27. The Red Coat ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

For that winter, Ida bought Robert and Charles new parkas. Robert asked if, rather than the usual dark blue or gray coats, he could have the red one on the rack at Sears, and—surprise!—Ida consented.

Robert loved his red coat! It was bright red throughout. Even the fuzzy stuff that took the place of fur around the hood was the same red! He could hardly wait to wear it on the playground at school.

He had fewer chances to wear it than he might have. The onslaught of childhood diseases had begun, and he had to remain at home with them, as well as being “quarantined” with what he eventually came to expect: his Christmas flu.

Over the next few years, Robert had the chicken pox, measles, mumps (on both sides), and a different kind of measles that was much more virulent than the first kind had been. He heard his parents referring to “the German measles,” so that must have been what the bad ones were.

Robert hated missing school and falling behind in his assignments—even while he tried to keep up from home.

… and he hated Vicks VapoRub. Whenever he had a cold or flu, his mother smeared the intensely aromatic VapoRub on his chest, covered the gooey mess with a square torn from a worn-out pair of flannel pajamas, and buttoned up his new flannel pajama top over the square. Even when she had pulled the sheet, the bedspread, the gray woolen blanket, and the crazy quilt with its thick batting up to Robert’s eyes, Robert could still smell the VapoRub. While he slowly baked beneath the heavy bedding, he felt sick because he smelled VapoRub, which he associated with feeling sick. It was a vicious cycle.

Robert was not terribly fond of the vitamins, either. They were in a brown bottle. Ida would pour the thick liquid into a teaspoon and hold out the spoon for Robert to take the vitamins, which had a strong aroma from the sulfur in the composition.

In the medicine cabinet above the bathroom sink were other medicines. There was tincture Merthiolate for cuts. It was applied from a thin glass rod attached to the inside of the cap, and it colored the cut a glaring reddish orange. For inflamed membranes or rashes, the light pink salve from the tube of Taloin ointment did the trick. Rubbing alcohol cleaned scratches.

Whenever Robert experienced a particularly stubborn bout of flu, Ida took him to see Dr. Scheurich. The good doctor might or might not set his cigar aside long enough to insert a tongue depressor in Robert’s mouth and to peer down Robert’s throat. Then, invariably, he would hand Ida a bottle of little red pills. Did the pills help? Not that Robert could determine.  

Behind one of the upper hinged doors of the Hoosier was Joe’s arsenal of aspirin. There was also an extra tin of the udder balm, with which Joe soothed his cows’ sensitive skin after milking them. Joe and Ida applied udder balm to any dry patches that appeared on their hands, arms, or legs during the winter months.

Illnesses could not hold out forever, and—finally!—Robert got to wear his red coat on the playground! Alan and Terry led Robert’s class in building a beauty of a snow fort. Simultaneously, the two Steves of the class above Robert’s class guided their classmates in fashioning a most menacing fort within a snowball’s distance of the other fort.

One of the Steves yelled across the no-man’s-land, “I dare you to be the first to throw a snowball.” At the same time, to taunt Alan and Terry’s side, the other Steve stood on his head and waggled his legs.

“I say we attack ‘em now,” Terry advised.

“Have we made enough snowballs?” Alan asked.

“Sure! There are plenty.”

“They’re asking for it,” Robert said.

“Fire at will!” Alan commanded.

Suddenly, the air between the two forts was full of snowballs. With several allies from older and younger classes, each fort numbered as many as twenty troops. Steve the Taunter nimbly dodged multiple snowballs hurled in his direction. His arm was a blur as he gave back as good as he got, firing snowball after snowball at his opponents.

A snowball found its mark on the right side of Robert’s face, shattering lightly all about. Robert laughed as a chunk of the cold stuff went down his neck. Almost immediately, another snowball burst off the left side of his face, and more snow rolled inside his collar and down his neck. Robert was laughing so hard that he was almost incapacitated.

Gasping for air and laughing uncontrollably, he yelled, “Stop! Stop!”

Wham! Another snowball hit him on a shoulder.

“It’s your coat,” Terry shouted over the din of the battle. “The red is a target!”

Robert ducked behind the highest wall of the fort and regained his breath.

Nearby, Dennis jumped up to throw a massive snowball toward the enemy fort. At the same instant, he was hit full in the face.

“Oh, they got me,” he said, falling to the ground and pretending to be a casualty—but only for a second. Then he was back on his feet and sending snowballs through the frosty air.

Susan, Linda, Randy, and Jean had reinforced the fort. They scurried out the back, formed snowballs in their gloved hands, ran inside the enclosure, and threw them as hard as they could, many of them finding their mark.

