Dad and I accompanied Joe and the pastor in toward the butcher house. Dad turned to Barry and said, “Why don’t you come also? I’d like you to relate some of the technical accomplishments we’ve done around here.”
“Sure,” said Barry. On the way in, Barry, Joe and Dad started filling in the reverend about all the things we had done with motors, the water pump, the alternators, the windmill, and the batteries. They intended to show him the showers, oven and wash machine, but when we entered the butcher house, Mom and the other women took over the conversation. It was the same questions the men had asked, and the same answers. He told them where his family lived, where he got the horse, what things were keeping him busy, how everyone was doing.
Mom offered him drink and food of course and then inquired, “How are people really doing? Are there some specific people we should pray for?”
“Well,” Reverend Schneider answered, “there really are some people out there who are hurting. Not people who are starving or without shelter; the community is meeting those needs, at least so far. But there’s quite a bit of depression. They’re asking questions like: How did this happen? Why did this happen? How will we make it through the winter? There are some who are separated from loved ones and don’t even know where they are. It’s tough. I can only soothe them so much. It’ll take strong faith, perseverance, trust in Jesus, and lots of prayer as you rightly acknowledged. So pray for all those people, but there is one couple who could definitely use specific prayer.”
“Who would that be?” Jean asked.
“You know Jennie and Bob Prince from church?” he asked.
“Sure,” Jean replied, “something wrong with one of them?”
“Physically they’re fine, but you know their son, Mark, is in the Navy?”
“Oh, that’s right,” answered Mom, “where is he stationed?”
“That’s the problem,” the reverend answered, “No one knows. Last they heard from him was in mid-May. At the time, his ship was in the Indian Ocean. Haven’t heard a word since. They’re really taking it hard and just letting the worry get the best of them.”
“They have some cause to worry,” Grandmom said. “He could be dead I suppose, but there hasn’t been mail for two months. How could he write home? He’s probably part of the force we’re using to protect our shores. He’s doing his duty and serving his country and I bet he’s proud to do it. The service probably wouldn’t let him go, the way things are right now. But if they did, how would he get here from whatever part of the world he’s in? He’s probably just as worried about his folks as they are about him. Jennie and Bob and Mark do need our prayers - and everyone else who’s hurting. If you’re finished eating, Reverend, why don’t we pray right now?”
“Great idea,” answered the reverend, “and I am finished. Why don’t we all sit around the table and hold hands? But first, is anyone here in need of healing?”
Joe replied, “My back hasn’t quite been the same since we mowed that last field of hay.”
“Then sit on my right, next to me, and I’ll lay hands on you. In James chapter 5 verse 14 he writes: ‘Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer made in faith will make the sick person well…’. I have a little vial of olive oil in my pocket, just for these occasions.”
Sandy sat on the other side of her husband and laid her free hand on his back as well. Dad coaxed a very uncomfortable Barry in position on the other side of the minister. And then Dad sat next to him. We all held hands and Reverend Schneider anointed Joe with a dab of oil and then prayed. He didn’t pray terribly long, as he sometimes could, but when he finished he didn’t let go of Barry’s or Joe’s hands.
He continued, “I have a strong feeling that someone else here is in pain, too. Physical perhaps, but maybe spiritual as well. Is there someone else in need?”
There was silence as we glanced around the table. Then Barry started sobbing.
“What is it, brother?” the pastor asked. “How can Jesus help you?”
It was hard for him. He stumbled a few words, took a couple breaths, and then restarted, “I’ve known my brother here on my left ever since grade school. Later he was a good customer at my repair business. We’d share a lot of things and he knew what my physical problems were.” He paused, trying to compose himself.
Reverend Schneider aided by asking, “And what is the difficulty you have?”
“My breathing,” Barry replied. “I have emphysema; smoked too many years.”
He paused again, so Dad jumped in, “Jesus can help you with that difficulty; we can pray for you, like the scripture the reverend quoted instructed us to do.”
Barry sobbed again and then took another deep breath before blurting out, “That’s the real difficulty! I don’t know God! Just a few years ago, when my emphysema started becoming more serious, you stood right in my garage. I’ll never forget it. You offered to pray for me, for healing. You quoted those passages from James, but there was more to it and that’s where I fell short. You told me it depended on both the faith of the person making the prayer and the faith of the person receiving it. I told you it was no use then, because I didn’t believe in any of that stuff, or a word similar to that. I could tell you were hurt, but it was the truth. You countered well enough by saying something like, ‘Well, maybe today’s not the day, God’s timing, He can do it. I’ll still pray for you’.”
“I wonder if today is the day?” he concluded.
“Praise Jesus!” Reverend Schneider exclaimed. “Today can be the day! It’s your decision. Jesus is waiting with open arms to receive you. Now here’s the rest of that passage that you heard those few years ago: ‘…the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.’ Have you sinned?”
“That’s an easy one,” Barry replied, “of course I have.”
“Do you believe Jesus is real?”
“That’s harder, I did go to Sunday School and I do remember the stories, but how could I say ‘no’ with all the evidence of Him in this community?”
“Open your heart and think harder. Faith doesn’t require evidence. What you see around here is a product of the faith, not the other way around. Is Jesus real to you?”
Barry looked intently at the minister, and then at Dad, and then skyward and then finally, quietly declared through teary eyes, “Yes, I do believe in Jesus.”
“Praise the Lord,” many voices echoed.
“And that he died for your sins, even if you really don’t understand all this now, and that you will be forgiven by your faith in Him because he loves you, and that He can heal you, and that you’ll be able to abide in Him forever?” Reverend Schneider concluded.
“Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes,” cried Barry. And so did a few other people, Dad included. And more ‘praise the Lord’s' were heard. The pastor anointed Barry and then prayed for healing. This time he prayed longer, a prayer filled with joy.
“How does it feel to be born again?” Dad asked Barry when the prayer was over.
“Born again?”
“It’s what Jesus called it. You have a new life now, the old is gone. It will be different. You will still have troubles, but one thing you’ll always have is Jesus by your side. Relish it.”
“I think I will,” Barry replied.
“I’ll have to be getting on my way,” Reverend Schneider said. “Thanks for the meal. Is there anything I should be on the look out for you?”
“Roosters,” Mom said as she packaged up some pork and string beans for the pastor to take home.
“Roosters?” he inquired.
“We only have laying hens here and at Butch and Clare’s. None of our eggs are fertile. If we’re going to increase our egg production, and we have the corn to do so, we need to hatch some broods of chicks. But we need some roosters to make it happen. If you get my drift?”
“Yes, I understand,” the pastor answered, “I’ll be on the lookout.”
Leave it for Mom to bring practicality into a moving moment.
“Oh, one other thing,” he continued. “The other ministers in the area are making an effort to observe World Wide Communion on its usual date, the first Sunday in October. We feel we need to bring as many followers together as we can that day, not only to honor God, but also to support each other and have a time of fellowship. I’ve talked to a few elders about this and have their support. We’d like your support too.”
“Agreed,” responded Dad, “what can we do?”
“First of all, spread the word, and then bring as many people as you can, by horse and wagon, bicycle, walking, trucks if necessary. Pick up anyone you can along the way. We want to have a big meal afterwards, so could we count on you for a healthy supply of some kind of barbecue? Pork, beef or venison, whatever you have available.”
“Can do,” answered Joe, “for how many people?”
“Hard to say. We’re hoping for a church full. Let the Spirit lead you. Nearly everyone will bring something. You know our culture; a food shortage won’t be the problem. And also, if you have some, we could use some more wine; our supplies are low.”
“No problem,” said Jean, “we’ve some to spare.”
“Okay then, I’ll hop on old Flash and head on down the road. Thanks again for the food and the fellowship. The communion service is in two weeks, so I probably won’t be around before then. See you all there and don’t forget to bring the newborn, Brother Barry.
(Author’s note: to the best of my knowledge, the real life Barry has not yet accepted Christ as his savior. I continue to pray for him and really need to make a harder effort to reach him. I ask that all of you think of the Barry in your life and do the same…To be continued……Mort)
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Chapter Seventeen - Communion (cont)
Harvey pursed his lips a little, scratched behind his neck a bit, and then answered, “Well, according to agricultural historians, in the 19th century one farmer fed six other people. Heck, most of them were his family. With engine powered equipment and technology that number rose steadily through the 1900’s. I recall about the time I started farming with Pop, the number might have been calculated to be about 60. And with further advances the last thirty years, maybe I heard once the number approached 90. There are two farmers in our operation, counting Larry, so theoretically our operation could feed 180 people.”
“Now,” added Larry, “one might have to discount the fact that we won’t have the technology, you know fertilizer, pesticides, and animal health products. But we have the acres necessary to grow a lot of food. We just need the labor. Between Butch’s farm and ours right now, there are twenty full grown men. Applying the 19th century standard, we should be able to feed 120. And absolutely the women and the kids around here work as well as many men, so you have to factor that in, too. Plus, every family that shows up provides at least one if not more workers. It will take some managing, but it’s doable. It also takes some faith.”
“Hey, that’s usually my answer,” Reverend Schneider answered. “But you certainly are on target. Keep thinking that way.”
“You know,” Joe said, “you said earlier you were very busy the last five weeks. What else you been doing?”
“Funerals,” he responded, “you see, not all the news I have for you is positive. In fact, there’s been a lot of trouble.” Then turning to my dad he added, “Remember you and me talking about nursing homes?”
“Yeah, I just thought of Springside Manor, that large one just to the west of town. How did it go over there?”
“Could have been worse. When I realized things were okay at the food bank, it dawned on me they might need help, so I headed over there. Management saw this coming and advised the families of the guests there to take them home. Adequate care could not be provided. As a result, the numbers were down as families took their parents or grandparents home to care for them as best they could. But many remained. Some had no family, or their families just lived too far away and lacked the means to get there. And then some just were in too poor a medical condition to leave. And, I guess, maybe some families just didn’t care.”
“When the electricity ended, the emergency generators they had only had enough fuel for a couple days. Quite a bit was used up the previous weeks when electricity was being rationed. It wasn’t a pretty sight; middle of August, no air conditioning or lights for the inner rooms; preparing food on charcoal grills and propane stoves. Of course it was too much stress for several of the patients. There were heroes though.”
“Heroes?” Jeremiah asked.
“The workers themselves. Several came to work even though they knew they wouldn’t get paid. Some used their precious gasoline, but many just stayed on the job. They became live-in caregivers. Just stayed day after day. One by one, however, they had to return to their families, but that created a chance for more heroics. A few took a resident with them, basically agreeing to care for that person as long as he or she lived. It was amazing. Of course, the local neighbors pitched in too. Bringing, water and food and helping with the care. Some of my family members accompanied me and put in a few days, too. The most able residents ended up in private homes somewhere, another credit to our community. But about a dozen did not pull through. Last Saturday, I buried the last one that had remained. The place is empty now. It’s usable. Perhaps it could house migrants this winter.”
“I did a few funerals at the church, too. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just want to let you know that Steward, the contractor that usually digs the graves, is housing his backhoe there. He says it might have enough fuel in it to dig maybe 50 to 75 graves, unless some other project in the neighborhood requires his hoe and he’d have to donate fuel to that. Bottom line, if you need a grave dug, there’s a backhoe there. You wouldn’t have to run yours up, Harvey, or dig a grave by hand. There are other troubles I could tell you about, if you’re interested?”
“Local or worldwide?” Jake asked.
“Local and what happened in some of the cities. Haven’t run into any preachers with news from China or Europe.”
“No I guess you wouldn’t have,” Josh agreed. “What local trouble? Anything we could help with?”
“Not really; the damage is done now. You know that big dairy west of the church, Gruber’s. Where they have about 200 cows?”
“Yeah,” Larry answered.
“Well, their operation was too, what’s the word? …. intensive. Fortunately, at this farm, your fields were already laid out with pastures and fencing. I look around and see pretty healthy and content cattle roaming around. At Gruber’s the cows were housed in big buildings and cement feedlots. Fans running all the time and silo unloaders needed to feed them. There was only a small lot for them to roam. Well when electricity became scarce, Gruber’s just kept on going. They made no adjustments in the way they were doing things, kept generating their own electricity until their fuel supply was completely depleted. Just kept feeding and milking cows just to pour the milk away. No one came to haul it away, right?”
“No one,” responded Harvey.
“They couldn’t milk or feed 200 cows by hand. No water, manure accumulated, buildings became deathly hot, cows got sick and died. They had no means to bury them. Made a terrible stink. They finally realized they had to release the cows so they could drink at the closest creek and eat in the surrounding fields. Fortunately the neighbors really pitched in by allowing it, though how could they say no. They helped to tend the herd, kept them in certain fields until some fencing could be erected. Others started taking one or two of the healthier ones home to milk and care for. Steward moved in with his bulldozer and buried the dead cows. Seems like everything’s settled now, but I’m sure more than 100 died. What a mess it was.”
“A mess that could have been mitigated by a little foresight and planning,” Jake said.
“Now Jake,” Dad admonished, “not so judgmental. Did you ever walk in their shoes?” It was one of Dad’s favorite philosophies: “Don’t judge a man until you walked a mile in his shoes”. Or is it a day in his shoes? No matter, good philosophy.
“Yeah, you’re right,’ Jake concurred. “I’m thinking a lot of other people had to make tough decisions, too, especially in the cities, perhaps. What did you hear about them, Reverend?”
“Well, a lot, but I’m not sure what’s true. Of course there was some looting. People trying to find water and food. Releasing the prisoners didn’t help.”
“Releasing the prisoners?” Barry asked. “Just yesterday, I had it on my mind how the prisons were managing. What happened?”
“Again, I heard a lot of things, but just last week I ran into a guard from the county prison. He was helping at the nursing home and he verified the story. They couldn’t keep a prison running with no fuel or water. Something had to be done. Here is one instance that shows that the federal government is still functional because they stepped in. The military came and hauled away all convicted murderers. No one knows where they took them, but they’re gone. Everyone else was released. Anyone convicted of theft, bad check writers, marijuana growers, prostitutes, drug users, people convicted of drunk driving or driving without a license or insurance; they are out on the street now.”
