11. The Perm ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

As Robert had foreseen, Joe bought the Chevrolet Bel Air from the Dowdens. To Robert’s way of thinking, everything about the car was cheap. The aqua ceiling fabric felt like plastic, and it had a pattern of tiny circular holes. After experiencing the interior of the 57 Chevrolet, the 63 seemed cheap inside. The seat covers were not luxurious. Even the exterior lines of the vehicle made Robert feel that Chevrolet had lowered its standards. Robert felt that he was riding in a thin horizontal cardboard box. The lack of chrome and the plain round taillights proclaimed that everything about the car had been cheapened to the lowest denominator, yet the car was dependable. It did not languish for long periods of time in Glen Bisel’s shop; rather, it ran and ran in its bland, undistinguished way. Joe’s family rode in its cheapness from place to place for many years.

Ida drove the Bel Air to Bessie Eberly’s house when it was time for Bessie to give Ida a perm. While Bessie was transforming Ida’s straight hair into tight curls, Ida said, “I think we’re going to move.”

Bessie fumbled her comb, she was so surprised!

“Move! Where to?” Bessie managed to blurt out, fixing a concerned gaze on Ida in the mirror that both faced.

“Well, that’s just it,” Ida said. “We probably will move to Lizzie Williams’ house.”

“Here, in town?” Bessie questioned, her look becoming stern.

“No,” Ida laughed. “Her house out east of town.”

Bessie said, “You mean where the Davises lived.”

“That’s right,” Ida confirmed.

“I’m sure it’s a nice house, but why would you want to move there?” Bessie asked.

“Because we can’t move to Uncle Marshall’s house, which is falling in—” Ida began to explain.

Bessie interrupted, “—Anna and Marshall Rhode’s place?”

“That’s right,” Ida said again. “That’s a nice big house, but the roof has leaked so much that Joe thinks it would cost a fortune to fix everything. He says it should be bulldozed.”

“That’s a shame!” Bessie commented. “Such a big house! But why do you want to move at all?”

“Oh, I see what you were asking,” Ida remarked. “Well, the town has wanted additional revenue, and, at that meeting last week, somebody suggested annexing land around the town to increase the tax base.”

“Yes,” Bessie said encouragingly, once again busy with her comb.

“Joe said that he doesn’t want to pay the high taxes that would be assessed on his hundred and twenty-five acres. He thinks we should move right away.”

“But the town hasn’t annexed his farm, has it?”

“Oh, no!” Ida exclaimed. “That probably couldn’t happen for a year or two, even if the town managed to approve it, and there’s no proof that the town would want to annex good farm land anywhere around the perimeter.”

“But Joe is worried that the town might make that decision someday,” Bessie concluded.

“You know something?” Ida asked.

“What?” Bessie asked.

“I think it will be hard for Joe to move.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He has lived his whole life here. He grew up in the house where Cecil Gray lives, and he has raised his family in the house where we live now, which was part of his grandfather Tom Cobb’s land. I think Joe will feel homesick.”

Bessie laughed! “But Lizzie’s farm is only two miles east of here! It’s not like Joe would be moving to Canada!”

Ida laughed. “You’re right, but Joe is like his mother. They have to follow a routine, and they can’t endure change. I think when Joe is out there two miles away, he’ll feel as if he were in another country.”

Lizzie wanted Joe’s family to farm the old Williams place, so she sold the land to Joe.

When Joe, Ida, Charles, and Robert first pulled into the driveway of what would eventually become their new home, they hardly knew what to think. Charles appeared apathetic, Joe uneasy, Ida confident, Robert thrilled! Out there on the flat land that had once been marsh, the ancient trees around the house formed an oasis in the midst of a desert of black loam stretching toward the horizon in all directions. The maples were gnarled and bent from the constant wind that could roar from west to east during blizzards. A scraggly group of Osage orange trees huddled near a rusty wire fence. Outbuildings of gray, splintery wood leaned in crazy directions. While the others explored the house, Robert walked through the tall weeds to the west until he came to a slough, wet with cattails. The scent of tadpole water arose from the sedge grass. He could see so far away, and, everywhere he looked, the sky was filled with dark gray clouds reflecting the even darker earth, which was wild and lonely.

