LONG TRAINS AND FREE TICKETS

I always enjoyed watching the long trains pulled by powerful steam engines, puffing their way through the small town near our farm. Often they were over a mile long, but if one waved at the engineer there was always a wave in return. On cold winter nights the sound of the steam whistle had a lonesome quality in the frosty air, and often our dogs would howl back in response, sounding much like coyotes. But if I laughed at them they nearly always stopped, as if embarrassed, and then wagged their tails. When there was no train to be heard, I would sometimes make the sound of a wolf howling, and my dog would howl in reply. But when I stopped, my dog would stop, wag his tail, nuzzle against me, and even try to lick my face.

Usually the freight trains stopped in our town to take on water from a very high, round tower. In other towns they took on coal from a high storage bin. Our tower had been built by the railroad, and it drew water by pump from the Sheyenne River several miles away; no one else was ever permitted to take water from it. When a huge steam engine pulled to a stop beside the tank, the train's fireman would reach up for a long, flexible spout that was connected to it.

When the spout was bent down the water rushed out of it, into the boiler of the engine; when the fireman pushed the spout back up, the flow stopped.

To get the long train moving again, the engineer often made the engine jerk the cars a little to get them rolling. Sometimes the load would be so heavy that the locomotive's wheels would spin on the steel rails as if on ice, but once the train began to move, the engineer would gradually increase the steam going into the engine, and as he did so the "choo-uff, choo-uff" sound quickly changed to "chuff, chuff," as the train picked up speed.

In the late summer and early autumn these freight trains also carried many passengers, usually sitting on top of the boxcars or inside when the doors were open. Railroad police, usually referred to as "bulls," frequently tried to chase them away when the trains stopped in major towns, for they had no tickets. Such passengers were referred to as hoboes, and what they were doing was described as "riding the rails."

During harvest season, most of the passengers were seasonal laborers following the ripening crops, because in those days harvesting required many workers for relatively short periods of time. Those who dropped off to find work in our town often had begun to work with the harvest a month or more before in Kansas and Nebraska, or even farther south. Others went on to the west coast to work at picking fruit. In our area, when the threshing season was over, many of the workers went south to Iowa and other corn-growing states to pick the ears of corn. By "riding the rails," they could ride for free.

A few years after I left the farm to go away to college, these "passengers without tickets" had largely disappeared. The reason was a new machine called a "combine." Because it both harvested and threshed the grain at one time, few if any extra workers were required. The farmer simply had to drive this new machine through the fields of ripe grain. Even the "chuff, chuff" sound of the steam engine disappeared about the same time, having been replaced by the sound of the diesel engine. And when this happened even our dogs stopped barking when the freight trains came by.

D uring Prohibition, which lasted from around the end of World War I to 1933, most of the farmers in our community made their own beer, or home brew, even though it was illegal. At a very young age, I thereby received training in how to respect law and order.

Under federal law, no alcoholic drink could be made or sold that contained more than one half of one percent alcohol. To most of the male adults at the time, such a weak drink was hardly worth swallowing, but a lot of this "near beer," as it was called, was nonetheless drunk on celebration days, such as on the Fourth of July. I personally saw grown men drink bottle after bottle, with no apparent effect, aside from an increase in the size of their stomachs. Others who found near beer too weak would buy "moonshine" liquor. As a boy I preferred a soft drink, or "pop" as we called it.

I knew of at least one adult who drank "lemon extract." It had a very high percentage of alcohol, and the local store would only sell a bottle or two per person. This individual had an advantage over most of the other adults because of the large size of his family. He would send his many children, one at a time, to the store to buy one bottle each. Very soon he would become intoxicated and confined to bed for any where from a couple of days to a week or more. His absence was always noted because he was a barber, and when he "retired" for a week the hair and beards of the farmers grew very long.

