Teenage Summertime

Summer vacation was filled with work and play. My father and mother would never work on Sunday. They only did the chores that absolutely had to be done. We never did any field work on Sunday. After the chores were done, we all got cleaned up and went into Milton to the Methodist church for Sunday School and church. We then went home to a nice meal that Mother prepared. After dinner we could play all day until supper and chore time again.

A lot of the neighbors gathered in our yard under the large maple trees to play volleyball, horseshoes, or softball. Sometimes we played hide-and-go-seek. It seemed like the majority of the time the gathering was at our farm.

Sometimes we played Anti-I-Over. This game was played by throwing a soft ball, like a tennis ball, over a building that was standing alone, like a garage, woodshed, or similar building. Two teams were chosen to stand on opposite sides of the building. Someone would throw the ball over the building. If a person on the other side caught the ball, then they would run around the building and capture any person on the other team by hitting them or touching them with the ball before that person got half way around the building. The captured person switched teams and the game was played until one team captured the entire opposing team.

I loved to go fishing every chance that I could go. There were some little farm ponds in the neighborhood that I could go to and catch small bullheads. I would dig some worms out by the straw stack, hitch Bonnie to the cart and off we would go. I usually caught a whole bunch of small bullheads. I always had to clean and dress the fish when I got home. Mother fried them for all of us to eat. I nearly always caught enough for the whole family. Everyone liked my bullheads.

Summer vacation was also hard work. After doing all the chores that I have talked about before, there were many things I had to do to help Dad and Mother. There was always hoeing and weeding to do in the garden. I hitched Bonnie to the cultivator and led her down between each row a couple of times while Dad guided the cultivator to loosen up the soil.

I often had to hoe thistles out in the corn and grain fields. This was the job I hated the most, but it had to be done. Sometimes my sisters, and maybe Dad if he did not have other more important things to do, would also help hoe.

If you ever get barefoot in a thistle patch, you will know what I mean when I said I hated the job.

As soon as I was big enough, I had to drive the horses to load hay into the hayloft. Dad attached a load of hay to a rope that was strung over a pulley and I guided the horse to pull the hay up into the loft. It was always hot at haying time and the hay would scratch my back and make me very itchy.

When I got big enough so my feet could reach the foot pedals on the one row cultivator, I had to cultivate corn. It was a hot job also. I remember one of the horses was a slow old gray horse and he farted in my face all day long. It would make me mad at him. My dad always said, “A farting horse never tires,” but old Prince was slow and tired most of the time.

Back in those days, corn was grown a lot different than it is today. It was planted in a checked pattern. The rows were 42” apart and the corn was dropped three kernels to a hill, 42” apart in each row. In this pattern, the corn could be cultivated both directions to keep down the weeds. There were no chemicals to control weeds like they use now. The corn planter that produced this pattern followed a “check” wire which was strung across the field. The check wire had a knot every 42” and when the knot went through the planter, it tripped the gate and three seeds dropped into the ground. These planters were only two rows wide; much smaller than the large planters used today.

The corn fields were cultivated not only to keep the weeds down, but also to conserve the moisture in the ground. Usually, each corn field was cultivated four times or more. It continued until the corn got too tall to go under the cultivator or until the corn started to tassel.

When I got some free-time, I would hitch up Bonnie to the buggy and load in one or two 10-gallon milk cans filled with water from the well. I took four or five glass quart jars and set off down the lane to the pasture. I was looking for gopher holes. When I found a good area, I put a glass jar over all the holes in the area but one. I had a jar by the hole that I left uncovered and I used it to pour water down the hole until it filled with water. Soon, one or more gophers came out and got into one of the jars. Quickly, I screwed on the top and captured the gopher. I took them home to a cage that Klao had helped me build. One day, after I had several in the cage, our German Shepherd, named Bob, saw all the gophers in the cage and he tore a big hole in the screen which allowed the gophers to go free.

I remember one day, when I was playing around, I climbed up on top of the brooder house and when I jumped down off the roof, I landed barefooted on a rusty spike that was sticking up from an old plank. The spike went all the way through my foot and out the top. I was able to pull my foot off the spike and go tell Mother what had happened. She kept my foot bandaged in a milk poultice. She made the poultice by heating milk until a scum formed on top and then poured it over a piece of soft bread. This was put on the wound just as hot as you could stand it. Sometimes the skin would get burned because it was put on too hot. This drew out the poison to keep the wound from getting infected. It worked. I did not lose my foot, but it was sure sore for a long time.

