Farm Girl

by Karen Jones Gowen

  THE BIG CITY

  While I was staying at Aunt Elizabeth’s, Catherine received a watch from her mother as a birthday present. Oh, I wanted a watch so badly. That was one of the popular fashions of the time, for young people to wear a wristwatch, and I didn’t have one. Later, Aunt Bernice gave me one for Christmas, I think it was a Timex, with a leather band. The most popular and nicest watches back then were Elgin. The Elgin watch for girls had a pretty metal wristband. Many students received a good watch as a high school graduation presents, and I got a nice Elgin when I graduated from high school.

  An Austin, joked about by the vaudeville team, was a very small car.

  DUST BOWL DAYS

  I had graduated from high school on January 26, 1934. Back then the city schools had A and B classes. Students could start to school in January as well as September. The B class finished in January. I wasn’t in the B class until I was a Senior and had finished all my required subjects and earned extra credits with top grades, so had enough credits to graduate in January. I stayed home with my parents during February and then started in March to Kearney State Teacher’s College, which was on the quarter system. I began the third quarter there.

  APPENDIX B:

  Writings of Julia Walstad Marker

  (1948-1958)

  Julia Marker

  Oil painting by Julia Marker

  INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD HERALD

  OMAHA NEWSPAPER

  Mrs. Julia Marker, whose four hundred acre farm in the middle of Nebraska hasn’t produced a spear of grass since 1932, painted her way out of the Depression.

  Today Mrs. Marker is proud to announce that her crop of pictures exceeds one thousand, that they have gone to every state in the union and her household budget is balanced.

  “We have not had a blade of green grass here for five years,” Mrs. Marker said, “so I had to do something. I borrowed a painting and copied it. Since then I have made as many as three oil paintings a day. I send hundreds to stores in Minnesota. I also exchange paintings for embroidery work, quilt tops, oranges from Florida, salmon from Washington, dates from California, and also turkeys from the state of Iowa.”

  Mrs. Marker said she gets up early in the morning to paint and is often still working at midnight. She never tires, she says, because she loves to paint. She never had any formal art education.

  “Only when the dust blows too hard, I have to stop,” she explained. “I tried to paint in a dust storm but had to give it up, although I was indoors.”

  “Sometimes I copy snapshots of animals,” Mrs. Marker said. “Sometimes I just copy a picture out of the paper.”

  “My favorite picture is ‘Dog and Lamb,’which I painted in 1934. I also like the one I made of two cranes standing in a stream of water with water lilies in front. I think a picture is more complete with a deer, a dog, bird, or some animal in it.”

  Mrs. Marker’s ambition is to paint a large church mural. “The next time I get an order for a church painting,” she said, “I am going to paint a picture of Bethlehem. I want to do a large canvas with lots of color and life. I know I can.”

  The middle-aged woman who took up painting in lieu of potato planting, makes all her own frames. She augments her income of oil paintings with what she earns from plaster plaques and painting of velvet.

  A GIRLS PATH STREWN WITH SNAKES INSTEAD OF ROSES

  I have heard of a person’s path being strewn with roses, but I never heard of a person’s path being strewn with snakes. That happened in my own life so I know it is true. I guess I inherited those snakes from my grandfather and my father. They did their best to rid the country where they lived of snakes, mostly rattlesnakes, by breaking up the sod where the rattlesnakes thrived. But this country has many different kinds of snakes that are not considered poisonous.

  I remember seeing rattlesnakes curled up in a coil alongside the road as we walked barefoot to school. I have had blue racers chase me. They are long and slender, a dark blue with head raised a foot above the ground while they wind their way about.

  Oil painting by Julia Marker

  Watercolor by Julia Marker

  One day when I was twelve, herding cattle a mile from home, I saw one of those blue racers. I was curious and got a little too close to it, and when it spied me the race began. I kept turning around while I was running to see the snake still following me, until I got into some tall grass where it lost track of me. And was I glad.

  I guess the snakes first took a liking to me as they lay in the windows of our sod house, sunning themselves and watching me when I was a little baby in the cradle. But I think my mother’s prayers for my safety kept me from ever being bitten by one. The snakes must have made up their minds that they were going to follow me through life. My path has been strewn with snakes, and it seems that it always will be for I still live in the country.

  My folks raised cattle. We milked from ten to twelve cows. We did not have much pasture, so my sister and myself had to herd them in summertime. In winter, they ran in the corn stalk fields after the corn was picked. I went along with my sister when we first started herding on some vacant land that was free for all to herd cattle on. I was four years younger than her, I started herding at the age of eight.

  I herded cattle up to the age of twenty. I herded barefoot all through the summer. I went in the ponds while the cattle were grazing. The water seemed so cool on a hot day. I could not swim, but the water wasn’t deep. I just waded into the water when suddenly a snake would stick his head up out of the water. I would turn around just to be looking at another snake. I had heard that snakes do not bite in the water, but I wasn’t going to stay and find out.

