Farm Girl

by Karen Jones Gowen

  Uncle Will, Catherine’s dad, died in 1927, and we went to Lincoln for the funeral held in their house. I remember sitting in chairs in their living room, the body laid out there in the casket. There were rows of chairs and lots of people, it was a huge living room and dining room.

  After Uncle Will died, Aunt Elizabeth wanted me to come to Lincoln and stay a week and go to Bible School with Catherine. Then after Bible School, since Aunt Bernice would be driving home for the summer, I would go back with her. I was just eleven and that was quite an experience for me to get to stay in Lincoln and go to Bible School with Catherine.

  During the summers, Catherine came out to the country with Aunt Bernice. After Uncle Will died, it was hard on Aunt Elizabeth, so Catherine came out for a couple weeks. Each summer after that she stayed a little longer than the one before.

  One summer, Aunt Bernice brought a poodle with her, a little white dog with a curly tail. We called him Fluffy. Aunt Bernice and Catherine came over with the dog, and I just fell in love with that little dog. I wanted to keep him. He would chase his tail, going round and round in a circle. Mother, Aunt Bernice, Catherine and I laughed and laughed watching him do that.

  When Aunt Bernice took Catherine back to Lincoln, she left Fluffy at our house. He was my dog, so friendly and playful. When we’d come home in the car he’d see us pull up and be so excited. He’d go look for a stick and pick it up in his mouth and stand by the car with the stick in his mouth.

  Of course, we always had a dog that ran to get the cows, a shepherd dog, a work dog. Dad would order a dog from a man who lived in Eastern Nebraska, and the dog would come on the train. His name would usually be Shep or Rover.

  Dad would say, “Rover, go get the cows,” and Rover would run down to the pasture and bite the heels of the cows and bring them up to the barn.

  I made friends with those dogs too, but Fluffy was special. He wasn’t a work dog, just a play dog, and he belonged to me.

  I’d go to the mailbox with Fluffy, Rover, a whole bunch of cats, and a pig. Half a mile to the mailbox with about thirteen pets following me down the lane and back. We had two sets of trees on either side of the hay field. I often took the dogs down to those groves of trees. There I would sit and look at the birds, pet the dogs, and walk around in the “woods.”

  One time I went down to the furthest woods and the dogs ran ahead barking and barking. They’d found some kind of animal that I’d never seen before, as big as a rabbit with a rat-like tail, a furry animal lying there dead. I picked it up by the tail and carried it home because I wanted my dad to see what it was.

  When I was nearly home, I glanced down and saw it curled back staring at me with its beady eyes and snarling teeth. I dropped it and hit it over the head with a stick then took it to my dad.

  He said, “Why that’s a possum.”

  He helped me skin it, and I sold the skin for eighty-five cents. We had some skunk skins to take in as well.

  There was a big market for skins, for fur coats and fur trimmed hats. I had lots of coats with real fur trim. By the time the skins were tanned, trimmed, and colored, it all looked the same, you didn’t know what kind of fur you were wearing. It might be rabbit, skunk or possum. But you could always tell beaver by its feel, so very plush and soft. Aunt Elizabeth had a coat with a beaver collar that felt so nice. Aunt Bernice had a black coat that was entirely sealskin, with a mink collar. Everyone’s ambition was to have a sealskin or a mink coat.

  One time Catherine came to visit wearing a beautiful red coat and matching hat with fur trim, fur on the hat, the coat collar and the cuffs. Mother admired that so much and was examining it closely. Later she went to town for the material and started making one for me just like it. She never used a pattern, she could just see how something was made and then sew it herself.

  Mother was very capable and creative and could do nearly anything she set her mind to. At one time our front porch was open with pillars, and flies would come and bother us when we were on the porch.

  Mother talked to Dad about screening it in, and he said, “Oh, no, that can’t be done. We don’t want to do that.”

  One morning Mother said to me, “Your dad is going to be gone all day, so you and I are going to town.” I started to say something about it at breakfast, and she kicked me under the table and winked. She didn’t want Dad to know.

