14. The Disking and the Camp ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

Ever since Robert had celebrated his ninth birthday, Joe had let him steer the Minneapolis–Moline Z tractor while Joe stood carefully between the seat and the fender on the right side. Now that the summer of Robert’s thirteenth birthday was approaching, Joe began showing Robert how to run the International 560 by himself. When spring planting began, Robert spent weekends helping disk ground that Joe and Charles plowed.

Robert had already lifted some of the farming burden from his father’s shoulders by tending livestock and caring for chickens and ducks, but now Robert began assisting Joe in the fields during the spring months, when farmers were in a near frenzy to plant corn and soybeans while the good weather lasted.

One morning, Joe deployed Robert and the 560 in a recently plowed field close to State Route 55 and near the Old Barn. Before Robert’s father strode across the land to an adjoining field where he would be plowing, Joe reminded Robert, “Don’t turn too short at the edge of the field!” Robert was pulling an ancient harrow behind the relatively new disk. The harrow was in two heavy sections of rusty iron with a two-by-four running across the front to hold the two sections side by side. A fairly wide turning radius was required, so that the two-by-four did not catch on the plow.

Robert made many passes the length of the field. He enjoyed disking because he could go a little faster than was possible with plowing, and he enjoyed plowing less because leaning in the seat as one of the driver wheels ran in the furrow was less comfortable and turning to keep constant watch on the plow was more demanding. The soil that day was perfect for disking. The black loam lay smooth and fine. Robert had coined a word for well-disked ground: “chuffy,” a combination of “churned” and “fluffy.” The soil behind Robert’s disk and harrow was chuffy. Robert set his mind free to imagine stories.

He was in the midst of telling himself a story about a UFO like the ones that had been seen by so many people in Michigan in 1966, when suddenly he heard a snap.

Robert had been making a turn. He wisely stopped the tractor. Before he looked behind him, he knew what he would see: a broken two-by-four. Sure enough! he had turned too short, and the plow had snapped the board as it jammed up against it.

Robert shut off the tractor and walked across the fields to tell his father what he had done.

Joe backed off on the throttle but still could not hear Robert, so Joe switched off his tractor. He smiled and said, “Now, say that again.”

“I broke the two-by-four,” Robert confessed.

“You turned too short, didn’t you?” Joe commented, still smiling.

“Yes,” Robert said meekly.

“I was afraid that might happen,” Joe continued. “When you’re working a short field like that one, you have the tendency to try to work closer to the fence line than you would in a larger field, and, when you do that, you also have the tendency to try to make too short a turn. We’ll go to the elevator right now and have Let Crane saw a new two-by-four, so that you can keep on disking today.”

It was not the first time that Robert was amazed at his father’s patience and equanimity, nor would it be the last.    

Later that spring, Mr. Charlie Coffman loaded the school bus bound for 4-H Camp at Shakamak, a park southeast of Terre Haute. (Teachers and others in authority were addressed with a title, such as Mister.) Besides being 4-H advisor, FFA advisor, agriculture teacher, and principal, Mr. Coffman was a bus driver. He was ever and always in a cheerful mood, and the trip to Shakamak was no exception.

Charles and Robert threw their Army surplus duffel bags in the back of the bus, took their seats, and enjoyed the drive to Shakamak. Sitting in the sunny window of the bus and watching the small towns drift by, Robert felt as if he might be Charlie Brown or Linus. Compared to Tippecanoe River State Park, where the Adams Township 4-H Club occasionally repaired and where raccoons kept Robert awake all night, Shakamak seemed like a spa. On the first afternoon, Mr. McKee, the county extension agent, pitched the softball game. His windup was something to see! Squinting and biting his lower lip, he lifted a knee high in the air while he contorted his body like a pretzel, then he tossed the ball in a graceful arc. In the outfield, Mike would comment, “Oh, honestly!”  If anyone could keep from laughing long enough and could get a hit, Mr. McKee would exclaim, “Very fine! Very fine!”

