Teenage to Marriage

After high school, I helped on the farm with all the chores and field work. We now had a nice, rubber-tired, Allis Chalmers tractor and cultivator. We also had a used, five foot, AC combine and an old, used Case hay-baler that made our farm work go much easier and faster. We started to make extra money by doing custom work for neighbors. I also did any other jobs that I could get. Dad and I got $4.00 an acre to combine grain or soybeans. We did not have a corn-picker at first, but we did get a one-row corn-picker later on. This newfangled equipment made the work easier and eliminated much of the exchange work with neighbors.

Before the corn-picker became popular, much of the corn was picked by hand or was cut and shocked and then it was put through a corn shredder. We did this quite a few years. They used to have corn-picking contests to see who was the fastest corn-picker in the county, state and nation. I was very fast at it and nearly entered a local contest but I chickened out. To pick corn by hand, you had to have a very good team of horses to keep the wagon right by your side. I remember one time a neighbor about two miles away came and asked me if I would come and pick his ten acres that he had left standing in the field. I agreed to do it as I sure could use the money to take out the girlfriends. I would drive over to his farm with my wagon and horses and pick one wagon-box in the morning and one in the afternoon. Then I shoveled the corn into his corn crib. I picked the corn in ten days and got $40.00 when I finished. I was rich.

I started to help Al Bentz, an electrical contractor, who was doing wiring of new and old houses and farms. I did this mostly in the wintertime when there was not a lot of farm work to do. I learned a great deal working with Al. Later on, I contracted to wire up a couple of the neighboring farms on my own.

Another job that I took in the wintertime was to help put ice from Clear Lake into the icehouse for them to sell the following summer. This way I earned a little more money to spend on fun, etc. I kept very busy picking up odd-jobs to earn extra money. I was a hard worker when I was a young man and took pride in trying to do my best.

I loved to go to different inside roller rinks and skate to music. I started to date some of the girls that I met at the rinks, church and 4-H. The 1940 Chevrolet took me to rinks in Janesville and Delavan, mostly. I had a lot of fun and met many nice friends.

One of my best friends who I went around to the rinks with was Donald Kidder. Don had the use of his dad’s 1940 Ford, and we would take turns driving to the skating rinks and also the movies. Don was a great friend. He joined the Air Force and went away for training. He was flying a plane while training when it crashed and killed him.

I continued to be involved in 4-H work and projects. I participated in a play that Milton 4-H entered in contests at both the county and state level. I was selected as the best actor in Rock County two years in a row. Our play was selected as a first-place winner in Rock County. We went to the state contest in Madison and came in third.

While in Madison, I met a girl from Janesville, Rose Lassie. Rose invited me and Don Kidder to come to her home the next Saturday night to a barn dance. This is where I first met Helen. She was at the dance with her fiancé. She did not pay any attention to me. I think I did ask Helen to dance with me and I must have been a terrible dancer for Rose invited Don and me to a Wednesday night dancing group to learn to dance. This was held at the YWCA in Janesville.

Don and I did go and we learned to dance with all the girls, including Helen. I dated several different girls, and as time went by, I stopped going to the YWCA for a while until one Wednesday night, I returned to the dance group. Who do you suppose I met at the dance? You are right, it was Helen. She was there without her Norman, whom she had been engaged to.

I danced a lot with Helen that night, and while dancing close, she informed me that she had broken off the engagement. I asked if I could take her home. She said she had Jezebel, her 1930 Chevrolet and could not have me take her home. I did make a date to go to the movies the next Saturday night.

I picked her up on Sunday to go to a Mawhinney family-reunion picnic with all my mother’s relatives. She was a pretty gal. I was proud to show her to my family even though we had just met. I think I knew at that time, she was my future wife.

Helen got her skirt all wet sitting in the bottom of a canoe that Bob Wilson, my cousin, and I were paddling. She was a good sport about it and did not hold it against me. She just turned her skirt around until it got dry. My Aunt Margaret Reese told my mother that I was robbing the cradle. I was not, for she was 20 at the time. She did look beautiful and young. I was truly in love for the first time.

I broke off all dates with other girls, and Helen and I dated steady. I loved that gal. Helen worked at the Parker Pen Co., and I continued to pick any extra work that I could do in my spare time from farming.

On December 4, 1941, the ground was not frozen yet, and I finished our fall plowing that day. Our next-door neighbor, Charles Hanke, came over when he saw that I had finished our fall plowing. He wanted me to come over to his farm and disc and plow his twenty acre field that lay right next to our farm. I agreed on a price and said sure, I would do it. My dad did the milking and evening chores while I gassed up the tractor and went over to disc and plow that night. It kept getting colder and colder that night, and before I finished, it was freezing. I pulled out of the field about three o'clock in the morning, all done. That was the last day that anyone could do any plowing, as it froze up for the winter.

On Saturday, December 6, 1941, I took what money I had and went down to Dewey and Bandt Jewelry store. I bought a Bluebird diamond ring. It was kind of small and very plain. I kind of had a feeling that she would like a plain one. I had a date with Helen that night. I asked her if she would accept my engagement ring and she did.

The next day being Sunday, I asked her to come out to my house and show the ring to my family. We were riding along in the car on the way to the farm, and the radio gave us the news that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. World War II was declared.

We continued to date every chance we could. At the end of May, 1942 we decided to get married on the 4th of July. I told my folks the next morning while eating at the breakfast table. Right away they wondered if we had to get married; meaning, was Helen pregnant. I told them no, and we immediately started to plan where Helen and I would live.

At that time, I was working in partnership with my parents. They said that we had better build a house on their farm. This gave us a month to build a house. Dad, who was not handy at building, did most of the farm work and let me build our home from dawn to dusk. Helen came out weekends and helped do whatever she could. It was small but cute and it was going to be Helen’s and my home for the beginning of our marriage.

When we got married on July 4, 1942, the house was all done but varnishing the hardwood floors. Mother did that while we were gone on our honeymoon to northern Wisconsin.

Helen fixed up the house real nice and cute. The whole house was only 14 x 24 feet and had a living-room on the front-end that a 9 x 12 rug exactly fit in. It had a small bedroom that held a double bed and a chest of drawers. There was a clothes closet and a small toilet room that only held a toilet stool. We had to go over to the big house to shower. There was a very narrow kitchen for which I designed and built a bench to pull out to eat on the countertop. We did have an electric stove and refrigerator. They were very hard to get at that time, because of World War II. Things were rationed at that time. If we had company, we had to eat on a card-table. We had an oil burning space heater in the living room to heat our home. It was cozy, and we had a very happy time living in this small house.

Our wedding was very simple but very nice. We got married in Helen’s parents’ home, which was all decorated up with hollyhocks, mostly pink and white. Helen came down the open stairway from her room upstairs, where she was attended by Laurel Roach. Priscilla Damrow played the wedding march. We were married by the bay window in the living room. John VanHise was my best man. Arlene Olmstead helped with the reception that was held at a private home on Milton Avenue in Janesville. The guests were our families. It was a very nice wedding, just the way Helen wanted it to be.

John VanHise and Laurel Roach later got married. We continued a real good friendship with John, Laurel, Arlene, and Priscilla. They all attended our 50th anniversary.

It has been a good marriage.