  Some summers there were three or four of us girls, each one having their herd of cattle to look after. At noon when we rounded up the cattle to rest, we went exploring. There was one place we called snake town where we would go to look at all the different kinds of snakes. We never missed seeing one when we made that visit to snake town. I never dared go there by myself, but when there were four of us I was brave, even if we saw lots of snakes. Sometimes, we had a dog along with us.

  There was a mad bull in the herd, and one time he got my sister down in the fence close by our home. I was further back and heard her scream, so I told the dog to hurry and rescue her. He ran as fast as he could and was soon there to chase the bull away.

  Another time we had a mad bull and, while my mother and I were milking, the bull came and threw my mother up in the air with his horns. When she landed on the ground with the milk all over her, he threw her again. That time there was no dog around. I took my milk pail and poured milk all over the bull, then pounded him with it until he let loose of her. I was twenty when that happened.

  My mother lay there helpless on the ground. I chased the cattle all out of the yard, called my father, and we helped Mother to the house. She was so heavy we could barely lift her. She suffered for a whole month. We wanted to get the doctor, but she would not listen to it. Those days we had to drive fourteen miles in the lumber wagon to get the doctor. Her command was law to us. We did not dare call him when she said no. She was a strong woman and got through it alright.

  I was not afraid of cattle as I spent all my life among them. I know them and their habits well. I noticed that when a big fly is buzzing in the air, the cattle will roll their tails up on top of their backs and start to run. So when it came time to chase the cattle home, I imitated the buzzing fly until they all had their tails curled up and were running home, their leader in front. The cattle all went in a row, the calves at the end, and me behind them buzzing.

  I tried that trick the other day when I chased them home from the stalk field, and it worked after many years and many generations of cattle. They knew what it was, and they all curled up their tails and ran for the barnyard, leaving me alone in the field.

  Back to the snakes. They had all kinds of colors of eyes—some red, some green, some yellow. I guess it was the color of those eyes that fascinated me. It would al
ways be the eyes that I’d see first in a snake. While young girls nowadays see all kinds of movies for excitement, I made my own by running away from snakes.

  One time we had a cow die of snake bites. The snakes would even follow me at home. We had a bird dog, a long dog with short legs. We had him trained so that when my brother played the accordion the dog would look at his tail and start barking. Then he would take hold of his tail and begin to dance in a circle round and round til everyone got dizzy watching him. The dog got dizzy too, and would fall like a drunk person right down on the floor, which would cause us all to roar with laughter. People came from miles to see him perform this wild dance that only happened when my brother played the accordion.

  I worshiped that dog. One day there was a snake close to the house, and I urged the dog on him. My mother said it was only a grass snake, but it proved poisonous for it killed our dog Trip. He would sit there for days with his head swelled up, and watch me through swollen, accusing eyes. When he died I felt like I had lost a good friend, and it was all my fault.

  Another time we had a dog fighting a snake. The dog got out of it alright, but it wasn’t so good for me as he threw the snake right down at my feet. It curled up my leg clear to the knee. I gave a kick and a jump to throw it some distance.

  With my hand I have felt a cold snake on a hen’s nest. My brother killed it, and afterward we could see it was a five foot long bull snake.

  In the drought years I wanted lily pools. We had several in the yard. The ponds were all dry and there was no water for the snakes, so they soon found my lily pools. Once when I opened the screen door, one flopped right down by my feet. Another time, one was hanging on the screen door. One got in the basement, and we killed it.

  I got rid of all the lily pools, filling them up with dirt, so that problem was settled. We didn’t get any rain all summer and had to water the garden with a hose. The snakes soon found that out. As I was hoeing weeds out of the garden, I saw a snake rubbing his head against the softness of my shoes, with his greenish eyes looking right at me. I stood paralyzed for a moment. I could see his long body in the weeds. My husband heard me scream and came and killed the snake.

  Snakes are good rat killers so sometimes we let them go. Last summer while tearing up the floor of a corn crib, we found two of the large snakes crawling in the rat holes. They eat rats in the nest. With a spade in one hand while tearing up the floor, whenever I saw a rat, I’d put the spade down quick and cut it in two. I killed seventeen rats in one day.

  The farm is not always such a pleasant place to live. We have gone through drought, and grasshoppers that would take whole fields of corn when it was ready to tassel. I have seen swarms of grasshoppers that were so thick they hid the sun like a cloud, and buildings covered with hoppers so that the walls looked black. They ate the bark off trees, they even ate the handle off a pitchfork. They quickly finished the corn so that there was not a green straw or a green leaf left. It looked like the ground had just been plowed.

  Along with the grasshoppers and the drought, I remember one of the worst dust storms in history that followed a dry, windy winter. People got lost on the road or in their own yards. It started at eight p.m. and kept on all night. In the house we had to sit with wet cloths over our faces so we could breathe.

  People would come from other states and cry, they felt so sorry for the people in this community. I never traveled any in those days and did not realize that fifty or one hundred miles away they had rain and snow and no dust storms. We managed to live through it all as we had cattle, just a few, and chickens, also a hog to butcher. All feed had to be shipped in.

