CHAPTER FOURTEEN - REUNION

The rest of the week saw some accomplishments. The new calves were doing well. On Wednesday Joe accompanied Butch on the pilgrimage to Roger with our few extra barrels of sour milk for his hogs. Everything was reported as going well over there. When Roger realized he had more of an outlet for the meat, he decided to kill the biggest hog they had. Of course Joe and Butch aided, and then each brought a good portion of meat for each household. Fresh pork for supper; it even gave a few jars of leftovers that were canned for another meal. We also received four new little piglets to expand our swine herd. The ones we had were growing well and Joe said there would be one large enough to butcher next week for ourselves.
Pork wasn’t the only meat we had. Larry had noticed a flock of Canadian geese landing regularly in the pasture behind the spring. Prior to the collapse, if it would have been legal goose season, he would have just grabbed his shotgun and pursued his quarry. With the mindset of saving ammunition he decided to try and trap them instead. Dad and Harvey said when they were youngsters they would try to catch pigeons in the barn by using a stick with a string tied to it to hold up a box. They would bait the trap with a few kernels of corn, hide behind some hay bales, and wait until a pigeon was under the box, then yank the string and catch the bird. Well, it was suppose to work like that. Dad wasn’t sure if they had ever caught one. Harvey seemed to think they had. Ah, what a few score years will do to brain cells. This method wasn’t going to work for the geese, however, which were ten times larger.
Instead, Larry rounded up some muskrat traps Wednesday evening and indiscriminately set them around the area the geese were usually feeding. Of course, he had to stake them well into the ground or any trapped geese would simply fly away with the trap. He knew the geese were arriving every morning just a little before breakfast, so he, Dad and I went to the pasture about an hour before to check the traps. Sure enough, a possum had wondered into a trap. With Dad’s help we were able to release the trap from the critter’s foot and shush it away from the area. The trap didn’t appear to do the possum much harm. We retreated about forty yards from the traps to the closest woods and then made a makeshift blind to hide behind until the geese came.
“Do you think those traps will hold a goose?” Dad asked Larry.
“I hope so,” he answered. “Least ways until we can run out and grab them.”
“You know as soon as we run out, the others will fly away,” I said.
“Yeah, I know,” Larry retorted, “we’ll have to be patient and wait until two or three are caught, and then rush for them all at once.”
“I’m also thinking, as soon as one trap snaps, they’ll all take off, but I wonder,” Dad thought out loud. “Alyssa, run over to the cornfield across the way and bring us back an ear of corn. Hurry!” I did, and came back puffing to where they were now standing out at the edge of the trapping area.
“Here, Dad,” I wheezed out.
“Thanks,” he said. “Now just shell a few kernels,” he said to Larry, “and carefully place them under the trap, right next to the trip plate. Let’s see what happens.”
“Anything’s worth a try,” Larry remarked as he placed about dozen kernels as Dad had directed. Then Dad took a handful of corn and just flung it out beyond the traps. Back to the blind we flew. And just in time, for within ten minutes, I heard the distinct honk of a goose.
“You know,” Larry whispered, “yesterday there was no corn here. Don’t you think that will make them suspicious?”
“Perhaps,” Dad softly replied, “but there was some undigested corn kernels in the cow manure. That’s some of what they were feeding on; it should seem familiar to them. Now don’t anyone move; looks like they’re coming in right above us.”
They did. Amazingly, they didn’t spot us. They circled the pasture twice; surveying the situation. Then finally set their wings and drifted to Earth just short of the traps. They were noisy; there was loud honking and some were hissing. I wondered if we make noise like that when we’re eating. They soon wandered into the area where the traps were set.
SNAP! One of the traps closed right on the head of a feeding goose. And then a tremendous commotion followed. Screeching and honking and as they ran to take flight, more stepped in the traps.
“NOW!” Larry yelled, “just grab them by their necks, Alyssa. Hold them till I can help you.”
