Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl

by Carol Bodensteiner

  I sidled up to Dad. “Can I have a sip?” I whispered.

  “She can hear a bottle of beer open from the Back 40,” he laughed, and I felt a ripple of pleasure as he looked at the men and handed me his bottle.

  I tipped a little of the bitter gold liquid into my mouth and handed the bottle back to him. One sip was all I wanted. One sip brought me into the circle of the men. If I couldn’t actually work with the men, I could soak in their talk. I could pretend. I could dream. I leaned against Dad’s leg, listening as the men talked about haying—how many loads they’d put up this morning, how far they figured they’d get in the afternoon.

  When it was time to make hay, Dad headed to the field with the hired men as soon as the dew dried. As long as the weather was good, they didn’t leave the fields except to come in for dinner. The men radiated the aura of strength and power in their work. I hung around them soaking in that strength though I was, according to Dad, too young and ‘too light in the poop’ to do more than help Mom with meals.

  While the men made hay, the kitchen filled with the sounds of ladles banged against pans and silverware clattering as Mom prepared the noon meal. Each night, Mom selected a roast for the next day’s meal from the freezer and set it out to thaw. After we downed a breakfast that included fried eggs, bacon and fried potatoes, she browned the roast and put it in the Dutch oven to cook slowly. By noon, the roast was so tender you didn’t need a knife to cut it.

  In the course of the morning, she’d eventually say to one of us kids, “Go pull some onions and radishes.”

  “How many? How big?” we’d ask as we headed out to the garden.

  “Oh, about that many and about that big,” she’d respond. “Enough for everyone to eat,” she added, shooing us out the door. We’d go get them and somehow whatever we carried in would be just right. Occasionally Mom joined us to pick peas or green beans. We worked our way down the row, turning the vines from side to side, testing the pods with a gentle squeeze, holding the vines so the roots stayed secure in the ground as we pulled mature pods free. Pods quickly mounded in the pan Mom nudged down the row with her toe.

  I liked to pick peas, or more accurately, I liked to eat peas. For each pod I picked, I’d find another one to eat. “Look at this one. It has nine peas,” I’d exclaim after I slit open a pod and just before I tilted it above my mouth, letting the perfect, sweet peas dribble onto my tongue.

  Back in the house, Mom directed, “Go get a dozen potatoes.” She was always in motion and we were additional arms and legs. I took a pan down to the fruit cellar in the basement, pulling the string that hung by the door to turn on the bare light bulb.

  The cool, musty, earthy smell of the fruit cellar was comforting and reassuring. If we were attacked by the Russians or they dropped a nuclear bomb on us, I thought this would be a good place to wait until the radiation was gone.

  The news was full of reports advising everyone to have an air raid shelter and a plan for being safe in case the Russians attacked. Mom and Dad talked about it, too, and I listened with a mixture of anxiety and excitement. We had a cement cistern and I’d never been down in it, but Sue and I did sometimes lift the heavy metal lid to look inside. It was dark but we could see some water and some trash. It definitely didn’t seem like a good place to have to spend any time.

  I debated with Jane whether we would get bombed or not. “I don’t think so,” I said one day. “Why would they bomb us? If they were going to attack the United States, they’d want the food we produce. Wouldn’t they?” I asked, hoping against anxiety this would be true.

  “Yes, but we’re close to Chicago,” Jane worried. “They’d attack where there were a lot of people. And the missile silos are by Omaha. They’d have to bomb those.”

  During those times, I watched the night sky to the north, half expecting to see Russian fighters screaming toward us. Russian soldiers haunted my dreams and I plotted all kinds of places to hide. In the house, I considered the attic crawl space under the eaves as a possibility but discarded this as a real option because there was only one way in or out and no room to run. The bins in the corncrib also received consideration. Running along at such a height, balanced only on the two-by-four boards that separated one bin from another, intimidated me, so I did not count this a prime hiding place either. I felt most at ease when I thought of the gullies in open fields and the trees in the Back 40. The Russians would not know the route I’d taken and I could keep moving anywhere, all the time. Thoughts of avoiding the Russians consumed a major portion of my brain for quite some time.

