Rambling on --
The house we moved into
in 1947 was 20' x 24' as I recall. Had 5
rooms, 3 bedrooms, kitchen and living room.
At first had no running water, but then we had it to the kitchen sink. Electricity came to our area, through REA, in
the summer of 1950. A neighboring farmer
- Ralph Downin - decided to become an electrician and he wired our house. Holes were drilled through mopboards to the
basement where wires were strung around and drilled holes back up to other
rooms. Many of these holes missed their
expected places, and it seems like we nailed tin can lids over the holes that
contained no wires. A single light bulb
hung from the middle of the bedrooms with a pull string that we strung over to
a wall through a fence staple, and later a wooden thread spool, down to where
we could reach it as we came in the room.
I think there were fancier lights on the ceiling in the kitchen and
living room. My little sister, Louise,
was born on January 25, 1950, and due to a blizzard at the time Mom and Dad had
gone to a relative's house in Callaway where the doctor could easily get to so
"us boys" were standing by a bureau with two kerosene lamps sitting
on the top shelf, wondering what was going on with Mom. Cold winds were blowing outside. We had a pretty good sized heating stove in
the living room that was stocked with coal usually and wood sometimes. (That area of Nebraska did not have a lot of
trees).
I was told the house
was a little closer to the barn than where they intended to move it. When the barn was moved from the ranch to
where I always knew of it, the house was the second to move. When the movers got to its present location
it was getting dark and they stopped. It
rained overnight and they were unable to move it another several feet away from
the barn. So for all the years I was
growing up the barn was handy, but the smell of cow manure and hog manure, especially
with a south-west wind, were very noticeable in the house. Of course, there was never any air
conditioning when I was there so the windows were always open in the summer
time, so farm odors were always present.
The house was at the bottom of a fairly steep hill that sloped to the
south from nearly the side of the house.
For years the toilet was up the hill a ways past the clothes line. It was moved several times from 1947 when we
moved there until 1961 when I left home.
The last time it was moved to a location near the east driveway, in the
trees. It was the same distance from the
house, but on basically level ground!
Sometimes that made a difference!
The clothes line, which was up the hill a bit, had hollyhocks growing
by both poles. Mom also had them by the
back yard fence, it seems.
The little house had 7
of us in it when little sister Louise came.
Mom & Dad had the center bedroom, I and little brother Darrell had
the north bedroom and older brothers Don & Roger had the south bedroom. These little rooms had no closets other than
something set in the room, which barely held a twin bed. At some point a plywood triangular closet was
built into the corner of the south bedroom.
The kitchen was on the south and there was a small porch off it -- it
was covered with tar-paper only for many years.
The house was set on about 3 or 4 layers of cement blocks and when a
basement was dug there was a sloping door to it on the west side of the back
porch. I recall that basement being dug
-- "shoulders" were left of about 3 or 4 feet around inside the
blocks supporting the house so there was no danger of the house "caving
in" the basement. A
"slip" was used to drag out the dirt - I think I rode the horse some
to pull it out. This would trip over to
unload once it was outside, then be drug back under the house to again either
be filled by shoveling dirt into it, or using it to scrape a new load. In 1961 when we finally got indoor plumbing
we hand-dug a septic tank to the east, just outside the yard fence. That yard fence was a 5' high woven wire
fence to keep cattle out if there were any cattle around.
The kitchen had a
counter with base cabinets and wall cabinets as I remember it from the late
1950's, but I don't remember when they were put in. There was a two-door metal cabinet on the
west wall probably 6-feet tall that held dishes that was used for many years --
I recall it being tipped forward and spilling a lot of dishes, not sure if I
was climbing on it, or just how it happened but it seems I was in trouble
account of it falling.
The front door of the house faced the east
out of the southeast corner of the living room.
A big metal heating stove set in the southwest corner of the living room
just by the door that went into the center bedroom of Mom & Dad's. When Louise was small, until Roger & Don
both left home, she slept on the "du-fold" couch in the living
room. I would guess that would be
sometime around when Louise was 9 or 10.
When the bathroom was added to the house in the spring of 1961, just
before I graduated from High School and left for Omaha, NE to go to business
college, the center bedroom was converted to the bathroom and a hall that went
to both bedrooms on the south and north.
An extension of 12 feet was added to the house to the north which gave a
bigger bedroom for Mom & Dad as well as an extension to the living room.