“Wow!” Barry exclaimed, “most of those people didn’t belong in jail anyway. I don’t know if that would have really contributed to looting and rioting.”
“Well, I’m thinking it probably did to at least a small extent,” Reverend Schneider responded. “But there’s another theory floating around. This guard said all the released prisoners received a pretty stern speech. They would be completely exonerated and in return for that would be expected to become productive members of society. They would have to learn to live with the other members of society as society needed as many productive members as could be found. It would not be easy, they’d have to learn to work, share, and give as well as take. It was necessary for them to change in order to be accepted. And finally, they would not be protected any longer. If they committed any crime, there would be no criminal justice system to save their butts, no court appointed lawyer to moderate their punishment, no getting out on bail. They would be subject to the wrath, sense of justice, and perhaps the vengeance of the communities they choose to settle in.”
“Do you think that’s working?” Barry inquired.
“Can’t say for sure; but I hear less and less about looting and criminal activities. One interesting story I did hear was about gangs in the city. Seems like when the police stopped doing their job, the gangs took over. They took control of territories and protected everyone living there. Stabilized the situation. Enforced their own law, administered justice, made everyone tow the line. Get along or get out was the dictate. Wouldn’t have been a welcome environment for criminal behavior; perhaps that’s what kept the released prisoners in line.”
“That is darn interesting,” Barry commented. “Perhaps things are working out.”
“You know,” said the reverend, “I’ve talked a lot. I really need to hear what you are all doing around here, so as I can share it with others that have the same predicaments. And, gee, I’ve been holding you up from your work.”
“Work!” Joe exclaimed, “I plum forgot. I wanted to help the girls can that pork we didn’t eat for dinner. And what kind of hosts are we? We offer your horse water and offer you nothing. Come on into the house. Maybe there’s some left for you. And the girls will be glad to see you as well.”
“I’d like that, and I’d like to hear how everyone else is feeling," Reverend Schneider answered.
To be continued….. How is everyone else feeling?.... Mort
“Now,” added Larry, “one might have to discount the fact that we won’t have the technology, you know fertilizer, pesticides, and animal health products. But we have the acres necessary to grow a lot of food. We just need the labor. Between Butch’s farm and ours right now, there are twenty full grown men. Applying the 19th century standard, we should be able to feed 120. And absolutely the women and the kids around here work as well as many men, so you have to factor that in, too. Plus, every family that shows up provides at least one if not more workers. It will take some managing, but it’s doable. It also takes some faith.”
“Hey, that’s usually my answer,” Reverend Schneider answered. “But you certainly are on target. Keep thinking that way.”
“You know,” Joe said, “you said earlier you were very busy the last five weeks. What else you been doing?”
“Funerals,” he responded, “you see, not all the news I have for you is positive. In fact, there’s been a lot of trouble.” Then turning to my dad he added, “Remember you and me talking about nursing homes?”
“Yeah, I just thought of Springside Manor, that large one just to the west of town. How did it go over there?”
“Could have been worse. When I realized things were okay at the food bank, it dawned on me they might need help, so I headed over there. Management saw this coming and advised the families of the guests there to take them home. Adequate care could not be provided. As a result, the numbers were down as families took their parents or grandparents home to care for them as best they could. But many remained. Some had no family, or their families just lived too far away and lacked the means to get there. And then some just were in too poor a medical condition to leave. And, I guess, maybe some families just didn’t care.”
“When the electricity ended, the emergency generators they had only had enough fuel for a couple days. Quite a bit was used up the previous weeks when electricity was being rationed. It wasn’t a pretty sight; middle of August, no air conditioning or lights for the inner rooms; preparing food on charcoal grills and propane stoves. Of course it was too much stress for several of the patients. There were heroes though.”
“Heroes?” Jeremiah asked.
“The workers themselves. Several came to work even though they knew they wouldn’t get paid. Some used their precious gasoline, but many just stayed on the job. They became live-in caregivers. Just stayed day after day. One by one, however, they had to return to their families, but that created a chance for more heroics. A few took a resident with them, basically agreeing to care for that person as long as he or she lived. It was amazing. Of course, the local neighbors pitched in too. Bringing, water and food and helping with the care. Some of my family members accompanied me and put in a few days, too. The most able residents ended up in private homes somewhere, another credit to our community. But about a dozen did not pull through. Last Saturday, I buried the last one that had remained. The place is empty now. It’s usable. Perhaps it could house migrants this winter.”
“I did a few funerals at the church, too. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just want to let you know that Steward, the contractor that usually digs the graves, is housing his backhoe there. He says it might have enough fuel in it to dig maybe 50 to 75 graves, unless some other project in the neighborhood requires his hoe and he’d have to donate fuel to that. Bottom line, if you need a grave dug, there’s a backhoe there. You wouldn’t have to run yours up, Harvey, or dig a grave by hand. There are other troubles I could tell you about, if you’re interested?”
“Local or worldwide?” Jake asked.
“Local and what happened in some of the cities. Haven’t run into any preachers with news from China or Europe.”
“No I guess you wouldn’t have,” Josh agreed. “What local trouble? Anything we could help with?”
“Not really; the damage is done now. You know that big dairy west of the church, Gruber’s. Where they have about 200 cows?”
“Yeah,” Larry answered.
“Well, their operation was too, what’s the word? …. intensive. Fortunately, at this farm, your fields were already laid out with pastures and fencing. I look around and see pretty healthy and content cattle roaming around. At Gruber’s the cows were housed in big buildings and cement feedlots. Fans running all the time and silo unloaders needed to feed them. There was only a small lot for them to roam. Well when electricity became scarce, Gruber’s just kept on going. They made no adjustments in the way they were doing things, kept generating their own electricity until their fuel supply was completely depleted. Just kept feeding and milking cows just to pour the milk away. No one came to haul it away, right?”
“No one,” responded Harvey.
“They couldn’t milk or feed 200 cows by hand. No water, manure accumulated, buildings became deathly hot, cows got sick and died. They had no means to bury them. Made a terrible stink. They finally realized they had to release the cows so they could drink at the closest creek and eat in the surrounding fields. Fortunately the neighbors really pitched in by allowing it, though how could they say no. They helped to tend the herd, kept them in certain fields until some fencing could be erected. Others started taking one or two of the healthier ones home to milk and care for. Steward moved in with his bulldozer and buried the dead cows. Seems like everything’s settled now, but I’m sure more than 100 died. What a mess it was.”
“A mess that could have been mitigated by a little foresight and planning,” Jake said.
“Now Jake,” Dad admonished, “not so judgmental. Did you ever walk in their shoes?” It was one of Dad’s favorite philosophies: “Don’t judge a man until you walked a mile in his shoes”. Or is it a day in his shoes? No matter, good philosophy.
“Yeah, you’re right,’ Jake concurred. “I’m thinking a lot of other people had to make tough decisions, too, especially in the cities, perhaps. What did you hear about them, Reverend?”
“Well, a lot, but I’m not sure what’s true. Of course there was some looting. People trying to find water and food. Releasing the prisoners didn’t help.”
“Releasing the prisoners?” Barry asked. “Just yesterday, I had it on my mind how the prisons were managing. What happened?”
“Again, I heard a lot of things, but just last week I ran into a guard from the county prison. He was helping at the nursing home and he verified the story. They couldn’t keep a prison running with no fuel or water. Something had to be done. Here is one instance that shows that the federal government is still functional because they stepped in. The military came and hauled away all convicted murderers. No one knows where they took them, but they’re gone. Everyone else was released. Anyone convicted of theft, bad check writers, marijuana growers, prostitutes, drug users, people convicted of drunk driving or driving without a license or insurance; they are out on the street now.”
“Wow!” Barry exclaimed, “most of those people didn’t belong in jail anyway. I don’t know if that would have really contributed to looting and rioting.”
“Well, I’m thinking it probably did to at least a small extent,” Reverend Schneider responded. “But there’s another theory floating around. This guard said all the released prisoners received a pretty stern speech. They would be completely exonerated and in return for that would be expected to become productive members of society. They would have to learn to live with the other members of society as society needed as many productive members as could be found. It would not be easy, they’d have to learn to work, share, and give as well as take. It was necessary for them to change in order to be accepted. And finally, they would not be protected any longer. If they committed any crime, there would be no criminal justice system to save their butts, no court appointed lawyer to moderate their punishment, no getting out on bail. They would be subject to the wrath, sense of justice, and perhaps the vengeance of the communities they choose to settle in.”
“Do you think that’s working?” Barry inquired.
“Can’t say for sure; but I hear less and less about looting and criminal activities. One interesting story I did hear was about gangs in the city. Seems like when the police stopped doing their job, the gangs took over. They took control of territories and protected everyone living there. Stabilized the situation. Enforced their own law, administered justice, made everyone tow the line. Get along or get out was the dictate. Wouldn’t have been a welcome environment for criminal behavior; perhaps that’s what kept the released prisoners in line.”
“That is darn interesting,” Barry commented. “Perhaps things are working out.”
“You know,” said the reverend, “I’ve talked a lot. I really need to hear what you are all doing around here, so as I can share it with others that have the same predicaments. And, gee, I’ve been holding you up from your work.”
“Work!” Joe exclaimed, “I plum forgot. I wanted to help the girls can that pork we didn’t eat for dinner. And what kind of hosts are we? We offer your horse water and offer you nothing. Come on into the house. Maybe there’s some left for you. And the girls will be glad to see you as well.”
“I’d like that, and I’d like to hear how everyone else is feeling," Reverend Schneider answered.
To be continued….. How is everyone else feeling?.... Mort
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Chapter Seventeen - Communion
Reverend Schneider’s horse was unlike my Brutus, the Clydesdale, and Titus’s workhorse. It was much sleeker, a shiny dark brown, and exhibited a lot of pep.
“Got yourself a racehorse there?” Joe asked the reverend.
“Suppose so,” he answered, “been winning every race, too. Got here first didn’t I?” Looking back up the road he added, “Don’t even see the second place finisher. Do you see him, Alyssa?”
I had a notion to look, but then caught the joke. It was getting to the point I had hung around these wise guys long enough to be aware of their trickery. “I’ll just keep an eye out for him, so you can hop on and head down the road, if’n he catches up to you. Wouldn’t want you to lose your lead. How far back do you think he is? Do I have time to water your steed before he gets here?”
He chuckled, then said, “Smart girl; sure you have time to water old Flash. Thank you.”
“So whose horse you acquire?” Joe asked.
“The neighbor farm, right next to the church; my whole family moved there. They still have a hand water pump, so we can pump all the water we need from their well. Their livestock can drink from the creek. The wife and kids work around the farm and they loaned me old Flash here for me to make my rounds. Miss you all at church. And I’m not being a wise guy. I’m not condemning you for not coming to church; I really do miss seeing and talking to you. Just came down from Butch and Clare. I told them the same. It was great to see everyone there, too.”
“It’s great to see you too, Reverend,” Harvey said. “What you’ve been hearing in your travels? That is, I assume you’ve been traveling.”
“That I have. This is one of the first days in the last five weeks that I could actually just go visiting. Seemed like every other day I had something to take care of.”
“Like what?” asked Dad.
“Well, as soon as we lost power and water, I knew a lot of people would be in trouble, just like you and I talked about a couple months ago. As I was on the board of the food bank in town, I headed into there to see what I could do. You know, it wasn’t as bad as I suspected.”
“How so?” Joe asked.
“When the power went off, the store managers knew that all the food in the freezers and coolers would spoil, so they gave it away. Just opened up their doors and announced any perishable food and fresh baked goods were free for the taking. They had moved most of the dry goods into the back of the stores, thinking maybe they could sell that later. So at least for the first week or so, no one was hungry. Eventually, when they realized that money as we knew it wasn’t coming back too soon, they allowed people to have some of the other food too. As a result, the food bank still has food. The whole thing was pretty sensible too. People didn’t cart away truckloads at a time; just what they needed for a few days. Oh I’m sure they didn’t wait until there was no food in the house before acquiring more. We’re a community of ants, not grasshoppers; food’s being stored for winter. Many are using the food from their gardens or farmers just out of town. Of course there aren’t as many people living in town anymore.”
“Where did they go?” I asked.
“Like I said, out to the country. Found a place with water and moved. Besides, if you had a home dependent on gas or heating oil to keep warm, what good would it do you to stay there? And those remaining had to cart all their water from the reservoir outside of town, at least their drinking water since the creek flowing through town provided some for washing and flushing toilets. But that became a problem too. Sewage treatment plant eventually became non-functional. They had to just allow the sewage to drain into the river.”
“Not so good for the people downstream,” Joe said.
“Not good, however, it isn’t a large volume. Mostly only toilets being flushed. Not near the number of showers and baths being taken and loads of laundry being done. And other people moved north.”
“North?” asked Dad, “What’s up there, cleaner water?”
“Yeah, I guess there is, but really, they moved for coal. They heard the coal mines needed workers to keep the mines open. All the work’s being done by hand, like in the 1800’s. Horses bring the coal out the mountain. They’re using steam engines to power the crushers. Others are chopping wood for the engines or sawing lumber for the tunnels. Whole families are working there.”
“For what?” responded Harvey, “there’s no money to pay workers. What good does it do them?”
“You’re correct, no money; they get paid in coal, or more precisely, coal credits.”
“Coal credits?” Dad asked.
“Yep, they get paid by the hundredweight of coal. Work a day; get ten hundredweight or whatever the going rate is, depending on the job you do. The mine owner just keeps a tab or you can take it home in script.”
“Script?” Harvey inquired.
“Sorry,” the reverend responded, “coal script. It’s a fancy piece of paper that tells others you own so much coal.”