Before long, the sides had increased to over thirty troops apiece.

Just when the fight was becoming the best in history, someone heard Mrs. Arvin calling. The recess was over. Laughing and chuckling, the students filed from both forts across the playground to the school building. There were no hard feelings. Students that had been enemies only seconds earlier were swapping tales of valor with one another on the way back to the classrooms.

As Robert thought about it later, it may well have been the best snowball fight in history. By the next day, an abrupt warming trend had melted much of the snow, and the forts were destined to disappear from the playground landscape. The bonds of friendship that the battle had only strengthened were strong enough to endure the vicissitudes of lifetimes.

 

21. The Ice ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

That winter, there had come a spell of light snow that would melt a little before the temperature dipped below zero, producing a sheet of ice over the ground. Joe walked into the kitchen and spoke in a low voice to Ida, who promptly told the boys to put on their parkas, stocking caps, and gloves. She had to take Joe to see Dr. Scheurich.

Robert felt a wave of apprehension as he quickly followed his mother’s instructions. He had thought that only he and his brother ever had to visit the doctor, not one of his parents. When he saw his father sitting in a strange posture on one of the kitchen chairs, his face pale and gray, Robert felt his apprehension deepening into anxiety.

Ida ushered the boys toward the car. Joe came slowly from the house. She held open the passenger door for him. He ever-so-slowly sank into the seat. Ida slammed the door, ran around the car, and, with considerable agitation, put the key in the ignition. When the Chevy started, she did not wait for it to warm up. She backed fast down the driveway and out onto the state highway. In a heartbeat, she was driving to Oxford.

Joe had been checking on the Chester White sows that were soon to have litters. One young sow had been pushing against the wooden panels that held her captive in a small exercise area beyond the door of an individual hog house on skids that Joe had pulled into place with his Minneapolis–Moline Z tractor. Painted red, the house had a V-shaped roof, half of which consisted of hinged doors that could swing over, permitting a view of the interior. Joe bought his hog houses from the grain elevator, where they were built at the lumberyard. On this day, Joe had decided that he needed to sink one more metal post to support the panel that the sow had been abusing. He had brought a tall fence post and a sledge hammer. After looking over the situation, he had decided to put the post on the inside of the small lot, so he had climbed over the panel.

Hammering the fence post into the frozen ground was a time-consuming job. Ping–ping–ping! His hammer had sounded a short bell-like tone each time that he had struck the post. Finally, he had driven the post into the ice deep enough to prevent the sow from working on the panel.

He had brought several strands of baling wire, with which he had secured the panel to the post, being careful to push the ends of the wires to the outside so that the sow would not be scratched. With a snap of his wrist, he had used a heavy pair of pliers to give each twist of wire two additional twists, tightening the wires. Finally, he had taken his sledge hammer and had climbed back outside the panel.

That is when it had happened. His feet had become cold, even though he had been wearing boots, high-top laced shoes, and brown woolen socks. He could barely feel where he put his toes in between the boards of the panel. As the gap between the bottom two boards was narrow, he had not pushed the toe of his boot through far enough. His foot slipped and dropped down on the ice. His balance thrown off, Joe had lost his grip on the panel but not on the hammer. Meanwhile, the foot that had suddenly reached the ice skidded out from under him, pivoting him. He had fallen on his side. As bundled up as he was with long johns, a flannel undershirt, a work shirt, a lined denim coat, and a regular denim coat over the lined one, he might have withstood the fall, but he had landed on the handle of the sledge hammer. He had writhed in pain for a few minutes before he had realized that, pain or no pain, he would have to get back on his feet and go to the house.

For the first few steps, standing had felt somewhat better, but then the pain had intensified. He felt certain that he had broken a bone.

Before he was married, he had been helping the members of the threshing ring to separate his wheat, and he had fallen from the grain wagon. His left upper arm had gone between the wooden hound that supported the wagon tongue behind the doubletree, and he had broken the bone with a spiral break. On this day, he remembered that pain.

While Dr. Scheurich examined Joe, Robert and Charles sat quiet as church mice in the waiting room. Before they had entered the doctor’s office, their mother had told them to behave themselves by sitting still and not causing trouble. She had accompanied their father into the examination room. Robert’s fears were mounting. Tears were gathering in the corners of his eyes. He had never seen his father look so pale, so gray, and so unsmiling. Robert still did not know what had happened, although Charles had whispered to him something about ice.

