When I first got a laptop computer in January of 1998 I started a word document I called "Ramblings". I added to it over the years and it has 275 pages. I just also discovered in my computer another 35 files in the same "Ramblings" folder that I ocassionally made comments. Anyhow, here is something I just copied from that document:
Some
things I remember about my Mom & Dad.
Lynn Miles June 21, 2001
I barely
remember the moving day when we moved from south of Callaway to the farm about
half way between Callaway & Oconto.
It would have been March, probably, of 1947. Dad had gone down earlier and helped get the
barn and house moved from the ranch to where we lived in it later. I remember that he either built or bought a
new brooder house that had simulated brick on the outside. He had lived in it while staying down there
before we moved. After we moved they got
little chicks and with the kerosene heater in the middle, raised laying hens
and fryers. Later a big chicken house was
built to the west of the brooder house.
There was another building just down the hill a bit from the brooder
house that had laying hens in it, too.
I recall
that there were a lot of people around during the move and that I had a hard time getting our
dog off another dog that was there. Mom
had me go around and look for dirty socks and underwear. Later I rode in a red truck with cattle sides
on it with just the driver. The tall
yellow cabinet was on top of the load.
I recall one time when we came home
from church to the new (to us) house Dad couldn’t get in the front door. I don’t remember if he didn’t have a key or
what. Anyway, he was wearing a suit,
from church, and crawled up on the two wheel trailer on the center window on
the west side of the house and went in and opened the door. For a long time we didn’t have any steps on
what we called the front door.
We had an all-black tarpaper covered
back porch for a long time, that was not
too big. Mom had the Maytag washing
machine in it. I remember she had to
step on the pedal several times to get the gas motor started. It had a long flexible exhaust pipe that
wound out the door and over the steps.
One time when I was quite young I sat down on it and burned what I sat down with.
The outhouse sat several
places. I recall it being up the hill to
the south. The clothesline was between
the house and the toilet. Mom always had
Hollihocks growing around the clothesline poles. The outhouse was moved to a few different
locations fairly close together. Later
it was moved down to the north-east, at the edge of the trees.
When we had a basement dug under the
house (and I got to ride the horse some to pull the slip out full of dirt) we
would go down there when it stormed. The
basement doors were on the west side of the porch. One time there was a Nebraska windstorm and
we all went to the basement. Just as we
went in or when someone opened the door and look out they yelled “There went
the outhouse!” as it blew over.
Dad liked to tinker with getting the
different fences and corals set up around the farm. He built the East Barn where we had a place
to feed the cattle. He fashioned the
north side of the barn into a milking room.
The gutter was made of railroad ties.
The haymow had an opening where hay could be thrown directly down to the
head of the stalls. In the west side of
the barn there were two bins where the corn and rye were kept for feeding the
milk cows. Later a door was cut into the
east bin and we went into it to get feed supplement, etc., and out into the
alleyway and over to the west bin which was usually kept full with ground ear
corn, or ground shelled corn. One time
there was ground rye in it and Cherry the black white-face milk cow got in it
from the outside alleyway door to the west and ate until she bloated up and
died. One time when we were cleaning
out the barn I threw a shovel full of manure out the door and Darrell walked
into the doorway at the same time. He
got a gash on his forehead.
The
floor of the haymow had four holes cut in it to let hay down to where the horse
stalls were. If you weren’t watching
when you walked in the haymow with a lot of loose hay on the floor you could
fall right down into the horse mangers.
Later they became feed mangers for cattle.
I
remember cleaning out the East Barn. One
day we were cleaning the manure out of it and Donnie was talking about driving
to Merna, NE, that night. It was a Saturday and he said he could even
drive the road in his sleep. The next
morning I found that he hadn’t made it home that night, but had fallen asleep
and gone in the ditch. The 1954 Pontiac
had a tie rod on the front end bent so both tires aimed out. He had caught a ride home early in the
morning. Guess he couldn’t drive in his
sleep. Another time I remember that
Jack’s were there for a Sunday dinner and the guys ( I suppose I was a pretty
small part of the guys) went out to the East Barn where they told some dirty
stories.
Dad
built a loading chute on the east side of the East Barn at the north end. You could load right onto trucks into the
yard between the house and the barn. The
barn was located pretty close to the house – maybe 100 feet. The story was that when they were moving the
house from the Ranch it got dark on them, or rainy, I don’t know which, and
they set it down. They intended to move
it another 100 feet or so to the east, but it kept raining and they finally
just leveled it there. The concrete
block foundation was laid after the house was there. When the basement was dug, they left about 4
feet of dirt on all four sides so it wouldn’t disturb the foundation. They then just plastered right over the dirt,
making a sort of shelf where things were stored.
The
house measured something like 24’ x 28’ and had 3 rooms. The two bigger rooms were the kitchen on the
southeast and the living room on the northeast.
On the west were 3 small bedrooms.
Mom & Dad were in the middle bedroom, Roger & Don in the south bedroom
and Darrell & I were in the north bedroom.
When Louise came along and was out of the bassinette, she slept on the
couch in the living room until Don went to College in Lincoln and Roger was
away from home on Active Duty with the Army National Guard. Then Darrell & I got the south bedroom
and Louise had the north one. During the
winter of my Senior year, Jim Cornish, the Landlord, had the house worked
on. About 12 feet was added to the north
of the house creating a large bedroom in the northwest corner. It had windows right at the corner and gave a
view both to the west and the north. It
also left a narrow addition to the living room where the piano was moved. This left the original center bedroom to be
made into a hall to reach both other bedrooms and the west side of the hall was
a bathroom. We had running water, but no
indoor bathroom up to that time. I
recall when we got electricity run to the house in 1950.
Dad
spent a lot of time and energy working with his cattle. He always had cattle, usually Herefords. Springtime, when the cows calved, was a
favorite of his, even though it was a lot of work. I recall, especially during high school
years, working with him before school and after. We usually fed silage in the mornings and
checked for new calves. After school we
usually took hay over to the cattle and spread it out with the Farmhand Loader
on the John Deere. Any cows having
trouble with calving were brought home.
We always earmarked the calves and put rubber bands on them for
“elastration” which was castration without a knife. The day Dad died of a heart attack in March
of 1978, he had spent time feeding the cattle hay and getting ready for the farm
sale that was to be the next Wednesday.
He always said raising a family and
raising food for the family and the country was important to him. Mom & Dad celebrated their 40th
wedding anniversary at Roger & Carolyn’s in 1974. Roger & Dad had farmed together for many
years and after Dad’s death Mom lived in a trailer house near Roger’s house
until she passed away in 1986.
