My Father Said ... 3

On the 5th of July in 1937, my father, Joe Rhode, started to work for Standard Elevator Company as a clerk. In our conversation on the 28th of November in 1998, my father had a twinkle in his eye when he said—with a smile—“Once, when I was working at the elevator, Lee Rhode and Arby Brutus began to argue some point. They kept at it for over an hour. By about noon, they decided to go to their homes. They jumped in their trucks and took off. I had had difficulty working while the argument proceeded. It was so intriguing! I noticed that each combatant had taken the other’s truck. The trucks were nearly alike: a ’36 Chevy half-ton green pickup belonging to Arby and a ’34 Chevy half-ton green pickup belonging to Lee. Within a few minutes, both trucks returned, arriving at the same moment. Not saying a word to one another, the men switched trucks and drove off again.” While I did not know Lee, I did know Arby, and I am sure that, within a very short time, Lee and Arby were back on friendly terms. In my view, Arby could not have held a grudge.

One of Carter Dalton’s Homemade Model Steam Engines

Photograph on Page 12 of The Iron-Men Album Magazine

For July and August of 1956

Life in Pine Village, my hometown in Indiana, was usually serene. Occasionally, circumstances arose that called upon a person’s highest qualities. During a conversation on the 26th of November in 1998, my father said, “Carter Dalton and Jim Hooker were brothers-in-law; their wives were sisters with the last name of High. The wives were from Locust Grove. Carter’s wife died. He took it bad. Jim Hooker listened to Carter’s despondent remarks. Finally, Jim recommended that Carter [take up] a hobby. ‘You’ve always talked about how much you liked steam engines,’ Jim said, ‘so why don’t you build a model engine?’ Carter considered the idea. On another occasion, Jim repeated his idea. This time, Carter took the bait because he had no hobbies and felt he would enjoy trying to build a working model of a steam engine. He then built the Case model. [He] misfigured the boiler size by modeling the diameter when he should have used the circumference of the cylindrical part of the boiler; thus his boiler looked too thin. He [also] made a double Nichols & Shepard rear-mounted model.”

Wood Carving Attributed to Jim Hooker of Pine Village, Indiana

I well remember both models. While the Case provided plenty of fun because it was large and easy to drive around, the Nichols & Shepard was a thing of beauty! As I am not mechanically minded, I stand in awe of the work of machinists who can engineer a working scale model of a farm steam engine! I considered Carter Dalton an artist in metal, just as Jim was an artist in wood.

Jim’s barn was filled with carvings, many of which were lost when the barn burned to the ground. Cinders from the barn blew east across town. Volunteers came to our home several blocks away to ensure that the roofs of our house and barn were not harboring live sparks. Not too many years ago, I found in an antique mall a carving of oxen pulling a wagon. While there is no identification on the piece, I am confident that it is one of Jim’s earliest carvings that I used to see in his barn. Perhaps he gave it to someone. I immediately purchased the antique, as I had always wanted an example of Jim’s work. Incidentally, many years earlier, Jim “ran a Model T sales business from the first floor of the Pine Village Hotel,” as my father told me on the 18th of October in 1997. “He got one of the Model Ts out of the showroom as the fire was beginning, but the other Model T burned in the blaze, which destroyed the hotel.”

My Father Said ... 1

When we talked, my father, Joe Rhode, first made a cup of coffee. We sat across from each other at the drop-leaf table in the kitchen. (I still have the table.) In my memory, I can see Dad in his well-washed overalls and blue denim shirt with his boyish countenance alternately beaming or frowning, depending on the story he was telling at the moment. During our conversation on the 7th of June in 1999, my father said, “The hot days in 1934 began in May. The temperature surpassed 100 in the first week of June.” In fact, the temperature was 102 degrees Fahrenheit in nearby Crawfordsville, Indiana, on the 1st and 2nd of June in that year. Toward the end of the month, my father’s thermometer registered 104 degrees on two days. “Old, weak, or hard-worked horses died,” Dad said, “as well as a few young ones.”

How to Form a Barrier to Chinch Bugs

Photograph in Thomas D. Isern’s

“Folk Entomology in the Flint Hills of Kansas”

In Kansas History (Autumn 1996)

My father continued, “In early June, just as corn was eight or so inches tall, the chinch bugs attacked. Farmers dug shallow ditches around their fields. They used a horse or two to drag a pole through the ditch. The pole knocked the bugs into post holes, placed every four or five rods. Before the bugs could crawl out again, a helper poured a little creosote into the hole from a dipper dipped in a bucket. This killed the bugs. Corn yielded fifteen to twenty-five bushels per acre that year.”

The terrible conditions of 1934 in the midst of the Great Depression were a harbinger of what was to come only two years later: one of the most devastating heat waves in the history of North America.

Dad recalled, “In 1936, the heat lasted longer, and conditions were drier. From May 29th through the third week of July, no substantial rain fell. A few local showers wet the sidewalks. A period of extreme heat in July yielded a stretch of at least nine days with the temperature consistently above 100 degrees.” Indiana’s all-time record high of 116 was set in July of that year. “Corn yielded twenty-five to thirty-five bushels per acre in 1936,” my father added. He explained that there was a corn yield because sufficient rain had fallen in May: more rain than fell in May of 1934.

“Chinch bugs were not a problem in 1936,” said Dad. “There had been a heavy rain the night of May 29th, killing the chinch bugs. That evening was the graduation night at Pine Village High School,” when my father was Valedictorian and Senior Class President. On the 1st of June, he embarked upon his farming career with Marshall Rhode, Dad’s uncle. Circumstances were inauspicious, yet my father persisted, testifying to his hope for better times to come and his trust in agriculture.