Many of the residents of my community were immigrants who had been accustomed to having beer from a young age. While many of them opposed the drinking of hard liquor, they also tended to regard home consumption of beer as a right. Even the local Lutheran minister made his own beer and drank it publicly at church picnics and other social occasions. On the other hand, he regarded dancing as the work of the devil, and dancing was never permitted in the recreation room of the church.

The "moonshine" that was sold illegally was made in small stills by people willing to risk arrest, because of the high profits possible. They were called "bootleggers," and the quality of their product was often very inferior. One time, while on the way to Sunday school in the nearby town, I walked by the entrance to the barber shop and pool hall that was on the main street. I saw a young man from the community who was not only drunk, but sick and sleeping in his own vomit. Flies were buzzing around his mouth and soiled clothing. I lost all interest in anything stronger than beer.

The beer my father made was allowed to ferment in a large earthen crock that stood in our cool basement, which was really a large hole dug in the ground underneath the house. When it was ready to be bottled I was called upon to help. My task was to put a small metal cap on the bottles as my father filled them, and for this I used a small mechanical device that squeezed the cap permanently into place. It was not until many years later that I realized I was probably participating in breaking the law. But then, I thought, if I had been arrested and sent to jail, I would at least have had the company of my father and brothers. Fortunately, the federal authorities never made any arrests in my community, although there were many bootleggers around.

M ost people on the farms made their own sausages. This was done in the autumn when the leaves were off the trees and it was cold enough at night for ice to form on the ponds. My mother and father always set aside a day for "butchering," which meant to kill a pig and a calf, and to prepare and cut the meat into pieces. We usually had enough meat from these animals for the entire winter, and never had to buy meat from the butcher shop. Because we had no ice box or freezer, it was important that the butchering day be late enough in the autumn so that the meat would freeze when we hung it in the granary.

When I was about fourteen and the oldest boy at home, I was suddenly given the responsibility one day for shooting the pig. I also had to stab it so that all of the blood would run out, because if that was not done the meat might spoil. The first time, however, after I shot the pig, my father was to do the stabbing, because that was a responsibility that he had always assumed for himself. But he was getting a little old, and just as he began to move toward the squirming pig, his hand began to shake so violently that he could not direct the knife to the proper place on its throat. I stepped up, took the knife from him, and did what I had seen him do on all previous "butchering" days. From that year on the responsibility was just assumed to be mine.

After the pig and the calf had been killed, parts of both were cut into small pieces to use in sausages. But we also took the intestines of the pig, and washed and prepared them to hold the ground meat, which would make the sausage. We used a metal grinder turned by hand to grind the pieces of meat into the consistency of hamburger. My mother inserted a section of cow or steer horn into one end of the washed intestine, and then pushed the ground sausage meat into the opening with her fingers so that it went into the intestine and made the sausage.

One winter we either bought or borrowed a machine that would do the pushing of the ground meat into the intestine much more quickly and with much less effort. All one had to do was to fasten the end of the intestine to the spout, fill the middle part with the ground meat, and then push down the compressor with a wooden handle to force the meat into the intestine.

As the equipment was new to the family, there was great interest in it, and considerable competition to see who would get to press down on the handle. One of my older brothers was chosen. My mother loaded the machine, checked the attachment of the intestine to the spout, and when she was satisfied told my brother to press. Instead of proceeding slowly, in his eagerness he brought the full force of his two arms down on the handle. The ground meat went into the intestine with such force that it filled it to a great distance and then tore it loose from the spout and sent it sailing across the room. We all thought it was so funny that even my mother could not refrain from laughing. She kept her kitchen floor very clean, and in similar situations she always quoted her father to the effect that a little dirt was good for cleaning out the intestines. The sausage was not thrown away. In any event, the incident of the shooting sausage became part of the family lore for many years. It was frequently retold at family gatherings, and was usually introduced by "`member when?"

E veryone owned horses of one kind or another when I was a boy, but only a few people owned automobiles. One day, however, my oldest brother came driving into the yard in a second-hand Model-T Ford, with Father sitting proudly by his side. It didn't matter that the car was secondhand. The family could not have been more excited and pleased, even if it had been a new Cadillac, for a car meant no more traveling by buggy or wagon, and no more being limited to the speed of a trotting horse.