The "east barn" was added some
time in the 50's and the south part of the old barn was made into a milking
parlor with wooden railroad ties forming a gutter for the manure. We had milked something like 17 cows by hand
and then Dad was sold a Surge milker and we used the milking barn then. We named a lot of the milk cows - Val and
Tina were born on February 13th and 15th; Cherry was a black white-face who
gave a lot of milk, but when I left a door open on the west side of the barn
one day and she got into the wheat that had been just put in the feed bin and over-ate
she died. Big Ears was one cow; Brownie
was one I had picked out as a calf and showed at the Custer County Fair in
Broken Bow. She was a black and white Holstein,
but when she was only a week old when I picked her off the semi-truck from Minnesota
she had a brown fuzz to her--I had been taught the formation necessary for a
good milk cow/calf, but when she came up and sucked on my fingers I picked
her. So much for my education! There was Angel, _____________. Recall one time before we had the milker or
the milk barn the hay crew was out late and I was sent home to milk. At that time we just walked up to the cows
out in the corral and sat on a one-legged stool and milked them. I bragged that I was able to milk the 17 head
by myself; but Dad said the next morning they got a lot of extra milk then
because I hadn't really milked them completely.
I would suppose I was 12 or 13 then.
Being born on June 10th
I usually was mowing or raking hay on my birthday. One year as I was heading out the door my Mom
asked me what kind of birthday cake I wanted.
I smarted of "Blue" and sure enough when we ate at noon that
day she brought out a chocolate frosted cake, that when cut into was dark blue
(food coloring in Angel Food Cake).
Recall running the Ford tractor pulling the side-rake and wondering what
it would do if I ran the tractor into one of the standing hay stacks. So, I did.
The soft hay didn't hurt the front end of the Ford, but I got a jolt and
jammed into the steering wheel.
Kids! This was in the hay field
to the south of the house, just east of Loui's Place. On Loui's Place there was a sod house when we
first moved there, though I only remember it in later years when the roof was
all caved in and only about half or 2/3 of the walls were standing. Loui Van Antwerp had owned the 80 acres or so
before Jim Cornish bought it and that is why we called it that. There was a windmill and tanks. There were only a couple tanks and no cistern.
When it was dry and the wind didn't blow enough there was a John Deere green
one-cylinder engine that was kept running for some time. It didn't hold a lot of gasoline or kerosene,
whatever it ran on, and someone had to stay with it to keep it running to power
the pump jack to keep the well pumping to keep up with the cattle that were in
that pasture. Don't know if this was
done for very long, but it seemed like quite a while at the time.
Just remembered one time a travelling
salesman came to the door and was looking for someone. Dad had given him instructions -- something
like go to the first crossing and then turn left and go another mile--Mom was
standing behind him and said no, it was the second first crossing and then go a
mile. The guy said okay, the second
first crossing and left. Dad turned to
Mom and said "Just what the hell is a second first crossing". We razzed mom a lot about that later.
In the '50's there were
several travelling salesmen who would call in the country. The most consistent one was the Raleigh Man. He always had seasonings and usually some various
household items. Mom bought stuff from
him, but I remember one time the guy was nearly to the front door where I had
opened it and yelled at Mom who was coming -- she yelled back from some place
in the house to "Tell Him We Don't Need Anything". He gave me a funny look and turned around and
left. He didn't even get the chance to
show her whatever was the special at the time.
There was also a Fuller Brush salesman that called at times - I still
have a Fuller Brush wire brush used to take lint off clothes that Dad bought
and used for years.
In the early 1950's we had a couple drought
years in central Nebraska. A few other
neighbors and Jim Cornish went together to buy a leveler that was pulled behind
the H Farmall to smooth ground; a V-plow to pull in irrigation ditches; and a
transit to lay out the direction of rows and the irrigation ditches. The farmers all owned these pieces of
equipment together and shared them. They
each put down an irrigation well and bought canvas (later, plastic) roll-up
dams and a couple sizes of siphon tubes to pull the water out of the ditch to
go down the row. I think it was 1954
when we had our first year of irrigating.
That first year we tried to run water up hill, I think. We were always having "break outs"
of the ditches and had to run down to the dam below it to roll it to lower it a
little, go back and shovel dirt/mud into the opening that was washed out until
we got it built back up to the level of the previous top of the ditch. Then roll the dam back up to the proper level
and re-set any siphon tubes that had quit running. If we were lucky we didn't cause the next
section of ditch below the dam to build up and break out where we would have to
do that all over again. That first year
they decided that some of the rows were two long, allowing the water to soak in
too much on the upper end and not reach the lower end of the rows. So, they took the transit and laid out a
ditch that ran across the field about half-way down. This, of course, was not a straight line, but
had to follow the lay of the land so it curved around quite a bit. This was pulled in after the corn was planted
and after the last cultivating was done - including pulling the big shovels on
the last trip to make a path for the water to run down. This left the ditch right next to the corn on
both sides of the ditch and when the corn was 5 to 7 feet tall it made it very
interesting to put the dams, rolled up on 2" x 2" wooden boards with
ropes through the upper seam in the dam, over our shoulders. The tubes, usually 1.5" by about 4'
long, were also carried in on our shoulders.
