Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl

by Carol Bodensteiner

  “Oh, girls, these are great. Look how many you have,” Mom enthused, as she wiped her hands on her apron and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

  “We think there’s enough for a pie,” I suggested, the hint totally transparent.

  “I believe you’re right,” Mom said as she glanced at the clock. It was 3:00—still an hour before she had to go out to the barn to start chores. “I’m going to make a pie right now. You sit right here and tell me how you picked all these berries,” she urged as she poured glasses of milk and slipped a plate of brownies out of a plastic bag.

  “We took the ladder because we couldn’t reach them,” I said, drawing in a big gulp of milk. Mom opened the flour drawer and measured flour into a mixing bowl.

  “Look at my leg,” Sue interrupted, flinging her foot up on the edge of the table to display the bruises.

  “Both my legs,” I said, hopping off my chair and dancing in a circle to show off the fabulous black-and-blue marks.

  Mom dusted the flour off her hands and touched lightly on the swelling discolorations. She shook her head and tsked, “Those will be big bruises all right. I wondered what you girls were doing when I saw you take the ladder down the lane.”

  “We brought it back,” I said around a mouthful of brownie. Even though it was a long haul, even though it was really heavy, it never dawned on us to leave the ladder in the pasture and ask Dad to drive down with the truck to retrieve it. We’d gotten it out; we’d put it back.

  “I know you did. I saw that, too. You worked hard for these berries,” she said with a smile as she cut lard into the flour.

  “We wanted it to be a surprise,” Sue added.

  “Well, it sure was. You have to tell me every last detail,” Mom urged.

  So we did. As we talked, Mom rolled out crusts and mixed sugar, flour and butter with the mulberries to make our pie. Never once did she say anything about the white sheet stained purple or the fact that at least half the berries were green. While we sat there telling her all about our adventure, Mom simply made us the sweetest mulberry pie ever.

  The Harvest Auction

  “Help me, here, Squirt. We need to get a calf ready for the church auction,” Dad said as he threw a bale of straw up on the end gate. He cut the twine with his pocketknife and broke up the bale, pushing the sections toward me.

  I grabbed squares of clean, yellow oat straw and shook them out, covering every inch of the Studebaker truck bed a foot deep. As I spread straw, Dad fitted panels onto the sides of the truck, creating walls on the truck bed that reached as high as my shoulders.

  “There,” I said, dusting my hands against my shorts when I finished. “That will be a good bed for the calf to spend the day on.” I dropped down on the end gate, dangling my feet over the side, as Dad made sure each of the side panels was tight in place.

  “Yup.” Dad nodded, giving the last panel a shake. It was solid. “Let’s get the calf.”

  “Why are you going so early?” I asked, trailing him into the barn.

  “Gotta get a parking spot under the trees. Don’t want the calf to spend all day in the sun.”

  That made sense. Even though it was the first Saturday of October and days started out cool enough, by afternoon it could get hot. Both parking and shade would be at a premium with all the people that showed up for Salem’s annual Harvest Auction.

  Dad herded a heifer calf less than six weeks old out of the pen, into the alleyway. “Hand me a currycomb,” he said.

  I grabbed one of the metal brushes hanging from nails above the cat milk pan and handed it to him. While I traced around the whorl of hair on the calf’s forehead with my fingers and admired her blue-black eyes, Dad combed away bits of dirt and manure until the calf’s coat was spotless.

  “Why a heifer calf? Why not a bull?” I asked. Heifer calves grew into the herd. Giving one away didn’t make sense to me; it was giving away the future.

  “A heifer is worth more. And a heifer calf out of a good cow like this one was is worth a lot.”

  “But you always take the bull calves to the sale barn. You get rid of them anyway.”

  “It’s for the church,” Dad said.

  I recalled a sermon on giving the ‘first fruits,’ the best you had, to God. Dad was sure doing that.

  “Let’s get her in the truck. I need to get going.”

  We nudged the calf out of the barn and Dad scooped her up into the truck bed. The calf nosed around this strange pen for a minute, then knelt down in the bed of straw, her nearly all-white coat shining in the sun.