  Mother and I went to town and bought the screen, then she hid it under the curtain in the basement so Dad wouldn’t see it.

  The next day while he was working in the field, she put the screen up. She was a good carpenter, better than my dad, she’d built a chicken house and a little milk house, and there was a shed at her family home that she’d built. She had it all figured out. She nailed the screen over the top and the sides, with a strip over it, and she put a post in the center to support it. Then she made the door frame and installed the screen door.

  Before showing it to my dad, she had it entirely finished with a metal framed couch setting out there.

  After the noon meal, she said casually, “You know, John, why don’t you come on out to the porch and rest,” and that’s when he saw it.

  That became his favorite room of the house. Every noon he’d come home and either before lunch or after, he’d lie out there and take a nap. He enjoyed it so much and was out there every day. We had a lot of ice cream on that porch, and we entertained a lot of people there.

  Mother made me a tent to play in. She used old, three-inch wide floor boards saved from when her family’s old house was torn down. She made a wood frame out of the boards and took old canvas seed sacks, sewed them together and nailed them onto those boards. It had a roof, sides, and a door to go in and out. There was a window in the back with screen sewed in, and that was my playhouse. I’d play in there with my dolls, and Catherine and I would play house when she was over.

  We had celluloid dolls about two to six inches tall, like plastic, except they didn’t have plastic back then. Catherine and I would dress those dolls, cut out scraps of cloth and make little dresses. We used shoe boxes for their cars, with a string to pull them, and we pulled them all around the yard.

  Or we’d play Annie Over where we’d throw the ball over the tent to each other. Sometimes the tent was in the south part of the yard over the tunnel area where grass never grew very well. Another time we’d move it next to the front porch on the grassy side, or out in the ash trees outside the yard. Dad had planted a grove of ash trees along the entry road going out to the public road.

  Catherine liked to ride horseback and we often rode Flora and Prince. On Sunday afternoons, she and I would hitch Flora up to our old buggy and drive it all around the square mile, the roads out there being laid out in square miles. Sundays were always kind of boring to me, so I liked it when Catherine was there. Mother and Dad would take naps and rest as Dad didn’t work on Sunday. We hardly every went anyplace on Sunday, like visiting or to town. We’d go to church in the mornings, then have a big dinner.

  Sometimes in the evening they’d say, “Lucille, you go down and get the cows and we’ll milk them early and make ice cream.”

  And we’d eat a gallon of ice cream on the screened-in front porch. Uncle Ford could eat an awful lot of ice cream. He’d start with the dasher and be done with that by the time his bowl was scooped out and ready.

  I had a long spoon I liked, an ordinary teaspoon with a long handle. We only had one like that, and it was always my spoon to eat with. Once when Catherine was there, she wanted a spoon like it, but we only had one so I had to give it to her. I decided to make a big deal about a different spoon, and then Catherine wanted that one, and I got my own spoon back. I learned to deal with Catherine that way. There was a side of the tent I liked better, and I did the same thing with the tent.

  Like a sister, she helped me learn to deal better with other people. Another cousin sometimes came over, Aunt Leone’s daughter Alice, the same age as Catherine, and they didn’t get along. I had to be the peacemaker between Alice an
d Catherine. They were too much alike, both wanting things their way.

  One day Catherine and I were sewing our doll clothes and one of us dropped a needle on the bedroom floor. That night my mother stepped on it with her bare feet, and it broke off in her foot. Dad couldn’t get it out and it hurt so much that she wanted to go to the doctor and not wait until morning.

  Dad and I got the car and took her to Red Cloud. The doctor made her hold her foot still and, without pain killers, he cut around trying to get out the splinter.

  Finally he said, “You will have to go where there’s an x- ray machine. I can’t see where it is.”

  We went back home with Mother in even more pain. The next day we took her to the other doctor in Red Cloud who had an x- ray machine, and he found the needle and removed it.

  From then on, she was often bothered with that sore foot because of how the first doctor had cut so deeply and hurt her so badly. Sometimes it would swell and she would limp.