Mr. Coffman was all for getting in the water as soon as possible. Robert and Charles lined up with the other 4-Hers, and Mr. Coffman led them on the trail to the lake. Even though Charles and Robert had gone barefoot around the farm, their bare feet were cut by the exposed shale that formed much of the path. The next day, every step was painful. For the time being, though, it was fun to watch Mr. Coffman disporting in Lake Shakamak. He was like a smiling duck, splashing and cavorting in utter glee.

Robert despised water and barely put up with the swimming. Back when he was in the third grade, Ida had enrolled him and Charles in swimming lessons at the indoor pool of the YMCA in Lafayette. At the first lesson, the children had turned right to gather around the instructor, who was standing at the shallow end. Shy, Robert had turned left, and the instructor had not seen him. The instructor had said, “Jump in,” and Robert had obeyed. Down he went in a pale green world. Breathing water instead of air had been a new experience; bubbles had gone up as he had gone down. Later, he had learned that parents, who were watching their children through a window, had pounded on the glass to get the instructor’s attention, and that the instructor had finally understood that a child had leapt into the deep end of the pool. The next thing that Robert knew was that the instructor had rescued him and was reviving him at the side of the pool. After that experience, Robert had feared the water so much that, every Friday after school, when the swimming lesson was approaching, he had felt sick to his stomach. After several weeks, Ida had given up and had canceled the lessons. Robert had gone cheerfully forward in life as a non-swimmer. So, at Shakamak, he was content to stand on the sharp shale in the shallow water and watch Mr. Coffman having fun.

At the end of a pier stood a tall structure supporting several diving boards with the uppermost one seemingly among the clouds. Mr. Coffman warned against using the diving boards—especially the top one. At dinner, Alan told Robert he looked at the diving boards and decided that discretion was definitely the better part of valor.

The soughing of the breezes in the oak leaves made Robert feel content, and, as a fiery sunset of scarlet, coral, and tangerine deepened into garnet and boysenberry, Robert felt that all was right with the world—except for his sore feet!      

 

13. The Celebration ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

The snow began early, with a deep accumulation just after Halloween of 1966. Inaugurating January of 1967 was Chicago’s largest blizzard on record. While the storm missed Pine Village, additional snow fell on the farm a week and a half later. Although Robert generally liked snow, he was having too much of a good thing. He wondered what it would be like to ride a bus after the move from the town to the country. He would have wondered what it would be like to eat lunch in the school cafeteria, but Ida had decided that Charles, now a student in high school, should have lunch with his classmates and had persuaded Joe to purchase lunch tickets for both of his sons. Even though Charles and Robert were only across the road from a home-cooked meal, they ate in the cafeteria. For Robert, lunch offered an opportunity to socialize with his classmates—and he loved socializing!

Mrs. Miles directed an effective cafeteria staff having four great cooks whose meals included fried chicken, chipped beef on biscuits, creamed turkey on biscuits, beef and noodles, chicken and noodles, beefaroni, ham and beans with cornbread, hot dogs with pickle relish, Coneys, hamburgers, meat loaf, tuna casserole, Salisbury steak, salmon, spaghetti Creole, chili, potato soup and crackers, vegetable beef soup, baked beans, mashed potatoes, green beans, buttered corn, buttered peas, buttered spinach, strawberry Jell-O, peach halves, seasonal fruit, beef sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches, ham salad sandwiches, pork sandwiches, pork fritter sandwiches, Sloppy Joes, submarine sandwiches, jellied vegetable salad, cream slaw, applesauce, bananas in red Jell-O, fruit salad, chocolate pudding, graham cracker pudding, cherry cobbler, pineapple crème, and sweet rolls. Most of the ingredients were grown nearby.

Leo Synesael gave himself permission to lean against a doorsill or a stairway railing for a few seconds each day; otherwise, he kept cleaning. Leo was the school custodian. He was skinny as a rail—most likely because he seldom stopped moving! In a jiffy, he mopped up spilled milk in the cafeteria. In the wink of an eye, he dusted the floor of the gymnasium. With time to spare, he spread his magic sand over an oil leak in the parking lot and swept it all up, leaving no trace that anything had been amiss.

