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The Unplowed Sky
A Novel
Jeanne Williams
This story is dedicated with love and appreciation to Uncle Lou, who worked on a threshing crew and helped build roads and railroads in No-Man’s Land; to Aunt Dorothy, an indomitable spirit, who drove “Big Red” in the harvest fields; and to Alice Shook, my kissin’ cousin, who has shared with me such vivid memories of life on the land and when the threshers came.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Even though they were no longer farming wheat, my grandparents and parents often spoke of those days, and Mother and Grandmother well remembered cooking for harvest and threshing crews. Half a century later, I’m sorry that I didn’t listen better and ask more questions. Thank goodness, in the sixties, I did record considerable information from my father, Guy E. Kreie, who plowed virgin prairie near Dodge City when he was a boy and later grew wheat with my maternal grandparents and uncles near Elkhart, Kansas. I also have some treasured material from my mother’s mother, Susanna Parks Salmon, and I wrote the book in view of a photo of my mother driving a tractor and my father on a header with my uncles and grandfather.
One might call these family memories the seed of this story, but I was lamentably ignorant about wheat farming when I decided to write this book about the period when the mighty steam engines that had revolutionized grain farming were being challenged by kerosene and gas-powered machines and the development of a practical combine that could harvest and thresh grain at the same time.
While reading Bull Threshers and Bindlestiffs by Thomas D. Isern (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1990), I was intrigued with the threshing outfits that traveled from farm to farm all over the plains. In the heyday of steam threshing, one hundred thousand men swarmed like migrating birds to a swath 200 to 300 miles wide that stretched from Texas into Canada. They harvested and threshed the fields that fed the nation and, during the war years, much of Europe.
Women usually cooked for the traveling threshers, whipping up huge, hearty meals in a small shack on wheels. There are countless photographs of women, many of them only seventeen or eighteen, standing beside their cookshacks, and managing to look pretty and neat in spite of their hard work. Many a romance bloomed as men vied to dry dishes for the cook!
The twenties saw dramatic changes in American life. Women got the vote in 1920. Radio grew from infancy to a medium as influential and widespread as television today. Henry Ford’s production lines brought the price of a Model T to below $300. Prohibition fomented racketeers and bootleggers. Still, though flappers might smoke and dance the Charleston in the cities, on farms without electricity or indoor plumbing, women’s work was laborious beyond modern imagining.
Fortunately for me, since I usually write about such households, I lived on my grandparents’ farm in my teen years. It didn’t bother me at all then to carry water from the spring for all our needs, scrub laundry on a washboard, read by kerosene lamps, and carry wood for heat and cooking. I’m glad I don’t have to do it now, though.
Material for this book came from many sources apart from immediate family. I owe a tremendous debt to Dave Webb and Noel Ary of the Kansas Heritage Center in Dodge City, who lent me tapes and videos and suggested sources. Dave, a railroad enthusiast who lives in an antique depot, sent me many relevant articles and an invaluable taped interview with Hazel Moore and “Pat” Murphey who was a county agent in Greeley and Comanche counties. Also through the Heritage Center, I was able to view an excellent film on threshing that shows the old steam engines, Steam Thrasherman, Lloyd N. White of Colby, Kansas, adviser.
Naturally, I pestered all my relatives who experienced harvest and threshing firsthand. My cousin, Dr. Jack Salmon, videotaped his father’s and mother’s recollections. Later, when I visited them, they shared vintage photos and answered a lot of questions. Thank you, Uncle Lou and Aunt Thelma!
Alice Shook, my friend and cousin, wrote some warm, humorous and fascinating memories of life on an Oklahoma Panhandle farm. She also went to the trouble to send steam-whistle signals that she got from the kind people at the Antique Engine and Threshers Association at Bird City, Kansas.
My aunt, Dorothy Thompson, who has herself run a tractor at harvesttime, sent me a number of useful pictures, photos, and recollections. She has always been supportive of my writing, and I am glad I have filled a bookshelf for her.
