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by Eddie W. Schodt FARM FUN |
I never went out for "tricks" on Halloween until I was a teenager, and we had no "treats" at that time. In school we made things to put in windows, but that was the extent of it. There was also the practical problem of distance; our closest neighbor was a half mile away, and over a road that was not much more than two tracks in the ground.
One Halloween I decided to walk the mile to our town, and there join other boys I had been told would do various forms of tricking, although we did not even use that word at the time. "Mischief" would have been more accurate. But to me it was all new and strange and exciting. Until that night I had only heard stories from my older brothers and from friends about what was done on Halloween. Not until I was thirteen and confirmed in the Lutheran Church was I permitted to go out for social events by myself.
The first activity for the night was to move a piece of heavy machinery from where it was parked on the edge of the town, to a place where it would not be easy for the owner to find it the next day. There were several of us, and although quite young we were strong as a group. We had just started to move the machine in the dark when an adult voice spoke out loudly and said, "all right, I have seen every one of you, and either you move this machine back to where you found it or I will turn you over to the local constable." —a kind of police officer without a uniform. I, at least, felt a little intimidated, also being conscious of the wrong I was doing to the farmer who owned the machinery. Apparently the others felt somewhat the same because everyone, after a moment's hesitation, pitched in and helped return the machine to the place we had found it.
That was the end of my tricking. I went home shortly afterward, but several of the group apparently continued their activity. One common practice was to tip over the small wooden toilets that stood in the back of every house in the town. These buildings covered a deep hole that had been dug in the ground. Some had one hole for a seat and others two, and they were accordingly known as "one-holers" or "two-holers." A good push by a couple of strong boys, and over they went. In another instance a farmer's sheep was tied to the rope of a flag pole, and hoisted to the top where it was left to dangle and bleat until the neighbors awakened in the morning.
As a young boy I often heard about some of the tricks that had been carried out by my three older brothers on Halloween, especially if the tricks were at all funny. One night they went to a neighbor's barn several miles away. This farmer had a reputation for being lazy, and also for not feeding his animals adequately. They always looked very thin, or like "bone piles," as we used to say. So my brothers and their friends hit on the idea of going one night to the place where his hungry pigs were kept, and releasing them into the feed bin. For at least one night the pigs would be well fed.
The pigs were apparently happy to cooperate, and made little noise while being moved, and when the farmer came to the barn in the morning, they were eating and grunting happily, as they do when content. That was one time my father laughed over what had been done as a trick, and even seemed to approve. Fortunately for him, no one ever came to our farm for Halloween tricks.
T he first Christmas I remember was an unfortunate experience. In my home we always had our Christmas dinner — turkey or goose- on Christmas Eve, and the dinners were always special. My mother prepared tasty food, including several types of cookies she was accustomed to making in Denmark. We always received our gifts after dinner, before we went to bed. When we were very small we also all joined hands around the Christmas tree while our parents walked with us and sang Christmas carols, in Danish, since they did not know them in English. These traditions were all brought by my parents from Denmark.
As there were eight children in my family, and as my parents were farmers of modest means, food was always treated as something to be appreciated and never wasted. Fresh fruit was rarely available in our house in the winter, and that was also true of fresh meat in the summer. We had no refrigerator. Ice cream was never available to be served as a dessert. But no one ever starved, even though there were times in my boyhood when the food seemed a bit monotonous. If I complained to my mother she would usually reply that if I could provide the money for additional groceries then she would prepare different dishes.
We always had a Christmas tree when I was small, but not in the later years. As the older children left and the family grew smaller, it seemed that Christmas became less festive, even though it was always celebrated. From 1929 until I went to college in 1934, my parents had to deal with the consequences of the drought and the depression, which meant less and less money for anything but the barest necessities. But they still managed to give us one gift each Christmas, and to give us a paper sack filled with hard candy and nuts and an occasional orange. My older brothers and sisters, as they left home to work elsewhere, also sent us Christmas gifts every year. These packages were eagerly anticipated.