The short forty yards we were from the geese seemed like one hundred as we sprinted out. Larry ran for the goose furthest away, Dad for the closest, the one with its head in the trap and I chose one in between. It was a flurry of wings and beaks. Dad secured his in no time. Larry’s wiggled free before he reached it, but he quickly switched his sights to a fourth one before it could free itself. He got it, and I got mine, but not before it nipped me in the hand. It hurt like crazy, but I still hung on though, until Larry had dispatched his and came back to finish mine. Success: goose for supper.
That same afternoon the first water pumping occurred. The milk tank, hot water tank and the shower heads were now in place. The building, including the installation of insulation and the flooring had been completed. The water line had been laid on top the ground and the pump set up in the cellar with a bicycle drive. To prime the pump, the boys poured water into the line before making the final connections. Josh proudly hopped onto the bicycle seat and started pedaling away. Sure enough, it worked, as water started flowing into the milk tank. Not that anyone in the cellar could tell, though. We were too far away.
“One of the disadvantages of this set-up,” Aaron said. “Someone has to watch the level of water in the tank, and then tell the pedaler when the tanks full.”
Dennis added, “But we decided to keep the pump in the cellar, so the person doing all the work would not have to be in the heat of the butcher house. Should make the job a little more bearable. How’s it pedal, Josh?”
“Not bad at all,” he answered. “I’m sure Mel could do it. Heck I even think Alyssa, Lynette or Amy could too.”
“Well, let one of them try,” Uncle Jeremiah said. “Go ahead Amy, hop on.” So Amy hopped on and pedaled away. Lynette took a turn and so did I. It wasn’t that hard. Nor did you have to pedal fast to make it work. Whatever speed you pedaled, the water still flowed.
“I think you girls have won an assignment,” Jeremiah continued. “As a team, keep the milk tank full of water. You can take turns. Remember someone has to watch the water level and another relay the message into the cellar. You have the time freed up because you’ll no longer have to bring as much water from the spring with Brutus. Just some for Poppop’s house, I guess. We’re hoping one day we can adapt a twelve volt motor to the pump and then you’ll be relieved. In the meantime, be timely with the job. The longer you put it off, the more pedaling you’ll have to do to fill the tank, and the greater the risk of the tank running dry. Got it?”
“I guess so,” Amy answered for us.
“Don’t worry,” Dennis added, “we’ll be around here to help you if you need us. We still have some things to finish up. The line needs to be buried and some plumbing completed to make the showers operable. No showers tonight yet, everyone. First we have to install some kind of tub above the shower head. In it, each showerer will have to mix the hot and cold water to his or her taste. They’ll be lines coming from the cold and hot water tanks that will have valves on that you’ll have to open to let the water in. Then you’ll be ready to shower. We should have that ready by tomorrow or Saturday evening.”
Even as we were completing the construction of the showering house, the boys still found time to sneak in some of the other projects. With Barry’s help they had rigged up a bicycle and an alternator on the back porch to charge batteries. It was mobile so you could carry it different places instead of carrying the batteries all over. Plus you could move it to the shade when it was hot, inside when it was cold, or under roof when it rained. It was temporary we hoped, as Joe and Larry were getting closer with their windmill project.
The water pump, furnace, and lights in the barn weren’t the only applications for twelve volt current that necessitated charging batteries. For by Friday they had installed a starter motor from our old Ford Fairmont on the wash machine. At first, the washer ran way too fast, but after some adjustments with the gearing, they slowed it enough to keep it in the building. The agitator ran much faster than it was designed to, but we’d just power it on for two, two and a half minutes at a time, as recommended by Aaron. He just wasn’t sure if the motor would hold up if we ran it continuously. Mind you, only the agitator operated, not the spin cycle, nor any of the automatic controls. It was simply “go” or “stop”. We still had to fill the tub by hand; once with hot water for washing and again with cold for rinsing. We used a set of hoses that branched off from the lines going to the shower tub. The boys had installed a hand nozzle to drain the water out of the tub. And, of course, we also had to squeeze the water out of every piece of laundry; no wringer had shown up. But it beat all the pounding and rubbing we had done to get the clothing clean with just a tub of soapy water the week before. Poppop had done a good job whittling some clothespins for us to use, but then his woodworking skills were shifted to a new project. He started manufacturing hay rakes.