  It taught me the lesson that when you drop something, you have to pick it up.

  Threshing time was always a big event. We had oats and wheat to be threshed, and one of our neighbors, Henry Williams, had a threshing machine. He and his sons went all around the neighborhood with their machine. It took a crew of ten to run it.

  Mother and Aunt Bernice stayed busy cooking all the food for the crew. That was the only time we had iced tea. We pulled out the table in the dining room to seat ten or twelve. We’d have mashed potatoes and gravy, fried chicken, applesauce, homemade bread, corn, beans, cucumber salad or cabbage slaw, and cakes and pies. And iced tea to drink.

  The men went to the field with their horse-drawn hay racks and pitched the shocks of wheat or oats onto the hay wagon, and then came back and pitched them into the threshing machine. The straw blowing out of the machine formed a large straw stack, and out of the other end came the pure grain piled into a truck or wagon, all threshed. When the wagon was full, the horses pulled it away and the men brought another one. The grain had to be shoveled into the grain bin. Catherine and I liked to sit on top of the grain in the wagon as the horses pulled it back to the granary.

  My job was to take a jug of fresh water and pull it in my little wagon down to the men. If anyone had an errand that needed doing, I’d do it. I helped dry dishes and put them away.

  You fed the men at noon and fed them for supper, too, and brought sandwiches out to the field at three for their break in the afternoon. At seven, you fed them again.

  The next day it might be at Uncle Ford’s, and Mother and I would go help Aunt Bernice. Dad paid Henry Williams for the machine, but the other men were neighbors and everyone helped each other. I always thought that was a fun time. It was a lot of work for the women, but I just ran errands and didn’t do that much work.

  Sometimes I washed dishes, but always wanted to clean the sink first. Our kitchen sink was used for everything, and it would get so dirty. Mother cleaned it with coal oil, or kerosene, and I didn’t like the smell and didn’t want to use that.

  One time I found out that you could use Bon Ami, so Mother bought some of that, and I would clean the sink. Sometimes I dusted or swept the floor if I felt like it, but if I whined a little then I wouldn’t have to finish.

  The screened-in front porch

  Dad and daughter dressed for church

  Chapter Six:

  The Best Dad in Nebraska

  My father was an established cattle farmer when he met my mother, the Norwegian hired girl. Handsome, dark-haired John Marker was quite a catch.

  “All the girls were after him,” my mother would say proudly.

  Mother worked as a hired girl, or live in servant, for Mrs. George Cather, glad to get away from home and make a little money. Back then that was what the immigrant girls did when they got old enough, instead of going on to high school in town. They hired out to wealthier farm families, or to people in Red Cloud, as live-in servants and earned some money to spend on themselves and to help out their families.

  My mother had been going with my dad and thought he wasn’t coming to see her anymore, so she decided to leave her employment at the Cathers’ and move to Omaha. There she worked as a hired girl for awhile, but she was homesick in the city and only stayed a few months.

  She was back at home when my dad came over in the buggy and said, “I’d like to have you come to Red Cloud with me. They have wedding rings on sale.”

  She went with him to Red Cloud, where he bought two wide, gold bands for $5 apiece.

  I don’t remember ever seeing my parents wear their wedding rings. Mother had arthritis in her hands and for Dad, working hard in the field and with machinery, a ring like that would be in the way.

  I have a bracelet that Dad gave Mother. It was a beautiful soft gold, almost pinkish in color, and it felt so rich and satiny, not like hard metal. One time it came unfastened and broke, so she sent it away to get repaired. When it came back, it was a different bracelet, the same design but a hard yellow color, obviously not the same valuable gold.

  Mother felt so bad about that. She didn’t know what else to do. Out there you don’t think about calling the police, there weren’t any police. There was a county sheriff, but he wouldn’t know what to do. Back then, you didn’t believe anyone would do such a thing, you just trusted people.

