelson kids had been going to our country school but they were in the Lone Rock school district and they were forced to go to Lone Rock and they had a stall reserved in the school barn. They drove one horse on a surrey there were six kids. Ellen quit after she finished eighth grade in the country school. That winter Bill Nelson bought an old race on a farm sale, they told him it was the wife’s driving horse and Bill brought him home and hitched him on the surrey and Bill and some of the kids were going for a ride and what a ride; the horse was scared and the people were scared. The harness didn’t fit and the surrey was too heavy. The horse jumped forward with a jerk and reared up and Bill jerked on the reins and the horse backed up and walked around on his hind legs and plunged around back and forth till he broke the harness and almost got loose. Bill had enough of that and he was afraid to hitch him up again. So he called my dad on the phone and asked him if he wanted to buy a horse. Dad asked what was a matter with him and he said come over and see for yourself. Dad said I would come tomorrow and the next day must have been Saturday because there wasn’t school that day. I went along with my dad to look at the horse.
When we got there he told us he had hitched him up to surrey and it must have been too heavy so he balked. He took a step forward and stopped and shook his head and I hit him with the end of the reins and he went berserk. He is no good for my kids; I got to get rid of him. We had the saddle with us; I wanted to see if I could ride him. I put the saddle on him in the barn and led him out and dad held him while I got on. He was pretty nervous and scared and I was afraid there would be trouble so dad held onto the bridle and tried to lead him but he didn’t want to go with me on his back. So dad petted him and talked to him, and Bill came over and petted and talked to him. Come on Ginger, be a good boy we are not going to hurt you. Dad pulled on the bridle and Ginger took a few steps forward and stopped. We didn’t date hit him or yell at him so all we could do was wait.
All the Nelson kids were watching either through the windows or from the porch. We had to wait till Ginger got in the mood to move; finally dad got him started again and led him around in a circle in the yard and we made two or three laps and dad let go and Ginger stopped again. I waited a little while and talked to him, but that didn’t do any good so I kicked him in the sides with my heel, that is when things started to happen. He held his head way down and kicked his hind feet up. He bucked three or four times then he came up and walked around on his hind legs. I thought he was going over backwards, it was hard to stay on but my feet were set pretty tight in the stirrups and I hung onto the reins. To my surprise I didn’t fall off. When he came down on all fours he started to walk toward the barn and I turned him around and he walked toward the men. Bill said what will you give me for him? I have thirty-five for him. He ought to be twenty-five and dad said I will give you fifteen; he may not work out for us either.
Bill said I will take it he is no good to me. I used him and rode horseback the rest of my freshman year and kept him in Joe Elvidge’s barn. The next year I drove him on the buggy and took Sam and Myrtle Orvick with me and I got to keep Ginger in the school barn that had a new addition to it. I had good luck with him and the kids. We had many fast enjoyable rides.
The Orvick kids will always remember Ginger and so will my brothers and sisters. He hardly missed a school day as long as we had him. The buggy was wore out, the wheels were rotten and falling a part so when Odey was going to start to high school and I was going to be a junior.
Dan had us boys take the body off the surrey and built a new closed-in body out of ceiling boards. We made it to look something like a mail carrier’s wagon. Its outside measurements were 3’ wide, seven’ long and 5’ high with a sliding door on the middle of each side. The front had an opening one-foot square to see and drive through. We made a curtain out of canvas with a clear plastic window that we could roll up or down as we wished. There was a small window six inches square in the back and the top was covered with regular buggy top material over a two by four to make a peak from front to back. There was no lazy back on the front seat and we stepped over the seat to get in front. It was pretty nice to be in out of the wind and weather. We used that rig till Julian was through high school. When he was a junior and senior he got to drive the car part of the time. Julian graduated in 1930 and horses weren’t used to go to school anymore. Myrtle and Ruby drove a car, or dad would bring them.
I graduated in 1926 in class of seven boys. There were nine boys and four girls to start with; a boy and a girl moved away, the others quit or flunked. I am thankful that I graduated; it was tough and I was tempted to quit many times. I was spending too much time on the road in all kinds of weather and I was a slow reader. There was poor light, a smoky flickering kerosene lamp on the kitchen table. It was hard to get my homework done and my grades weren’t very good. My parents told me to hang in there it would get better. They wanted me at least to get through high school. My teachers told me they would help in anyway they could; I shouldn’t give up.