Eventually, Joe emerged. Ida was at his side. The nurse was close behind. Ida and the nurse walked with him down the front stairs to the car. Robert and Charles followed. On this occasion, Robert had ridden in the back seat of the two-door car so his father could sit in front. Robert had managed not to have motion sickness, but, on the way home, he felt the dizziness starting. Still, he listened carefully to his parents’ conversation. Little by little, he felt his worries subside as he began to understand that his father had fallen on the ice, that he had cracked some ribs, and that there was nothing that could be done except take aspirin and wait for the bruising to heal. Dr. Scheurich had wrapped a stretchy bandage around Joe’s side and over one shoulder to keep Joe steady, as much as anything; otherwise, the bandage had no effect, as the doctor had readily admitted.

“You’ll have to milk the cows and feed and water the sows,” Joe was saying to Ida. The doctor had advised him not to move about much for the first two days and for Ida to handle the chores. “I’m sorry for you to have to do my work,” Joe said.

“It’s only for a few days,” Ida reassured him. “The boys can help me.”

After school, Robert and Charles helped their mother all they could. They threw down hay from the mow. They scooped ground feed into buckets to be carried to the sows, each sow in her own paneled lot. They mixed feed and water for the ducks. They scattered feed for the chickens and the turkeys. Robert thought it was funny to watch Ida at work. She wore four-buckle boots that made her feet seem too big for her body. She did everything differently than the boys’ father did. She positioned the stool differently when she sat beside the cows to milk them. She spoke more jokingly to the cows—as if they were people! “You like that clover, don’t you, Flossy!” Ida would say. At the end of each day, Ida had completed all the same jobs that Joe would have accomplished, even though she had done them in her own way.

Eventually, Joe had begun to move about in a gingerly fashion and had resumed doing the chores himself.

“Don’t let your dad try to use his sore side,” Ida had warned the boys. “Think ahead, and help him lift things that he shouldn’t be lifting!” she ordered. Robert and Charles were good about providing as much assistance as they could to their father.

Then, one cold night, Ida set a bushel basket in front of the Norge heating stove in the kitchen. She arranged an old blanket in the bottom. Joe came through the door to the porch. The gloved hand on his good side was holding something that squirmed. He put it in the basket.

“She may have another one before I get back out there,” Joe said, as he went through the porch and out into the night, a flashlight in the hand on his sore side.

Robert peered into the basket. A pink piglet was standing on the blanket. It looked up at him with its inquisitive eyes beneath white eyelashes. Soon, Joe brought another pink piglet and deposited it in the basket.

The boys’ mother prepared a second basket. Later that night, there were nine piglets all in all.

“I think they could go back to their mother now,” Joe said.

Robert put on his coat, hat, and gloves and walked with his mother as she carried the first basket out to the hog house containing the sow that had just had her litter. It was the sow that had given so much trouble. Robert stood on a straw bale to look down through the doors that Joe opened in the roof of the house. A heat lamp cast a reddish light around the inside, which felt warm on Robert’s face. Ida was handing each piglet to Joe, who was setting them down in the fresh straw inside. When the first basket had been emptied, Ida brought out the second basket of piglets. Before long, the newborns were lined up along the belly of the sow and were having their dinner.

“We’d better close the doors now,” Joe said to Robert, who stepped down from the bale. The piglets were so cute that Robert silently questioned why his parents never kept one for a pet. Then he thought about how big the sow was and how it was not nearly as cute as a piglet, and he answered his own question.       

 

     

17. The Persimmons and the President ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

American persimmon trees grew naturally in southern Indiana. Before Robert’s memory, Joe and Ida had brought one to their yard, where it grew a nice, tall, straight trunk.

That autumn during Robert’s first-grade year, Ida chose an ideal time to make persimmon pudding. The first frost had not yet arrived, but it was not far off. The nights were becoming chilly but the days were still warm. Ida, Robert, and Charles gathered the persimmons from the ground while their mother shook the slender tree. The fruits were relatively hard, and their skins were frosty orange with a purplish or bluish tint. They were too bitter to bite into. Ida divided the persimmons into quart size strawberry boxes made of thin wood with eight staples around the upper border. Robert and Charles helped. Robert caught a thumb on the point of a staple. “Ouch!” he exclaimed, putting his thumb in his mouth. The persimmons spent a few days in their cartons on the enameled counter of the Hoosier in the hot kitchen. Then they had become fully ripe and soft. It was time to make pudding!

When the delectable fragrance of the pudding, with its cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice, arose from the oven, the tantalizing scent permeated the house. Then, when the dark, rich pudding was spooned, still warm, into bowls and topped with whipped cream from the family’s milking cows, manna from heaven would have had tough competition!

