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!      

 

5. The Old Barn ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

On a warm summer’s evening, Joe brought Robert along in the 1951 GMC pickup through the barnyard and through the pasture to the edge of the cornfield. Robert opened and closed the gates for his father. Joe then began using a machete to cut cornstalks, which were still green but had well-formed ears. Robert lifted the piles of cornstalks in the back of the pickup, which had the tailgate down. The Holsteins in the pasture could foresee the treat that was coming, and they gathered near the gate that the truck would pass through when it exited the cornfield. With the stalks about three feet deep, Joe climbed back behind the steering wheel, and Robert stood by the gate. Joe drove into the pasture, and the cows strode over to mill about the back of the truck. Robert jumped onto the running board, balanced his knee on the hot metal of the rear fender, steadied himself, and climbed over the short side panel into the truck bed.

“Ready?” Joe asked through the open window.

“Yep,” Robert replied.

The GMC crept forward, and Robert slid three cornstalks over the edge of the tailgate. No sooner had the corn fallen to the ground than the lead Holsteins were standing over it, finding the sweet green ears. Meanwhile, Robert shoved a few more cornstalks onto the ground in front, and cows of lesser status in the pecking order came around to take their turn to feast on the corn. The GMC kept inching along until all the corn had been shoved out. The herd would keep working on the corn until only traces of it remained.

Next, Joe and Robert drove through town to feed the Hereford herd at the Old Barn. Joe’s farm on the east side of Pine Village was really two farms joined catty-corner. The smaller farm bordered State Route 55 and could be accessed from the farm that bordered State Route 26 by driving along dusty farm lanes, through many gates, and across the corner that joined the two farms, but driving through the town meant having to pass through only two gates.

Before Joe was born, the Gady brothers ran a butcher shop just north of the intersection of the two main highways in Pine Village. Elmer Gady bought the stock and Bill Gady prepared the meat, which the Ogborns sold in their grocery. The Gadys had a large barn on their farm just south of town. Elmer always thought “big.” He shipped in western lambs that were fed in the barn, which boasted nearly 6,500 square feet under roof on the first floor alone. To accommodate more and more sheep, Elmer added wing after wing to the barn, making a large barn a huge barn. He and Bill were earning handsome profits.

Elmer decided he could afford to mortgage his farm and speculate on the Board of Trade. Elmer lost his farm and the butcher shop. He became a day laborer. Bill, meanwhile, moved to Chicago to work for a big farm, but Bill fell from a streetcar and broke his back. He returned to Pine Village. He walked stooped over. Frank Ogborn’s department store and grocery hired Bill to take orders and make deliveries.

The Old Barn, as Joe referred to it, was still standing, although it had not seen paint in so long that the boards were silvery gray, the roof rusty red.

Just outside the barn on the east side was a stock tank that once featured a windmill to pump the water. Now the pump was electric. Joe kept a long stick, which he used to push up the curled rod on the side of the switch box that started the motor. The box was affixed high on a pole, so that cattle could not accidentally start the motor by rubbing the box. The pipe that delivered the water to the tank was rusted through in several places. By covering the end of the pipe with his left hand, Robert made a water fountain through a quarter-sized hole in the top of the pipe. He drank the clear water that came from so deep down that it was icy cold.

South of Pine Village stood a large building that housed a rest home for elderly patients. Despite its size, the building was only the small remnant of what earlier generations had known as a vast spa named Mudlavia: nearly all of it long gone by the time that Robert’s family visited. Joe and Robert often stopped by Pig Gady’s room. Ernest Alvin Gady, a 1910 graduate of Pine Village High School, had acquired the nickname “Pig,” and it was just too good not to stick. Everyone knew him as Pig, and many had forgotten that his real name was Ernest. Pig was Elmer Gady’s son and had played in the Old Barn when he was a lad. For a brief time, Pig had taught lower grades, but his father’s downfall prompted him to seek independence. In 1913, when he celebrated his twentieth birthday, he decided upon the life of a transient laborer and lit out for the West.

When Robert and Joe visited him, the 74-year-old Pig wore brown plaid flannel shirts and jeans. Whenever he saw Robert, his eyes lit up.

“Say, what do you know?” Pig asked, grinning and slapping his knee. Then came the best part. Pig would lean forward and begin telling stories of his train-hopping days as an itinerant thresherman. The walls of Pig’s room in Mudlavia faded away, replaced in Robert’s imagination by the broad expanse of Kansas wheat fields and Kansas skies.