Going barefoot all summer long was hazardous to my health. I remember another time I got a large wood sliver between my big toe and the next one to it. I had Mother look at this several times. She dug in there and looked for the sliver. She told me that the sliver must have come out when I scuffed my foot on that old board. Again she put the milk poultice on for several days to draw out the infection. After about a week it was still hurting so bad that I told Mother there must be something in there. She dug in once more with her needle that she sterilized by holding a burning match under it. This time, out came a big sliver, at least two inches long. My foot soon healed up after that.

In the summertime, after the work was done on Saturday night, we all went to Milton and Mother would grocery shop. The men gathered to discuss things that men would normally discuss. All the kids played together until it got dark. The merchants hired someone to show a movie in the village park. Most of the time they were thrilling western movies. Often they would be serial movies so that you had to keep coming to the movies every week. That way the merchants got more business. They were free movies.

We really felt rich if we had a nickel to spend. A nickel would buy a big ice-cream cone or a big candy bar. There was also a lot of candy that you could buy for a penny.

You can see that we did have fun and enjoyed life living in the Great Depression. When someone says, “Oh, those were the good old days,” these are some of the things they were doing.

I remember all the good times we had at the different holidays.

Thanksgiving was a real feast. My mother’s family, the Mawhinneys, always celebrated Thanksgiving together. My mother’s sisters would all take turns having this event at their home. What a feast it was. All my aunts as well as my mother were excellent cooks and they each prepared different dishes. We usually had turkey, chicken, goose, duck and sometimes venison, mashed potatoes & gravy, scalloped corn, squash, fresh baked buns, with pumpkin and minced meat pies, cake and cookies for desert.

Most of the Mawhinney girls were married to farmers. They had lots of room for the gatherings. We would play football and other games after dinner. It was a real fun day.

At Christmastime we went to my Dad’s parents house. The Christmas meal was not as memorable as Thanksgiving, but it was good. The main thing I remember about Christmas was Grandpa Jennings’ penny throw. Throughout the year he saved his pennies, and once in awhile a nickel or dime. After Christmas dinner he had all the children gather in the parlor and he threw out his coins by the handful. We all scrambled for the coins. He always gave a prize to the one who got the most money. It was quite a time. I received many a scratch from my sisters’ finger nails.

Another thing that happened in those days were the threshing, shredding, and silo-filling “bees.” The neighbors all gathered together to help do each of these tasks. My uncle, Paul Jennings, owned the threshing machine and tractor. He also owned the shredder and silo-filling machines. Each farmer had to pay him a fee for the use of his machinery and furnish a team of horses and a wagon to haul the crop in from the field to the machine. The dinners for the men to eat were prepared by the wife of whosever farm you were at that day. Each lady tried to outdo the other one. Oh, what feeds we had at these bees.

Woodcutting was another ritual we had to frequently perform. Dad owned a ten acre woodlot about 3 miles from our farm. On cold winter Saturdays, or Christmas vacation when I was not in school, Dad hitched up two horses to a sleigh, if there was snow, or a wagon, if not. They were old wooden-wheeled wagons in those days. He put in a long two-man crosscut saw and an axe that had been sharpened by me turning the handle of the old, round whetstone while Dad held the axe to the wheel until it was sharp. I believe you could have shaved with it when he was done. It seemed like it took forever to get the axe sharp enough to satisfy Dad.

We drove to the woods and then Dad selected any dead trees or ones that he wanted to thin out. Dad took the axe and cut a large notch in the trunk of the tree to make it fall in the right direction. The two-man saw was used to cut through the trunk until the tree fell down. The axe was used to cut off the branches, which I piled to make a fire.

When it was really cold, it felt so good to sit by the fire and eat our lunch.

After we sawed the tree into chunks, we loaded them into the sleigh or wagon and headed for home with a full load of wood to keep the furnace and cook-stove going. When we arrived home we were wet, cold and tired.