Sometime later the family decided that Father should learn to drive the new car. There might be a time, after all, when my older brothers would be away from home, and unable to drive him. I started taking the wheel myself when I was ten, but at the time I was still too young to drive.

One autumn day, after the crops had been harvested and the fields stood empty and dry, my brothers took my father in the car to an area that had no fences, no rocks and no trees. My oldest brother carefully explained to him what had to be done to make the car go and, even more important, how to make it stop. There were already many stories in our area about farmers who had tried to stop their cars by yelling "whoa," and pulling on the steering wheel as if it were a horse's reins instead of stepping on the brake. That was why, people liked to joke, there were now so many garages with openings on two sides, even though they had been built with only one.

Parking the car in the garage (in our case a `lean-to' on one end of the granary) never became a problem for Father. He never advanced that far. He drove the car only one time.

The field in which Father took his first lesson was very large, and he quickly found how easy it was to simply keep the car going in ever widening circles. Having accomplished this much without mishap, my older brother decided that Father had advanced to the stage where he could drive the car into the front yard and stop in front of the house so that Mother could see what he had accomplished. In those days it was still rare for married women to drive cars.

Everything went as planned. Mother stood beaming on the front steps as the shiny black car came running smoothly along the little road that passed in front of our house on the way to the barn. Father was proudly behind the wheel. But unfortunately for Father it was not yet winter, and so the pigs, in which he took great pride, were still permitted to roam around the barn yard and house and leisurely search for roots and other food. Just as Father was supposed to come to a halt right in front of my mother, one of the pigs, for reasons known only to a pig, chose to cross the road. Too late, the car struck the pig on the side. The pig gave out an ear-splitting squeal of the type common to pigs even when they are not seriously injured.

The pig recovered quickly, but Father did not. He emerged from behind the steering wheel pale and visibly shaken. He never asked to be given another lesson, and he never was.

M ilking is fun when you don't have to do it twice every day, and always at the same time. In the summer, on hot Sunday afternoons when I went swimming with my friends in the cool water of the Sheyenne River, I always had to leave in the late afternoon to be home in time to milk the cows around 5 o'clock. My friends, even though also from farms, always seemed able to stay much later. But Father was very insistent on milking regularly at the same time every day. When I got older I realized that he had been right: cows do give more milk when they are emptied on a regular schedule.

Milking in the summer also brought a lot of flies, and that meant the cow's tail was going back and forth constantly to drive them away. What the cow didn't know, or at least didn't care if she did know, was that the long hairs at the end of the tail usually hit me in the face with every swish. Also, the tail never smelled exactly like perfume. Sometimes to get relief I would try to wedge the tail between my head and the stomach of the cow. Then she simply tugged harder to get it loose, and even began to move around if the flies were biting her. Holding a pail of milk between your knees while you are sitting down is never easy, and especially not with a restless cow that might kick if unhappy enough. Also, if I spilled the milk Father would blame me instead of the cow.
But it wasn't always unpleasant. In the winter, when it was cold even inside the barn, the cow felt very warm to lean my head against. In the summer there were usually kittens that had been born in the spring and that came with the mother to the barn at milking time in the hope of getting fresh milk. Normally some milk was put into a pan from which they could drink. But when my father was not looking it was much more fun just to squirt the milk in a high arc from the cow to the edge of the barn where the kittens were gathered with the mother. There they would try to catch the stream in the mouth, often falling over in the process. When it was over they were partly soaked with the milk, and then the mother would clean them off with her tongue.