Each year, Robert’s hometown—like hometowns across America—celebrated Lincoln’s Birthday on the 12th of February and Washington’s Birthday on the 22nd of the same month. (In 1971, the Uniform Monday Holiday Act established three-day weekends for all major holidays and annual commemorations. In many states, Presidents Day became associated with one of the weekends.) On Washington’s Birthday, grocery stores would offer sale prices on canned cherries, and items that usually cost a quarter would be reduced to twenty-two cents, in honor of the 22nd of February. The art teacher always invited the junior high and high school students to make portraits of Lincoln that were judged, with the announcement of the winner during the Republican Lincoln Day Dinner in the gymnasium. Several of the older students were blessed with artistic talent and skill, and their portraits of Lincoln were exceptional. The best of the best were displayed in the cafeteria, and Robert admired them.

Robert became determined to create a portrait that could compete with those of the high school students. Choosing pastel as his medium, Robert devoted hours and hours over the course of many evenings to the formation of Lincoln’s face. Robert compared several images of Lincoln in books that he had checked out from the school library. His portrait was not a direct copy of any one of them but a compilation of features he observed in several of them.

“You have captured him,” Ida said. “You can enter your picture in the competition without doubting whether your work is good enough.”

His mother’s compliment reassured Robert.

He was shocked through and through when the art teacher confided in him that his art had won the competition, although the fact had to be kept secret until Lincoln’s Birthday!

Robert wore a suit and tie to the dinner. Blushing, he stood before the applauding audience while his portrait was proclaimed the contest winner.

Back in grade school, Robert and his classmates had used crayons to color purple-dittoed American flags while listening to their teachers read to them about Washington and Lincoln. For Mrs. Winegardner, the students prepared scrapbooks commemorating Indiana history, and, for Mrs. Leighty, the class’ shoebox floats celebrated the fifty states; such activities further instilled patriotism. Robert’s heart was stirred when the red, white, and blue month of Lincoln and Washington rolled around. Now in his suit and tie, he stood talking with various townspeople who stepped up to congratulate him on winning the Lincoln Art Contest when he was only in the seventh grade.

On Washington’s Birthday, Spot the Fox Terrier (his formal name) decided upon a patriotic excursion of his own. While Robert was bringing home his portrait of Lincoln with the winning ribbon fluttering in the corner of the large frame, he miscalculated how far the front gate would swing, and, with no free hand to hold the gate open just enough to slip through, Robert saw the gate open all the way—and Spot dashing through and running lickety-split for town!

Robert set down his painting by the gate and shouted toward his father, who was taking his boots off by the back door, “Spot’s out!”

Joe and Robert jumped into the front seat of the Bel Air and took off after the dog. They soon detected him racing behind “Peanut” Neal’s house. Robert was surprised that Spot, panting excitedly, let him scoop him up so easily. Then Robert noticed the gash in his side.

“Spot’s hurt!” Robert said, when, holding the terrier, he slid onto the seat of the car.

“I wonder how that happened,” Joe said, as he drove straight to Doc Cullup’s house and veterinary clinic.

Spot’s cut required several stitches, but the dog wasn’t fazed. His eyes remained as bright as ever, and he indicated that he was ready for another sprint while Joe handed him to Robert for the drive back home.

“Hold onto him!” Joe exclaimed.

“I have him,” Robert said.

That evening, the family cuddled Spot even more closely than usual. He had to wear his harness to hold gauze padding against the stitched wound. Ida added a small swatch of red-white-and-blue fabric over the gauze.

“I can’t imagine how he was cut in that way,” Joe said. “We were right behind him. He wasn’t out of our sight more than a couple of minutes.”

Joe, Ida, Charles, and Robert considered Spot so much a part of their family that they expected the dog to speak up and tell them how it occurred, but Spot remained silent on the point.

Robert set his Lincoln portrait on the top edge of his bed’s headboard, put Spot on the foot of the bed, and took a flash photo to preserve the memory.