My sister, Marjorie, worked at the 5 & 10 cent store in Janesville. She had a used Model A Ford coupe that she bought with some of her earnings. She met Raymond Wenham, a real nice neighbor farm boy, and they got married in 1937. My sister, Rosalie, did house-work, also in Janesville. She met Tom Wagner who worked at the Chevrolet Plant in Janesville. After they married, also in 1937, Tom got a job on the Beloit Fire department.

I did finish my eight years of schooling at good old Six Corners School. I went to Milton Union High School and graduated after four years. I just got a passing grade in English and history, but in arithmetic, math, agriculture, and typing, I usually got an ‘A’. That was 1938.

That was the year we finally got electricity. The REA (Rural Electrification Act) brought it to our farm. This brought quite a change in the quality of my life.

We were too poor for any of us six children to go on to college after finishing high school.

After my Grandma Jennings died in 1935, the farm I was born on was sold. Dad took his inheritance and bought a 160 acre farm, which Mother named Pilgrims Progress. Dad paid $10,000 for the farm. We moved in on March 1, 1937.

There was a lot of work to do on this farm. It had been rented to some poor and also very dirty people that did not take care of anything. I worked hard with my parents, and in a little while, we had a nice farm. We put electricity in all the buildings. This was the start of my knowledge of how to wire up farm buildings. We got an indoor toilet and a shower. I built Mother a new kitchen. The cabinets were all built by hand, and I put linoleum on the countertop. Mom loved her new kitchen. And this was the start of my carpenter skills that I used to earn a good living later in life. This all happened about 1937 & '38.

We had a big fire one day that burned down our two old barns. It started by spontaneous combustion. To replace these buildings, we tore down an old tobacco warehouse that a good friend of the folks, Daddy Williams, found. It had a lot of good lumber. The large wooden beams were hauled to Raymond Wenham’s father’s sawmill and sawed into big planks to frame the barn. Other lumber from the warehouse was enough to cover the roof of the 38’ x 80’ barn. A contractor from Clinton furnished the concrete, the metal cattle stalls, the windows and doors, and the rest of the lumber to finish the barn. The contract was for $2,700. Dad and I did all the ground work which included a lot of gravel that had to be hauled in. Luckily, there was a little gravel knoll a short distance from the barn, so we used a slip-scraper to move the gravel to fill under the concrete floor and back-fill around the walls. We also had to haul sand and gravel from a pit that was in another area of the farm. The contractor used this sandy-gravel to mix with the cement he furnished. He did a good job. A bachelor friend and distant relative, Frank Mawhinney, who was a good painter, came and lived with us while he painted the barn a bright red. When he had the barn primed and painted two coats, he printed in big letters, “PILGRIMS PROGRESS,” on the side of the barn. It sure looked nice. It was a beautiful barn.

We moved a large machine shed to a better location and built a new double garage mostly from lumber leftover from the old tobacco warehouse. The painter continued to work, mostly for his room and board, and painted the house and new garage white. He painted the big tool shed red, like the barn. Pilgrims Progress won first place in a “before and after” contest that was held by the Janesville Gazette.

In 1937, when we moved to the larger farm, we got our first tractor; a used Case CC with cultivator. I was the driver most of the time. It had steel wheels and a four-cylinder engine. It was a good tractor, but did not work well to pull a used, five foot wide, Allis Chalmers combine that we had bought.

Dad started to look for a new tractor. A dealer from Janesville brought out a brand new, six-cylinder, Massey Ferguson tractor. It was much faster than the old Case. I came up from the field with the new tractor at a pretty good speed and turned it sharp right in the graveled driveway. The tractor rolled over on its top. The fender pinned me to the ground. It was on top of my back as I lay face down. Dad was not too far away. He ran over and lifted the tractor off my back so that I could crawl out. I fractured a vertebrae. The new tractor was heavily damaged. The dealer came out and brought us a new Allis Chalmers WC tractor to try. It was lower to the ground and the wheels were wider apart. You could turn it around at full speed and it would not tip over. It also worked much better on the combine, so we bought the AC. This was in 1940.

We were making money on the farm, so Dad traded off our old 1930 Chevrolet for a brand new 1940 Chevrolet. It was a black, 4-door sedan. This was a great car. It got me several dates and finally it got me my wife, but that will be another story.