“What can you do with it?” Joe wondered.
“You can redeem it for the coal, anytime and anywhere; anyone with coal will honor it.”
“But you can’t eat coal,” Joe responded.
“No you can’t,” Reverend Schneider agreed. “But you can also trade the script. Of course the main commodity right now is food. So workers are using their script to buy food. Unlike our little town, where the stores are pretty much out of business, in parts of the coal regions the stores are still open. Sure they don’t have all the goods they used to have; actually the dry goods are at a premium. They’re being stashed for winter. The local farmers provide the bulk of what’s being sold. They have produce to market. They’d rather accept the script than U.S. dollars. Script is worth something; you can redeem them for coal or trade them for something else you need, but dollars are worthless.”
“So coal script is their money now?” Dad asked.
“I suppose you’re right,” the reverend answered, “it would be like money. I tell you the other industry that’s flourishing.”
“What’s that?” Harvey asked as Josh, Jake, Barry and a couple others joined us.
“Transportation,” Reverend Schneider replied, “Coal and produce have to be moved. Horses are at a premium. Only so much hauling can be done by them. A lot of hand carts have been built; even heard of some dog carts. Townsfolk that walk to the farms to work or trade, wear baskets as backpacks and always carry something with them – coal out, food back. Or they carry the coal to the river.”
“The river?” Jake asked.
“Oh, didn’t I mention? Some entrepreneurs are building barges to float the coal to market.”
“That’s interesting,” Joe said, “but like I said before, you can’t eat coal. Only so many homes can burn coal, and those that can, like us, can also burn wood. Besides, what commodity could the people downstream trade for the coal? Sounds a bit risky to me. The whole operation might be fruitless. They’re creating a coal-driven economy, just like our country had an oil-driven economy.”
“And look what happened to us,” Josh touted.
“Now fellas,” Dad interjected, “let’s applaud their industriousness; and maybe their benevolence. Just like we share food with hungry people, they might share their coal with cold people. At least their producing something and not sitting around on their butts, waiting for someone to bail them out.”
“Right,” offered Harvey, “we’re all in this together and we’ll all pull through this together, provided we become a nation of producers, instead of consumers. All those people that had jobs manufacturing unnecessary items, like DVD’s, VCR’s, CD’s, video games, TV’s, I-Pod’s, walkman’s, or working at a computer, making movies or TV shows, or advertising, not to mention insurance salesman, lawyers or bankers; you get the idea; they’ll now be working to grow food, provide heat or shelter and the other things we really need.”
“It’s a chance for the faithful to shine,” the reverend added.
“Don’t keep your light under a bushel,” Jeremiah said.
“And speaking of lights,” the reverend said, “the way I hear, some parts of Pennsylvania are doing just fine.”
“How’s that?” inquired Josh.
“Well, there are thousands of natural gas wells drilled in Pennsylvania, mostly in the mountain regions, waiting to be tapped. Property owners, who have wells on their property, use the gas all the time. It’s naturally pressurized so the flow hasn’t stopped. They should have heat all winter and even be able to generate electricity. I hear people are migrating to those regions as well, helping with the harvest where there is farming.”
“Very interesting,” Jake said, “but you keep saying, ‘I hear’. How do you hear all these things? We hear practically nothing here.”
“Good question, Jake,” Reverend Schneider responded. “It’s from the other ministers and the doctors. We are all operating under the same system. Everyday we head out, making the rounds and looking for people to help. We hear stories from all kinds of people we run into and we meet each other both coincidently and on a planned basis, to discuss the needs of the community and to determine what we might do about it. We’re out spreading the word, hope, information and ideas, encouraging everyone to let their fruits emerge.”
“Makes sense to me,” Jeremiah said. “As you brought up doctors, here’s a piece of information we’d like to know. We heard Dr. Bear’s operating like you, but we don’t know how to reach him in an emergency. Do you?”
“Just get on a horse and fetch him. I’d say it’s only four or five miles from here where he’s headquartered. He’s on the farm on Dogwood Road, just north of the church, belongs to Milt Snyder. Know where it is?”
“Sure, that’s easy to find,” offered Joe.
“No guarantee he’ll be there during the day. He makes rounds like me then. I hope you don’t ever need him too quickly.”
“Hope not either,” Harvey said, “but the more people that keep moving in here, the greater the chance.”
“You expect more people?” the reverend asked.
“Yep.”
“How many, and can you feed them?”
To be continued…..What is Harvey’s answer? …… Mort
“Got yourself a racehorse there?” Joe asked the reverend.
“Suppose so,” he answered, “been winning every race, too. Got here first didn’t I?” Looking back up the road he added, “Don’t even see the second place finisher. Do you see him, Alyssa?”
I had a notion to look, but then caught the joke. It was getting to the point I had hung around these wise guys long enough to be aware of their trickery. “I’ll just keep an eye out for him, so you can hop on and head down the road, if’n he catches up to you. Wouldn’t want you to lose your lead. How far back do you think he is? Do I have time to water your steed before he gets here?”
He chuckled, then said, “Smart girl; sure you have time to water old Flash. Thank you.”
“So whose horse you acquire?” Joe asked.
“The neighbor farm, right next to the church; my whole family moved there. They still have a hand water pump, so we can pump all the water we need from their well. Their livestock can drink from the creek. The wife and kids work around the farm and they loaned me old Flash here for me to make my rounds. Miss you all at church. And I’m not being a wise guy. I’m not condemning you for not coming to church; I really do miss seeing and talking to you. Just came down from Butch and Clare. I told them the same. It was great to see everyone there, too.”
“It’s great to see you too, Reverend,” Harvey said. “What you’ve been hearing in your travels? That is, I assume you’ve been traveling.”
“That I have. This is one of the first days in the last five weeks that I could actually just go visiting. Seemed like every other day I had something to take care of.”
“Like what?” asked Dad.
“Well, as soon as we lost power and water, I knew a lot of people would be in trouble, just like you and I talked about a couple months ago. As I was on the board of the food bank in town, I headed into there to see what I could do. You know, it wasn’t as bad as I suspected.”
“How so?” Joe asked.
“When the power went off, the store managers knew that all the food in the freezers and coolers would spoil, so they gave it away. Just opened up their doors and announced any perishable food and fresh baked goods were free for the taking. They had moved most of the dry goods into the back of the stores, thinking maybe they could sell that later. So at least for the first week or so, no one was hungry. Eventually, when they realized that money as we knew it wasn’t coming back too soon, they allowed people to have some of the other food too. As a result, the food bank still has food. The whole thing was pretty sensible too. People didn’t cart away truckloads at a time; just what they needed for a few days. Oh I’m sure they didn’t wait until there was no food in the house before acquiring more. We’re a community of ants, not grasshoppers; food’s being stored for winter. Many are using the food from their gardens or farmers just out of town. Of course there aren’t as many people living in town anymore.”
“Where did they go?” I asked.
“Like I said, out to the country. Found a place with water and moved. Besides, if you had a home dependent on gas or heating oil to keep warm, what good would it do you to stay there? And those remaining had to cart all their water from the reservoir outside of town, at least their drinking water since the creek flowing through town provided some for washing and flushing toilets. But that became a problem too. Sewage treatment plant eventually became non-functional. They had to just allow the sewage to drain into the river.”
“Not so good for the people downstream,” Joe said.
“Not good, however, it isn’t a large volume. Mostly only toilets being flushed. Not near the number of showers and baths being taken and loads of laundry being done. And other people moved north.”
“North?” asked Dad, “What’s up there, cleaner water?”
“Yeah, I guess there is, but really, they moved for coal. They heard the coal mines needed workers to keep the mines open. All the work’s being done by hand, like in the 1800’s. Horses bring the coal out the mountain. They’re using steam engines to power the crushers. Others are chopping wood for the engines or sawing lumber for the tunnels. Whole families are working there.”
“For what?” responded Harvey, “there’s no money to pay workers. What good does it do them?”
“You’re correct, no money; they get paid in coal, or more precisely, coal credits.”
“Coal credits?” Dad asked.
“Yep, they get paid by the hundredweight of coal. Work a day; get ten hundredweight or whatever the going rate is, depending on the job you do. The mine owner just keeps a tab or you can take it home in script.”
“Script?” Harvey inquired.
“Sorry,” the reverend responded, “coal script. It’s a fancy piece of paper that tells others you own so much coal.”
“What can you do with it?” Joe wondered.
“You can redeem it for the coal, anytime and anywhere; anyone with coal will honor it.”
“But you can’t eat coal,” Joe responded.
“No you can’t,” Reverend Schneider agreed. “But you can also trade the script. Of course the main commodity right now is food. So workers are using their script to buy food. Unlike our little town, where the stores are pretty much out of business, in parts of the coal regions the stores are still open. Sure they don’t have all the goods they used to have; actually the dry goods are at a premium. They’re being stashed for winter. The local farmers provide the bulk of what’s being sold. They have produce to market. They’d rather accept the script than U.S. dollars. Script is worth something; you can redeem them for coal or trade them for something else you need, but dollars are worthless.”
“So coal script is their money now?” Dad asked.
“I suppose you’re right,” the reverend answered, “it would be like money. I tell you the other industry that’s flourishing.”
“What’s that?” Harvey asked as Josh, Jake, Barry and a couple others joined us.
“Transportation,” Reverend Schneider replied, “Coal and produce have to be moved. Horses are at a premium. Only so much hauling can be done by them. A lot of hand carts have been built; even heard of some dog carts. Townsfolk that walk to the farms to work or trade, wear baskets as backpacks and always carry something with them – coal out, food back. Or they carry the coal to the river.”
“The river?” Jake asked.
“Oh, didn’t I mention? Some entrepreneurs are building barges to float the coal to market.”
“That’s interesting,” Joe said, “but like I said before, you can’t eat coal. Only so many homes can burn coal, and those that can, like us, can also burn wood. Besides, what commodity could the people downstream trade for the coal? Sounds a bit risky to me. The whole operation might be fruitless. They’re creating a coal-driven economy, just like our country had an oil-driven economy.”
“And look what happened to us,” Josh touted.
“Now fellas,” Dad interjected, “let’s applaud their industriousness; and maybe their benevolence. Just like we share food with hungry people, they might share their coal with cold people. At least their producing something and not sitting around on their butts, waiting for someone to bail them out.”
“Right,” offered Harvey, “we’re all in this together and we’ll all pull through this together, provided we become a nation of producers, instead of consumers. All those people that had jobs manufacturing unnecessary items, like DVD’s, VCR’s, CD’s, video games, TV’s, I-Pod’s, walkman’s, or working at a computer, making movies or TV shows, or advertising, not to mention insurance salesman, lawyers or bankers; you get the idea; they’ll now be working to grow food, provide heat or shelter and the other things we really need.”
“It’s a chance for the faithful to shine,” the reverend added.
“Don’t keep your light under a bushel,” Jeremiah said.
“And speaking of lights,” the reverend said, “the way I hear, some parts of Pennsylvania are doing just fine.”
“How’s that?” inquired Josh.
“Well, there are thousands of natural gas wells drilled in Pennsylvania, mostly in the mountain regions, waiting to be tapped. Property owners, who have wells on their property, use the gas all the time. It’s naturally pressurized so the flow hasn’t stopped. They should have heat all winter and even be able to generate electricity. I hear people are migrating to those regions as well, helping with the harvest where there is farming.”
“Very interesting,” Jake said, “but you keep saying, ‘I hear’. How do you hear all these things? We hear practically nothing here.”
“Good question, Jake,” Reverend Schneider responded. “It’s from the other ministers and the doctors. We are all operating under the same system. Everyday we head out, making the rounds and looking for people to help. We hear stories from all kinds of people we run into and we meet each other both coincidently and on a planned basis, to discuss the needs of the community and to determine what we might do about it. We’re out spreading the word, hope, information and ideas, encouraging everyone to let their fruits emerge.”
“Makes sense to me,” Jeremiah said. “As you brought up doctors, here’s a piece of information we’d like to know. We heard Dr. Bear’s operating like you, but we don’t know how to reach him in an emergency. Do you?”
“Just get on a horse and fetch him. I’d say it’s only four or five miles from here where he’s headquartered. He’s on the farm on Dogwood Road, just north of the church, belongs to Milt Snyder. Know where it is?”
“Sure, that’s easy to find,” offered Joe.
“No guarantee he’ll be there during the day. He makes rounds like me then. I hope you don’t ever need him too quickly.”
“Hope not either,” Harvey said, “but the more people that keep moving in here, the greater the chance.”
“You expect more people?” the reverend asked.
“Yep.”
“How many, and can you feed them?”
To be continued…..What is Harvey’s answer? …… Mort
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Chapter Sixteen - Time (conclusion)
The following week we made quite a bit more hay, but by Friday we had a break in the action to make the excursion back to the old house. It looked pretty much the same. For twelve years, other than when I was at camp or on vacation, I had woken up here. By now, I was just getting used to waking up at Grandmom’s house. Here I had my own room, but it made we wonder who slept in it now.
I got to see Marie and the other neighbors. They all looked well. Dad gave Marie and Bill directions to our new farm. They said they might take occasion to visit someday, especially if some trading was necessary or advice needed. While we were picking the beans, Dad related to our old friends all the technological things pertaining to direct current and batteries that the boys had accomplished at Harvey’s Dairy. Bill said that it might be worth the trip, just to get some ideas. In the meantime he said he’d experiment on his own, and then he’d know what obstacles he might need to overcome. Bill and Marie had become daily workers at our old farm.
There were other changes evident at our old place. The old springhouse now had water running through it and was surrounded by a thick layer of straw bales.
“Not exactly an ice house,” Bill said, “but it cools the milk and keeps the fruits and vegetables fresh.”
“Milk?” I inquired, “Where do you get milk?”
“We acquired three cows from Chester,” Marie offered. “Milk for the whole neighborhood. I’ve learned how to milk a cow. Have you?”