When the corn was tasseling, with all that powder floating down in the
air, and it was in the 80-95º range of temperature with high humidity and you
were covered with sweat it really seemed miserable to be doing that work. A big Diesel Caterpillar Engine was used to
power the pump on the 8" x 1,200 foot deep well and it was started with a
pony engine. This pony engine, fastened
to the Diesel, ran on gasoline and was hand-cranked. When it was running and warmed up you used a
lever to have it engage the diesel and turn it until the diesel fired and ran
on its own. This pony engine turned kind
of hard with the hand-crank and sometimes it kicked back. We were told to be sure and not wrap our
thumb around the crank so if it did kick back our hand would slip off it. Younger brother Darrell forgot to do that
once, it kicked back and ended up breaking his arm. So that summer he was in a sling for some
time -- which does not work well in carrying tubes or dams or working the
shovel. Of course, it took two hands to
start the siphon tube so that was out for him, too. The siphon tubes would be thrown across the
ditch to the side where the corn was, one per row (actually between rows) and
then when the well was started and water running down the ditch you would walk
along the side with the tubes, picking up a tube with one hand, putting the
curved part under water then you held your other hand over the straighter end and then pull the part from
under the water out over the ditch edge and lay it down taking your hand off
the outer end. This started a siphon and
the tube would continue to run as long as the water in the ditch was above the
level of the outer end of the tube. It
took a bit to master this, but as we got better we could almost not break a
stride as we walked along starting one tube after another. Years later they did away with the ditches,
using gated pipe that was heavy to set out, but once it was there they only had
to open each gate at each row as wide as they needed to get the water they
needed--no ditch breaking out or siphon tube stopping because the water got too
low.
Jim Cornish came up
with the idea for a "drop box" at one location where we ran one ditch
to the south to a field, but needed to go back to the east with another ditch
and the lay of the land was quite a bit lower.
Tried it with several dams to drop it, but that didn't work so he had a
concrete box built that had slots where we could put boards across the higher
side to either let water in or not. On
the other, lower side was another set of slots with boards where the water
could be let out at several feet lower level.
This saved washing a lot of dirt away.
I mentioned the dams were canvas at
first. When they were wet and muddy,
then needed to be rolled up to move to another location they weighed a ton. Finally we were able to get plastic dams
which did not absorb the water and the mud could easily be flushed off so they
were quite a bit lighter as we carried them over our shoulders.
When the tubes were all set up and things
were running we still had to stay near by and watch things in case the edge of
the ditch started leaking anywhere. At
the time Dad had bought an old
Chevy car from Peter Johnson
- it was a two-toned blue and looked something like this picture I found
on-line. We would sit in this car
resting between walking the line of siphon tubes. Of course, I always had to read and always
was getting copies of Look, Saturday Evening Post, and Life and reading them as
I got a chance. Dad told us not to be
sitting in the car instead of watching the water, but I did. I had to hide them from Dad, so I came up
with an idea of putting them up under the dash where there was a lot of space
and they stayed there. Well, one day
when it rained Dad couldn't get the windshield wipers to work and took the car
in to the mechanic. They discovered the
magazine stuck into the mechanical arms that were below the window and powered
the wiper blades. I sort of caught the
devil - had wasted time and cost some shop charges. Kids!
In the summer between my junior and senior
year in High school I hired out to neighbor Orville Naylor to do some disking
getting ready to plant corn. I recall
being several miles from home, over by our "hay land" on his ground
when my disc had some problem. I got a
big Crescent wrench out of the tool box and fixed whatever was loose--and
apparently laid the wrench on the disc and got back on the tractor and kept on disking. I was happy to tell Orville about fixing the
disk, but he asked me where the wrench was --- I don't recall now if he took
the cost of replacing it out of my pay or not, but it certainly did not impress
him.
I recall eating lunch with the men one day
at Orville's when there was either a thrashing crew or we were working
cattle. Mom's brother was there and got
to telling some tall tales and Orville would laugh his deep laugh.
More to come - Lynn
Phyllis had lunch this noon