Robert pushed on through the tangled weeds catching at his feet. He came to a weathered shed where, in his father’s boyhood, Joe Williams had stored his Reeves steam engine, threshing machine, and water wagon. Robert’s great uncle Charley Cobb had worked as the Williamses’ engineer. Charley had died long before Robert was born. While Robert stood near the fallen doors of the shed, he thought how his grandmother’s brother had stood in the same place, oilcan in hand. Robert thought how closely the past pressed in upon him.

Robert joined the others at the house. A long enclosed porch with a sloping floor ran the length of the structure. It was homey. Ida was saying that she would move the kitchen into a large room that could double as a family room and wall off part of the old kitchen to make a bathroom. Robert and Charles would have bedrooms to the southeast of what would be the new kitchen, and Joe and Ida would have the room to the northeast. The empty house felt forlorn. Robert found a blue glass medicine bottle from the 1800s that someone had set on a windowsill.

“Could I have it?” he asked his mother.

“Yes, you may have it,” she said.

For Robert, the bottle came to symbolize the home east of Pine Village.  

Nearly two years would elapse before Joe’s family could move to Lizzie Williams’ farm. During that time, Robert would pass from classroom to classroom as a member of the seventh grade class and matriculate to the eighth grade. Every evening, he looked at the dark blue bottle and thought of the murky pools, the wild winds, the twisted tree trunks, the statuesque herons, the mysterious great horned owls, the scurrying quail, the gliding pheasants, and the cantering foxes that he felt were tugging him away from the security of the village into the unknown countryside, as if leprechauns were working an enchantment to lure him there. He pictured the move as an exciting adventure awaiting him just beyond a theatrical scrim through which, for the time being, he could see but which would not be lifted for him to see clearly for some time to come.

  

24. The Spelling Bee and Halloween ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

Robert was wary about starting the second grade. He was accustomed to Mrs. Hail. When he entered the school on the first day that fall semester and saw Mrs. Hail welcoming a new class into her room, he felt somewhat abandoned, although he knew that passing from one grade to the next was the way the system worked. Now he would have Mrs. Arvin, who was older than Mrs. Hail and who sometimes wore a face of what he took for severity.

After a time, Robert adjusted to Mrs. Arvin’s classroom manner and began to appreciate her methods. For Mrs. Arvin, the answers had to be strictly correct. Give her the correct answers, and she was your greatest supporter!

The year unfolded gradually, as did all the years back then. Time seemed to be in no hurry. Each minute was round and full of promise. One of Mrs. Arvin’s pedagogical strategies was to conduct spelling bees during the second half of the lunch period when the weather was so inclement that the students could not go outside for recess. Robert came to look forward to the spelling bees so much that he hoped for rain. On the drizzly days of autumn, he raced back to school after eating lunch at his home across the street so that he could take part in the contests.

The students chose up sides, and Robert felt proud to be one of the first chosen because he was considered a good speller. He tried as hard as he could not to let down his team. He correctly spelled such words as “separate”: S E P A R A T E. One day, Mrs. Arvin gave him “receive,” and he correctly spelled R E C E I V E. Another day, Mrs. Arvin said, “Robert, spell ‘definite.’” He said, “D E F I N I T E.”

On one rainy noon, Robert wolfed down the lunch of chili and grilled cheese sandwich that his mother had prepared and ran back across State Route 26 to the school building. His class had already chosen sides and had already begun the spelling bee. The moment Robert walked through the door, Mrs. Arvin said, “Robert, while you were gone, Susan chose you to be on her team, and it is your turn. Spell ‘twenty-three.’” Robert felt relieved to be given such an easy example. He took his place with Susan’s group, which was standing in front of the chalkboard, and he said, “T W E N T Y - T R E E.” Mrs. Arvin said, “That is incorrect. Robert, you may sit down.” With the blood rushing to his face, Robert stumbled toward his desk and took his seat. Susan was staring at him accusingly. Mrs. Arvin gave the opposing team “twenty-three,” and Alan spelled it correctly. Robert was too embarrassed to ask why his spelling was wrong, but the questioning look on his face must have revealed his bewilderment. Robert felt certain he had given the correct spelling. Mrs. Arvin said, “Robert, you omitted the h in ‘three.’” Although he knew how to spell “three”—and although he thought he had spelled it correctly—he could remember the sound of his own voice skipping from the t to the r without saying the h.