“Not yet,” I answered, “but I’m sure I’ll get my chance pretty soon.”
“There’s a nice supply of fruits and vegetables in the springhouse,” Mom pointed out. “Where do they come from?”
Bill responded, “Jim, Hallie and their family travel everyday by bicycle to a produce farm this side of town. They have baskets fastened to their bicycles and bring produce home every night to trade for milk. It’s been working real well so far. They also bring some dried and canned food as well for winter. We’re supposed to save every jar we open and the lids for them.”
“Just like Titus was telling us,” Jean offered.
“Titus?” Marie asked.
“Titus Weaver,” Dad replied, “he’s a Mennonite from the other side of town. He visited us a couple weeks ago and traded produce for a load of hay. He told us how things were going in his neighborhood.”
“Sure, I remember him,” Bill said. “Chester told him where you were.”
Mom and Jean sorted through our remaining goods that had been stashed in the shed and came up with nothing we needed. There were plenty of things we didn’t need: electric appliances, lamps, light bulbs, decorations, books, toys, pictures, mirrors, TV’s, VCR’s, DVD’s, video tapes, and air conditioners.
Mom wondered out loud, “What if the boys figure out how to make electricity? The lamps would come in handy and maybe even the air conditioners could be used to cool food or something?”
“Or the mirrors,” Dad added, “could they be used to collect solar energy some how?”
“Unanswered questions,” Jean responded, “but if items such as these do become useful, we have ours and your in-law’s to use back at the farm. We can always come back for these or perhaps maybe someone else will need them more?”
“You’re right – just let them here!” Mom concluded. And then we headed for home.
When we arrived back home, Poppop and Joe had the drying beds set up in the yard between Jean’s house and the barn in a spot the shade doesn’t hit.
“Just in case some of the beans need to dry some more. We wouldn’t want any of them to spoil – or spoil a whole batch,” Joe said.
“Good thinking,” Dad commended them. “We’ll let them dry thoroughly before we pack them away.”
We shelled all the beans by nightfall, and then put them on the screens when the sun had risen. Just after dinner on Saturday, I went to check on the beans and found Uncle Jeremiah and Jake with a funny looking table. They were digging the legs into the middle of the yard, near the drying beds and just off the sidewalk that we used most often to travel to and from the barn and house. It had four steel legs, that I suppose were made from some scrap found lying around the farm, bolted to a three by four foot plate of white appliance colored steel. I found out later it was a refrigerator door. On one side of the door was a triangular piece of steel mounted upright. Opposite the triangle painted like the end of a spoke with the triangle being the hub, was a single black line. It was labeled with a large, black, capital “N”. Harvey, Joe and Dad walked over to investigate.
“I get it,” Harvey said. “I saw this laying in the shop before the triangle and line were on it. Now I see what it is.”
“Should work,” Dad added, “if it’s positioned correctly.”
“Good spot for it,” said Joe. “We walk by it so often. With those long legs, it will stay above the snow, too. What do you think, Alyssa?”
“What do I think? I think I’m the only one here that doesn’t know what it is.”
“If you figure out what the “N” stands for, then you’ll know,” Jake offered.
“I’m surrounded by people who talk in riddles,” I lamented.
“That’s how you learn,” Dad said. “You have to figure things out, then you’ll remember. If we just tell you, then you’ll forget. Just observe what they’re doing.”
Just what I needed – more Stump philosophy. So, I watched. Jeremiah and Jake were carefully aligning the ‘door’ so that the shadow from the triangle fell on the line, every so often checking their watches and filling ground into the holes each leg was in.
“Hope it stays for you,” Joe said.
“No matter,” Jeremiah answered, “we can adjust it, if it wanders.”
“Know what the “N” stands for yet?” Jake asked.
“Must stand for ‘no’, I have ‘no’ idea.”
“Ha, Ha,” Jake laughed, “which direction is the shadow pointing?”
“So now I’m a geographer. Just like my teachers – answer a question with another. Well let’s see. Harvey talks about an east wind from that way, of course that’s where the sun comes up. Middle of the day the sun is to the south, so the shadow points NORTH! That’s what the “N” is for. It’s a compass!”
Everyone laughed. “I guess that’s true,” Dad agreed. “But what time is it when the sun is directly to the south?”
I thought a little, and then exclaimed, “NOON! The “N” stands for noon, too. It’s a sundial!” Everyone applauded, but then I added, “But you missed it. Noon was an hour ago. It’s nearly one o’clock.”
Harvey chuckled, “Noon used to be twelve o’clock, Alyssa. But you see in this country we have on omnipotent Congress.”
“Om-nip….what kind of tent?”
“Omnipotent means ‘all-powerful’. You see, back one Sunday morning in March, Congress had the power to make the Earth rotate faster, so that there was a 23 hour day. Remember, we had to get up an hour earlier, once again in the dark, just like it was winter again. They call it daylight savings time. Moved noon ahead to one o’clock. Was supposed to solve the energy crisis,” Harvey concluded.
“That worked just like everything else Congress did. They aren’t omnipotent, they’re impotent,” Jeremiah announced. The men broke up. Harvey rolled on the ground laughing. I didn’t get it.
“Of course Congress is important,” I said. More laughter.
“No, not important,” Joe replied, “impotent, means not having the power to perform.” The men laughed even more.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Impotent has another meaning. Hopefully you won’t run into it until you’re married 50 years,” Dad said.
“Yeeewww,” I answered. “By the way, why did you choose to do this today?”
“Tomorrow’s the autumnal equinox, equal day-equal night, the first day of fall,” Jeremiah said. “We thought the readings would be most accurate today, tomorrow and Monday. Every hour still needs to be marked off. If we miss one, or it’s cloudy, we can add it a later day. We’ll just mark the lines; we can paint and label them anytime.”
“You know what?” Joe announced. “Let’s free ourselves from the tyranny of Congress and go off of daylight savings time today. We actually did a couple weeks ago when we started getting up when the sun did.”
“As it should be then,” Harvey declared. “Everyone change your watches and then pass the word to the others.”
“Give me liberty or give me daylight savings time!” Dad shouted. “Now look who’s all powerful. We just added an hour to September 22nd.”
“And we are important, unlike Congress,” I added.
We left my uncle and brother to the task of firming the sundial’s position. As we walked toward the barn, we saw a man on horseback riding down the road. Why it was Reverend Schneider.
“I imagine he’ll have a lot to share,” Dad said.
“Or preach about,” Harvey added, “I wonder what time he’s on.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Joe cried, “so much for our extra hour."
To be continued..........Mort
I got to see Marie and the other neighbors. They all looked well. Dad gave Marie and Bill directions to our new farm. They said they might take occasion to visit someday, especially if some trading was necessary or advice needed. While we were picking the beans, Dad related to our old friends all the technological things pertaining to direct current and batteries that the boys had accomplished at Harvey’s Dairy. Bill said that it might be worth the trip, just to get some ideas. In the meantime he said he’d experiment on his own, and then he’d know what obstacles he might need to overcome. Bill and Marie had become daily workers at our old farm.
There were other changes evident at our old place. The old springhouse now had water running through it and was surrounded by a thick layer of straw bales.
“Not exactly an ice house,” Bill said, “but it cools the milk and keeps the fruits and vegetables fresh.”
“Milk?” I inquired, “Where do you get milk?”
“We acquired three cows from Chester,” Marie offered. “Milk for the whole neighborhood. I’ve learned how to milk a cow. Have you?”
“Not yet,” I answered, “but I’m sure I’ll get my chance pretty soon.”
“There’s a nice supply of fruits and vegetables in the springhouse,” Mom pointed out. “Where do they come from?”
Bill responded, “Jim, Hallie and their family travel everyday by bicycle to a produce farm this side of town. They have baskets fastened to their bicycles and bring produce home every night to trade for milk. It’s been working real well so far. They also bring some dried and canned food as well for winter. We’re supposed to save every jar we open and the lids for them.”
“Just like Titus was telling us,” Jean offered.
“Titus?” Marie asked.
“Titus Weaver,” Dad replied, “he’s a Mennonite from the other side of town. He visited us a couple weeks ago and traded produce for a load of hay. He told us how things were going in his neighborhood.”
“Sure, I remember him,” Bill said. “Chester told him where you were.”
Mom and Jean sorted through our remaining goods that had been stashed in the shed and came up with nothing we needed. There were plenty of things we didn’t need: electric appliances, lamps, light bulbs, decorations, books, toys, pictures, mirrors, TV’s, VCR’s, DVD’s, video tapes, and air conditioners.
Mom wondered out loud, “What if the boys figure out how to make electricity? The lamps would come in handy and maybe even the air conditioners could be used to cool food or something?”
“Or the mirrors,” Dad added, “could they be used to collect solar energy some how?”
“Unanswered questions,” Jean responded, “but if items such as these do become useful, we have ours and your in-law’s to use back at the farm. We can always come back for these or perhaps maybe someone else will need them more?”
“You’re right – just let them here!” Mom concluded. And then we headed for home.
When we arrived back home, Poppop and Joe had the drying beds set up in the yard between Jean’s house and the barn in a spot the shade doesn’t hit.
“Just in case some of the beans need to dry some more. We wouldn’t want any of them to spoil – or spoil a whole batch,” Joe said.
“Good thinking,” Dad commended them. “We’ll let them dry thoroughly before we pack them away.”
We shelled all the beans by nightfall, and then put them on the screens when the sun had risen. Just after dinner on Saturday, I went to check on the beans and found Uncle Jeremiah and Jake with a funny looking table. They were digging the legs into the middle of the yard, near the drying beds and just off the sidewalk that we used most often to travel to and from the barn and house. It had four steel legs, that I suppose were made from some scrap found lying around the farm, bolted to a three by four foot plate of white appliance colored steel. I found out later it was a refrigerator door. On one side of the door was a triangular piece of steel mounted upright. Opposite the triangle painted like the end of a spoke with the triangle being the hub, was a single black line. It was labeled with a large, black, capital “N”. Harvey, Joe and Dad walked over to investigate.
“I get it,” Harvey said. “I saw this laying in the shop before the triangle and line were on it. Now I see what it is.”
“Should work,” Dad added, “if it’s positioned correctly.”
“Good spot for it,” said Joe. “We walk by it so often. With those long legs, it will stay above the snow, too. What do you think, Alyssa?”
“What do I think? I think I’m the only one here that doesn’t know what it is.”
“If you figure out what the “N” stands for, then you’ll know,” Jake offered.
“I’m surrounded by people who talk in riddles,” I lamented.
“That’s how you learn,” Dad said. “You have to figure things out, then you’ll remember. If we just tell you, then you’ll forget. Just observe what they’re doing.”
Just what I needed – more Stump philosophy. So, I watched. Jeremiah and Jake were carefully aligning the ‘door’ so that the shadow from the triangle fell on the line, every so often checking their watches and filling ground into the holes each leg was in.
“Hope it stays for you,” Joe said.
“No matter,” Jeremiah answered, “we can adjust it, if it wanders.”
“Know what the “N” stands for yet?” Jake asked.
“Must stand for ‘no’, I have ‘no’ idea.”
“Ha, Ha,” Jake laughed, “which direction is the shadow pointing?”
“So now I’m a geographer. Just like my teachers – answer a question with another. Well let’s see. Harvey talks about an east wind from that way, of course that’s where the sun comes up. Middle of the day the sun is to the south, so the shadow points NORTH! That’s what the “N” is for. It’s a compass!”
Everyone laughed. “I guess that’s true,” Dad agreed. “But what time is it when the sun is directly to the south?”
I thought a little, and then exclaimed, “NOON! The “N” stands for noon, too. It’s a sundial!” Everyone applauded, but then I added, “But you missed it. Noon was an hour ago. It’s nearly one o’clock.”
Harvey chuckled, “Noon used to be twelve o’clock, Alyssa. But you see in this country we have on omnipotent Congress.”
“Om-nip….what kind of tent?”
“Omnipotent means ‘all-powerful’. You see, back one Sunday morning in March, Congress had the power to make the Earth rotate faster, so that there was a 23 hour day. Remember, we had to get up an hour earlier, once again in the dark, just like it was winter again. They call it daylight savings time. Moved noon ahead to one o’clock. Was supposed to solve the energy crisis,” Harvey concluded.
“That worked just like everything else Congress did. They aren’t omnipotent, they’re impotent,” Jeremiah announced. The men broke up. Harvey rolled on the ground laughing. I didn’t get it.
“Of course Congress is important,” I said. More laughter.
“No, not important,” Joe replied, “impotent, means not having the power to perform.” The men laughed even more.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Impotent has another meaning. Hopefully you won’t run into it until you’re married 50 years,” Dad said.
“Yeeewww,” I answered. “By the way, why did you choose to do this today?”
“Tomorrow’s the autumnal equinox, equal day-equal night, the first day of fall,” Jeremiah said. “We thought the readings would be most accurate today, tomorrow and Monday. Every hour still needs to be marked off. If we miss one, or it’s cloudy, we can add it a later day. We’ll just mark the lines; we can paint and label them anytime.”
“You know what?” Joe announced. “Let’s free ourselves from the tyranny of Congress and go off of daylight savings time today. We actually did a couple weeks ago when we started getting up when the sun did.”
“As it should be then,” Harvey declared. “Everyone change your watches and then pass the word to the others.”
“Give me liberty or give me daylight savings time!” Dad shouted. “Now look who’s all powerful. We just added an hour to September 22nd.”
“And we are important, unlike Congress,” I added.
We left my uncle and brother to the task of firming the sundial’s position. As we walked toward the barn, we saw a man on horseback riding down the road. Why it was Reverend Schneider.
“I imagine he’ll have a lot to share,” Dad said.
“Or preach about,” Harvey added, “I wonder what time he’s on.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Joe cried, “so much for our extra hour."
