Viewed in the gentle warm glow which illumines the scenes of days gone by, my life on the farm in the 1930's and 1940's presents me with a myriad of fond memories.
The weather, it seems, was usually warm and
pleasant; the skies, sunny and blue; play times, interesting, even exciting;
and work, invigorating, if not always exhilarating. Any recollections of stifling heat, dismal
gray days, frigid north winds, boring times or wearisome work tend to remain
securely tucked away in the more receded compartments of my memory.
 |
Paul and Ruth
|
My earlier years were dominated by
play. Ruth and I played together quite a
bit and very seldom fought, a fact which impressed my father enough for him to
comment on it on more than one occasion.
We played "house" and "school;" climbed the
evergreen trees and box elders to get a higher view or to examine birds' nests;
bounded from boulder to boulder in our collection of those glacial rocks in the
corner of our barnyard; walked on rolling oil drums, and did a host of other
things.
In our very first spring on the new farm we experienced the fascination of what matches could do. We had been warned about playing with matches, but in our wisdom, concluded that we could handle them with no problem.
Old dead pine needles, we discovered, burned nicely and the three rows of evergreen trees to the west of the house had all kinds of old, dead pine needles under them. We heaped some needles together and struck a match to ignite the pile. It burned beautifully--and rapidly. The yellow-orange tongues of fire lapped out hungrily. Startled, we quickly stomped out the flames which lashed out in another direction. But no sooner had we extinguished those and the flames darted out in three other directions. In a moment we realized that the flames were spreading much more rapidly than our little feet could snuff them out. We ran to the house and called Ma. She immediately called the fire department in Kanawha, then hurried out in a desperate attempt to control what was becoming a raging blaze. Pa saw the smoke and fire from the field, stopped the tractor and ran home to join the fight against the spreading flames. By this time Ruth and I had run for cover into the hay loft of the barn where, peering through a crack in the door, we watched our parents in their furious battle with the conflagration. Eventually, the fire truck came, but by that time the fire had run its course, having consumed all the layered needles under the trees. When the smoke finally cleared away, it could be seen that some tree trunks were charred, but fortunately, no trees were ignited and the grove of evergreens was spared from a fiery destruction. Ruth and I now mustered the courage to come out of our hiding, chastened by the experience and promising never to play with matches again.Understandably, I had acquired a respect for the ferocity of fire, and that respect would be reinforced a few years later.
It was an evening in late November of 1937 and the first snow of the season had fallen. My father and Henry and Harold had finished the milking and other chores and we were all seated at the supper table having our evening Bible reading when the telephone interrupted. It was a neighbor, Sylvia Johnson, inquiring whether our barn was on fire. Henry ran to the north window and instantly confirmed that indeed it was. Ma hung up the phone and then called for the fire department, while Pa and Henry dashed out to the barn to turn out the cows and horses. Harold was delayed a bit because he couldn't find his cap. "You won't need a cap," Ma said as she pushed him out the door. I was instructed to stay in the house. From the window I watched the flames leaping into the evening sky as the guys hastened to get the 14 cows, two horses and three calves out of the burning barn. It was a dramatic race to accomplish this task before the fiery hayloft, filled to the top with the season's hay, would burn through its floor and possibly collapse on them below. The animals, fortunately, cooperated nicely and all of them were led out safely with considerable time to spare before the floor finally did burn through and the loft collapsed to ground level.
What a sickening experience to watch
our barn go up in flames and then, next, to see nothing there but a smoldering
residue of ashes and twisted metal. A
recollection of the odor from that burned debris comes back to me every time I
come across a burned out place. Although
this was a significant calamity, my father was too busy that night talking to
all the spectators who had gathered from far an near to immediately become
overwhelmed by this catastrophe. But it
did call for immediate decisions about what to do with the cattle over the
winter. In short order that question was
resolved. The machinery was moved out of
the machine shed and that space was converted to a temporary barn. Then, with a
$2,000 insurance settlement, my Dad very soon made plans to build a new barn.
The building of that new barn the following spring and summer of 1938 was an exciting episode in my life.
It was interesting to watch the progress of the building as the construction people dug the foundation, laid the clean new concrete floor, installed the shiny new cow stanchions, built the brick wall up to about eight feet and then, the most interesting part of all, built the hay loft and upper portions of the barn. The new hay loft (we called it haymow) gave Ruth and me a fantastic opportunity. We now had for ourselves our own roller skating rink. The floor was not, to be sure, quite as smooth as a commercial rink, but it was large and it was unobstructed. And so we skated and we skated, round and round, hour after hour. And our relatives and our friends skated. What a summer! But that would not last forever. Haymows are built for hay, and about mid-June the first cutting of hay put an end to our roller rink. But haymows have their attractions with hay in them too. What a marvelous place to climb and jump or somersault with the reassuring safety net of hay below you; or to dig caves and tunnels and play hide and seek. The haymow was an irreplaceable ingredient of a child's life on the farm.About a half mile east of our place a dredged creek ran through. I seldom went there by myself but almost certainly when friends or cousins came over that would be on our playtime agenda.
The creek had quite a few trees growing along its banks, and this made our expeditions along this waterway all the more interesting. Right next to the creek about a half mile north of the road there was a gravel pit left there by a melting glacier thousands of years earlier. I didn't know about the glaciers at that time in my life, nor did I speculate as to how that area of concentrated gravel could have collected there. I supposed that it was just there; or that perhaps God had somehow seen fit to create it in place. However it may have come to be, the gravel was very useful to spread on the dirt roads in the country to make them passable in wet weather. By time I had come on the scene most of the useful gravel had already been extracted from that pit, but in the process, a hole was left, a hole that usually had water in it. Quite a few trees also grew around the pit and made this spot an attractive place to capture tadpoles and frogs, and observe birds, muskrats and, occasionally, other animals. We would often swim there too, when the water wasn't too scummy. As the years passed, the pit began to lose its appeal when the owner of that property began to dump his broken down machinery and other refuse there.