Our Christmas tree was usually decorated with things we made, such as strings of popcorn and red cranberries. For lights we used white wax candles, because we had no electricity. One of the smells I remember from Christmas came from the burning candles, especially when the flame singed the needles of the tree. The light from the burning candles always made our faces look rosy and happy.
During the first Christmas that I can remember, we children were all seated on chairs in a line, waiting for Santa Claus to enter the house through the kitchen door. We had no fire-place, and, anyway, at that time I did not know he was supposed to come down the chimney in the middle of the night.
Very soon I heard a startling sound, as if from a sleigh bell (I later learned it was made by shaking a steel chain). When our parents said it meant Santa Claus was coming to the door, I could feel the excitement. Sure enough, he burst through the door with a sack on his back, and went to the children to give each of us a gift.
But when Santa Claus came to me I was so excited I jumped up and pulled off his mask. He fled out the door. I was filled with remorse, but no one punished me. My greatest concern was that he might not come back the following year, but he did.
Later, at the rural consolidated school I attended, there was also a Christmas school party held each year in the evening. We had a play and sang songs, and we had a tree, usually decorated with strings of popcorn, cranberries, white wax candles, and other items. I thought it was beautiful.
On two or three occasions I was able to persuade my parents to let me stay after school on the day of the party, rather than driving home with horses five and one half miles to help with the chores, and then returning later to the school. The two or three single teachers in the lower grades did not seem to mind. They prepared their evening meal in the school, and lived in a small house nearby, and my parents probably did not know that my main reason for wanting to stay after school was to share the teachers' food. It was not the same as my mother's, and being different, it seemed to taste better. Moreover, the teachers nearly always served canned fruits, which I liked and only received at home on special occasions. I tried to be on my very best behavior. One time I accidentally swallowed a large pit from the canned fruit, but I merely laughed along with the teachers, even though it went down with some difficulty.
After the Christmas play and songs, it was time for Santa to enter from a side door and go to the tree to read off the names on all the gifts that had been piled under it. To assure that each child received at least one gift, the children all drew names in their classes. In addition, there were many other packages from friends and relatives of certain families. Most children also gave a gift to their teacher. From quite an early age I saved my money to buy a present for a certain girl.
Probably because there were so few children in the school, I was always included in the school plays we had at Christmas and other times. For one Christmas program I had to recite a poem in which there was a line about a napkin ring. It was many years later before I learned what those words meant. We never used napkins in my home.
One year the teachers asked me to be the Santa Claus, even though I was not at all a jolly Saint Nick in appearance, being quite small and also quite slender. To increase my girth they put two pillows under my jacket and secured them with the usual wide belt that Santa Claus wears. That worked very well as long as I was standing up, but when I had to keep bending to pick up the gifts under the tree to read off the names, the pillows began to slip. Only by repeatedly tugging could I keep them in place until I dashed out the door with "A Merry Christmas to All!" For the next eight years I was asked to play the same role, and I gradually grew into it.
CHANGING REELS AND PUTTING OUT FIRES
G oing to the moving pictures was always a great treat. I didn't go very often, even though children were admitted for only ten cents. Money was always scarce, and we had a big family. And moving pictures were shown only once a week in the winter time, and less frequently during the summer.
The theater in our town was a long, rectangular building that was called a hall and actually used for many other activities. When a dance was held, for example, the chairs on which the moving picture audience sat had to be removed and rearranged. When moving pictures were shown a projector was placed on a raised platform at the end of the building in a place called "Nigger Heaven," even though there were no Black people in the entire community. I was an adult before I really knew the significance of the words. Because the floor of the hall was flat, the children always tried to sit in the front rows so they could have a good view of the screen.