Near the beginning of November, Ida announced to Robert that he would be keeping an appointment with Dr. Scheurich that afternoon for his last booster shot. When Ida drove Robert to the white house in Oxford that was Dr. Scheurich’s office, storm clouds were already overhead and rain was beginning to fall.

Robert knew he could not escape what was about to happen to him, so he went along compliantly. He sat on a red-upholstered chair in the waiting room on the south side of the house. When the familiar nurse stepped up to the counter, looked at a clipboard, and called his name, he went with his mother into the inner office, which reeked of cigar and rubbing alcohol. Had Norman Rockwell been invited to paint an ideal image of a small-town doctor, he would have painted Dr. Scheurich. Even though Dr. Scheurich wore a serious expression on his face and peered through his glasses sternly, he was as roly-poly as Santa Claus. The belt to his trousers was almost lost beneath the bulging white shirt that was always decorated with a stethoscope hanging around his neck. Ida chatted with the doctor while holding Robert’s coat. Quickly and efficiently, Dr. Scheurich brought out the large stainless steel device terminating in its long needle. He sat heavily down on his swivel chair while Robert loosened his belt. Before long, the shot was administered. It hurt like the very devil!

With tears in the corners of his eyes, Robert walked down the concrete steps leading to the front door of the doctor’s office and into the car. His coat was wet from the rain.

While Ida drove back to Pine Village, the sky grew darker and the rain fell faster. The landscape was forlorn. The trees had lost their leaves. They stood gray and rain-soaked. Flat land stretched far away until becoming lost in sheets of rain.

When Ida reached home, she told Robert to wait in the car while she got Charles. Robert wondered what was to happen next. Soon, Ida and Charles ran out to the car. Ida drove the short distance to Joe Dan’s Restaurant in town. By the time the three of them had taken their seats in a booth near the window, the sky was almost as dark as night. Rivulets of rain glinted down the plate-glass window.

Robert felt that the day had definitely taken a turn for the better. Even though his posterior still felt sore, he knew he could have a breaded tenderloin sandwich with mustard: one of his favorite treats. He could also have a chocolate milkshake.

For some reason, Ida ordered a sandwich for the boys’ father, even though he was not there. At about the time the sandwiches were served, Robert saw a figure running across the street from the volunteer fire station. It was Joe, who slid into the booth beside Ida.

“I’m supposed to be using the restroom, so I have to gulp this down,” Joe said. When Joe hung up his coat, Robert noticed that his father was wearing good slacks and a Sunday shirt. The slacks were wet up to the knees. “The plumbing at the station broke yesterday, and the election board decided we could take turns coming to the restaurant to use the restroom.”

Joe lifted his sandwich and took a big bite.

“This rain may keep voters at home,” Ida said. “It’s been raining cats and dogs ever since I took Robert for his booster shot. He was good about it this time. He didn’t cry. Doctor Scheurich said Robert’s shots are all up to date.”

“Did it hurt?” Joe asked Robert.

“Yes,” Robert said before trying to suck chocolate milkshake up through the big paper straw, which collapsed.

“You need another straw,” Joe said.

“You may have to use your spoon,” Ida suggested.

Gusts of rain beat against the windowpane.

Having overheard the conversation, Joe Dan, the owner of the restaurant, brought Robert another straw from a tall glass container full of straws and topped with a silver lid. The container stood on the horseshoe counter surrounded by silvery stools that could spin around.

“Who’s winning?” Ida asked Joe.

“You know we’re not allowed to discuss anything about the election,” Joe said, grabbing another big bite of his sandwich.

Ida nodded, accepting his answer.

Then Joe said, “I can tell you that the early reports on the radio say the election’s close.”

Joe had wolfed down his sandwich. He excused himself from the table, dashed to the restroom, returned to get his coat, wriggled into it, and splashed back across the street to the polling booths in the fire station.

Later the next day, Robert learned that the new President of the United States was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. After having seen only President Dwight David Eisenhower, who looked old to Robert, Robert was surprised that a person as young as Jack Kennedy obviously was could be elected President of the United States.

The sun was shining. Robert’s parents talked about how the election was the dawn of a new era. They were excited about the prospects of a bright future, which Alan Shepard’s flight in a spacecraft in May seemed to promise.

No one could foretell how dramatic events would dampen those prospects. No one could predict the assassination of the young President in 1963. The slow turning of the tide of public opinion against the Vietnam War, the escalation of the Soviet threat, the racial unrest, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the massive demonstrations in cities and on campuses were storm clouds on the horizon, but no one saw them yet.

Instead, life on the farm in Pine Village seemed a happy continuation of the happiness at the end of the 1950s. Everything seemed secure. Everything seemed like an innocent way of living not destined to change.