  Dad wasn’t inclined to build a special shelter so as a family we eventually decided on the basement fruit cellar as the place we would go should a bomb drop. The basement was also our retreat from tornadoes: the southwest corner of the basement, under a table.

  I did worry that the small window in the fruit cellar would let in nuclear rays that would no doubt bounce off the walls like a cue ball careening around a pool table, but I figured we were mainly underground so maybe the radiation couldn’t get us. At least we’d have food. We could stay there for a long time.

  The walls of the fruit cellar were lined with shelves. Each shelf was a constantly shifting storehouse of two-quart jars, quart jars and pints of fruits and vegetables, jams and pickles. No sooner had we canned vegetables that ripened in the garden and placed them on these shelves, than we retrieved jars for the next meal. Toward the end of the winter there may be fewer full jars, but the shelves were never empty.

  Now that it was summer, the metal trough at the end of the fruit cellar that we had filled with potatoes last year was close to empty, and I had to search for firm potatoes. That spring, we’d taken out potatoes that had started to grow sprouts, cut them into sections and planted hills in long rows in the garden. As early as June, when the potatoes we’d planted were nowhere near mature, we sometimes dug a hill or two anyway, searching for the tiny new potatoes. These tiny/walnut/baby-sized potatoes were so tender Mom didn’t even have to peel them before she cooked a summer favorite—creamed new potatoes and peas. Later in the summer, when the potato vines shriveled and dried, the potatoes we carried from the garden in bushel baskets filled the bin again. Seldom did we run out.

  When I brought up the potatoes, Mom set Grandma up to peel them. Grandma Jensen sat by the table, the pan of potatoes wedged between her knees, her print housedress drawn up revealing rolled-down nylons. Grandma was skilled with a paring knife, sometimes managing to peel an entire potato so the peel held in one long spiral. She cut each potato in quarters and dropped the pieces in the pan of cold water Mom set next to her on the table.

  “Can I have a piece?” I asked Grandma.

  “You’ll spoil your dinner,” she said, turning a stern look on me.

  “Oh, come on. Just one?”

  “Just one won’t hurt, Mother,” Mom said.

  “Go ahead then,” Grandma said with a grunt.

  It was as though Grandma believed the end of the world would come if we ate a potato, I thought. I took a slice, tapped the water off against the side of the pan, sprinkled it with salt and bit into the crisp, white spear.

  Mom smiled at me as she slid two pies into the oven. She’d rolled out crusts and made pies for dinner and supper that day. The bubbling pies would come out of the oven by 11:30 so they’d cool enough to serve for dessert but still be warm. I do not ever recall a piece left over.

  All this, or something very like it, was going on upstairs that July as I stood by my dad’s knee listening to the men talk about making hay. Their conversation came to a halt when Mom shouted down the stairs.

  “Come and get it before I throw it to the dogs.”

  Dad drained the last drops of beer, handed the empty Schlitz bottle to me to put in the case and stood up. “Let’s go. Ma won’t wait.”

  At exactly noon the men sat down at the table. Dinner was always on the table at exactly noon. Dad could work all morning and count on coming in from the fields and finding it ready. M
om could fix the meal, timing every bowl to hit the table at noon, and count on the men being there to eat it. Roast beef, potatoes, gravy, homemade bread, creamed peas, pickles, apple pie.

  Once we’d all sat down, Mom turned to Jane. “Would you say the prayer, please?” Table grace signaled the start of every meal and was followed by a stream of serving dishes passed to the left.

  “Dry!” Sue blurted so loudly and suddenly that the hired men looked up from their plates in surprise. Sue’s shout signaled the start of a three-second game we kids played at every meal.

  The game related to washing dishes at the end of a meal. It worked like this. We divided dishes into three tasks: washing (least desirable), drying (most desirable), and rinsing/putting dishes away (acceptable). The rule was that none of us could lay claim to a task before the meal started. The first person to think of it after the meal started shouted out their preferred task—almost always drying. Then it was a question of whose reflexes were fast enough to avoid having to wash.