  Mother didn’t want me around when she worked, but my dad let me work with him. I always wanted to help him and just waited for what he’d tell me next. I’d put the oats in the barn, one side for the horses, the other side for the cows. In between was an alley, with hay in the corner to take with a pitch fork and put in for the horses. There was a box in each stall for oats. Every horse got a half gallon of oats or more, two horses in each stall, each with their own box. Hay was there for the horses to eat, too.

  Dad had four stalls for eight horses, but he never had that many in the barn at one time. Flora was a riding horse, Doc and Jim were big percheron work horses, one black and one white. They were to pull the plow, the corn planter and the cultivator. Dad had a mule for awhile, in the stall with Pat, another big horse though not a percheron. The far stall was for Prince, who was mainly for riding. I learned to ride on Prince because he was very gentle. Flora was larger and more spirited. I couldn’t ride her until I was ten.

  I loved it when Dad and Uncle Ford put up hay. The hay mow made up the whole second floor of our barn. The roof went pretty high up so you could stack a lot of hay up there. There was a big hinged door on the south side of the barn, bigger than a garage door. There were pulleys and ropes to let the door down. When we put up hay, Uncle Ford always helped, and he and Dad would have the hay cut and put into piles.

  They’d take out the hay rack and pitch the mounds of hay onto that rack. The hay went on top of the sling until the hay rack was partly full. Then they spread another sling over that and put hay on it until it was very high. I liked to ride on top of the hay when the horses pulled it back to the barn.

  They’d get the hay rack backed up to the barn door, then drove the horses forward and that tightened the ropes in the barn. The tightening ropes rolled the sling of hay into a big round roll. They kept going until the sling pulled into the hay loft. Dad had some way to trip the sling to make the hay fall into the barn. They did it again and again until both slings were lifted up and the hay dropped into the barn.

  The barn was southwest of the windmill, from the barn you’d go a little east to the shop. On the west side of the shop was a big scale built into the ground. On top were bridge planks to make it level, so Dad could drive a wagon full of corn onto the planks to weigh it. Inside a cupboard was the apparatus that did the weighing. They always weighed the wagon empty first, then weighed it with the corn.

  When it rained, Dad had a lot to do in the shop. He had an anvil on a wooden stump, and he’d take the bellows and big tongs to hold the heated piece. To sharpen his plow lays, he got it red hot in the forge then pounded it with the sledge hammer to make it thinner, to sharpen it.

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nbsp; An old leather punching bag from when he was young hung inside the roof of the shop. I liked to play with that and punch it. I found all kinds of things to do when my dad worked in the shop. I’d play with his tools, pound nails into a board, and I’d straighten up, picking up all the bolts and putting them in a container. We talked about all sorts of things, about when he was young, what he was planning to do on the farm, about my school.

  Sometimes I went with him in the wagon to ride around the fields, through the pasture to cut out cockleburs, thistles and sunflowers. He didn’t like sunflowers. He’d take the hoe and we’d chop them down, all the cockleburs, thistles and sunflowers growing wild, to keep the roadway clear.

  He often sharpened the parts on the mower. It had a lot of discs, or teeth about three inches wide and long, and down about one inch, screwed onto a long iron bar. He’d have me bring those discs, or teeth, to him as he sat at the sharpener, a big concrete wheel out by the ice house. The wheel went around as he held the disc against it to sharpen it, while pumping the pedal that turned the wheel. Sometimes he sharpened Mother’s knives, especially before butchering.

  He always had things for me to do. “You run do this or you run do that.” He called me his little race horse because I ran so fast. I learned a lot about machinery by holding tools and helping my dad. When I was in tenth grade, we had a mechanical test in home room, and I got the highest grade out of thirty kids. The teacher couldn’t believe a girl had the highest grade on that mechanical test.

  Southwest from the house was the windmill. Our well was about two hundred feet deep, and the windmill pumped and pumped to fill the round water tank in the basement. There was a horse tank next to the well and a milk house next to that. You could adjust the windmill to pump water into the horse tank. When I was little, after Dad cleaned that tank out, he let me get on my bathing suit and paddle around in the water. It was about 2½ feet deep and eight feet wide.