  Dad latched the end gate and climbed into the cab. “Now go help Ma get ready.”

  I stole one last look at the calf. “Goodbye, pretty girl,” I said to her. “See you at church,” I yelled as Dad drove off down the lane and I headed to the house. He waved out the window.

  In the house, Mom had the kitchen counters and table lined with apple and cherry pies, loaves of homemade bread, and the chocolate chip cookies my sisters and I had made. Mom had baked all week getting ready for the auction. Some pies were sliced and served as part of the meal; the rest went on the bake sale. Jane and Sue were sticking strips of masking tape on each item and writing down prices with a magic marker–25 cents for a loaf of bread, 20 cents for a dozen cookies, $1.00 for a pie.

  “Put the cherry pies in there,” Mom pointed me to a box lined with newspapers. “We may as well keep them together. Hiram will buy them as soon as we show up.” She shook her head as though she could not quite believe this no matter how many times it happened.

  Hiram was a painter, a bachelor. He had painted our house and he bought every cherry pie we ever made for any bake sale. After bake sales, he must have eaten nothing else for a week. The way he bought our cherry pies was both funny and a point of pride.

  Many women had signature baked goods, special treats made for every church event, bake sale, potluck, goodies sought out by people who came looking for just those specialties. Louise made Blarney Stones—chocolate cake cut into squares, dipped in powdered sugar frosting, rolled in crushed peanuts and then frozen. Stella was known for her fancy cookies–crispy, spritz butter cookies or thumb print cookies topped with jam or date swirls—the kind of cookies other women made only at Christmas. Edna baked wheat bread—Mom’s particular favorite—that crumbled when you cut into the loaf. Lucille was famous for her peach pie.

  At church functions, I lurked near the food tables, scoping out all the dishes, stomach growling, positioning myself close to the head of the line, waiting for Pastor to lead us in singing grace. Mom guaranteed I would not be so rude as to push in first. But I hovered as close to the front as I could get, keeping my eye on Mom, waiting for her nod to grab a plate and move through the line.

  When we had everything ready, Mom handed me a cake carrier that had two levels and held two apple pies. “Put that in the front seat. When we get there, one of you girls run it to the basement and give it to Joanne or Dorothy.”

  By the time we left the house and drove the six miles to the church, the trunk was full and each of us girls held a box on our lap.

  Salem Lutheran Church was a little country church on the edge of Spragueville, a village that claimed fewer than 100 residents. Most in the congregation were farm families like ours.

  The church backed up to a field and whether planted to corn or hay or oats, the field was a reminder of our connection to the land. When Mrs. Strohmeyer pulled out the stops on the organ—something she did with gusto and at a volume that blew the sleep out of our brains—and led us through all the verses (Lutherans consider it heresy to skip even one verse) of ‘bringing in the sheaves,’ I felt a particular connection to God and those fields.

  When it came time to hay or pick corn, the men ducked out on Sunday services, leaving the pews lined with women and children. “You gotta make hay while the sun shines,” they claimed, a pronouncement accompanied by winks from the men and tsks from their wives.

  A place of worship, yes, but Salem wa
s more than that. The congregation was a community gathering to celebrate births, weddings and anniversaries, and to weep when someone died or when someone moved away. Luther League, choir practice, soup suppers, Lenten suppers and worship. We might find ourselves piling into the Chevrolet on any day of the week for some gathering at the church.

  During the hot summer months, church activity slowed down. Instead of Sunday school every week, we had a week of Vacation Bible School, which kept us on track to earn our perfect attendance pins. My pin recorded six years of never missing a week, and I wore it with pride.

  Before worship on summer Sundays, the ushers propped open the stained glass windows so flies buzzed in and out on breaths of hot, humid air. The men—those who did not have a reason to be out in the fields—abandoned their suit coats and even their ties in favor of open-necked shirts. The heat offered yet another reason for the men to doze during the sermon. I watched as Dad’s eyes drooped closed and his head began to nod. Mom waited until his breathing turned to snores before landing a soft elbow poke in his side. From time to time, the sermon was interrupted by the snort of someone startled out of sleep when his head fell forward. Those snorts caused us to giggle, but our giggles were cut short by a glance from Mom.