George Scofield of Ponca City, Oklahoma, grew up in Elkhart, my birthplace, and worked at a drugstore. He sent me a wonderful account of life there in 1924, describing how he helped build a railroad across the Texas Panhandle, very much like the project Garth hires on for in this book. His spirited memoir yielded many interesting details about a work crew.
My neighbor, Sally Spofford, gave me some real licorice root and told me about that and other treats of the twenties. She also bore, as ever, with my travails.
Helen Brown, director of the Morton County Museum at Elkhart, gave me a special tour of that impressive and intriguing collection. It has everything from dolls to a windmill and a fine collection of machinery, including a marvelous old steam engine.
For Shaft’s wonderful beard and kitten, I am indebted to friend and fellow writer Nelson Nye’s nephew, Tom Johnson of Springfield, Kentucky. He told me about a small cat he had rescued and how it slept beneath his beard or draped itself shoulder to shoulder. No lover of cats could resist such a charming practice, and he kindly granted me permission to borrow his beard and cat.
Among books that helped in re-creating time and place were Land of the Post Rock by Grace Muilenburg and Ada Swineford (1975) and Natural Kansas, edited by Joseph T. Collins (1985), both from the University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas; Kansas Bootleggers by Patrick G. O’Brien and Kenneth J. Peak (Manhattan, Kansas: Sunflower Press, 1991) and This Was Wheat Farming by Kirby Brumfield (New York: Bonanza Books, 1958).
Robert L. Yates’s When I Was a Harvester (New York: Macmillan, 1930) is the true story of a seventeen-year-old college boy who goes west to work the harvest. It was in his account that I read about Saskatchewan greyhounds. Carey MacWilliams’s Ill Fares the Land: Migrants and Migratory Workers in the United States (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967), has a concise and illuminating section on harvesters and threshers, showing how this work force differed from most migrant laborers.
Also useful were J. Sanford Rikoon’s Threshing in the Midwest, 1820–1940 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988); Winter Wheat in the Golden Belt of Kansas by James C. Malin (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1944); The Grain Harvesters by Graeme Quick and Wesley Buchele (St. Joseph, Michigan: American Society of Agricultural Engineers); The American Farm Tractor by Randy Leffingwell (Osceola, Wisconsin: Motorbooks International, 1991); and Jon Steward’s The Reaper (New York: Greenberg, 1931).
A memoir I kept always at hand is Pioneer Threshers written and published by Joseph Dale Fry (Garden City, Kansas, 1993). Illustrated with a wealth of family photos and pictures of machinery and components, it gives a detailed, step-by-step account of threshing as his parents and family knew it, from 1884 to 1928. This is no dull textbook. It is a captivating story, full of humor, about real people and how they lived and worked. Mr. Fry kindly cleared up some of my perplexities by phone and letter. One of his prize possessions is a scale-model Case steam engine and separator made by his brother.
Another deskside reference was Days of Steam and Glory by Dana Close Jennings (Aberdeen, South Dakota: North Plains Press, 1968). Through drawings, photos, and vigorous language, it shows how the engineer cared for his engine, got it up to operating pressure, and what could h
appen if things went wrong.
Loving owners of the great old machines still get them out for threshing demonstrations throughout the wheat-growing country; and, once again, if only for a summer day, the giants belch smoke and whistle and thresh the grain.
JEANNE WILLIAMS
October 1993
Cave Creek Canyon
I
Hallie stretched, opened her eyes, and smiled at the dawn. Then she realized that it glowed through a strange window in a wall papered with violets, and there was an unfamiliar warmth beside her. She turned, saw the curly black head burrowed into the pillow, and everything came back in a welter of confused feelings. Her main feeling was relief: relief that she had a job where she could look after her small half-brother while earning their living.
Her father had died of cancer a few days into that new year of 1924. Seven months later—just five days ago, but they seemed a lifetime—his widow Felicity had come to see Hallie, who was working her last week for the MacReynoldses. The childless couple who had been so kind to her had sold their dry-goods store and were moving back east in hopes that the climate would improve Fanny MacReynolds’s health.