  “Rinse and put away,” I sputtered through a full mouth.

  “Oh, nuts,” Jane muttered. She would stand at the sink again. Over the years, Jane lost so frequently I came to harbor the suspicion she actually liked to wash.

  “Be quiet now,” Dad said as he turned on the radio to catch the noon market reports. Immediately all talk stopped while the announcer read the day’s prices for hogs, cattle and corn. Anyone who talked after the announcer started reeling off the day’s prices earned a knuckle thunk on the head. Dad turned off the radio as soon as the farm report was finished and conversation rose around the table as though it had been switched on when the radio was switched off.

  “We’ll get going in a half-hour,” Dad said, after the pie was gone and a last cup of coffee drained. Chairs scuffed back from the table as the men rose and went outside to let dinner settle. Lighting cigarettes, or lying on the ground under the walnut tree by the pump stand, arms flung over their eyes to block the light, they rested. While they lay down outside, Dad took his nap on the kitchen floor, a small pillow under his head.

  “Wake me up in 15 minutes,” he said to Mom. Even on a hard floor in the middle of the kitchen, Dad was snoring in under a minute. We tiptoed around and over him, clearing the table, washing the dishes, and cleaning up from dinner.

  Mom woke Dad up in exactly 15 minutes. Once she’d thought he could use a little extra rest and let him sleep a half-hour. When she did wake him and he realized he’d lost that time, he grumbled a harsh, “Damn it, Ma,” that made my skin curl. Probably hers, too. After that, she woke him exactly when he asked.

  Getting up as though he hadn’t just been snoring loud enough to wake the dead, Dad pulled on his work shoes, grabbed his hat from the hook by the back door and headed out. “Let’s go, men,” he called and the men sleeping or smoking under the walnut tree pulled to their feet and made for the tractor and hayrack.

  While haying was going on, in addition to having a full breakfast on the table at 7 a.m., a full dinner on the table at exactly noon, and a full supper on the table at 7 p.m., Mom fixed lunch and took it to the field in the mid-afternoon.

  “Grab the thermos bottles,” Mom motioned toward the counter. “We can meet the tractor at the top of the hill.” Mom stacked the ice water chocolate cake she made that afternoon on top of a Tupperware container of lunch meat and cheese sandwiches and headed for the door. With a big silver thermos of coffee in one hand and a two-quart jar of ice water in the other, I backed through the door, bracing it open with my back so Mom could edge through.

  Once we had everything in the pickup, Mom wrestled the old Studebaker out across the field while I held the coffee and water jugs upright on the floor between my feet and kept a hand on the sandwiches and cake so they didn’t bounce off the seat. We careened over ruts, stirring up a cloud of dust behind us.

  Mom stopped the truck on a hill a ways in front of the oncoming baler. As soon as I swung open the door and stepped out onto the hay stubble, I realized I should have put on shoes before I left the house. Stepping on hay stubble feels every bit like stepping on the point ends of spikes. I stepped lightly, planted my feet in between the hay stubble when I could and pretended it didn’t hurt when I couldn’t. We left lunch on the truck seat and leaned against the fender, watching the tractor and hayrack crawl toward us.

  I shaded my eyes, squinting into the sun, to see the men work. Their muscles rippled and sweat streamed down their faces and arms. They wore leather gloves but the young men often stripped off their shirts and their bodies glistened strong and hard in the afternoon sun. They were doing important work and when we brought lunch to the field, I felt I was doing something important, too.

  One of the men drove the tractor and another walked alongside, picking up bales and throwing them up onto the hayrack. Dad grabbed hold of the twine binding each 70-pound bale and fitted the bales tight onto the stack. Each bale had to be in the right place so the load held together as the wagon rocked back and forth over the rolling hills. Finishing the field would have gone faster except one of the men had left at noon.

  As they slowed to a stop, Mom began pulling the food out of the truck. The men climbed down, wiping sweat from their heads and necks. I was ready with the water they always wanted first. Dad took the jar from my hands and drank in big gulps.