  Paper fans bearing pictures of Jesus with children and lambs graced every pew, tucked under the clips on the backs of the pews where the men hung their hats. I grabbed a fan as soon as we sat down and waved it through the whole service to generate a breeze and to perform a minor act of rebellion. That much physical action by a child during church was frowned upon in any other circumstance. Through the open windows, I could see sun shimmering off the corn tassels and I yearned to slip out to lie on the grass under the trees.

  In September, Sunday school classes resumed. Days shortened. Nights cooled. By the time we got to October, things were hopping again. The Harvest Auction signaled the real end of the season.

  The event was an all-day affair, and we spent days ahead of that getting ready. The auction drew a crowd from all over. Catholics, Methodists and people from other Lutheran churches threw off theological differences long enough to break bread together and bid at the auction.

  The Salem women—divided into the Faith, Hope and Charity Circles—organized and managed the bake sale, the rummage sale and the dinner. People bought tickets for the meal. A dollar and a half bought a meal that included roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, homemade rolls, red or green or yellow or orange Jell-o salad dressed up with cans of fruit salad or bananas or marshmallows or oranges or raspberries or combinations of any of those. It is believed that church ladies can make Jell-o salad in more variations than there are stars in the sky. And, of course, pie for dessert.

  While the women busied themselves with the dinner, the bake sale and the rummage sale, the Salem men organized the auction. They stacked smaller items on hayracks that abounded with household goods—silverware, pots and pans, aluminum perk coffee pots, crocheted doilies, hand towels, outgrown toys, dolls, stuffed animals. Hayrack items were auctioned first, followed by tools—spades and shovels, rakes and hoes, hammers and screwdrivers. More valuable items ringed the edges of the parking lot. If you needed something–and even if you didn’t need it–you could find it at the auction. Beneath the shade trees were items that earned the Harvest Auction its name—bushels of apples and potatoes, bags of onions and carrots, a cooler full of frozen containers of blackcaps and blackberries, crates of multicolored Banty chickens, gunny sacks full of walnuts, single bales of straw and hay representing the truckloads farmers donated, pigs big enough to butcher, and our calf—the fruits of a farming community.

  When we pulled into the churchyard, the lot was filling up. I looked for Dad.

  “I don’t see the truck. Dad should be here by now, shouldn’t he?” I turned to Mom.

  “He’ll be along.” Mom spoke without taking her eyes off the route she was navigating across the lawn to get near the schoolhouse door. “Let’s get these things inside.”

  As we unloaded boxes, it looked as though we could stock the bake sale all on our own, but when I walked inside the school, it was clear every other woman had been equally busy.

  “What do you have there, Carol?” Miss Barr peered into the box cradled in my arms.

  “Cherry pies,” I smiled up at my Sunday school teacher, a tall, slender woman with perfectly styled red hair. Miss Barr organized the bake sale. And the Sunday school. And Vacation Bible School. Miss Barr was as reliable and meticulous in organizing events as she was in styling her hair. Nothing out of place. Ever.

  Thank goodness she was occupied organizing the bake sale. Otherwise for sure she’d ask me if I had Psalm 23 memorized yet.

  I squirmed, remembering Vacation Bible School and the debacle of my recitation. Normally I could memorize anything, easy. I had worked on this Psalm, saying the verses over and over to myself and out loud. I had it, I was sure of it. When it came time to recite, I stood and spoke with assurance all the way to the end: “Though annointest my head with oil. My cup runneth over.” I sat down.

  “Shirley …” Miss Barr said.

  I looked at Shirley Kemp, a younger girl with thin blond hair, sitting next to me. Her turn.

  Shirley stared back at me.

  “Shirley …” Miss Barr nodded at me.

  I stared at Shirley and then at Miss Barr. Why was everyone looking at me?