As Ruth and I grew older we began to outgrow "house" and "school" and go our separate ways in play.
I'm not really sure what occupied Ruth's time, although she did take up piano playing. As for myself, I began to spend more time in the fantasy world of baseball. Not having seen a major league ball park or even a good picture of one, I was left with my imagination as to what was happening when I listened to play-by-play descriptions of games on the radio. While at my uncle Bert Roskamp's place in July of 1937 we listened to the all-star game. I was for the National League, I discovered, because Dizzy and Daffy Dean and Joe Medwick and the other St. Louis Cardinals were National Leaguers. While listening to the game, Lou Gehrig of the Yankees, an American Leaguer, hit one over the fence. "A home run!" they announced; but I held out the hope that there might yet be a possibility that the fielders could crawl over, or under, or through the fence and retrieve the ball in time to throw him out at home. Such was my ignorance. |
| Ronald "Dutch" Reagan |
But, I was not content to be a mere passive listener. I acquired a good firm rubber ball and became a pitcher.
Our new barn had a fortunate and conveniently located configuration of like-colored bricks on it that approximated the dimensions of a strike zone. The pitcher's plate, approximately 60 feet away, was just behind the pump house, and it was from there that I pitched hundreds of games before countless thousands of cheering fans. When I hurled the ball with enough accuracy to hit the strike zone on the barn, it would be a "strike;" if not, it would be a "ball." As time went on my control became good enough so that I could consistently pitch shutouts. My parents could never figure out how I could enjoy throwing the ball at the barn hour after hour, day after day. They didn't realize that dramatic ball games were being played with the fortunes of pennant races and World Series victories at stake.
The control I developed in those
hours would later serve me well when I pitched for my high school baseball
team, the Kanawha Bulldogs. I even made
some money from my control. In the
summer of 1946 after my last year in high school, Britt had its annual Hobo Day
celebration. Among the many carnival
games and concessions there was one in which the object was to dunk a hobo into
a tank of water. The hobo was seated
above the tank of water with a small six-inch disk extended to the side. The object was to hit that disk with a
baseball which would then spring his seat and dunk him into the tank. You put down $1.00 and got three base- balls. One hit would give you the satisfaction of
dunking the hobo but would win you nothing.
Two hits would give you your money back and three hits would win you
$3.00. Now, I have never been gifted
with a lot of money to throw away, so I decided in advance that I would not
waste more than three dollars. I had
watched quite a few people try their skill at dunking the hobo, but rarely did
anyone do more than occasionally dunk him one time. I tried it.
The first time, I dunked him twice and got three more balls, free. The next time I dunked him three times and
won $3.00. From there, I kept throwing,
breaking even or winning on almost every occasion. A crowd began to gather to watch while the
hobo, who had earlier been taunting those who attempted to dunk him, was now
becoming weary of crawling out of the tank and getting back on his seat only to
be dunked again. Before long I had
accumulated over $20.00, which in those days was a significant wad of
dough. The operator of the concession
finally told me that if I won one more time he would have to close up the
concession for the night. Not wanting to
spoil the fun for others, I stopped for the night and the game continued. The next night I came back. Immediately, the operator recognized me and
told me I could win $5.00 and then he would have to ask me to stop. So this time, as soon as I won $3.00 I went on my way.
But, I was not only a pitcher. I liked the hitting part of the game as
well. Early in my childhood I had
learned to toss the ball up and hit it with the bat. I soon constructed a game from this on the
large lawn south of our house. I would
toss the ball up and hit it as far as I could.
If I didn't hit it beyond a certain point, it would be an
"out." Hitting the ball to
certain points beyond that would be singles, doubles or triples; and if I could
hit it into the ditch by the road, it would be a home run. I bought my own bat, a Louisville Slugger,
for 58 cents, having saved the money from setting tenpins for two cents per
line in the tenpin bowling alley in Kanawha.
In these hitting contests I would be both the home team, which was
"my team" and the opposing team for whom I struggled equally hard in
order to make the games exciting.
There was one big drawback with this
game, however, especially as my batting skills increased; and that was that I
had to retrieve the ball after every hit.
Our dog was willing to chase the ball and get it, but then I'd have to
chase him down in order to get it back; so I preferred to leave him out of the
contest. Later, I devised a similar game
but used stones instead, and hit the stones with clubs made from small limbs of
trees. Instead of the front lawn I
transferred the ball park to the hog yard east of the barn. The evergreen trees to the north were the
centerfield bleachers where the home runs would land. This worked quite well, and I wouldn't have
to retrieve the stones, but eventually I would run out of stones and have to go
on an expedition to replenish my stock.
Children were designed to play. That is their way of preparing for the real
world, physically, mentally, and socially.
The farm, though sometimes short
on opportunities to play with other kids, was replete with the opportunities
for freedom to exercise one's imagination.
My play times were pleasant times.
Grab the paperback copy of "Looking Back" HERE!
Read more stories by clicking on the links below:
Read more stories by clicking on the links below:
- Birthplace: Kanawha
- Amsterdam Township #4
- 1934
- One Room Schoolhouse - Norway Township No. 3
- On the Farm - Playtimes
- On the Farm - Chores
- On the Farm - Field Work
- Kittenball
- The Special Times
- The Party Line
- Radio
- Town
- Sundays
- The War Years
- The Big Surprise
No comments:
Post a Comment