The projector operated on electricity, but the reels had to be changed by hand, and this meant that the picture stopped after each reel. It always seemed to happen at the most exciting places, especially in cowboy and Indian films,the kind that I liked the best, or in comedies starring Laurel and Hardy, Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin and "Our Gang." And while the reels were being changed, the children always laughed and talked among themselves, and tried to imitate things they had seen in films. To me everything on the screen seemed very real, and not just "pretend," even though it was always a black and white picture with no sound. My imagination easily filled in any gaps. Often when I was herding cattle, I would imagine that I was a cowboy such as I had seen on the screen.
One winter night, right in the middle of a film I was watching, a man burst into the hall and yelled: "The Sheeney store is on fire!" The film stopped instantly, the lights went on, and everyone dashed for the door. The burning store was only about a block away, but by the time I got there clouds of smoke were already pouring out of the rear of the store and flames were high enough to cast shadows on the snow. Everyone was talking and shouting.
Very soon the town's fire engine came hurtling down the street, pulled not by horses but by three men. It was only a small tank with a chemical in it, mounted on a two-wheeled cart. One of the firemen took an axe from the cart and swung it mightily, knocking a hole in the wall of the store. They then squirted the chemical through the hole, but it seemed to have no effect, for the flames only roared and mounted even higher.
Just about this time I heard the sound of breaking glass and a shout from some of the adults near the front of the store. I ran in that direction and saw several adults go through a hole that had been knocked in one of the front store windows. When they came back out they had armfuls of shoes, overshoes, bolts of cloth and everything else that could be carried and was not on fire.
Some adults ran to a nearby ditch where they hid their loads in the weeds, and then returned for more. Others stole what had been hidden. No one said anything about it not being right to take what was in the store, for the general feeling seemed to be that it would all burn anyway if not taken out in time. I even overheard comments to the effect that the owners had probably set the fire on purpose, so they could collect the insurance and make more money.
I had never before seen such a large fire, and while I was watching, listening, and feeling the excitement, a glass case suddenly landed on the ground in front of my feet. There were spools of thread of different colors and sizes in the case, and I was seized with a desire to take it home to my mother, but I discovered it was too heavy for me to carry a long distance. With my fingers, I therefore pried out two or three spools, and put them in my coat pocket. When the fire had covered the entire building and the walls had collapsed, I went home with the rest of my family. Our house was about a mile away, and Mother, who rarely went with us to the moving pictures, was asleep when we entered, but everyone was so excited that we felt we had to awaken her and tell her what had happened.
I proudly gave Mother the three spools of thread, and she thanked me for them. I sensed a little reserve in her voice when she accepted them, but it was not until many years later, when I was a grown man, that I realized I had committed a crime in taking them. If a policeman had been around I might have been arrested and even put in jail. But the only policeman in our town was called a constable; he did not wear a uniform, received no pay, and probably had been at the fire himself.
W e bought our first phonograph when I was about ten years old, and a few years later we bought our first radio. Until then the only source of music in our house was someone whistling or singing, and no one was very good at either.
The phonograph was secondhand, but that didn't make it seem any less wonderful. It stood about four feet above the ground, and was made of shiny mahogany. To make it play one had to put a heavy 78 rpm record on the turntable, use a crank to wind a coiled spring, and then move the player head with its steel needle into the proper place on the record.
About ten records were packed inside the phonograph when it arrived by train from the city of Fargo about eighty miles away. My parents never did buy any new ones, and the ten records were soon well worn. I knew practically all of them by heart. One had only laughing sounds on it, and as we gathered around to hear it we found ourselves laughing even louder than the voices on the record.
Another favorite of mine, and I think of my father's also, was titled "Cohen's New Automobile." When Cohen took his new car out for a drive he was stopped by a policeman who charged him with exceeding the speed limit by going sixty miles an hour. Cohen replied, "How can dat be? I vas only out a half an hour." The policeman then looked under the hood and exclaimed, "Your engine's missing." Cohen replied, "Dat's funny. It vas in der ven I started."
I also liked the song "Red Wing." At the time I was in love with a girl in my class, and I found that by playing this record I would begin to think of her in a sad and romantic way. So when I wanted to get into the right mood after not having seen her for a day or so, I would put on the record, stand by the phonograph and feel the tears well up in my eyes. But I never let anyone see me. It was my secret.