  “Shirley, goodness …” Miss Barr nodded at me again.

  At that moment it dawned on me that Miss Barr meant for me to continue. That she wasn’t saying Shirley; rather she was saying Surely. Of course there was another verse. Still seated, I blurted out the words I knew so well, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,” I gulped a breath, “and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

  Everyone laughed. I blushed, tucked my hands under my legs, stared at my shoes and tried to disappear.

  “That’s good,” Miss Barr said. “We’ll do it again tomorrow.”

  As I stood there holding the box of pies, I hoped Miss Barr had forgotten that whole episode.

  “Mmmm,” Miss Barr said. “Those smell as good as they look. Laurel has desserts on that table.” She pointed toward a woman arranging a long table already filling up with pies and cakes and cookies and bars. “Just give them to Laurel …”

  “I’ve been waiting for you!” a man’s voice boomed.

  I looked over my shoulder and saw the familiar white painter’s pants. I’d never seen Hiram wear anything else, even when he wasn’t working on a job. “Hi,” I mumbled, suddenly bashful. “Mom said you might want these.”

  “Sure do. These are the best cherry pies.” Hiram pulled his wallet out of his pants pocket and turned to Miss Barr. “How much do you need for these? I can put them right in my car and they’ll be out of your way.”

  “One dollar each,” Miss Barr looked straight at Hiram, her voice firm, as though she half expected him to object to such a price.

  “Sold!” Hiram exclaimed, commandeering the three pies still warm from our oven. “Worth every penny.”

  Doug stuck his head in the schoolhouse doorway and caught my eye. “We’re having a race. Bet you can’t beat me.”

  “I’m coming,” I said, looking at Mom who nodded.

  “We’ve got it all. Go on.” She was already heading toward the table in search of Edna’s wheat bread.

  I raced off after Doug. A year younger than I, Doug ran everywhere and though I seldom beat him, I never stopped trying.

  The churchyard was swarming with kids and we all knew each other well. We went to church so often, all these kids were almost like brothers and sisters. The other parents were just like so many added sets of parents. And none of those adults hesitated to set us back in line if we stepped off track—particularly when it came to running or yelling in the sanctuary.

  While we’d been carrying things inside, Dad had arrived. I didn’t see Dad anywhere, but I headed to the pickup, with Doug
in tow. “Come see our calf,” I urged. “It’s a heifer. I helped Dad get her ready.”

  We scrambled up on the truck bumper and clung to the panels, looking down into the truck bed.

  “Nice calf,” Doug agreed.

  I nodded, but I was confused. This was not the calf I helped Dad load up. That calf was mostly white. This calf was mostly black. In addition, this calf wore a halter and was tied on a short rope. I looked around for Dad but didn’t see him anywhere.

  “Let’s go,” Doug jumped down from the truck and ran toward the church. “It’s time to eat.”

  I looked at the calf again. Why would Dad bring a different calf from the one we loaded?

  “Come on,” Doug shouted.

  Jumping down, I tore off after Doug. Dinner was most important. I would ask Dad about the calf later.

  With a full stomach, including a Blarney Stone and a slice of banana cream pie, I wandered out of the church basement and into a yard full of cars and people milling around, checking out the auction goods. I spotted Dad standing in the shade of a pine tree, smoking a cigarette, talking with some men. As I walked up, I overheard him say, If I’d tied her down, it wouldn’t have happened. When Dad saw me, he stopped talking, dropped the cigarette to the ground and stubbed it out with his toe.

  I tugged on his sleeve. “Dad.”

  “What?”

  “Our calf. Doug and I looked in the truck. It’s not the same one we loaded this morning.”

  Dad looked at the other men.

  “How’s your corn looking?” one of them said as he dropped back a step.

  “Good,” the other replied. “We’ll be picking soon,” They faded away leaving Dad with me.

  “It’s not the same calf,” I repeated.

  Dad looked at me for quiet seconds and in those seconds a little chill ran up my back.

  “No. No, it’s not the same calf.”

  “Well, where is she?”