“I have a well-to-do childless cousin in St. Louis who is willing to adopt Jackie,” Felicity said, as Hallie listened thunder-struck. “But since the child’s your half-brother, I thought it only fair to see if you wanted to raise him.”
Hallie’s insides twisted. She looked at this small, pretty woman who had gotten rid of Hallie’s mother’s things as if they carried infection, who had made Hallie feel like an outsider with no place in either the house or her father’s love. As she grew older, and especially since her father’s death, Hallie had begun to understand a little of how difficult it had been for him and was sorry that she had coldly rebuffed his invitations and overtures after she had gone to live with the MacReynoldses.
Now she stared at Daddy’s widow, scarcely believing her ears. “The MacReynoldses are moving, and I’ll have to find another job. I don’t have a home, Felicity, no place to keep a child.”
“Neither do I, unless I marry.” Felicity’s brittle tone took on an edge of desperation. “The bank foreclosed on the house. I have to be out by the end of this month. By the time I paid your father’s hospital bills and gave him a decent funeral, I was destitute. Harry’s waited all these years”—she touched her eyes with a lacy handkerchief—“he owns several drugstores and has done very well, but he says his life’s been empty. I’m the only woman he ever wanted.”
“But he doesn’t want Jackie?”
Felicity snuffled. “He said he might have been able to adopt a little girl, but a boy who would remind him constantly that there had been another man—”
“Felicity, if you’ll try to manage, I’ll send all I can from my wages.”
Felicity shook her stylishly bobbed head. Her new dress almost reached her knees. “There’s no use looking at me like that! It might be noble to take in washing or slave in a restaurant to keep Jackie, but I’m not able to live without a man to love me and take care of me. I found that out while your father was in the hospital this last awful year. And Harry’s waited so long! He wants children of his own.”
“Then he’d better hope he doesn’t die and you give them away.”
“What a nasty thing to say!”
“What a nasty thing to do!”
The two women gazed at each other. Felicity’s eyes dropped, but she squared her shoulders. “If you don’t want Jackie, I’ll take him to my cousin.”
Remembering her own bewildered hurt when she felt that her father didn’t want her, Hallie surrendered. “What in the world will you tell him?”
“That I’m sick, and in order to get better, I have to go live in a place he wouldn’t like, a place where children aren’t allowed.”
“Just don’t let him hope you’ll come back,” Hallie said. “That would be the cruelest thing of all.”
At least she had a job. Mr. MacReynolds had found her a place with Quentin and Estelle Raford, a couple from the East. A few years ago, they had bought the largest farm in the county and had been adding small farms to it as mortgages were foreclosed. The price of wheat had fallen steeply since the hungry demands of the Kaiser’s War. Most wheat farmers had bought more land and machinery on credit. Now many of them had been ruined along with the banks that held their mortgages.
Daddy had been an officer and shareholder in a bank that failed two years ago. Hallie wondered if the disaster, coupled with Felicity’s bitterness, had brought on the cancer. At any rate, Mrs. MacReynolds had telephoned the Rafords about Jackie, and they had consented to let him stay with Hallie so long as she kept him under control. Mr. MacReynolds had driven them out the night before and slipped an extra ten-dollar bill in with her pay.
“You’ll need it with the little fellow,” he said.
“But Mrs. MacReynolds already gave me five dollars.”
He grinned. “Did she? Good for her! The Rafords are out this evening. They said for you to go up to your room on the second story and have breakfast ready at seven-thirty.”
Seven-thirty! Hallie had never heard of anyone sleeping so late. But she could use some extra time to get used to a strange kitchen—and she would fix them a breakfast that would make them glad they’d let her bring Jackie.
Poor little guy! How bewildered and scared he must feel with his father dead and his mother disappearing. He and Hallie scarcely knew each other, but he had clung to her last night when she tucked him in.
“You—you won’t go away, Hallie?”
“No, sweetie!” She gave him a fierce hug. “We’ll be together till you grow up. I promise.”
“You won’t get sick like Mama or die like Daddy?”