The superintendent told me I was worth two dollars a day below my chin, but with a high school education I could up that quite a bit depending on how I used my education. Before I started to high school there weren’t very many country kids that went to high school and after I graduated everybody went to high school and quite a few went to college.
The roads were being improved all the time and cars were the common thing. They were building sedans with heaters and I wanted a car. I graduated in 1926 and wanted to get a job so I could buy a car. My dad wanted to build a new barn and us boys helped him tear down the old barn and set the cow stanchions on some posts in the cow yard. He hired a carpenter, Bill Kennedy, from Burt to build the new barn. We helped dig the trenches and pour the cement. It was all mixed by hand in a mortar box. We hauled the water in a barrel on the stone boat and dipped it out with a bucket.
Dad and Odey helped the carpenter build and Julian and I cultivated. They had to hurry to get it ready to put hay in it. We pitched the hay on the rack by hand and unloaded it with slings. That was quite an improvement over the old barn. We had to pitch it in and somebody had to be inside to throw it away and level it. So we stacked it in the field and hauled it in later when the weather was cooler or, as we needed it. Later dad bought a loader that could be hitched behind the rack that elevated the hay up over the back of the rack. One man would pitch it away from the loader and keep it level while somebody drove the horses. Before we started to load we laid one sling in the bottom of the rack which was like laying two ropes about three feet apart from front to back with a small steel ring in the end of each rope and hung over the front and in the back both ropes were tied to one bigger ring and hung over the back and fastened with some kind of hook or a wire so it wouldn’t get lost in the hay. When we got about a half a load we would level it pretty level and lay another sling on for the top half of the load.
There was a hay carrier that rolled on a tack that was hung from the rafters at the peak of the roof from the back of the barn to the front and extended about five feet outside of the big haymow door. It was to this carrier that one end of the big hay rope was fastened. This rope was an inch thick and about 100 feet long and went through a pulley on the carrier to make a loop with two pulleys hanging in the loop. One pulley was hooked to the back end of the sling and the other to the front with a trip on it that was controlled by small ropes that dumped it when it got in the barn. The big tope went through a pulley at the back end of the track and down along the wall to a pulley below the haymow floor and out through the east barn door behind the horse stalls. There we hitched a team of horses on the end of the big rope that pulled the hay up to the carrier and in on the track to the other end of the barn or wherever it was dumped. Then the horses were brought back and the carrier was pulled back by hand with the trip rope and unhooked the empty sling so the next sling could be hooked on the pulleys and pulled up and in and dumped and pulled back. Then we would take both slings with us after the next load. That was the best way we knew to put up loose hay and this method was used till we started to bale. We tried to use slings on the bales. We put 10 or 12 bales in a sling and when we dropped them on the bare floor when the barn was empty it broke the floor and broke the bales. After we got the first hay crop in Odey painted the barn and Julian and I finished the cultivating. Then we built a new cow yard fence to the new barn with a new steel gate on both sides of the barn.
Oat harvest was coming up so we mowed around the oat field and took that up as hay. There were three of us boys to shock and we could shock as fast as dad could cut so I asked Tom Murphy if he would hire me to shock. He said yes and he would pay me two dollars a day, but he wasn’t ready to start as soon as dad so I helped at home. It took only a little over two days and we were all done. Then I went to Murphy’s and worked till I finished his. Then I went to Less Hollister; he was a midget about four feet tall and couldn’t stand the heat. He lived on the first place east of Madison. He had forty acres that had been cut for several days. The bundles were loose and fluffy; the oats had been lodged so it was hard to make good bundles and hard to shock. I worked hard and had to carry my own water jug. I remember it was exceptionally hot. I sweat so there wasn’t a dry thread on me.
When I quit for the day I went to the house to call home for Odey or dad to come after me, but Hollister told me they had an empty bed I could sleep there and have supper and visit. He told me Pete Christensen wanted a man to haul bundles, so I called him and asked about a job. He said come right over he had a big field left to shock. I told him I had another days work at Hollister’s, and then I would come. The next day I finished Hollister’s and he paid me and took me home. I got five dollars for two days. I thought that was pretty good. I stayed at home overnight. I got some clean clothes and I took an extra shirt and overalls and dad brought me over to Christensen. There were three of us that finished the shocking that day. Pete pulled the threshing machine out of the shed he had some work to do on it to get it ready. The next day he still had some more work on the machine and I and his steady hired man cleaned the horse barn and greased three bundle rack wagon wheels and put some new boards on the floor of one rack. Then he sent us out to load two racks and try it out.