To be continued..........Mort
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - TIME (cont)
The mo-ped was also a valuable tool for Dad. Near the end of the week, he said he would be going back to the old house to check on his beans in the garden as well as on our old neighbors. “Is there anything you can think of,” he asked Mom, “that we left behind that you could use?”
“All I can really think of is my sewing machine,” she answered. “Originally we thought it would be of no use without electricity. But the way things are progressing around here, the boys might be able to make it functional.”
“OK,” Dad answered. That struck me as a little odd. How could he bring Mom’s sewing machine back with him on the moped? Although, I recolected, Dad often had a way of making things work. So just after breakfast, off he went.
Later that morning, Uncle Jeremiah, Amy, Lynette, and I were working with Chip and Pepper, our young oxen. We were up to the point where we were actually leaving them yoked together for eight hours. They were getting used to it, were able to eat and drink while yoked, and even had gotten accustomed to being led around by us. We had started to give them verbal commands, not that they knew how to obey already, but they needed to hear the repetition of the commands to learn. The commands were simple enough. Of course, the obvious one was “whoa” for stop. Go was “hup”, left was “gaw” and right was “hee”. The actual word wasn’t that important, the sound of them was. Each had a distinctive ending vowel sound so the animals would not confuse them. We had just finished and Uncle Jeremiah was measuring them for the next size yoke that needed to be made soon, when we looked down the road and noticed a large charcoal gray Ford pick-up with some things loaded on the back approaching.
“Looks like the landlord from the old place,” I said.
“Wouldn’t know that,” my uncle replied, “but it’s your dad driving it.”
Sure enough, it was Dad. As he wheeled into the driveway, he throttled the diesel engine loudly enough to catch the attention of Josh and some of the others who were working close by. As they came out to see what was going on, we took stock of the items loaded on the truck. Of course there was Mom’s sewing machine and Grandpop’s mo-ped. We saw two cases of honey, a basket of beans from the garden and three implements that I wasn’t exactly sure what they were; one looked like a cultivator.
“Nice trade,” Josh said to Dad. “So this is what you got for our coal stove?”
“You remembered?” Dad replied. “This and more.”
“More?” Larry asked.
“Yep, the landlord’s son-in-law is a beekeeper. That’s where the honey comes from. But also in the deal are two hives of bees he’ll deliver next spring. That way we can have our own honey, but more importantly, ensure better pollination for all the fruit and vegetable crops we’ll be growing around here.”
“That hand cultivator is nice too,” Jeremiah said. “It’ll save a lot of hoeing when the time comes.” The hand cultivator had a high steel wheel in the front with wooden handles in the back, similar in design to a wheelbarrow. In between and at ground level was a row of narrow harrow like tines for scratching the dirt, making it loose for killing weeds.
“And look at that!” Joe exclaimed as he had just arrived and peered into the pickup bed. “A foot pedal driven grinding wheel for sharpening knives and axes.”
“And scythes and sickles,” Larry added. “We can sure use that. But what’s this third item?” The third item was shaped like the hand cultivator, but with a smaller wheel and a chain drive coming back to some kind of mechanism mounted under a metal box.
“It’s a planter,” Poppop announced. “One you can just push by hand through the field. It makes the furrow, drops the seed and covers it all in one pass. That’ll sure save us some time.”
“Sure will,” Jeremiah replied. “Do you have different plates for it?”
“Yep,” Dad responded, “in this box here with some spacing gears too.”
“Plates? Spacing gears?” I inquired.
“The plates are the metering mechanism. Round rings of metal with holes in that catch and drop one seed at a time. The holes have to be different sizes because some seeds are large like lima beans and others are smaller like sweet corn or pea beans,” Dad explained.
“The spacing gears,” Poppop added, “change the speed at which the plates rotate, either decreasing or increasing the distance traveled between each seed drop, hence changing the distance or spacing between each seed. You don’t plant every crop in the garden with the same distance between plants. There a chart for it?”
“On the underside of the seed box lid,” Dad answered.
“Good,” Poppop responded, “look here Alyssa. The chart tells you what gear to use with which plate to get the inches between seeds that you want. You’ll see when we use it.”
“Thanks,” I said, “looking forward to it.”
“And,” Dad continued, “got one more thing in the deal.”
“What’s that?” Josh asked.
“A Ford, four-wheel drive, diesel, pickup truck.”
“Neat,” Josh responded, “just for our old coal stove?”
“The truck couldn’t heat the house,” Dad answered. “Besides, what value does a truck have when there’s no fuel to run it?”
“Tank empty?” Larry inquired.
A big smile emerged on Dad’s face and then he said, “No, full. Part of the deal. Landlord filled it with the heating oil left in the tank in the cellar for the oil burner. It’s a forty gallon tank. I figure enough to combine twelve to fifteen acres of soybeans. Sound about right, Larry?”
After a little mental calculation Larry replied, “That would be just about right. No matter, every little bit helps.”
Poppop was looking at the beans and then asked, “This all there were?”
“No,” Dad answered, “they need about a week of good weather to dry well enough to keep. These will either have to be dried more, canned or eaten. If we don’t, they’ll spoil.”
“Either way,” Poppop responded, “these need to be shelled. I’ll take them in and we can get started on them. The cooks can decide later what to do with them. You picked them pretty quickly.”
“Had help,” Dad said, “a few of the neighbors were there. We actually picked more than these. I shared them.”
“Good for you,” Poppop replied.
“Which neighbors?” I asked. “Was Marie there? Did you talk to her?”
“No, she wasn’t, sorry,” Dad said. “But next time we go, you make the trip as well. Then you’ll get to see her. Everyone else seems to be doing fine. A couple other families moved into the house, must be about eighteen people in all. They had to take our things we left behind out into the wagon shed. No problem, I had told them. Next time we go over, I figure we’ll use Brutus and a wagon. Take Mom and a few others to pick the beans. That way we have a way to bring home the beans as well as anything Mom or Jean root out of our belongings that might be useful here.”
To be continued….. Mort
“All I can really think of is my sewing machine,” she answered. “Originally we thought it would be of no use without electricity. But the way things are progressing around here, the boys might be able to make it functional.”
“OK,” Dad answered. That struck me as a little odd. How could he bring Mom’s sewing machine back with him on the moped? Although, I recolected, Dad often had a way of making things work. So just after breakfast, off he went.
Later that morning, Uncle Jeremiah, Amy, Lynette, and I were working with Chip and Pepper, our young oxen. We were up to the point where we were actually leaving them yoked together for eight hours. They were getting used to it, were able to eat and drink while yoked, and even had gotten accustomed to being led around by us. We had started to give them verbal commands, not that they knew how to obey already, but they needed to hear the repetition of the commands to learn. The commands were simple enough. Of course, the obvious one was “whoa” for stop. Go was “hup”, left was “gaw” and right was “hee”. The actual word wasn’t that important, the sound of them was. Each had a distinctive ending vowel sound so the animals would not confuse them. We had just finished and Uncle Jeremiah was measuring them for the next size yoke that needed to be made soon, when we looked down the road and noticed a large charcoal gray Ford pick-up with some things loaded on the back approaching.
“Looks like the landlord from the old place,” I said.
“Wouldn’t know that,” my uncle replied, “but it’s your dad driving it.”
Sure enough, it was Dad. As he wheeled into the driveway, he throttled the diesel engine loudly enough to catch the attention of Josh and some of the others who were working close by. As they came out to see what was going on, we took stock of the items loaded on the truck. Of course there was Mom’s sewing machine and Grandpop’s mo-ped. We saw two cases of honey, a basket of beans from the garden and three implements that I wasn’t exactly sure what they were; one looked like a cultivator.
“Nice trade,” Josh said to Dad. “So this is what you got for our coal stove?”
“You remembered?” Dad replied. “This and more.”
“More?” Larry asked.
“Yep, the landlord’s son-in-law is a beekeeper. That’s where the honey comes from. But also in the deal are two hives of bees he’ll deliver next spring. That way we can have our own honey, but more importantly, ensure better pollination for all the fruit and vegetable crops we’ll be growing around here.”
“That hand cultivator is nice too,” Jeremiah said. “It’ll save a lot of hoeing when the time comes.” The hand cultivator had a high steel wheel in the front with wooden handles in the back, similar in design to a wheelbarrow. In between and at ground level was a row of narrow harrow like tines for scratching the dirt, making it loose for killing weeds.
“And look at that!” Joe exclaimed as he had just arrived and peered into the pickup bed. “A foot pedal driven grinding wheel for sharpening knives and axes.”
“And scythes and sickles,” Larry added. “We can sure use that. But what’s this third item?” The third item was shaped like the hand cultivator, but with a smaller wheel and a chain drive coming back to some kind of mechanism mounted under a metal box.
“It’s a planter,” Poppop announced. “One you can just push by hand through the field. It makes the furrow, drops the seed and covers it all in one pass. That’ll sure save us some time.”
“Sure will,” Jeremiah replied. “Do you have different plates for it?”
“Yep,” Dad responded, “in this box here with some spacing gears too.”
“Plates? Spacing gears?” I inquired.
“The plates are the metering mechanism. Round rings of metal with holes in that catch and drop one seed at a time. The holes have to be different sizes because some seeds are large like lima beans and others are smaller like sweet corn or pea beans,” Dad explained.
“The spacing gears,” Poppop added, “change the speed at which the plates rotate, either decreasing or increasing the distance traveled between each seed drop, hence changing the distance or spacing between each seed. You don’t plant every crop in the garden with the same distance between plants. There a chart for it?”
“On the underside of the seed box lid,” Dad answered.
“Good,” Poppop responded, “look here Alyssa. The chart tells you what gear to use with which plate to get the inches between seeds that you want. You’ll see when we use it.”
“Thanks,” I said, “looking forward to it.”
“And,” Dad continued, “got one more thing in the deal.”
“What’s that?” Josh asked.
“A Ford, four-wheel drive, diesel, pickup truck.”
“Neat,” Josh responded, “just for our old coal stove?”
“The truck couldn’t heat the house,” Dad answered. “Besides, what value does a truck have when there’s no fuel to run it?”
“Tank empty?” Larry inquired.
A big smile emerged on Dad’s face and then he said, “No, full. Part of the deal. Landlord filled it with the heating oil left in the tank in the cellar for the oil burner. It’s a forty gallon tank. I figure enough to combine twelve to fifteen acres of soybeans. Sound about right, Larry?”
After a little mental calculation Larry replied, “That would be just about right. No matter, every little bit helps.”
Poppop was looking at the beans and then asked, “This all there were?”
“No,” Dad answered, “they need about a week of good weather to dry well enough to keep. These will either have to be dried more, canned or eaten. If we don’t, they’ll spoil.”
“Either way,” Poppop responded, “these need to be shelled. I’ll take them in and we can get started on them. The cooks can decide later what to do with them. You picked them pretty quickly.”
“Had help,” Dad said, “a few of the neighbors were there. We actually picked more than these. I shared them.”
“Good for you,” Poppop replied.
“Which neighbors?” I asked. “Was Marie there? Did you talk to her?”
“No, she wasn’t, sorry,” Dad said. “But next time we go, you make the trip as well. Then you’ll get to see her. Everyone else seems to be doing fine. A couple other families moved into the house, must be about eighteen people in all. They had to take our things we left behind out into the wagon shed. No problem, I had told them. Next time we go over, I figure we’ll use Brutus and a wagon. Take Mom and a few others to pick the beans. That way we have a way to bring home the beans as well as anything Mom or Jean root out of our belongings that might be useful here.”
To be continued….. Mort
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - TIME
Haymaking didn’t happen without some consternation. Friday morning Jean was bound and determined to get some laundry done; the job had been neglected for nearly a week.
“Now Mother,” Harvey had said, “we have hay to make today; we need all the hands.”
“Maybe so,” Jean answered, “but you know hay drying weather is also clothes drying weather and besides that, soon all your hands will be walking round in dirty underwear. We need to get started today!”
Now Harvey didn’t rule his dairy farm as a king. On the family level, he was quick to consult Larry about farming matters and his wife as well on all matters. But with the arrival of the additional families, a new triumvirate had been formed. Harvey, Dad, and Joe collectively made the decisions. It seemed to be working so far. This being somewhat of a marital issue, it appeared Dad knew better than to interfere. Joe, on the other hand, had his own thoughts.
“It’s also time to butcher the largest hog we have. We need meat and I can’t have the butcher house full of laundry when I’m working on the hog,” he had said.
“But there’s hay to put away!” Harvey exclaimed.
“We need food,” Joe stated.
“And clean clothes,” was Jean’s response.
“And there’s two days to accomplish it all,” Dad finally interjected. “Joe, aren’t you going to roast the whole hog?”
“Yes, I was,” he answered.
“Well that you’ll do outside. You’ll only need the butcher stove to can the leftover meat. Isn’t that correct?” Dad continued.
“Yes.”
“And that you can do Saturday, instead, aren’t I right?”
“I suppose so,” Joe agreed, “if the tables aren’t being used to fold laundry when I want to go at canning.”
“If they get started right away, they should be done by dinner tomorrow. And Harvey, I believe there’s less than half of the amount of hay to put away today as we did yesterday.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Harvey answered.
“So we can do without ten or so women and girls and still get it all loaded and under roof. If we have to unload the last wagons on Saturday, then so be it,” Dad concluded.
“Then so be it,” Harvey concurred as he once again took the lead. “Mother, get started as soon as you can. Keep whomever you need. Larry and the boys will stoke the fire well so you have plenty of hot water. Joe, we’ll do the hog tomorrow. It will make a great dinner. The canning can be done in the afternoon. The women can finish folding in the house if they need to. Okay everyone?”
It was okay. The hay got put away, the laundry was done, we had a fine hog roast for Saturday dinner, the leftover got jarred in the afternoon for future use, and I guess we learned a lesson on priorities, urgency, and cooperation.