  “Thanks, Squirt,” he said. “That hit the spot.” He handed the jar on to the hired men, picked up a sandwich and sat down on the ground in the shade of the tractor. The hired men lounged on the hayrack, grateful for the shade cast by the half load of sweet-smelling hay bales.

  “We’ll finish this field today and then we’ll just have that piece over behind Millers for tomorrow,” he said, nodding toward the southeast. “It’s slow going since Tom left.” He took off his cap and wiped the sweat off his head before settling his cap firmly back on his head. “Hand me a piece of that cake, Squirt,” he said.

  I grabbed the cake pan and took it to Dad. If I put my feet down just right, I could slide my bare soles between most of the stubble. Still I must have looked comical as I tottered in a bowlegged roll between the truck, tractor and hayrack.

  As Dad took a big piece of cake, he said, “Squirt, suppose you can drive the tractor for the rest of this round?”

  My head jerked up and a thrill ran straight through my stomach. Jane had driven the tractor already, but Dad had never let me.

  “Sure,” I said, and it was all I could do to keep from hopping up onto the tractor seat right that minute. It took a moment for me to remember that I didn’t know how to drive the tractor but I wasn’t going to say anything about that little detail.

  When the last bit of cake was gone followed by a last swallow of coffee, the men lumbered to their feet, thanked Mom for the lunch and stretched to loosen their sore backs. Then Dad looked at me and said, “Ready?”

  I sure was. In a second, I’d stepped from the toolbar up to the torn, sweat-stained, padded tractor seat. With the wheel of the Farmall H firmly in my grasp, I realized I had only the vaguest notion what to do next. Dad had held me on his lap while he’d driven the tractors, but I’d never done more than put my tiny hands on the wheel next to his. My stomach flipped. Would Dad make me get down?

  If Dad sensed my hesitation, he didn’t let on. He stood on the toolbar, his left arm on the back of the seat. “See if it’s in neutral,” he said wiggling the stick shift between my knees. “The brake is set, so step on the clutch. Push it all the way in,” he directed. I grabbed hold of the wheel with both hands and put my whole 70 pounds into pushing the clutch all the way forward. My butt rose up off the seat as I pulled back on the wheel to get enough leverage to push the pedal down. Sweat broke out on my neck. I was unsure how long I could hold the pedal down.

  “Now push the starter,” Dad said. I didn’t know that letting go of the wheel long enough to push the starter was such a hot idea, but I couldn’t say so. I let go with my right hand and reached down, pressing the starter with my thumb. The tracto
r sputtered to life and I could feel the engine strain against my arms and legs like a cow pulling against a halter.

  “We’ll put it in first,” he said, maneuvering the stick into gear. “Now, let the pedal out easy. Don’t jerk it or you’ll kill it.”

  I eased back on the pedal. The tractor jerked. I killed it. I was mortified.

  Grabbing the steering wheel so tight my fingers hurt, I strained to push the clutch pedal down again. With Dad’s hand over mine, I moved the stick into neutral and pushed the starter again. The old tractor coughed to life and Dad shifted into first.

  “We’ll give it a little gas,” Dad said as he pulled the throttle a couple notches toward me. “Now let the pedal out.”

  The tractor lurched but kept running. “Now just keep her going straight.”

  “But what about stopping,” I asked, thinking already that stopping on my own was going to be tougher than starting with Dad by my side.

  “When we get to the end of the row, step on the clutch and brake pedals at the same time,” Dad said as he stepped from the toolbar onto the tongue of the wagon and back to the hayrack.

  Anxious, I looked ahead. With relief I saw the end of the row was a long ways away.

  I could not believe it. I looked at Mom standing by the truck. She smiled and waved. I looked back at Dad balancing on the hayrack. “Give it a little more gas,” he yelled. I reached forward and eased the throttle lever toward me two more notches. I looked back again. Dad was grabbing bales from two men now and the load was filling fast. He was not at all concerned about me.