When the June berries became ripe, I discovered there was another reason for milking cows, and to enjoy doing it. The berries grew only in what we called the "big pasture," which was about a half mile from the house. This is where I had to drive the cows every morning in the spring and summer, and fetch them in the late afternoon. When the berries were ripe I would go for the cows a little earlier than normal, but I never told the family why. Once there I would select the gentlest and most cooperative cow near to where the berries were growing. Then I would fill my mouth to the point of bursting with berries, walk slowly to the cow so as not to frighten her, get down on my knees below the udder, tilt my mouth upward and then squirt the milk directly into it. Never did berries taste better, even without sugar.

P assenger trains also went through the town near our farm, one in each direction every day. They came and went with a "whoosh," so fast that one had to turn one's head quickly to get a good look at the engineer. Because our town was so small, they never stopped for passengers. Instead, our town was serviced by a very small train with only one or two cars that was laughingly referred to as the "Galloping Goose." It went faster than a horse could run, but not by much.

Although the big passenger trains did not stop, they nevertheless brought the mail to the town each day and took some away, too. The arriving mail was thrown out of the door of the speeding train in sacks. The outgoing mail was picked up by having the postmaster hang a mail sack stretched tight between two metal arms which were attached to a steel post set in the ground near the track. As the train came roaring down the track, the man in the mail car would push out a metal arm just far enough to catch the sack. Whenever they could, adults and children always came to the station to watch the speeding train go by, especially in the summer.

Walking along the track in the summer was always fun. It was a challenge to see who could balance themselves on the rail and walk the longest distance without falling off. In the spring, when the ground was wet and muddy from the melting snow, the space between the tracks was often the only dry place on which to walk with friends.

It was forbidden to put anything on the tracks, lest it cause the engine to be de- railed, but there was one harmless exception to this. We would often put a penny on one of the tracks so the wheels of the train would flatten it to the thickness of a piece of paper. The same thing could be done with nickel and silver coins, but for me that was too expensive. In those days even five pennies would buy an ice cream cone or a bar of candy.

S trangers rarely came to our house. We lived a mile from the closest town and a half mile from the closest neighbor. We could not see the buildings of our neighbor, and the neighbor could not see ours. The closest road was a quarter of a mile away, and infrequently traveled. If strangers did come they were always courteously received, and if they asked for food my mother always gave them something to eat.

Thieves were even more rare than strangers. When a gypsy band came by once with their covered wagons and extra horses for trading, I heard the adults talking about the need to watch the chickens, and to be particularly alert when it came to trading horses. The gypsies slept in their wagons at night and cooked their food over open fires on the ground, but took nothing.

One wintry night a thief did steal some fresh meat we had stored in steel barrels back of the house. I was about twelve or thirteen years old, and my father called on me to get up and help investigate what was going on. It was snowing, however, with the result the tracks of the thief were covered almost as soon as they were made. There was nothing to do but lament the loss of sleep, curse the thief, and go back to bed.

One summer night that same year my father also thought he heard thieves in the chicken coop near his bedroom window, and again called for me to investigate. But boys didn't sleep in pajamas in those days, and the underpants I had on presented a problem: all of the buttons had fallen off, and they stayed roughly in place only as long as I had my trousers on. When I got up I had to hold the top of the shorts together with one hand or they would fall down.

Although the stairs to the first floor were very steep, I managed them very well with my one free hand, but when I got to the kitchen, I decided I was going to go out armed. If any thief or thieves were around, I would command them to halt and raise their hands, but if they so much as made a move I was going to be ready to shoot. Using one hand to get the rifle off the nails that held it to the kitchen wall presented no problem; putting the cartridge into the chamber was quite another matter. Whenever I took my hand off the shorts, even for a second, they started for the floor. While I regarded myself as pretty much a man at the time, I was not yet inclined to prove it in front of my father.

I nevertheless managed to load the gun and to make my way outdoors to the front of the house. There I listened very carefully, but the loudest noise I could hear was that of my own heart beating. Yet simply going back into the house without even a warning shot seemed to me very unheroic, as well as a waste of good sleep for nothing.