We had garden rakes and lawn rakes, but their tines were too short and way too close together to rake long stem hay like Larry was going to mow. The hay would constantly be sticking in the rakes. Poppop had such an old style wooden rake, so he had one for a pattern. We rounded up every old handle we could find for him to attach a two and one half foot head onto. In each head, he used an old brace and bit to auger holes about five inches apart, and then he inserted some tines he had made from any wooden rod stock he could find. He would have to whittle and scrape them to just the right dimension. In some of the holes he used a little wood glue he had found to keep the tine in place, but usually the fit was tight enough to keep the tine from pulling out when in use. The finished product had seven tines sticking seven or eight inches from the head. We produced eight rakes in all. Saturday morning Poppop, Dad, and I carried the rakes to the equipment shed for presentation to Harvey.
We found Joe there with Harvey, who had his eyes glued to the sky. The last couple days he always had a watchful eye on the weather.
“Something’s going to give,” he said, “I can feel it. We’ll still have to wait before we start mowing. Larry’s sure getting itchy to go at it, but he can hold his horses a little longer. Ah, those are some fine rakes you got there. Looks like what, eight people can be kept busy raking. That’s good. Put them on that wagon over there.”
The wagon already had four scythes and six sickles, all recently sharpened, plus fourteen pitchforks on it, ready for Brutus to pull up to Butch’s. There was also a box full of work gloves and a toolbox with sharpening stones and some other tools that could be used to repair any implement that might break.
“We’ve a few more pitchforks around here to take along. With those that Butch has, we should be able to put a tool into everyone’s hands. It’s a shame we don’t have that old ground drive hay rake that you and my father had when we were kids,” Harvey said to Poppop. “Brutus could have easily pulled it. Do you remember it?”
“I do,” Dad jumped in, “it had a metal seat on it. I spent many enjoyable hours seated on it when my grandfather was raking hay. Isn’t it still here? Up in the woods with some of the other junked farm implements?”
“No, it’s gone,” Harvey replied. “Last winter scrap iron hit $8.50 per hundred weight. Just a year earlier, it was only worth four dollars. So Larry and I hauled three loads of scrap metal to the salvage yard. The rake was on one of the loads. It’s probably being turned into a Chinese missile right now.”
“Probably not,” Joe said. “things have moved too slowly the last four months to get it that far. It could be in the pipeline somewhere on route, but more than likely it’s still at the yard in that gigantic mountain of shredded steel that they had. You are, however, correct about the reason the price jumped so dramatically. China’s need of iron created tremendous demand for the commodity. And not only iron, but also aluminum and copper, like Titus had said on Tuesday night.”
“So maybe in this case,” Dad inquired, “the rise of metal prices was caused by true market factors, increased demand and short supply? And not the currency being inflated?”
“Maybe some of both,” Joe continued. “China’s need of all the metals created the demand. The increased demand caused the higher prices. Because China had to pay more for the scrap, that actually helped lower our trade deficit a little, plus retire some of that debt we owed China. But it might also have irritated them to the point that they made the move they did to change to the Euro and do us in. Yet in this country, we unsuspectingly benefited from the increased prices of scrap metals; least ways those of us that had some to sell. But then again, maybe the price for the metals was rocketed skyward by the inflating of our currency, just like the prices of almost everything else kept climbing. Who knows?”
“Bottom line,” lamented Harvey, “is that we never seem to learn from history. Before World War Two we sold our scrap to Japan so they could build the ships, planes and bombs to go to war with half the world. Seventy years later, we do the same damn thing.”
“Extremely ironic,” Dad agreed, “the richest country in the world, maybe only second to Russia in raw materials, gives the things we now need away to our enemy.”
“Water under the bridge,” Harvey concluded, “no sense looking back; time to go forward. Soon time to make hay.”

To be continued…. Mort