Robert had failed his team, and his chagrin was palpable. He felt his face grow redder and redder. Perspiration dripped down his neck. He had felt so confident, only to have erred and to have disappointed his team. He realized that, in the future, he could not allow himself to experience the luxury of confidence unless he had first taken every precaution to ensure correctness. One of those precautions was to take his time. He had rushed into the classroom, had immediately been given a word to spell, and had hurried to spell it. In the future, he would take a deep breath, concentrate with a steely steadiness, and not speak until he was sure that he could speak correctly. The lesson was one of the most important lessons he would ever learn.

As Halloween approached, Mrs. Arvin hung a cardboard skeleton on her classroom door. The bones of the arms and legs could swivel and hold various positions. The skeleton was taller than the children in Mrs. Arvin’s class. Halloween fell on a Tuesday, and, for an undisclosed reason, Mrs. Arvin had to be gone during the final period that day. Glen Bisel’s daughter, who was a high school student, took over the class. Mrs. Arvin had provided her with a stack of paper from the purple ditto machine in the main office. The pages retained the pungent but not unpleasant smell of the ink. They bore the outlines of a jack-o-lantern. The children were asked to color the pumpkin.

Robert and his classmates took out their crayons and set to work. While Robert preferred to create his own pictures, he enjoyed art of any kind, including coloring within the lines already laid down for him. He carefully shaded his pumpkin to make it as three-dimensional as possible. Beyond the windows, the skies were heavy with gray clouds scudding eastward and threatening rain. The students worked diligently at their drawings and gave their substitute teacher no trouble.

At the end of the period, Robert hurried home. He presented his mother with his jack-o-lantern drawing, which she appeared to appreciate. The evening became blustery. Now and then, the wind moaned. The weather was delivering the perfect atmospheric conditions for Halloween.

On the previous Saturday, after Robert and Charles’ piano lessons in Lafayette, Ida had shopped at the L. S. Ayres store, a branch of the big department store in Indianapolis. On display near the front doors were plastic Halloween masks.

“You boys, pick out your masks for trick-or-treating,” Ida had said.

The masks featured a fuzzy surface that felt almost like velvet when touched with the fingertips. Charles had selected a gray donkey mask, and Robert had chosen a brown dog mask.

When it was time to go trick-or-treating, Ida gave each of her sons an old sheet to wrap around the shoulders, concealing their identities. They had brown-paper grocery bags, which they had decorated with crayon pictures of bats, witches, and black cats. Joe drove them downtown and parked the car up the street from Grandma Rhode’s house.

Robert and Charles happily donned their new masks and wrapped the sheets tightly around themselves as the wind tried to whip the cloth away. They scurried to Grandma Rhode’s front door and knocked boisterously. When she saw them, she stood back in mock alarm and exclaimed, “Well, sir! Who might these animals be? I can hardly guess!”

“Did we fool you?” Charles asked laughingly, as both boys removed their masks.

“You most certainly did!” Grandma Rhode said.

“Trick or treat!” Robert joyfully shouted, holding forth his paper bag and waiting for the popcorn ball that he knew would be forthcoming.

Grandma Rhode and Great Aunt Margaret, who lived on opposite corners of an intersection, always got together to prepare popcorn balls for Halloween. They made the best! The balls were huge, the popcorn was tender, and the caramel was rich.

While Grandma Rhode placed a giant popcorn ball in each bag, Joe and she chatted about the weather and how they hoped the rain would hold off.

With Joe not far behind in the shadows, the boys next hammered their fists on Aunt Margaret’s door. A big smile spread across her face.

“What do we have here?” she asked. “I see a dog. He seems friendly enough. And here’s a donkey. He won’t kick, will he, Joe?”

“Trick or treat!” yelled Charles.

“I think you’re Charles, and you’re Robert. I see that you already have your popcorn balls from your grandmother, and I will give each of you another one.”

While the boys waited for Aunt Margaret to bring the sweets, the wind whistled around her house and dashed her bushes from side to side.

Robert made his popcorn balls last. He ate only one of them later that night and saved the other for another day. They were the greatest treats of his childhood days.