The following week the boys came up with several versions of wringers for the wash machine. They were patterned after the feed rolls on the forage harvester. These were spring loaded cylinders which pulled and guided the crop into the knives on the harvester that chopped the material fine. The rolls had serrated edges and were way too aggressive to use directly off the machine – would have shredded the wash. But they could use the drive and tension mechanism from the harvester and then replace the pair of rolls with smooth pieces of pipe. First they tried “schedule forty” plastic pipe which is about six inches in diameter, fairly heavy and is used for sewage lines both inside a home and underground. Harvey had several pieces lying around from his excavating days. The pipe being hollow, it was quite a challenge to put an end cap on the four ends that an axle could be mounted dead center so the rolls would run true. After a few tries, they had it working. They mounted a big crank to turn the wringer. Unfortunately, the pipe was way too smooth, so it would not pull the wash through; it just slipped, even after making several adjustments to the tension mechanism.
“Remember,” Grandmom said, “how the wringers years ago were made out of a semi-soft rubbery type material.”
“Yes, I believe I do remember,” Jean answered. “The boys really don’t know what they were like.” Then addressing them she added, “Could you find some sort of rubber like coating to put on the rolls or a different kind of roll?”
Aaron replied, “We looked at a lot of rolls from the farm equipment around here, and they were all too rough.”
“Suppose,” Dennis wondered, “we wrapped some of the duct tape that Bruce brought around the pipe. Would that be rough enough?”
“Maybe not initially,” Joe said, “we’d have to rough it up a bit with something like sandpaper, but then it probably would only last a few loads before wearing completely off. Worth a try though.”
They tried. He was right. Waste of tape.
Uncle Jeremiah suggested we stretch a piece of an old inner tube on the pipe and glue it fast. It was a project, trying to get the tube to just the right size so the glue would hold and the rubber wouldn’t be too loose on the pipe. But patience and perseverance won out and after a couple days of sticking to it, we had a working wringer. Finally, Barry and Dennis mounted a windshield wiper motor onto it so we wouldn’t have to crank. Great improvement, but we had to be more careful not to get our fingers caught between the wringers.
About the same time, Barry and Aaron had removed the circulator pump from Harvey’s furnace and mounted it in the line inside the house. They rigged a starter motor from Poppop’s Chevy onto it. After gearing it down, it worked fine.
“Still not sure how these motors will take the continuous use when it gets cold outside and will have to run for long periods. Nor how quickly we’ll have to replace the spent battery with a charged one,” Barry said. “If it becomes too burdensome, we’ll have to rig up another bicycle for people/pedal power.” This question, however, led to the determination as to where to put Larry and Joe’s windmill. On the porch right between the house and butcher house – that’s where we were using the most electricity and needing to have the batteries recharged.
When the windmill was up and functional there must have been a dozen batteries in line for charging at any given moment. They had built little carriers to move batteries where they were needed and we used a toy wagon to take four at a time to the barn for the lights later in the fall when we had to milk in the dark in the evening.
“You know,” Poppop said, “this reminds me of something. Before we had electric companies and wires bringing electricity to the farm, my grandfather Willis used to make his own with a generator. Gasoline was cheap and the generator was only run a few hours during the day to charge a bank of batteries that were stored in that small cellar beneath the butcher house.”
“Is that what those old electric controls in the corner of the butcher house were for?” Harvey asked.
“I think so,” Poppop answered, “remember I wasn’t around now mind you; only heard about it. Then all the lights in the house were direct current, running off the batteries in the evening. Wonder if we’ll regress to that?”
“Who knows,” was Dad’s response. “For the next several months, it might be hard to tell if we’re going forward or backward.”
At least we were going forward on the heating, laundry, and electric lighting front. But on the flour mill, I wasn’t so sure. Grandpop’s mo-ped had become a popular item when it came time to go somewhere in a hurry. The younger men could pedal it most of the time and only kick the engine into gear for the harder hills. It took very little gas. One day Larry had taken it to visit the two old flour mills in the neighborhood. The one was completely abandoned and all the milling equipment had been removed. Strike one. The other mill had been turned into a home and the current occupants were not at all agreeable to Larry’s request to look around. He tried to explain to them that we would be willing to trade for the mill if they desired or that a running mill, if they allowed us to donate to its repair, would be a valuable tool for the community as well as a source of income for them. They weren’t interested. I guess not everyone’s heart had changed. Or maybe Larry was sensed as a threat in these uncertain times. Strike two. Back to the drawing board for the boys to build our own mill.
To be continued……Mort
“Now Mother,” Harvey had said, “we have hay to make today; we need all the hands.”
“Maybe so,” Jean answered, “but you know hay drying weather is also clothes drying weather and besides that, soon all your hands will be walking round in dirty underwear. We need to get started today!”
Now Harvey didn’t rule his dairy farm as a king. On the family level, he was quick to consult Larry about farming matters and his wife as well on all matters. But with the arrival of the additional families, a new triumvirate had been formed. Harvey, Dad, and Joe collectively made the decisions. It seemed to be working so far. This being somewhat of a marital issue, it appeared Dad knew better than to interfere. Joe, on the other hand, had his own thoughts.
“It’s also time to butcher the largest hog we have. We need meat and I can’t have the butcher house full of laundry when I’m working on the hog,” he had said.
“But there’s hay to put away!” Harvey exclaimed.
“We need food,” Joe stated.
“And clean clothes,” was Jean’s response.
“And there’s two days to accomplish it all,” Dad finally interjected. “Joe, aren’t you going to roast the whole hog?”
“Yes, I was,” he answered.
“Well that you’ll do outside. You’ll only need the butcher stove to can the leftover meat. Isn’t that correct?” Dad continued.
“Yes.”
“And that you can do Saturday, instead, aren’t I right?”
“I suppose so,” Joe agreed, “if the tables aren’t being used to fold laundry when I want to go at canning.”
“If they get started right away, they should be done by dinner tomorrow. And Harvey, I believe there’s less than half of the amount of hay to put away today as we did yesterday.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Harvey answered.
“So we can do without ten or so women and girls and still get it all loaded and under roof. If we have to unload the last wagons on Saturday, then so be it,” Dad concluded.
“Then so be it,” Harvey concurred as he once again took the lead. “Mother, get started as soon as you can. Keep whomever you need. Larry and the boys will stoke the fire well so you have plenty of hot water. Joe, we’ll do the hog tomorrow. It will make a great dinner. The canning can be done in the afternoon. The women can finish folding in the house if they need to. Okay everyone?”
It was okay. The hay got put away, the laundry was done, we had a fine hog roast for Saturday dinner, the leftover got jarred in the afternoon for future use, and I guess we learned a lesson on priorities, urgency, and cooperation.
The following week the boys came up with several versions of wringers for the wash machine. They were patterned after the feed rolls on the forage harvester. These were spring loaded cylinders which pulled and guided the crop into the knives on the harvester that chopped the material fine. The rolls had serrated edges and were way too aggressive to use directly off the machine – would have shredded the wash. But they could use the drive and tension mechanism from the harvester and then replace the pair of rolls with smooth pieces of pipe. First they tried “schedule forty” plastic pipe which is about six inches in diameter, fairly heavy and is used for sewage lines both inside a home and underground. Harvey had several pieces lying around from his excavating days. The pipe being hollow, it was quite a challenge to put an end cap on the four ends that an axle could be mounted dead center so the rolls would run true. After a few tries, they had it working. They mounted a big crank to turn the wringer. Unfortunately, the pipe was way too smooth, so it would not pull the wash through; it just slipped, even after making several adjustments to the tension mechanism.
“Remember,” Grandmom said, “how the wringers years ago were made out of a semi-soft rubbery type material.”
“Yes, I believe I do remember,” Jean answered. “The boys really don’t know what they were like.” Then addressing them she added, “Could you find some sort of rubber like coating to put on the rolls or a different kind of roll?”
Aaron replied, “We looked at a lot of rolls from the farm equipment around here, and they were all too rough.”
“Suppose,” Dennis wondered, “we wrapped some of the duct tape that Bruce brought around the pipe. Would that be rough enough?”
“Maybe not initially,” Joe said, “we’d have to rough it up a bit with something like sandpaper, but then it probably would only last a few loads before wearing completely off. Worth a try though.”
They tried. He was right. Waste of tape.
Uncle Jeremiah suggested we stretch a piece of an old inner tube on the pipe and glue it fast. It was a project, trying to get the tube to just the right size so the glue would hold and the rubber wouldn’t be too loose on the pipe. But patience and perseverance won out and after a couple days of sticking to it, we had a working wringer. Finally, Barry and Dennis mounted a windshield wiper motor onto it so we wouldn’t have to crank. Great improvement, but we had to be more careful not to get our fingers caught between the wringers.
About the same time, Barry and Aaron had removed the circulator pump from Harvey’s furnace and mounted it in the line inside the house. They rigged a starter motor from Poppop’s Chevy onto it. After gearing it down, it worked fine.
“Still not sure how these motors will take the continuous use when it gets cold outside and will have to run for long periods. Nor how quickly we’ll have to replace the spent battery with a charged one,” Barry said. “If it becomes too burdensome, we’ll have to rig up another bicycle for people/pedal power.” This question, however, led to the determination as to where to put Larry and Joe’s windmill. On the porch right between the house and butcher house – that’s where we were using the most electricity and needing to have the batteries recharged.
When the windmill was up and functional there must have been a dozen batteries in line for charging at any given moment. They had built little carriers to move batteries where they were needed and we used a toy wagon to take four at a time to the barn for the lights later in the fall when we had to milk in the dark in the evening.
“You know,” Poppop said, “this reminds me of something. Before we had electric companies and wires bringing electricity to the farm, my grandfather Willis used to make his own with a generator. Gasoline was cheap and the generator was only run a few hours during the day to charge a bank of batteries that were stored in that small cellar beneath the butcher house.”
“Is that what those old electric controls in the corner of the butcher house were for?” Harvey asked.
“I think so,” Poppop answered, “remember I wasn’t around now mind you; only heard about it. Then all the lights in the house were direct current, running off the batteries in the evening. Wonder if we’ll regress to that?”
“Who knows,” was Dad’s response. “For the next several months, it might be hard to tell if we’re going forward or backward.”
At least we were going forward on the heating, laundry, and electric lighting front. But on the flour mill, I wasn’t so sure. Grandpop’s mo-ped had become a popular item when it came time to go somewhere in a hurry. The younger men could pedal it most of the time and only kick the engine into gear for the harder hills. It took very little gas. One day Larry had taken it to visit the two old flour mills in the neighborhood. The one was completely abandoned and all the milling equipment had been removed. Strike one. The other mill had been turned into a home and the current occupants were not at all agreeable to Larry’s request to look around. He tried to explain to them that we would be willing to trade for the mill if they desired or that a running mill, if they allowed us to donate to its repair, would be a valuable tool for the community as well as a source of income for them. They weren’t interested. I guess not everyone’s heart had changed. Or maybe Larry was sensed as a threat in these uncertain times. Strike two. Back to the drawing board for the boys to build our own mill.
To be continued……Mort
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Stump Family Tree
This week, in response to requests, and to help the readers keep track of the members of the communities, I’ve decided to list the characters in the story.
I’ll do a Stump family tree first, and then list others who have joined either the Stump community or Butch and Clare’s. – Mort
Willis Stump (Harvey’s and Dad’s great-grandfather)
-- he had two sons: Thomas, Sr. and Joel
---- Thomas, Sr. had two sons: Lester and Thomas, Jr.
------ Joe is Lester’s son
--------his wife is Sandy
----------they have two sons: Dennis and Aaron
------ Harvey is Thomas, Jr.’s son
--------his wife is Jean
----------their son is Larry
------------ Harvey also has a brother, Randall
----Harold (my Poppop) is Joel’s son
------ his wife is Myra (my Grandmom)
-------- their sons are Jeremiah (my uncle) and Dad
----------Jeremiah’s wife is Lois (my aunt)
------------they have two daughters: Amy and Lynette (my cousins)
----------Dad’s wife is Mom
------------ her parents are Grandpop and Grandma
------------ her brother is my Uncle Bruce
-------------- his wife is Kristen (my aunt)
-------------------- her mother is Leticia
---------------- they have a daughter, Jennifer and a son, Dean-my cousins
------------------Dean has a girlfriend, Vanetta
---------- their sons are Jake and Josh (my brothers)
---------- their daughters are Mel (my sister) and Alyssa-that’s ME!
- - - - also Barry, our auto mechanic, has joined us
Our neighbors at Crystal View Farm:
Butch and Clare Rorher
Ben Lukens and his wife Denise
----their sons are Dave, Clark and Ted
Lee Smith and his wife Donna
----their sons are Billy and Robbie
----their daughters are Renee, Karen, Molly and Susan
Dan Parris and his wife Julie (the teacher)
----their daughters are Tina and Leslie
----their twin sons are Blaise and Matthew
------ the elderly couple, Wayne and Joan Wolfe
To be continued….. what’s up next?....... Mort
I’ll do a Stump family tree first, and then list others who have joined either the Stump community or Butch and Clare’s. – Mort
Willis Stump (Harvey’s and Dad’s great-grandfather)
-- he had two sons: Thomas, Sr. and Joel
---- Thomas, Sr. had two sons: Lester and Thomas, Jr.
------ Joe is Lester’s son
--------his wife is Sandy
----------they have two sons: Dennis and Aaron
------ Harvey is Thomas, Jr.’s son
--------his wife is Jean
----------their son is Larry
------------ Harvey also has a brother, Randall
----Harold (my Poppop) is Joel’s son
------ his wife is Myra (my Grandmom)
-------- their sons are Jeremiah (my uncle) and Dad
----------Jeremiah’s wife is Lois (my aunt)
------------they have two daughters: Amy and Lynette (my cousins)
----------Dad’s wife is Mom
------------ her parents are Grandpop and Grandma
------------ her brother is my Uncle Bruce
-------------- his wife is Kristen (my aunt)
-------------------- her mother is Leticia
---------------- they have a daughter, Jennifer and a son, Dean-my cousins
------------------Dean has a girlfriend, Vanetta
---------- their sons are Jake and Josh (my brothers)
---------- their daughters are Mel (my sister) and Alyssa-that’s ME!