“Gracious, I hope not! Now, you cuddle up to Lambie and I’ll be right beside you in a minute.”
Looking very small in the big four poster bed, he hugged the faded raggedy terry-cloth lamb. He was asleep, tears dried on his cheeks, when Hallie finished getting ready for bed. How lucky to be at a farmhouse with a bathroom and electric lights! Plenty of houses in town didn’t have indoor plumbing, though the MacReynoldses did.
Now, in the first golden morning light, Hallie propped her pillow against Jackie’s back, hoping he would sleep till breakfast was over and she could devote some time to him. Hallie’s thick black hair was depressingly, defiantly straight, and she braided and coiled it on top of her head. She had bangs, and when there was time, she liked to curl them with her curling iron so they fluffed over a forehead that she considered too high and softened a rather long face. She had no way to heat the iron in this room, but the Rafords would scarcely mind what she looked like if she cooked to their taste and kept the house pretty.
Hallie tied on her apron and hurried downstairs. Not that there was any hurry, except in herself. It was only six o’clock. She could start the laundry, though, churn butter, and set the bread to rising.
When the washing machine was chugging away on the long screened back porch, she set the table, laying her place near the door so she could speed to the kitchen for coffee or food. Then she set out enough cream for breakfast and biscuits before pouring the rest into the glass churn. As she cranked the handle, the paddles went around, swishing the cream at first, then turning more slowly till her shoulder began to ache and she changed to her other hand. Specks of pale gold began to form and clot together. When a mass of butter formed, Hallie poured the buttermilk into jars. Her mouth watered as she thought how good it would taste with a dash of salt and pepper.
Putting the butter in a stoneware crock, she worked it with a wooden paddle, carefully pressing out all the liquid till the butter was a firm, fresh-smelling mound. She scooped some into a cut-glass bowl for breakfast, glanced at the clock, and put the coffee to perk on the kerosene stove. What a blessing that would be! Fire on and off as needed without burning on the way a wood or coal stove did to make a kitchen a place of summer torment. She mixed biscuits rich with fresh cream, popped them in
the oven, and sliced ham thin in a big skillet.
If she hurried, there would be time to cut some tiger lilies for the table. The morning air was as bright and fresh as the meadowlark’s song. She felt sorry for anyone who was missing this finest part of the day—one could even say the only pleasant part in late June. The sun’s heat increased as it rose. Farmers had already been in the fields for hours.
She was arranging the flowers in a blue-and-white pitcher when a deep male voice made her jump. “You must be Miss Hallie Meredith.”
“Yes, sir.” The man with tawny eyes and crisp grey hair gave the impression of filling the doorway. She had a ridiculous sense of being trapped, though when he stepped into the kitchen, she saw that he had a pleasant smile and was only average in height. “And you’d be Mr. Raford.”
He nodded, still with that easy smile. “I’d like coffee, black, anytime it’s ready. My wife will be down soon, but I have business in town, so I’ll have breakfast as soon as you can fix it. Eggs over lightly. Should you break a yolk, fix another. Ham crisp. Toast”—he wrinkled his nose—“Do I smell biscuits?”
“Cream biscuits.”
His gaze flickered to the crock of fresh butter. The practiced smile broadened to a grin. “It would seem I don’t need to instruct you, Miss Meredith.” He lazed away.
Pernickety. And if his wife had breakfast late, Hallie would spend half the morning in the kitchen. But they were paying her, and if that’s what they wanted, they could have it—though sometime soon she’d have to see if Jackie was awake and give him his breakfast. It wouldn’t do for him to feel abandoned again. Mr. Raford was studying some papers and only nodded thanks as she brought his coffee, but by the time breakfast was ready, Hallie heard a woman’s high voice in the dining room.
Good! Hallie hadn’t fancied sitting down with just Mr. Raford, though Mrs. Raford’s tone had just a bit of a whine. How could that be, with such a nice home and a husband who apparently let her do just as she pleased? Hallie filled a tray with ham, butter, his eggs done just so, and the fluffy golden biscuits in a napkin-covered basket.
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