A few years later we bought our first radio. It received its electricity from a car battery. A common topic of conversation at social gatherings at the time was to compare notes on how many new radio stations one had been able to hear in the course of a week. As the best reception came late at night, many people stayed up until the wee hours so they could enlarge their list of distant stations. To improve the reception, because many of the signals were often very weak, it was common to use ear phones that plugged into the radio set.
Our radio never did work very well, and I had never developed enough skill with radios to make it work better. Not long after we received it, in 1929, the Great Depression began, and money became very scarce. When the battery became weak there was no longer any money for recharging or replacing it. Fortunately, my father continued to pay for a daily newspaper despite the hard times. That was the only way I could learn about news from the outside world.
A s we had no indoor toilet, relieving oneself was a particular chore in the winter, but there could be problems in the summer as well. It was certainly true for me one early hot summer morning.
In most farm homes in our area, and even in small towns, the toilet was invariably located back of the house at a distance varying from sixty to eighty feet and more. It was usually painted red, sometimes with white trim, but as with the color of barns, there were variations. It was almost never referred to as a toilet, but rather by such euphemisms as "throne," "Chic Sale," "outhouse," etc. The toilet building was made with either one or two holes inside, and it had a door but usually no windows. It was simply placed over a five or six feet deep hole dug in the ground. Old Sears Roebuck or Montgomery Ward catalogs were normally used for toilet paper, the plain black and white sheets being preferred because they were softer. Those that were colored and shiny were rather stiff, and for that reason they tended to be used last. Given the gloom inside the windowless building, they were also easier to look at and to read.
As I and my brothers slept in an unheated room on the second floor of our two-story house, a trip to the "outhouse" could be an ordeal in the winter when the snow lay deep on the ground. Chamber pots were provided for my sisters and for my parents, but not for the boys. We were expected to go to the toilet, to the barn, or at least outside. In the winter, in particular, we tended to stretch the rule by going only to the edge of the exposed steps that led into the house. My mother never approved of this procedure, but as my father insisted on it as a matter of right, her only recourse was to periodic grumbling.
Almost from the time we were toilet-trained as children (and we were trained very early, as disposable diapers and diaper service were unknown) we were able to sleep through the night without having to relieve ourselves. However, there was something in my physical make up that made me somewhat of an exception. I frequently had to get up once a night to urinate. Confronted as I then was with the dreaded necessity of having to go down a flight of steep stairs in the pitch dark, through the kitchen and a closed porch (each with a door), and out into the bracing cold in winter or the eerie dark in the summer, I silently rebelled by using the chamber pot in the bedroom for my sisters. Although they made evident their disapproval, they never gave me a flat "no." As I moved toward my `teens, however, their objections hardened and my determination weakened. I had no choice but to face reality.
During the hot days of summer the heat in our second floor bedroom approached the unbearable. As we had no electricity, fans were unheard of. Moreover, as our bedroom had only one window, there was no cross ventilation. To take full advantage of what breeze did enter the room, I therefore often slept with my head at the foot of the bed, which was nearest the window. Usually by two or three in the morning, the cool outside air could be felt in this way, and sleep became possible. It was very early in the morning of such an uncomfortably hot July night that I began to feel a growing need to relieve myself. The sky was already light and I had slept very little. In a couple of hours or less my parents would be up and the day's work would begin. I knew that to make my way downstairs and outside would probably awaken others in my family. Even more important, I would find it difficult to get back to sleep.
Although we had no screens on our windows, my mother had fashioned an effective substitute from cheese cloth. It lasted only one season and thus had to be replaced each spring. As I was lying there wrestling with my mounting problem, the thought suddenly occurred to me that the cheese cloth was soft and could be parted in a way not possible with a wire screen, the more usual material for covering windows. I decided to go to the window and with my fingers easily force an opening without tearing the cloth. The window sill, however, was six to eight inches wide, and, as I was keenly aware, it was directly above my parents' window.