Pig was running for his life down an alley in Burlington, Kansas. He clutched a broad-brimmed straw hat in one hand and seemed to be swatting at hornets, he was sprinting so fast! He kept glancing over his shoulder, until he was sure he had lost the Industrial Workers of the World members who were chasing him. Pig slowed to a walk, his sides aching, his heart pounding. The nest that Pig had accidentally run into was not a nest of hornets but a nest of I.W.W. men, otherwise known as Wobblies. They had made vague threats to try to force Pig to join their socialist order. Pig wanted nothing to do with the I.W.W. because he would not hide shrapnel inside wheat bundles to wreck threshing machines and bring work to a halt. “Why would anybody want to bust up a separator?” Pig wondered, shaking his head in consternation. Higher wages for workers was one thing, but sabotage was another—and sabotage was criminal!

“What am I gonna do?” Pig mumbled, sauntering along. A colorful poster for the Barnum & Bailey Circus caught his eye. It was plastered to a tall fence made of rough-cut boards. With his pocketknife, Pig cut a small red rectangle from the poster. He slipped the card into the pocket of his shirt. He smiled and strode confidently along. Heading north on Third Street to find work as a thresherman, he encountered two men he thought might be Wobblies. He flashed the corner of the red rectangle and winked. One of the men produced an I.W.W. red membership card from his pocket and nodded. The Wobblies paid Pig no further notice. He strode past them and began whistling a merry tune.

Pig was fortunate enough to find employment as a spike pitcher for threshing rings in eastern Kansas. “Much of the wheat out in Kansas was winter wheat,” he told Robert. “It was spiky and tough, but it sure did grow well there.” He fondly recalled the steam engines belted to the threshing machines in the barnyards, but, in western Kansas and in states farther north, he came to know threshing on a vast scale with fields of wheat shocks stretching toward the horizon and with half a dozen columns of smoke indicating the locations of various steam engines and crews under the command of custom threshermen. Pig slept beneath the stars. He slept the sleep of a young man who has done hard work, honest work.

Pig’s stories often led back to 1913, and, in his mind, Robert was there, too, jumping down from the boxcar and looking for work. A custom thresherman, scrutinizing the hopeful unemployed men who had gathered near the train station in some Kansas town, chose Pig (and Robert) to pitch bundles. Pig (and Robert) climbed into a wagon and was hauled to where the work was to be done. Pig (and Robert) was doing what he loved best: lifting sheaves high above his head and expertly dropping them for the bundle loader perched atop the wagon.

When Joe and Robert would leave Mudlavia after visiting with Pig, Robert left with his vision expanded. Walking past the goldfish ponds of the once lavish resort, Robert peered at the flashing orange fish beneath the rippling surface that reflected the clouds. He thought of Pig flashing the red card and grinning. To Robert, the past appeared to be separated from the present only by a rippling film.

Robert thought of Pig while helping Joe load the pickup with freshly cut corn stalks for the herd of Herefords that had gathered in the pasture beside the Old Barn. Then Robert repeated the process of scattering the stalks while Joe drove the GMC slowly forward.

5. The Holidays ... THE FARM IN PINE VILLAGE

After Charles returned from school one day, he and Robert were playing Blob when their mother announced that they were going to the Masonic Lodge to see Santa Claus that evening. Blob was a game that the boys had invented. In previews at the movie theater in the nearby town of Oxford, enough of the plot of the movie by the same name had been revealed to suggest the game, without necessitating a viewing of the horror film—which their mother would never have permitted, anyway.

One of the brothers was designated “the Blob.” He covered himself with an old blanket and huddled on the floor while the other brother hid. Then the Blob searched for the hidden brother. While he searched, he periodically knelt and rolled around on the floor while keeping the blanket over him. When he found the brother, his object was to cast the blanket over him while making horrifying snarling sounds. If he failed to get the blanket to fall over his brother, he had to crouch beneath the blanket and make muttering noises until his brother had a chance to hide again. The search repeated. If he was lucky enough to drop the blanket over his brother, the brother became the Blob, and the proverbial tables were turned.

With a visit to Santa Claus in the offing, the brothers soon found themselves having to dress in their Sunday best. Because temperatures were chilly, they had to don long underwear. Robert had trouble folding the bottom of the leg of the underwear and stuffing it inside his sock. After he had pulled on his woolen trousers, he had to put on his corrective shoes and tie their laces. His mother had repeatedly demonstrated how to form a loop and to hold it in one hand while doubling the other end through the loop so as to form a second loop. Robert could almost achieve that much, but, when he tried to pull the two loops tight, the end of the one he had doubled invariably slipped through the first loop. He was left with one loop, a loose knot, and a long strand of lace that he would trip over, if he were to leave things as they were.

On his own, Robert had learned to form one loop in one hand and a second loop in his other hand and to tie the two loops together. He assumed (incorrectly) that speed was important, so he practiced forming the loops as rapidly as possible. That way, he could tell his mother, “See? My way is just as fast.” Ida wanted him to tie his shoes the way she had shown him, and she made him try and try again. Finally, Robert’s father said, “Ida, he gets his shoes tied just as nicely his way as our way. Why not let him have his way?” Reluctantly, she consented. (Robert would tie his shoes his way for the rest of his life!)