- - - - also Barry, our auto mechanic, has joined us
Our neighbors at Crystal View Farm:
Butch and Clare Rorher
Ben Lukens and his wife Denise
----their sons are Dave, Clark and Ted
Lee Smith and his wife Donna
----their sons are Billy and Robbie
----their daughters are Renee, Karen, Molly and Susan
Dan Parris and his wife Julie (the teacher)
----their daughters are Tina and Leslie
----their twin sons are Blaise and Matthew
------ the elderly couple, Wayne and Joan Wolfe
To be continued….. what’s up next?....... Mort
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Chap 15 - We Made Hay While the Sun Shone (conclusion)
The aches and pains started even before we had eaten supper that evening. Different parts hurt on different people. For some it was backs or legs; others it was arms or shoulders. Jeremiah wished out loud that Dr. Fleming would show up, but it was too early for him to come around again. Everyone had their own remedies. Many, like Dad, just wanted a hot bath, so we kept making and carrying hot water all evening. That meant Amy, Lynette, and I had to pedal a little more than normal to keep water in the milk tank. Jenn, Dean, and Vanetta helped out by taking a few turns on the bike.
Lois was busy dispensing. Rubbing alcohol was a favorite, but she also had some analgesic cream made specifically for muscle aches. Some people just chose that stinky ointment that old people often use. A few people had chaffing in areas like their armpits or in between their legs. A little witch hazel took the sting out of that. Lois often followed that treatment up with some antibiotic ointment or Eucerin cream. The chaffing problem might get worse when we start working in the dusty, dry hay and sweating all the time. Thank goodness we all wore gloves or Lois would have been treating blisters, too.
I think everyone slept pretty well that night, but started slowly the next morning. The stiffness and soreness were more evident now, especially for Dad’s generation, but the younger ones felt it too. Dean likened it to the morning after the first practice of a new sport’s season. After all that running and using muscles you hadn’t used for a while, your body had a way of letting you know. But we got the regular chores done in good time and once again used the Brutus-pulled wagon to head to the hayfield. This time we took along every pitchfork we could find on the place.
“We have to remember to bring several back with us tonight,” Larry said, “to feed the cattle.”
When we arrived at Butch’s, his crew wasn’t too quick to join us. Definitely some of them were not accustomed to working the way we had on “Labor” Day. The job this morning was to turn the hay. With a power driven machine, it was called tedding. To start, we lined up all 35 people along the end of the field, each with either a pitchfork or a couple with Poppop’s rakes. The purpose was to get the partially wilted hay up off the ground, spread it apart, knock the dew off, and hopefully have it end up with the wettest stalks of hay on top for the sun to work at.
In the beginning we watched as Dad, Harvey, Larry, Jake, and Josh demonstrated. Each had their own style. Dad just took a forkful and flipped it over to expose the wet hay underneath. Harvey took every forkful and shook it apart. Larry would hold the fork backward and rake the hay toward him like an oar, leaving it fluffed up. Josh tended to lift every forkful waist high, and then fling it a far as he could throw it, spreading it in a wide pattern. Jake just kept flailing from side to side, scattering the hay in both directions.
I’m sure one way might have been better than another, but Dad said, “Just so we get it distributed and setting up so the air can flow through it. The tricky part is not to step on it after it’s been fluffed.” Therefore, once we were away from the end of the field, it was better if we moved backward, facing the hay we had already turned. We soon caught on – everyone using their own style. It was fun; throwing hay all over the place - had to be careful though, not to get too close to the person next to you. We also found out how poorly we had cut some of the hay the day before. Often, when I’d grab a forkful, some of the individual stalks were not completely severed. It then took a little effort to rip them free.
Our motion took us away from the barn and our water, though. In about an hour and a half we had reached the halfway mark in the field. “Time for water everyone,” Harvey yelled, “let’s take a break.” After drinking, we walked all the way to the back end of the field and worked toward the barn. It gave us a more positive feeling – psychologically - always moving toward our goal. We were done before dinner.
“Looks good,” Larry said, “now let’s mow a bit more, before we eat. What do you think, Pop?”
“Grab the scythes,” was Harvey’s answer. We mowed about an hour, until Clare called us in for dinner. We didn’t need to eat in the hot sun today. She had a tremendous pot of vegetable soup on her outside cook fire, made with the pork from Roger. It had plenty of broth and tons of vegetables, many that Poppop had brought up that morning. After the filling meal, cool drinks, and a short rest, out we went to mow some more.
When we had about six acres mown (about ¾ of what we mowed the day before), Harvey said, “Let’s pack it in. We’ve a little work to do in the barn for tomorrow.”
You see baled hay in its comparatively compact package with twine for handles, can be carried fairly easily to the horses or cattle that you’re feeding. Loose hay’s a bit more difficult, so Harvey needed to find a spot in the barn where it would be both easy to unload from the wagons and convenient to fork down a hole in the barn floor near where the horses were fed. Fortunately, Butch’s barn, like Harvey’s, was of the old style that had two stories – a lower level, we called the bottom of the barn, where the animals were housed, and an upper level, we called the top of the barn, where hay, grain and equipment were stored. In different locations around the top of the barn, holes were left in the floor to drop feed down to the animals below. We called the holes hay holes. To some extent they were dangerous, generally uncovered most of the time. There were few kids raised on a farm that hadn’t fallen through one sometime in their life. I was no exception. Heck, sometimes we jumped on purpose, if there was something soft to land on. The vintage barn that Butch had was a throwback, specifically designed for the handling of loose hay and straw, so he had no problem choosing a spot to store the hay we were to bring in the next day. We only needed to clean up about a half an hour to make the site ready.
Wednesday was the big day - eight acres of hay to bring in - another six laying. The weather appeared like it was going to cooperate – wind out of the west, blowing early in the morning, with low humidity. There was no dew left on the hay by the time we reached the fields. First we turned the hay we had mown on Tuesday, and then jumped to our original eight acre patch.
Now Poppop’s rakes came into play. Because it was mown earlier, the hay around the outside of the field was the driest. In the middle of the field, it had more moisture; the phrase we used to describe it was “it was tough” or “not fit” (for harvesting). In the corner of the field, the eight people with the rakes started shoulder to shoulder, pulling about ten feet of the scattered hay toward them – maybe each person two rake widths wide. That way they took about a 40 foot swath down the side of the field. They weren’t fussy about it; just pulled the hay together, and then stepped over it and took another ten feet. Meanwhile, the rest of us with pitchforks, gathered any hay missed by the rakes and formed it into a continuous fluffy pile, so that the drying air could flow through it. We also kept an eye out for any really tough hay and make sure that it was well off the ground, preferably right on the top of the windrow so the sun could hit it directly.
“You know,” Dad said, “for forty-five years I’ve been calling these rows of hay, that we made with machines, windrows, without giving much thought to why. Now that I’m making them by hand, I can understand.”
“It’s a row of hay, set up so the wind can go through,” I offered.
“You got it,” he answered.
From the time we started raking, it would probably take about four or five hours of good drying to be fit enough to safely store in the barn. It was well past dinner time when we had the whole field raked up.
“No problem,” Dad had said, “it might be pretty late until we quit up here this evening; supper might be late, too.”
After dinner the hay wasn’t as dry as Harvey and Butch would have liked it. “Always a trick,” Harvey told the group. “You want to have very dry hay on the bottom of the pile in the barn - makes less chance of spoilage. Still you want to get started as soon as you can, so you can finish before running out of daylight.”
Just because we couldn’t start loading, didn’t mean there wasn’t work to do. Back to field #2 we went – the one we had mowed six acres of on Tuesday.
“Let’s mow some more,” Harvey directed. “It’ll give us hay to put away Friday. Why should we waste this good weather?” For hay making – yes, good weather; Harvey had hit it. For working – today was the hottest so far this week. People’s attire had changed somewhat, too. There were a lot more long sleeves, wide brimmed hats, and handkerchiefs tied around some necks. A few people had been sunburned the last couple afternoons. I admired the men who grabbed the scythes. They ached already and with a lot more work to do today, common sense might have told them to rest and store up some energy for the looming tasks ahead. But soon the scythes and sickles were swinging away and more hay was being knocked down.
An hour later, with about another two acres cut, Harvey said, “Good enough, let’s start loading.” We all got a fresh drink of water, set a little spell, and then Harvey and Butch headed into the field. Each had a team of horses with a wagon. About 15 people climbed aboard Harvey’s and went to the far end of the field. Butch stopped at the near end. We reversed the roles we had the day before. Today the men had both the pitchforks and the meat of the job. They plunged their forks into the piles of hay and then “pitched” it onto the wagon. As the pile increased, a couple boys climbed onto the wagon to “pitch” the hay higher and get as full a load as possible.
This time, I had a rake, and was relegated to gathering together the last few stalks of hay that the “pitchers” had left behind. The process really didn’t take too long – there were four of us raking and at least a dozen with pitchforks. We actually had to stay out of each other’s way. Before the wagon was full, Clare and Ben came out with the third team and an empty wagon. The switch was easy, but this second load would take much longer to fill, for the eight strongest loaders went back to the barn with Butch to unload the first wagon.
“Just pace yourselves,” Dad said. “From the looks of it, you’re all getting the knack of it.” I watched Butch and company as they neared the barn. They drove the wagon straight into the barn, close enough to where Butch wanted the hay piled and allowing enough room to unhitch the horses from the wagon, wiggle around it, and bring the team out of the barn to yet another empty wagon. They hitched it up, and then Butch drove it right past us toward Harvey’s crew. By the time Butch reached them, their wagon was full; a switch was made and back came Butch with another full load and four more men to help unload it. When he reached the barn the first wagon was empty – another switch and back to the field. What planning. Load after load, teams switching wagons, workers switching tasks. I even tried tossing hay onto the wagon for a spell.
We didn’t work non-stop. A couple times we’d just sit in the shade a few minutes. There were water breaks for the horses and drink breaks for us. Clare had prepared a concoction that was to be like Gatorade, that her family had used long before Gatorade was invented. It was water flavored with lemon juice, sweetened with honey, and some vinegar and a little salt added. It was OK, I’m no fan of vinegar, but it was supposed to keep our electrolytes balanced and provide us with stamina and energy. Must have worked: we just kept going. The job was getting done.
By late afternoon, six of the unloaders left for Harvey’s for milking chores, slowing things up a bit. But I believe we only had two loads of hay left laying in the field. An hour later, the field was clean with all four wagons full.
Inside the barn, the task was getting tougher. The first loads of hay were easily thrown down off the wagon onto the floor. Now, however the hay had to be thrown up for the pile was over eight feet high. Then others standing on the pile threw the hay even higher. I finally got to help in the barn and out of the sun, but now I realized another purpose for those long sleeved shirts and handkerchiefs – the dust. And even though I thought it was hot outside, inside it was stifling. The heat collected under the roof of the barn and the higher the pile of hay grew, the hotter it got. No wonder the men were rotating in and out of the barn all day – another benefit to numbers.
It went pretty fast though, what with two dozen plus forks in the barn at the same time. Right after we started the second to last load, Josh, Jake, and Uncle Jeremiah came back from milking.
“Is it that late?” Dad asked, “that you guys are finished with the milking already?”
“We milked our cows,” Josh said, “then Larry said he, Joe and Harvey could clean-up and feed all the animals. We needed to bring Brutus back, to haul everyone home and besides, we figured you were wearing out.”
“Naw, we’re still in great shape,” Butch huffed. “But appreciate it just the same. Why don’t you two young guys climb up in the pile?”
When the wagon was empty, Ben said, “Fourteen down, one to go.”
“We did fifteen loads today?” Mel asked.
“Yep,” Ben answered, “time flies when you’re having fun.”
Uncle Jeremiah and I got the last forkfuls of hay on the wagon. He stuck his fork into the final remnant, lifted it up and said, “There it is! That’s what I’ve been looking for all afternoon!”
“Did you lose something?” I asked gullibly. “What were you looking for?”
“The last forkful!” he laughed along with everyone else. It was an old joke and I fell for it, but I vowed not to let it happen again.
“The wagons can stay where they are until tomorrow,” Butch announced. “Bring my horses to the front of the barn so we can take off their harnesses, feed them and loose them in the pasture.”
That finished, we started climbing on board the wagon hitched to Brutus for the trip home when Josh said, “Wait! There’s something I need to do, yet.” He ran across the pasture, took off his shoes and leaped into Harvey’s pond. Didn’t take long for the rest of us to follow suit. None of us stayed in very long, however. Harvey’s pond was only a couple degrees warmer than spring water. Most of us jumped in, screamed, and popped right out again. Cooled us off though, and washed off the dust, sweat, and grime of a day’s hard work.
We repeated that day’s hard work on Thursday and Friday, then several more times in the ensuing weeks. A few more acres at Butch’s farm, and then several acres at Harvey’s other rented farm; that hay we brought home for Harvey’s animals. In all, it gave a nice pile of hay in the two barns. Mission accomplished; we made hay while the sun shone.
To be continued……. Mort
Lois was busy dispensing. Rubbing alcohol was a favorite, but she also had some analgesic cream made specifically for muscle aches. Some people just chose that stinky ointment that old people often use. A few people had chaffing in areas like their armpits or in between their legs. A little witch hazel took the sting out of that. Lois often followed that treatment up with some antibiotic ointment or Eucerin cream. The chaffing problem might get worse when we start working in the dusty, dry hay and sweating all the time. Thank goodness we all wore gloves or Lois would have been treating blisters, too.