Although my parents had never spanked me I was always very sensitive to any evidence of my mother's displeasure, and I knew she would be very displeased if she discovered what I was doing. It was essential, therefore, that I direct the stream with such force that it go out far enough to strike the ground beyond the window below. The intense pressure I could feel made speedy action necessary.
I inserted the penis that my genes had given me as far as possible through and beyond the opening in the cheese cloth. But I was not able to extend beyond the sill's edge. However, I could wait no longer, and in my desperation I released my bladder with maximum force. Although the stream made a respectable parabola, the lower end of it did not entirely clear the wall of the house. My mother was awakened by what she thought was rain. She jumped out of bed to close her window, but then became aware that the sky was clear and the sun's rays were edging over the horizon. She immediately realized what was happening and shouted at me to stop. Too late. I jumped quickly back into bed but sleep was not possible. I sheepishly went through breakfast and the day, embarrassment and mirth alternating in my thoughts. It was several days before I could again look my mother directly in the eye.
C ompared to Minnesota, North Dakota had few trees and no lumber camps, but it was still "Paul Bunyan" country in the telling and enjoyment of tall tales. Some people said it was because of the extremes of weather, and I can believe that. Several times as a boy I found snow on my blanket that had drifted over the bed through cracks around the window. It discouraged dawdling, once I got out of bed. Through the years I heard and read many tall tales, and also contributed my own. By the time I was an adult I had usually forgotten the source for them.
Burning surplus straw stacks in the autumn was a common practice in the countryside when I was a boy, and it caused a blue haze that reduced visibility for several days. One impatient farmer with many straw stacks decided to start burning them early one morning in the late autumn while the threshing was still underway. He had forgotten that men on the threshing crew had burrowed themselves into the straw to keep warm during the night. When he started the threshing machine for the day he discovered that two of his men were missing.
Hunting ducks was a popular sport among the farmers in the late autumn. One farmer, who liked to eat ducks but did not have a gun, was greatly helped one morning by an early and severe freeze. When he awakened he discovered that the ponds on his farm were covered with ducks frozen in the ice, but with their heads sticking up from which he hear loud quacks. He hurriedly hitched two horses to his hay mower and simply drove around the ponds, severing the heads with the blade of his mower as he went.
Music from wind instruments was virtually never heard in my community in the winter. It was so cold the notes froze inside the trombones, trumpets, and so forth. But since farmers could not work in the fields in the winter and had little to do, they played their instruments anyway, but silently. With the coming of spring, music burst out all over, as the frozen notes melted.
Visitors to North Dakota in the winter were always puzzled when they saw people walking backwards. What they didn't realize was that on very cold days the breath of people and horses froze into ice in front of them. To break it as one walked was slow and painful. It was much easier to walk backwards.
One night a farm neighbor disappeared in a howling blizzard while going from his house to the barn to feed the cattle. A search party was organized once the storm was over, but no trace of him was found. He had vanished. Early in the spring of that year I was helping my father inspect and repair the fences before the cattle were turned out to graze for the summer. It was still quite cold after the unusually severe winter, so we worked rapidly, going from post to post. I noticed on one post that both barbed wires seemed to be loose.
When I drove one staple nearly all the way in, I suddenly discovered there was no post at all; it was the neighbor, frozen upright against the fence into which he had stumbled in that terrible winter storm. After he thawed out, the community buried him—horizontally.
Hunting in extremely cold weather presented several problems. For one, the rabbits were very hard to see. Not only were they as white as snow, in the frigid weather they did not like to leave their holes. Frost bite was a constant threat to the hunter. I had to beat my hands across my back to keep them warm. Even the speed of the bullet was slowed down by the cold. Some of them never did reach the target until spring.