He had a big case threshing machine with thirty-two inch cylinder and a big case tractor to run it. There was a big pulley on the left side of the machine on the cylinder shaft, and pulley on the right side of the tractor. When it was in operating position the tractor faced the machine and was connected with a drive belt that was eight inches wide and a hundred feet long that put the tractor fifty feet from the front of the machine. There was a feeder fourteen feet long and two and a half feet wide with wood slats between two chains that pulled the bundles into the machine. We pulled racks up on both sides of the feeder and pitched the bundles from the rack into the feeder.
After he tried out the machine he called the neighbors in the run to come and help the next day. There were ten bundle racks and three-grain haulers and a straw stacker. I hauled bundles all the time for more than two weeks. Pete also hired a drifter to run one rack, he and I slept and had breakfast at Pete’s house and his steady man had his own house. We got our dinners and suppers where we worked. We threshed at nine different places. Mervin did chores all the time he and his dad had full blood Duroc hogs that he showed at the fair. He also sold breeding stock. They also had high priced Hereford cattle for breeding stock that they showed at all the fairs around. By the time threshing was done it was fair time. I went home and stayed and went with my folks to the fair.
Dad had a nice bunch of young pigs, there must have been 100 more or less and he was running low on old corn. So we fenced around a hatch of new corn west of the cow pasture. The pasture was hog tight and hogs and cattle were running together so we fixed a gate that the pigs could crawl under and cattle couldn’t get through. We chopped some corn stalks down with a corn knife and threw some corn in the pasture and some on both sides of the gate. The hogs and cattle came and ate the corn in the pasture and the hogs found the corn on the outside of the gate. We broke some corn down a little ways in the field and the hogs found out how to break the corn down themselves.
The corn was in the dough stage and some was starting to dent. They would eat all they wanted then they would go home and drink in the hog water on the tank and lay down and rest till they got hungry and they would go to the field again. At first they didn’t clean off the cob very good, they would take a few bites out of each ear and leave it and go to another till they had everything broke down and chewed on then they had to go back and clean up. You would be surprised how good they cleaned it up.
School started and the other kids were in school. Bill Nelson had a corn binder and dad hired him to cut a five-acre patch of fodder corn that had been drilled pretty thick and I shocked most of that myself. The pasture was short and we hauled corn bundles in the manure spreader, or hay rack and fed the cattle in the pasture. I started to plow for dad with the gang plow but he said he could plow so I asked Murphy if he could use me and said he wasn’t going to hire much till corn picking but I could haul some manure and maybe plow some. He would pay me a dollar a day and board and room. I couldn’t get anymore any other place so I worked part time for him. He told me I could take a day off whenever I wanted to so I went home on Saturday and Sunday and sometimes another day. I would go to town or church or visiting friends or relatives. I kept on that way till corn picking. I liked to work for Murphy and it was so close to home it was just across the field from home.
I plowed for him and helped him with chores and odd jobs, built fences and hauled gravel on his lane. We had to shovel it on the wagon by hand. We took the box off the wagon and laid some 2 x 6 planks loose on the bottom and 2 x 12 planks on each side and a 1 x 12 board in front and back for an end gate that way we didn’t have to shovel the gravel off. We just lifted the sides off and one man in each end and laid them on the ground and then we tipped one 2 x 6 over at the time and dumped the gravel off without shoveling. Then we laid the planks back on the wagon and went after another load. We hauled the gravel from the pit on the south side of the road that was his land so we didn’t have to haul it very far, but we couldn’t haul very many loads in a day anyhow and there had to be two men to handle the planks. But we filled in the worst mud holes. We leveled the gravel by hand. It sure made a nice road as far as we went.