  The next spring, we didn’t have much rain but enough to stop the dust storms. Out west sixty or more miles they had floods. The Republican River came like a wall, overflowing bottom farm lands which had not suffered from drought like we had. Lots of people were drowned. Some were saved by climbing trees. They said the snakes and rats also climbed the same trees. The snakes climbed clear to the tops while the rats were not so decent, and the people had to fight the rats for space in the trees. I was down to see the river as it came like a wall ten to twelve feet high, overflowing towns along the river. We could hear it roar nine miles away where we lived on high ground. I saw people using boats on the streets, while we on the hills could cultivate corn. But it got so dry for us that summer that we just raised fodder with no corn on it.

  I never knew what it was to go to movies or play bridge. People on the farm have to work hard. In summertime, we eat breakfast at 6 a.m. and supper as late as ten. Farmers can never strike. They put in crops every year and lots of time they do not raise enough to pay for the seed. Living nine to fourteen miles from the nearest towns, we only get there once a week. In winter, when snow drifts are piled high on country roads, we always get the worst of it. This year we could not get to town for five weeks, while a few miles from here they could go everyday. Mail did not come, phone was out of order, radio wouldn’t work.

  We have plenty of wind, so a windcharger furnishes us with electricity which runs our radio, washing machine, iron, fan and lights. Wind also runs the windmills which furnish water for the stock and the home. It fills our supply tank in the basement.

  For amusement, I always have to make my own, because I can never get to town when there is a good movie there. The dirt roads are always wet and slippery, or filled with snow. So I have just managed to see three good movies—“One Foot in Heaven,” “How Green is my Valley,” and “Gone With the Wind.”

  Having plenty of time since Lucille, our only child, left for high school, then University and teaching school, now married to a minister and living in Illinois, I have to keep busy to keep from being lonely. So with my husband busy in the field, I built chicken houses. One time I had one finished and was sitting on the floor putting a window in it. There was the everlasting snake lying stretched out on the floor watching me. I never can get away from snakes, even in my dreams.

  The only time they do not bother me is when I climb the ladder and paint the buildings, which I used to do every three or four years. I used to paint them all by myself. Painting the barn I climbed an eighteen foot ladder, had a six foot handle on my paint brush, and I got it painted clear to the top. I also climbed the same ladder and painted our two story house clear to the top. The other buildings, like the granary, corn cribs, hog house, ice house and garage were not so high. I used to paint them all, many a time.

  I have lived on this farm twenty-nine years, but I have let up some and started to paint only the lower half of the buildings and had the other half done by a painter. I papered the rooms every other year, also did this by myself. I had help only the first time I papered them. I have taken the car and gone three miles to get sand mixed with cement and cemented floors in chicken houses and bins.

  This is the way one woman spends her time on the farm. Living close to nature and to the snakes seems to agree with me. I have always been strong and undertook to do anything I felt like.

  THE DUST BOWL

  There are so many people who cannot even imagine what the “dust bowl” looked like. It was a place that seemed like God had forsaken it. Some said, “The people were too wicked, they were paying for their sins.” I was sitting in our church one time during dust storm years and heard these very words.

  My mind dwelt on first one then another in the community, but they all seemed like respectable people. Why there was hardly a one in this dust bowl neighborhood who smoked or drank whiskey, or even beer. They were hardworking farmers who year after year prepared the soil and planted corn and wheat, with high hopes every year, hoping they had seen the last of it. They were standing the drought, but debt piled up. Some summers there was not even a green straw. The worst was the spring when the first big dust storm came.

  After that, grasshoppers destroyed every bit of growing vegetation. We stood and looked at the swarm of grasshoppers that clouded the sun and was black like a rain cloud with moving elements in it.

 
During the dust bowl, we rolled up the mattresses every morning as we got up, so the bed would not get full of dust. Through the window it looked like a black snowstorm. We had to have lights on in the daytime. Those that lived so far from town like we did would not even venture to go the fourteen miles to get our supply. It seemed that we lived on almost nothing sometimes. We got so tired of eggs we could hardly stand the sight of them.

  One spring the flood came. It was eight miles from where we lived, and we could hear the roar of the river. We just had a little shower, enough to lay the dust. The river was doing its destruction, and many people drowned. Some would climb up in the trees. Those that survived said that rats and snakes also would climb up in the same tree. The snakes didn’t pay any attention to the others in the tree, but not so with the rats. They tried to bite the people up there.

  Nothing was raised in ‘36 as the grasshoppers were worse than the year before. They came back every summer until 1942. Now we see one once in awhile.

  There were lots of young people in the community during the drought years. But they all went away to college and universities. They almost all left the farms and either taught school or got a job in the city, which left the older folks alone on the farm. Then the old folks also moved to town, leaving many farm homes vacant. Farm homes disappeared one by one. Some were torn down, others moved their house to the nearest town to live in.

  A SOD HOUSE

  Most any kind of a dwelling house can be replaced except a sod house. They are gone forever and there is only the memory left, which is still fresh in my mind. It was one of the nicest homes I ever had, and the first house my parents built after the dugout days.