One clear morning when the temperature was very low I was out hunting for rabbits. Suddenly on a hillside to my front I spied the outline of the head of one. I raised my rifle, took aim and fired. There was the usual bang of the exploding cartridge, and then a strange thing happened; the rabbit leaped from his hole but remained suspended just above the ground. Both the bullet and the rabbit had frozen in place. I hurried home to get warm. When spring came I went back to the hillside. The rabbit was dead on the ground with a bullet through the heart. We called it a "delayed action" shot
THE FOUND AND LOST INDIAN STONE HAMMER
T he fact that Indians had once pitched their tepees and hunted over the land of our farm always excited my imagination.
My father once discovered a place where stones on the surface appeared to have been laid out in a distinct oval pattern. However, when he dug into the ground inside this oval, nothing was found. That still did not end our speculation over what might have been. A young farm boy (only a couple years older than I) who lived a few miles away, found many flint arrow heads, yet despite persistent effort over several years I never managed to find even one. How I envied him.
Then one day in August, when I was about fififteen years old, a truly remarkable thing happened. It was during the drought years in North Dakota, and the ground was very hard as a result. Although we had a very poor crop of wheat because of this, I was nevertheless required by my father to drive the binder pulled by four horses over the wheat fields, and to harvest whatever stalks of wheat were tall enough to be cut and gathered into bundles.
As I was coming to the top of a hill, with the horses straining to keep the binder moving at the required speed, I felt the bull wheel (the large wheel under the binder that made all the other parts move) rise up off the ground and then bring the binder down with a crash. Afraid that something might have been broken, I stopped the horses, leaped off the seat to the ground and quickly looked under the binder to determine the cause of the crash. There, on top of the ground and just behind the bull wheel, was a perfectly shaped Indian hammer It was made from a heavy and smooth stone rounded on both ends. In the center a groove had been cut to which deer or buffalo sinews could be bound to hold a handle in place. I assumed it had been used for pounding and grinding actions. Although I had long hoped I might find a stone tomahawk, which had been used in fighting, as well as arrow heads, I was very pleased with my stone hammer. I carried it on the binder until the end of the working day, and then I proudly showed it to my parents and younger brother.
In the local post office, which also housed a drug store and an ice cream parlor, there was a glass cabinet that displayed arrow heads and other stone items made by Indians. Included among them were arrow heads that belonged to the farm boy mentioned earlier. When I offered to display my stone hammer in the same case, the post master readily agreed. Whenever I passed the cabinet after that I always felt a quiet pride in seeing my stone hammer.
The years passed, and when I was nineteen I went off to college about thirty miles away. As the stone hammer was quite heavy and I did not know what kind of room I would have, I decided to leave it in the postmaster's case. When I graduated four years later I had forgotten all about it.
I then went to Boulder, Colorado for graduate work, and after three years there I went to Washington, D.C, and shortly after that I went into the U.S. Army until the end of World War II. After the war I spent nine years working in the Department of State in Washington, and twenty years working in different embassies overseas.
In l968, I came home to the United States and I was sent to the University of Montana at Missoula for nine months. Somewhere along the way, I found out that a daughter of the postmaster in my home town was teaching school in Helena, Montana. In June, 1969, when we drove back to Washington D.C., I therefore stopped by her school to talk with her, and to see if she had any knowledge of the whereabouts of my stone hammer. Although she didn't know anything about it, she told me that she would soon visit her now aged parents, and that she would be glad to inquire about it then. If they still had it she said she would give it to a cousin of mine living on a farm near Luverne, N.D. To my good fortune, the hammer was still in the possession of her parents, and they readily agreed to give it to my cousin. In turn I asked my cousin to take it to one of my brothers in Los Angeles, when he went there to spend his winters.
In 1975, I brought the hammer from my brother's house back to Black Mountain, North Carolina where we were building a cottage. And there it has been ever since, resting on a copper sheet we have on the floor in front of the fire place. I rarely pass the hammer without thinking how far it has traveled and how fortunate I was to be able to find it a second time. I sometimes wonder what the Indian who made it so very long ago might think if he knew where it had finally come to rest.
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Table of Contents |
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/farm6.htm
Copyright 1998, Frederik L. Schodt
Revised -- Dec/25/98