On this occasion, Robert tied his shoes successfully. Next, his brother and he had to zip up their parkas, put on their stocking caps, slip the hoods of their parkas over the stocking caps, wrap their mufflers around their faces, and put on their gloves. Charles and their mother climbed into the back seat of the 1950 Chevrolet, and Robert and their father took the front seat. Robert always got “car sick” in the back, so he had to ride in the front. His mother thought it was a reasonable concession to put Robert in front.

The boys were perspiring under their parkas, even after the short drive to the Masonic Lodge. The two-story building was on the south side of an alley that led westward from State Route 55 not far from the intersection of State Route 26. Some thirty years earlier, the first floor had served as Ray Ogborn’s garage and automotive repair shop. The boys’ grandmother Kosie had a brother, Charles Albert Cobb, nicknamed Charley or Cobbie, who died in 1931. His widow, Margaret Wagner, was the beloved family member that the boys and their parents called “Great Aunt Margaret.” She eventually had married the veterinarian, Doc Goddard, but he, too, died before the boys were born. Residents of the town continued to refer to her as Mrs. Margaret Goddard. Ray Ogborn had purchased the automotive business, but not the building, from Charley, so Great Aunt Margaret transferred ownership of the first floor to her sister Louise and Louise’s husband, Pete Thurman.

To reach the Masonic rooms on the second floor, the boys and their parents trudged down the dark alley. Robert kept turning his head from side to side so that he could see beyond the fake fur that surrounded the hood. Half dead vines shuddered in the cold breeze along the brick wall. Traces of snow highlighted the weeds along the foundation of the building across from the Masonic Lodge. The family passed through a doorway at the very back of the old building and started up the dimly illuminated stairs. Robert tripped more than once. Several of the steps creaked.

They entered the main hall. A huge potbelly stove stood in the center of the room. So much wood had been fed to it that it was glowing red in places and was radiating a tropical heat that melted the frost on the tall windows. Chairs were pushed back around the walls. The boys were thankful to remove their coats, but, even then, they were too hot. They waited patiently for Santa Claus. Well, they knew that this was not the real Santa. He came without being seen on Christmas Eve and left presents for the boys in their very own home. This Santa was a well-meaning member of the lodge. Soon, they heard him ho-ho-hoing. To the adults’ applause, he burst upon the gathering. He was wearing a flimsy Santa costume with a rather poor excuse for a cotton beard, but he was most certainly jolly! He handed small gifts and candy to all the children. The leader of the lodge said a few inspiring words about Christmas, and the event was over. The adults stood conversing with one another far longer than Robert’s patience could hold out, but he knew better than to tug on his mother’s sleeve. Eventually, Ida smiled down at Charles and Robert and asked, “Are you boys ready to go home?” They nodded politely.

On went the parkas, the stocking caps, the mufflers, and the gloves. Once the family was back inside the Chevrolet, Ida suggested that they see the Christmas lights. Joe drove around Pine Village, which took relatively little time, as the town was quite small. Next, he headed north on State Route 55 all the way to Oxford. The stores that year were carrying GE “ice bulbs,” which were pale blue Christmas lights that were shaped like globes and covered with “ice crystals,” as they were called, and Elvis’ recording of “Blue Christmas” had been playing on radio stations for two years. Even so, the family was surprised when Joe drove past Doc Scheurich’s ranch house in the woods just to the south of Oxford. All blue lights outlined the home! The blue was such a departure from the multi-colored bulbs that the boys and their parents were impressed.

Once the family was home, Joe played 45 RPM records on the Victrola, which resembled a piece of furniture and which had an honored place in the living room. Twin doors with ornamental ovals in the gleaming finish swung open to reveal a radio and record player, as well as a fabric-covered speaker, on the right and shelves for storing 45 records on the left. Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” was a favorite!

Christmas Eve fell on Wednesday, and the family went to the Methodist Church for the evening service. Joe’s father, Seymour, had come from Indianapolis to spend the holiday with Joe, Ida, and the boys. Grandpa Rhode gave everyone a ride in his black 1951 Hudson Commodore 8 Sedan. The family disembarked from the comfortable car and took the stairs to the sanctuary. For the remainder of his life, Robert would retain a detailed memory of how holy the church appeared that night. Candles stood in the windowsills, and their flames reflected from the undulations in the stained glass. Real evergreen boughs surrounded them, and the scent of pine filled the room. People spoke softly as they took their seats along the pews. Mrs. Brutus, the organist, launched into “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” Everyone stood and began to sing. Robert long remembered the twinkle in his father’s eyes and the sparkling light reflected in the glistening eyes of his mother, whom the song touched deeply.