Joe took his sons to a few other houses in town—enough for each boy to gather four candy bars. Milky Way and Three Musketeers were Robert’s favorites.

The next day, as Robert went to school, he felt sorry that Halloween was over, but he looked forward to the lunch period. The clouds were spitting rain, and he thought it likely that Mrs. Arvin would hold a spelling bee.     

9. The Threshing Reunion ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

On Labor Day Weekend each year, Joe drove the family the hundred miles to Pontiac, Illinois, to attend the Central States Threshermen’s Reunion. The event featured around fifty steam engines, half a dozen OilPulls, and several big prairie tractors. Every day, a steam engine was belted to a thresher for a demonstration of steam-powered threshing. As the threshing ring to which Joe had belonged had only recently disintegrated, Robert was familiar with threshing machines. His parents had photographed him standing beside the Nichols & Shepard Red River Special the last year that Joe had threshed with his friend Don Akers. Then Joe had bought his first combine, an Allis–Chalmers, which replaced the threshing machine. Had the family not attended the Pontiac show each year, Robert might not have been acquainted with the steam engines that originally supplied the power to the threshers that separated the wheat and other small grain from the stalks on which the grain had grown. Joe’s mother’s brother, Uncle Charley, who had died in 1931, had taught Joe how to run farm steam engines, which Charley had run professionally. Joe loved to see the steam engines at work again—if only for a weekend in Pontiac. Robert and Charles looked forward to the annual trip to the threshing reunion.

The family scurried around before dawn to get ready to go. Ida packed a picnic lunch of tomato soup, which was kept warm in thermos bottles. She wrapped a big block of cheddar cheese with a sharp knife to make cheese sandwiches. Other bottles held milk and coffee. A loaf of bread and a freshly baked apple pie were carefully deposited in the basket. Finally, a red blanket was folded and placed on top of the basket in the trunk of the car. Cookies, as well as other snacks, were arranged beside Ida where she could monitor them.

When Robert was five, the family was scurrying around before dawn on a Sunday. Usually, the family made the trek to Pontiac on a Saturday, but, in that year, Joe had chosen Sunday so that he would not miss an important Masonic meeting on Saturday. The week before, Joe had ensured a safe trip by having Glen Bisel put plenty of air in the spare tire. Glen also made sure that the coolant passages throughout the engine were not blocked. Even though Joe would not be sitting anywhere in stopped traffic—and even though his trip was not all that long—it paid to be sure that the radiator would not overheat. Many drivers carried a jug of water to refill a radiator whose heat (and, therefore, pressure) increased beyond the pounds of resistance from the cap. Cars with clouds of steam streaming out from a raised hood were common sights along roadways. The drivers of such vehicles were forced to wait until the car cooled down before refilling the radiator.

In those days, people dressed up to attend any fair. Accordingly, Joe wore a pair of pleated slacks, a starched and ironed short-sleeved shirt having a pattern of light green fish, and a wide-brimmed straw fedora hat. Ida wore a full skirt with a green and blue floral print and a light blue blouse. The boys put on their best tan shorts and new shirts with horizontal red-white-and-blue stripes. When everyone was ready to go, the sun had not yet awakened.

“Are all the animals fed?” Ida asked Joe.

“Yes,” he replied. “I gave the cows enough feed to hold them until we get home.”

Joe and Ida had not bothered to lock the doors to the house. In those times, no one in the town had a reason to lock a door.

“You did shut off the light in the kitchen, didn’t you?” Ida asked Joe.

“Yes,” he answered, “and I made sure the light was off in the boys’ room.”

The car pulled out of the driveway and headed west.

For the first many miles, Robert was too excited to nap, but, after a while, he felt drowsy. His head nodded, and he leaned into a corner of the front seat. He remembered hearing Ida asking Joe “Are you sure we will make it there?” and Joe replying “We have a good spare.”

The next thing Robert knew, the car was parked along a road in the middle of Illinois and Joe was using a jack to lift the flat tire off the ground. The sun had arisen. Charles and Ida were standing behind Joe and watching. After Joe had changed the tire and everyone was back in the car, Ida said, “I hope the spare will get us there—and back. There won’t be any place open to work on a tire on Sunday.”

“Glen looked at the spare and said its patches were good,” Joe reassured Ida.