The problem was the shorts. Because the rifle was heavy, it would take two hands to raise it to my shoulder, but I decided that if I spread my legs into a wide stance the shorts would stay at my hips. I raised the rifle, aimed in the direction I thought the thieves might have gone and pulled the trigger. There was a flash of fire from the barrel, a terrible roar in the stillness of the summer night, and a slight jerk of my right shoulder from the recoil of the gun. My shorts slid to the ground.

I hastily pulled them up, even though it was pitch dark, went back into the kitchen, and with my free hand returned the rifle to its proper place on the kitchen wall. The next morning we found no chickens missing, nor any sign of chicken thieves. But I consoled myself with the thought that if one had been around he would have been properly frightened at least. In any event, he never came back. But just in case, I asked my mother to sew the buttons on my shorts.

F or our family, doctors were expensive and rarely called. One came to our house when I was born and another for my younger brother, but the need had to be very great, virtually at the point where the only alternatives were a doctor or an undertaker. Veterinarians were called more frequently; farm animals were worth money and could be sold.

Patent medicines were a cheap substitute for doctors. Although my parents had very little money, there were always patent medicines in the cupboard. These were usually bought from a traveling patent medicine peddler. When I was very small he came in a black, covered buggy pulled by two horses, and he always seemed to arrive late in the afternoon. My parents always invited him to stay the night, for strangers meant conversation and usually interesting stories. Sleeping arrangements were a little crowded then, because there were always two children, and sometimes three, per bed in the boys' bedroom, even without a peddler.

No money was ever asked or received for the lodging, but the next morning the peddler always gave my mother a large bottle of Ward's liniment. Its curative powers were extensive. Father used it on the farm animals and Mother on the children. It was the common remedy for colds and coughs. As it contained a high percentage of alcohol, and was very strong to the taste, it was always given to us in a mixture of hot water, cream and sugar. My younger brother became particularly fond of it, so much so that he seemed to have one cold after another. Addiction was an unknown word in those days, at least in my family.

Traveling medicine shows came to our town nearly every year. In addition to jokes, songs, and demonstrations of hypnotism, a feature of every program was the sale of patent medicines, particularly liniment. One enterprising salesman used the sole of a shoe to demonstrate the penetrative powers of his liniment. He poured a small amount on one side of the sole, massaged it vigorously, turned it over and then showed the audience the stain of the liniment soaking through the leather, always accompanied by the assertion that the skin over aching muscles would react in the same way. One dollar a bottle was the usual price, with a discount if two bottles were bought. Sales were usually brisk. Farm work produced many aches and pains, especially among older people, and horses.

F rom earliest childhood I was taught by my parents to be careful with fire. Our house and all the other farm buildings were made of wood that could easily burn, and the barn usually had dry hay and straw in the loft. So I early came to understand how important it was to be careful and not to play with fire. There were no fire stations for miles around, and on the farm, as we had no electricity, there was no way to put water on a fire other than with a bucket. At the same time, we had to use matches daily, to start the fire in the stove in the morning and to light the lamps at night. My father and brothers also all used matches whenever they smoked. From a very early age I took matches with me when one of my chores was to drive the cattle to the fields in the autumn after the grain had been harvested. There they could find unthreshed grain as well as green grass and weeds to eat.

Although I always had my dog with me when I herded the cattle in the fields, and later always had a pony to ride, the days still seemed long with little else to do other than watch the cows to make certain they did not wander off into the neighbor's fields. The cows also had to be brought home each noon, and again in the evening for milking.

I sometimes used the matches I took with me to make a small fire in which I could roast heads of ripe wheat that had fallen on the ground. When roasted this way, I liked the taste, and I also discovered that if I chewed wheat kernels long enough they would turn into the consistency of gum.

Fortunately for me, I was able to keep these fires small. I was very careful not to light them when there was a strong wind blowing, for example, and also to make certain they would not spread to wooden buildings or to large stacks of straw left by the threshing machine. Because my father could only use one or two of these for the horses and cattle each winter, the others were simply burned after the threshing season was over. On some autumn nights after the end of the threshing season, straw stacks could be seen burning on the horizon in several directions, and on some days the air was filled with a blue smoke from the burning. Many farmers at the time not only burned their excess straw stacks, but also the stubble standing in the harvested fields. Doing so made plowing easier, and it was also thought then that the ashes added fertilizer to the soil.