I worked for him most of the time till corn picking time. He didn’t want to pick corn till it got good and dry because he had to put it on the ground in a big pile. So I started to pick for dad. He had a long narrow pole crib with wire cribbing fastened inside the poles with a wood floor on the top of the logs. The corn would dry pretty good in that crib if it didn’t have too much husk on it. I picked for dad till we got the crib almost full. Then I went to Tom Murphy’s. He hired another man so there were three of us when he came out himself. We worked pretty steady in all kinds of weather till about Christmas to get it done. There were snow and cold and short days and it was hard to pick much over fifty bushels a day. I was glad to get done so I could have a vacation and spend Christmas with my folks. I went car shopping; they were building some nice two-door sedans both Chevy and Fords, 1926 models. I was going to buy a Model T Ford coupe but my dad talked me out of it. Id didn’t have half enough money and I wouldn’t have operating expenses and they wouldn’t take my note unless dad signed with me. So I decided to wait till I earned more money.
A sedan would cost over five hundred. Dad had bought a 1926 Chevy touring with cloth top and side curtains. A sedan was over a hundred more and he wanted to build a new barn. He bought it in March before I graduated. Now that I was done picking corn there wasn’t any job to get that would pay. I would just have to work for my board and I could get that at home and enjoy being with the family. All I could hope for was to get a steady farm job in the spring. Tom Murphy said I could work for him when field work started in the spring. In the middle of March when the weather warmed up some he had me clean the barn and hog house and help break some colts. This was part-time work but he told me I could start full-time the 1st of April and he would pay 35 dollars a month and I would have to be milking at five o’clock in the morning. That was ok with me I was glad to get a job that close to home because I didn’t have transportation. After chores and supper I sometimes would run across the field home to the folks and get back by milking time in the morning. That way I could go to town and on Sunday after the morning chores was done I went with my folks to church. Everything worked out fine and I was happy and my folks were happy for me. This was the summer of 1927, all I could think about was getting a car but Tom Murphy and his wife talked me into going to college. They had both gone to college; he was a licensed pharmacist in Chicago. They both decided they wanted to raise their kids on a farm; he was a farm boy and had relatives near Bancroft and she had never been out of Chicago. They thought they were rich; they had a nice nest egg of about 40 thousand dollars. They bought it two or three years before they moved on it, they borrowed money to tile the quarter on the south side of the road. They moved on it in 1925 and stayed there till 1930.
The bank and loan company took the land and they let him keep the livestock and machinery and household goods and he rented a quarter west of Bancroft, which he bought later. It was in 1927 that I worked for them and it was a short time before school started that my parents went with me over to Forest City to get lined up to go to Waldorf. I signed up for a liberal arts course and to stay in the dorm and they sent to Lone Rock for my high school records. I had to go to the business office and make a down payment for tuition, board and room.
The first week in September school started. My parents bought over and I was optimistic and wanted to make the best of it, although I knew I was a slow reader. Everybody was real friendly and it was fun to get acquainted with a lot of young people, both boys and girls. I struggled to keep up with my studies; I was too slow to compete with the others. There were so many talented people that could speak and sing and play musical instruments and take part in athletics and I couldn’t do any of that. I worked hard to get my lessons; there was so much reading I wasn’t able to keep up.
We were required to take a course in religion. We had a professor that really knew the Bible to teach us and he really expected a lot of us. He assigned such big assignments. We had class three days a week and one day was a written test. Besides we were expected to go to Chapel every day for about a half an hour and they had roll call there and if you weren’t present you had to have a good excuse. The students had to take part either volunteer or be assigned something. Besides, I took advanced Algebra, history, literature and psychology. I was such a slow reader that I didn’t get my assignments read and they turned out the lights at ten o’clock. It was against the rules to burn candles; it was a fire hazard. They did serve good meals, family style. Students helped serve and clean up afterwards.
There were some days off at Thanksgiving and my dad came and got me and took me back. It was fun to go home and visit about what had happened at home and college. Then I struggled along till Christmas. It would have been great if I hadn’t been so slow. I had Christmas vacation till after New Year. And a little over a week after I got back I got a sick fever and chills and I couldn’t hold any food down, not even a drink of water. Semester exams were coming up and I needed to study, but wasn’t able to. So I went to a doctor and he told me I had scarlet fever and he wanted to put me in the hospital, but he wanted to talk to my parents first. I told him their telephone number and he called and talked to my mother and told her I would have to be quarantined for six weeks.
He couldn’t let me go back to my room so my mother said dad would come and get me.