On went the car. Just outside Chatsworth, an all-too-familiar bumping sound began. Joe looked grim.

“What will we do now?” Ida asked.

“Somebody in Chatsworth will be able to fix a tire,” Joe said.

The car limped into town. Joe stopped at a closed service station. A couple walking to a nearby church noticed the flat.

“Bill can get you back on the road,” the man said to Joe. “He’ll be at church.”

The couple went into the church, and, soon enough, another man came out and introduced himself as Bill.

He opened the door to the service station. Before long, he had patched both tires. When Joe took out his wallet to pay Bill, Bill waved his hand and said, “You folks just go and have a good time at the reunion.”

Joe pulled into the parking area of the Pontiac 4-H fair at 11:00, giving an hour to look around before the noon whistle. Ida said she wanted to see the crafts on display at the ladies’ building while Joe and the boys walked along the line of engines. Joe and Ida agreed to meet at the car for the picnic lunch at 12:00.

Robert, Charles, and Joe strode beneath the tall trees that shaded the park. As they neared the engines, smoke scented with cylinder oil drifted among the sun-dappled leaves. Robert was a little ahead of Joe and Charles. He wandered behind an engine and watched as a woman put a shovelful of coal in the firebox. She was wearing a plaid blouse and jeans. An engineer’s cap was perched jauntily on the back of her head. She turned around, saw Robert dawdling there, and asked him, “Do you like steam engines?”

Robert was delighted that such a great person as a steam engineer would take notice of him. “Y-yes,” he stammered.

Joe and Charles stepped up.

“Does he belong to you?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” Joe replied. “His name is Robert, and this is Charles. I’m Joe Rhode.”

“I’m Doris Lindenmier, and this”—she pointed a gloved hand toward the engineer on the platform of the engine next to hers—“is my husband, Lester.” Pulling the glove from his right hand, Lester reached down from the platform of his engine to shake hands with Joe.

“I’m pleased to meet you both,” Joe said. “We’ve been coming to Pontiac every year for several years, and I’ve always enjoyed seeing your engines. My uncle was the engineer for a Reeves outfit in the teens and twenties.”

Doris nodded smartly. “They’re good engines!” she said.

Both Doris and Lester ran Reeves engines, which were parked beside one another under the trees. Lazy billows of smoke rose from their stylishly shaped smokestacks. An RN, Doris had the additional responsibility of serving as the reunion’s nurse.

Robert felt a growing fascination for farm steam engines—a fascination that would last throughout his life.

Doris, Lester, and Joe talked briefly about Joe’s uncle’s experiences on various threshing runs, and then Joe said, “I suppose we should be moseying on.”

Doris and Lester waved as Joe, Charles, and Robert walked farther down the line of steam engines. They crossed an open area, and Robert was amazed at how quietly a steam engine could come up behind them so that Joe had to take the boys’ hands and move to one side, allowing the engine to pass. “Chuff, chuff, chuff,” the engine sounded, as if it were breathing.

Just before the noon whistle, Joe brought the boys back to the car. Ida had already spread the red blanket on the soft grass in the shade of the tree beside the Chevrolet. Soon, everyone was eating lunch.

Robert did not care for tomato soup, but, on such a special occasion as getting to go to the steam engine show, he could tolerate it without complaint. He liked the cheese sandwich, and he especially liked the apple pie!

The boys laughed and covered their ears with their hands when the noon whistle took place. From the area where the steam engines were parked, the madcap whistles shrieked and tooted in deafening abandon.

Later that afternoon, Joe and the boys watched as steam threshing was demonstrated. “Rumble, rumble,” the thresher sounded, as its numerous pulleys and belts came to life. Men with pitchforks stood atop two wagons piled high with bundles of wheat. Alternating from one man to the other, their forks lifted sheaves and dropped them on the feeder with its conveyor belt that brought the bundles to the chomping knives and the spinning cylinder teeth, which knocked the grain loose. Eventually, the grain made its way through a loading tube into a wagon while the chaff and straw blew from a big tube in back onto a straw stack. The threshing machine received its power from a big belt that crossed over the flywheel of the steam engine and over the thresher’s main pulley. The two machines were separated some sixty feet. The crowd of onlookers was so large that Joe had to thread his way to the front so that Robert and Charles could get a clear view of the thresher in action. The nicely dressed members of the crowd smiled and politely made way for the boys to work their way forward.