I truly enjoyed making and watching these straw fires. And that got me into difficulty one autumn day when I was still quite small. My father had driven with a wagon and two horses to the town about a mile away, and he had left my older brother to plow a field near our house. Before my father had left he told my brother and me that we could set fire to the stubble as long as the wind was not blowing too hard. It was already blowing fairly strong, so my brother plowed several turns around the field to make a fire break. Then my brother agreed to my urging that we set fire to the stubble. I eagerly touched a lighted match to the dry stubble, and watched it catch and spread quickly as the brisk wind fanned it.

I stared, fascinated, as it began to race across the field.

What I had not anticipated was that by the time it came to the fire break at the far end of the field it would be going with the speed of a race horse, and like a horse it leaped over the fire break and into the grass beyond, then over the adjacent road and into the neighbor's field where shocks of harvested grain still stood in the field.

When I saw what was happening my pleasure turned to great concern. I tried to beat out the fire with my feet and with whatever else I could put into my hands. All to no avail. The fire began to move rapidly through the neighbor's field, burning his shocks as well as the stubble as it went.

Fortunately my father returned from town just at this critical moment. He took the reins from my brother, leaped onto the seat of the plow pulled by five horses and whipped them into a trot in the direction of the burning field. He kept the plowshares just far enough into the ground to make a narrow fire break, racing near the line of fire with its leaping flames as he went. Fortunately, the neighbor's field was below a hill where the wind was less strong. When the flames reached the fire break my father was making, they stopped. My brother and I worked furiously to stomp out the small fires that remained, but the crisis was over. We all returned to our own field, greatly relieved. I continued to feel concerned, however, especially when my father had to pay for the neighbor's shocks that had been burned.

Although my brother shared the blame because he had agreed that I could start a fire, I had been very eager to do so, and I had struck the match. Fortunately for both of us, Father limited his displeasure over our action to sternly telling us again about the dangers of playing with fire, especially on a windy day. I never forgot.

T he extra hands required for threshing grain in the autumn were usually hired from men who followed the harvest season from Texas into Canada, and then back to the corn belt states for picking the corn. But they were also hired from sons of farmers seeking to earn extra money.
In my own case I began as a bundle hauler (bringing the sheaves in a hay rack from the fields to the threshing machine) for my uncle at the age of fourteen. We worked twelve hours a day and were paid 45 cents an hour, plus food and blankets for sleeping in a barn in the hayloft. After the depression that began late in l929, the pay dropped to a low of $1.75 for every twelve hours of work. The itinerant workers (who frequently had no fixed abode), often rode on freight trains, stopping wherever work was available. Their lives revolved around this seasonal employment.
When rain interfered with threshing, as could happen for anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks, there was no work and therefore no pay. Food and a place to sleep in the hay in the barn continued to be provided, however, and that was when the cards came out for gambling for money.

In autumn, if rains delayed the threshing until so late in the season that the nights were quite cold, those wanting to gamble would borrow a kerosene lantern for light and then sit between resting horses or cows and play cards. The heat from the animals helped keep them warm.

As the games went on for extended periods, considerable amounts of money could be won or lost. As a result, some of the players ended the season with all of their wages gambled away. After seeing this happen I became aware of the meaning of the words, "hard come and easy go." Even after I became an adult, I never did play cards for money.

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LEAVES FROM A FARM BOY'S DIARY by Eddie W. Schodt

Story Copyright 1994 Eddie W. Schodt
All Rights Reserved
Line drawings by Frederik L. Schodt
Black and white photographs printed by Misao Mizuno

http://www.jai2.com/farm5.htm
Copyright 1998, Frederik L. Schodt
Revised -- Dec/25/98