When the threshing crew stopped so that the throng could go to the reviewing stands for the daily parade, Ida joined Joe and the boys, and they sat on the lowest bleacher. One of Robert’s favorite engines was a Keck–Gonnerman owned by Joe Weishaupt; it had Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse painted on the bunkers! Ida had spent her earliest years within a short walk of the Keck–Gonnerman steam engine factory, so she loved the Kecks exhibited in Pontiac. While Joe often stayed for the whole parade, on this occasion he said that the family might want to get an early start on the return trip to Indiana. When almost the last of the steam engines had rumbled past, Joe, Ida, Charles, and Robert left the stands and started toward the parking area.  

Joe must have had a premonition. On the way home, the thumping noise returned. Another flat! As before, Joe slowly changed the tire. Eventually, the Chevrolet pulled into the driveway and parked. There was still enough light to make it easy to milk the cows. The next day, Joe bought two new tires.     

7. The Winter ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

When snow deep enough to build snowmen finally arrived, Ida chose a Saturday afternoon to take the boys outside to help her roll the snow and sculpt a snowwoman with arms akimbo and head tilted. She added an apron. She tied a scarf over the head and under the chin. She stuck walnuts for blouse buttons from the waist to the neck. More walnuts made eyes and a mouth. From across the street, Beulah Jones called, “Is that you, Ida?”

“No,” the boys’ mother said. “I’d have a dust rag in one hand and a mop in the other.” Beulah laughed.

“A woman’s work is never done,” Beulah commented.

Having returned to the kitchen to get warm, Ida and her sons laid their brown gloves in a row along the top of the heating stove to dry. While dollops of snow slid sizzling from the gloves, their fingers tingled.

Later that same day, Robert and Charles went back outside and shuffled along, making trails in the snow so that they could play Fox and Goose. One trail ended in a circular area that they tramped down and that they called the goose’s nest. Robert was the goose. He waited in the nest until Charles was at the point farthest away. Robert then came out of the nest and ran along one of the trails. As the fox, Charles chose interconnecting trails to try to catch Robert, who tried to outsmart him and get back to the nest before he could be tagged. Eventually, though, Robert was tagged, and became the fox for the next round.

On January days with the thermometer dipping below zero, Joe used a butter knife to work raggedy strips of torn flannel cloth into the cracks around the doors so as to try to conserve heat from the stoves.

There were two Norge dark-brown stoves that burned heating oil. One was in the living room, and the other was in the kitchen. Both stood on squares of metal with rolled edges that were made for the purpose. The stove in the living room had a mica window on the side. Whenever Robert had a nightmare and wanted to be with his parents, he had to go from the boys’ bedroom through the corner of the living room to get to his parents’ bedroom, but Robert was afraid to pass by the stove window. In the dark, the wicked flames scared him. Sometimes, he knelt shivering for what seemed an hour before he could summon the courage to run past the window. He would shake his father’s elbow until Joe would awaken enough to reach over, pick Robert up, and put him between him and Robert’s mother. Sandwiched between his parents, Robert felt safe.

On wintry weekends, if the sun were shining on powdery snow, Jim Eberle would harness his horses to a sleigh and go riding around the school playground. Robert watched in fascination from across State Route 26. With bells jingling, the pair of light brown horses appeared to enjoy the exercise, and the riders in the sleigh obviously had a great time. Their laughter drifted across the road on the breezes that made the dust of snow twinkle in the sunshine. It was quite a picture: the red sleigh sliding along, the tan horses with a lively step, the feathery patches of snow sailing down from the pine boughs, and the bluest of blue shadows here and there.

Among Joe’s winter chores was keeping what he called the “horse tank” free of ice long enough for the cows to drink water. From the middle of the large galvanized metal tank protruded a rusty iron stove. With a poker, Joe would slide the lid open, toss lumps of coal inside, and stir up the fire before shoving the lid back in place. During the coldest stretches, even the water nearest the stove would glaze over. Joe used a hatchet to chop through the thinnest ice. The cows would nudge him out of their way so they could slurp the water with frozen chunks bobbing on the surface. The Holsteins had to stretch their necks to reach the watery circle surrounding the stove; the thick ice of the tank’s perimeter jutted up in places like a miniature version of Pine Creek.

Sometimes, to Robert’s delight, Charles would consent to pull the sled that their father had been given as a Christmas gift in 1926. Robert would ride while Charles tugged on the clothes line tied to the handle bar. Going on thirty-three years of age, the sled still pulled fairly easily when the snow was sufficiently slick. The other sled, which had been given to the boys’ grandmother in 1890 and had been built by her uncle, the blacksmith Tommy Eleazer Fenton, resisted being pulled. While there were hills for sledding near Pine Creek, Ida prohibited the boys from participating in such activity that she felt was too dangerous. When he was a boy, Joe hit his chin on the sled while dashing down a slope named “Loop the Loop.” Snow kept the cut from bleeding, but, when Joe returned home, his mother had to put gauze and a bandage on it. The boys’ father had a scar from that cut, and that was enough for the boys’ mother to warn them away from leaving the fenced yard to visit the hills along the creek.

Once, on a drive toward Rainsville, Ida pointed and yelled, “Stop the car!” Joe brought the Chevrolet to a halt. “It’s a deer!” she whispered in tones of awe. Robert and Charles looked in the direction of their mother’s hand. Standing on a bank of snow at the edge of a wood was a doe. If her ears had not twitched, she could have been described as a statue. There were no laws protecting deer. For many years, they had been hunted. Seeing one was a rare event! The family waited as long as the deer waited. The scene resembled a magnificent stage. The backdrop was the purple and tan and blue forest with snow lining the branches. In front, there arose the drift sparkling with millions of multicolored spangles. With grace and dignity, the deer watched with her soft, alert eyes. Eventually, she turned and slipped silently among the trees. “Wow!” Charles muttered.

On another occasion that winter, the boys were riding with their father in his GMC pickup. It was rated a half-ton model, but it had a ¾-ton bed. It was painted a pale silvery blue. It boasted a 1940s underdash heater that was an aftermarket installation by Glen Bisel, who had found it in a wrecked Oldsmobile car. The heater was shaped like a shield and had two doors with round metal doorknobs. When a door was opened—or even when the doors were closed—the heat poured out. Robert always sat between Joe and Charles on the bench seat. The heater was close to Robert’s knees. He compulsively drew his legs back into the seat as far from the heater as he could get.

Joe had driven north onto the true prairie that was even flatter than the land in the vicinity of Pine Village. He crossed a rail line that stretched perfectly straight in both directions and pulled onto the gravel in front of the tall elevator at Templeton.

“I thought you should see the steam engine while you still can,” Joe said to his sons, as they tumbled from the pickup.

In a building attached to one side of the towering elevator was a whispering steam engine with quietly revolving flywheel. Robert watched as the connecting rod transformed linear motion into circular motion. What seemed to Robert a massive mound of corncobs awaited use as fuel, along with coal as iridescent as ravens’ wings. Now and then a drip sizzled somewhere.

“It won’t be long before we switch over to a gasoline motor,” the engineer said to Joe.

“It won’t be half as much fun,” Joe said, smiling.

The engineer grinned and shook his head.

Joe had ensured that Charles and Robert would remember steam power. When Robert was only two, Joe had booked his family on one of the last trips of the steam locomotive named James Whitcomb Riley (after the famous Hoosier poet) from Lafayette to Indianapolis, where everyone had lunch with Joe’s father, Seymour, whom the boys always called “Grandpa Rhode.” Further, Joe was always pleased when the family car had to stop at the railroad tracks on the west side of West Lafayette to let a steam locomotive pull its train through the intersection. The occurrence happened often enough for Robert to remember the shiny black boilers and the distinctive sounds as the last of the steam locomotives chuffed through the crossing. Soon, diesels replaced the steam engines. Now Joe had gone the proverbial extra mile to have Robert and Charles witness a steam-powered elevator.

As the days grew gradually longer, Old Man Winter loosened his grip on the countryside. Icicles crashed to the ground, spots of black earth showed through melting snow, and everywhere were sounds of trickling water. Joe began to talk of plowing and disking. Robert thought how he would soon turn the ripe old age of five!