I think everyone slept pretty well that night, but started slowly the next morning. The stiffness and soreness were more evident now, especially for Dad’s generation, but the younger ones felt it too. Dean likened it to the morning after the first practice of a new sport’s season. After all that running and using muscles you hadn’t used for a while, your body had a way of letting you know. But we got the regular chores done in good time and once again used the Brutus-pulled wagon to head to the hayfield. This time we took along every pitchfork we could find on the place.
“We have to remember to bring several back with us tonight,” Larry said, “to feed the cattle.”
When we arrived at Butch’s, his crew wasn’t too quick to join us. Definitely some of them were not accustomed to working the way we had on “Labor” Day. The job this morning was to turn the hay. With a power driven machine, it was called tedding. To start, we lined up all 35 people along the end of the field, each with either a pitchfork or a couple with Poppop’s rakes. The purpose was to get the partially wilted hay up off the ground, spread it apart, knock the dew off, and hopefully have it end up with the wettest stalks of hay on top for the sun to work at.
In the beginning we watched as Dad, Harvey, Larry, Jake, and Josh demonstrated. Each had their own style. Dad just took a forkful and flipped it over to expose the wet hay underneath. Harvey took every forkful and shook it apart. Larry would hold the fork backward and rake the hay toward him like an oar, leaving it fluffed up. Josh tended to lift every forkful waist high, and then fling it a far as he could throw it, spreading it in a wide pattern. Jake just kept flailing from side to side, scattering the hay in both directions.
I’m sure one way might have been better than another, but Dad said, “Just so we get it distributed and setting up so the air can flow through it. The tricky part is not to step on it after it’s been fluffed.” Therefore, once we were away from the end of the field, it was better if we moved backward, facing the hay we had already turned. We soon caught on – everyone using their own style. It was fun; throwing hay all over the place - had to be careful though, not to get too close to the person next to you. We also found out how poorly we had cut some of the hay the day before. Often, when I’d grab a forkful, some of the individual stalks were not completely severed. It then took a little effort to rip them free.
Our motion took us away from the barn and our water, though. In about an hour and a half we had reached the halfway mark in the field. “Time for water everyone,” Harvey yelled, “let’s take a break.” After drinking, we walked all the way to the back end of the field and worked toward the barn. It gave us a more positive feeling – psychologically - always moving toward our goal. We were done before dinner.
“Looks good,” Larry said, “now let’s mow a bit more, before we eat. What do you think, Pop?”
“Grab the scythes,” was Harvey’s answer. We mowed about an hour, until Clare called us in for dinner. We didn’t need to eat in the hot sun today. She had a tremendous pot of vegetable soup on her outside cook fire, made with the pork from Roger. It had plenty of broth and tons of vegetables, many that Poppop had brought up that morning. After the filling meal, cool drinks, and a short rest, out we went to mow some more.
When we had about six acres mown (about ¾ of what we mowed the day before), Harvey said, “Let’s pack it in. We’ve a little work to do in the barn for tomorrow.”
You see baled hay in its comparatively compact package with twine for handles, can be carried fairly easily to the horses or cattle that you’re feeding. Loose hay’s a bit more difficult, so Harvey needed to find a spot in the barn where it would be both easy to unload from the wagons and convenient to fork down a hole in the barn floor near where the horses were fed. Fortunately, Butch’s barn, like Harvey’s, was of the old style that had two stories – a lower level, we called the bottom of the barn, where the animals were housed, and an upper level, we called the top of the barn, where hay, grain and equipment were stored. In different locations around the top of the barn, holes were left in the floor to drop feed down to the animals below. We called the holes hay holes. To some extent they were dangerous, generally uncovered most of the time. There were few kids raised on a farm that hadn’t fallen through one sometime in their life. I was no exception. Heck, sometimes we jumped on purpose, if there was something soft to land on. The vintage barn that Butch had was a throwback, specifically designed for the handling of loose hay and straw, so he had no problem choosing a spot to store the hay we were to bring in the next day. We only needed to clean up about a half an hour to make the site ready.
Wednesday was the big day - eight acres of hay to bring in - another six laying. The weather appeared like it was going to cooperate – wind out of the west, blowing early in the morning, with low humidity. There was no dew left on the hay by the time we reached the fields. First we turned the hay we had mown on Tuesday, and then jumped to our original eight acre patch.
Now Poppop’s rakes came into play. Because it was mown earlier, the hay around the outside of the field was the driest. In the middle of the field, it had more moisture; the phrase we used to describe it was “it was tough” or “not fit” (for harvesting). In the corner of the field, the eight people with the rakes started shoulder to shoulder, pulling about ten feet of the scattered hay toward them – maybe each person two rake widths wide. That way they took about a 40 foot swath down the side of the field. They weren’t fussy about it; just pulled the hay together, and then stepped over it and took another ten feet. Meanwhile, the rest of us with pitchforks, gathered any hay missed by the rakes and formed it into a continuous fluffy pile, so that the drying air could flow through it. We also kept an eye out for any really tough hay and make sure that it was well off the ground, preferably right on the top of the windrow so the sun could hit it directly.
“You know,” Dad said, “for forty-five years I’ve been calling these rows of hay, that we made with machines, windrows, without giving much thought to why. Now that I’m making them by hand, I can understand.”
“It’s a row of hay, set up so the wind can go through,” I offered.
“You got it,” he answered.
From the time we started raking, it would probably take about four or five hours of good drying to be fit enough to safely store in the barn. It was well past dinner time when we had the whole field raked up.
“No problem,” Dad had said, “it might be pretty late until we quit up here this evening; supper might be late, too.”
After dinner the hay wasn’t as dry as Harvey and Butch would have liked it. “Always a trick,” Harvey told the group. “You want to have very dry hay on the bottom of the pile in the barn - makes less chance of spoilage. Still you want to get started as soon as you can, so you can finish before running out of daylight.”
Just because we couldn’t start loading, didn’t mean there wasn’t work to do. Back to field #2 we went – the one we had mowed six acres of on Tuesday.
“Let’s mow some more,” Harvey directed. “It’ll give us hay to put away Friday. Why should we waste this good weather?” For hay making – yes, good weather; Harvey had hit it. For working – today was the hottest so far this week. People’s attire had changed somewhat, too. There were a lot more long sleeves, wide brimmed hats, and handkerchiefs tied around some necks. A few people had been sunburned the last couple afternoons. I admired the men who grabbed the scythes. They ached already and with a lot more work to do today, common sense might have told them to rest and store up some energy for the looming tasks ahead. But soon the scythes and sickles were swinging away and more hay was being knocked down.
An hour later, with about another two acres cut, Harvey said, “Good enough, let’s start loading.” We all got a fresh drink of water, set a little spell, and then Harvey and Butch headed into the field. Each had a team of horses with a wagon. About 15 people climbed aboard Harvey’s and went to the far end of the field. Butch stopped at the near end. We reversed the roles we had the day before. Today the men had both the pitchforks and the meat of the job. They plunged their forks into the piles of hay and then “pitched” it onto the wagon. As the pile increased, a couple boys climbed onto the wagon to “pitch” the hay higher and get as full a load as possible.
This time, I had a rake, and was relegated to gathering together the last few stalks of hay that the “pitchers” had left behind. The process really didn’t take too long – there were four of us raking and at least a dozen with pitchforks. We actually had to stay out of each other’s way. Before the wagon was full, Clare and Ben came out with the third team and an empty wagon. The switch was easy, but this second load would take much longer to fill, for the eight strongest loaders went back to the barn with Butch to unload the first wagon.
“Just pace yourselves,” Dad said. “From the looks of it, you’re all getting the knack of it.” I watched Butch and company as they neared the barn. They drove the wagon straight into the barn, close enough to where Butch wanted the hay piled and allowing enough room to unhitch the horses from the wagon, wiggle around it, and bring the team out of the barn to yet another empty wagon. They hitched it up, and then Butch drove it right past us toward Harvey’s crew. By the time Butch reached them, their wagon was full; a switch was made and back came Butch with another full load and four more men to help unload it. When he reached the barn the first wagon was empty – another switch and back to the field. What planning. Load after load, teams switching wagons, workers switching tasks. I even tried tossing hay onto the wagon for a spell.
We didn’t work non-stop. A couple times we’d just sit in the shade a few minutes. There were water breaks for the horses and drink breaks for us. Clare had prepared a concoction that was to be like Gatorade, that her family had used long before Gatorade was invented. It was water flavored with lemon juice, sweetened with honey, and some vinegar and a little salt added. It was OK, I’m no fan of vinegar, but it was supposed to keep our electrolytes balanced and provide us with stamina and energy. Must have worked: we just kept going. The job was getting done.
By late afternoon, six of the unloaders left for Harvey’s for milking chores, slowing things up a bit. But I believe we only had two loads of hay left laying in the field. An hour later, the field was clean with all four wagons full.
Inside the barn, the task was getting tougher. The first loads of hay were easily thrown down off the wagon onto the floor. Now, however the hay had to be thrown up for the pile was over eight feet high. Then others standing on the pile threw the hay even higher. I finally got to help in the barn and out of the sun, but now I realized another purpose for those long sleeved shirts and handkerchiefs – the dust. And even though I thought it was hot outside, inside it was stifling. The heat collected under the roof of the barn and the higher the pile of hay grew, the hotter it got. No wonder the men were rotating in and out of the barn all day – another benefit to numbers.
It went pretty fast though, what with two dozen plus forks in the barn at the same time. Right after we started the second to last load, Josh, Jake, and Uncle Jeremiah came back from milking.
“Is it that late?” Dad asked, “that you guys are finished with the milking already?”
“We milked our cows,” Josh said, “then Larry said he, Joe and Harvey could clean-up and feed all the animals. We needed to bring Brutus back, to haul everyone home and besides, we figured you were wearing out.”
“Naw, we’re still in great shape,” Butch huffed. “But appreciate it just the same. Why don’t you two young guys climb up in the pile?”
When the wagon was empty, Ben said, “Fourteen down, one to go.”
“We did fifteen loads today?” Mel asked.
“Yep,” Ben answered, “time flies when you’re having fun.”
Uncle Jeremiah and I got the last forkfuls of hay on the wagon. He stuck his fork into the final remnant, lifted it up and said, “There it is! That’s what I’ve been looking for all afternoon!”
“Did you lose something?” I asked gullibly. “What were you looking for?”
“The last forkful!” he laughed along with everyone else. It was an old joke and I fell for it, but I vowed not to let it happen again.
“The wagons can stay where they are until tomorrow,” Butch announced. “Bring my horses to the front of the barn so we can take off their harnesses, feed them and loose them in the pasture.”
That finished, we started climbing on board the wagon hitched to Brutus for the trip home when Josh said, “Wait! There’s something I need to do, yet.” He ran across the pasture, took off his shoes and leaped into Harvey’s pond. Didn’t take long for the rest of us to follow suit. None of us stayed in very long, however. Harvey’s pond was only a couple degrees warmer than spring water. Most of us jumped in, screamed, and popped right out again. Cooled us off though, and washed off the dust, sweat, and grime of a day’s hard work.
We repeated that day’s hard work on Thursday and Friday, then several more times in the ensuing weeks. A few more acres at Butch’s farm, and then several acres at Harvey’s other rented farm; that hay we brought home for Harvey’s animals. In all, it gave a nice pile of hay in the two barns. Mission accomplished; we made hay while the sun shone.
To be continued……. Mort
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Break in the action
I decided to take a break in the story this week to broach two subjects.
First, in conversation with someone who read quite a bit of this story it was relayed to me that the situation I describe after the collapse would never occur. This person said that the way our society is today, we would simply kill each other for food. So my story should be about how people with food have to defend themselves from the heathen marauders. While I can't rule out this possibility, my heart says (as you probably sense in my writings) that we would overcome those attitudes. This person said there would be a group of people who had food who say, "it's ours and we're not sharing with anybody" and a group of people who have no food and say, "we need food , but no one will share it with us." Perhaps this is realism, but by now you know that I'm not a realist, but an idealist. I would like to see people change to the point where those without would say, "We need food, who will share some?" And those with would say, "We have food, who would like some?" Oversimplification, I guess. None-the-less, it's an attitude that needs to change for the sake of survival. My sincere hope is that my writing changes some hearts. Could I have feedback on this? (which brings me to #2)
Second, I receive little feedback. I do not know for sure if it's because no one is reading "Are You Ready" or if there is some glitch that does not allow readers' e-mails to come through. It is getting to the point that I feel I'm wasting my time, if no one is reading Alyssa's story. If you do read the story, please let my know. I need the encouragement. I do this for you.
By the way, I do have the end of chapter 15 written and a good portion of chapter 16.
To be continued................Mort
First, in conversation with someone who read quite a bit of this story it was relayed to me that the situation I describe after the collapse would never occur. This person said that the way our society is today, we would simply kill each other for food. So my story should be about how people with food have to defend themselves from the heathen marauders. While I can't rule out this possibility, my heart says (as you probably sense in my writings) that we would overcome those attitudes. This person said there would be a group of people who had food who say, "it's ours and we're not sharing with anybody" and a group of people who have no food and say, "we need food , but no one will share it with us." Perhaps this is realism, but by now you know that I'm not a realist, but an idealist. I would like to see people change to the point where those without would say, "We need food, who will share some?" And those with would say, "We have food, who would like some?" Oversimplification, I guess. None-the-less, it's an attitude that needs to change for the sake of survival. My sincere hope is that my writing changes some hearts. Could I have feedback on this? (which brings me to #2)
Second, I receive little feedback. I do not know for sure if it's because no one is reading "Are You Ready" or if there is some glitch that does not allow readers' e-mails to come through. It is getting to the point that I feel I'm wasting my time, if no one is reading Alyssa's story. If you do read the story, please let my know. I need the encouragement. I do this for you.
By the way, I do have the end of chapter 15 written and a good portion of chapter 16.
To be continued................Mort
Thursday, June 21, 2007
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - We Made Hay While The Sun Shone (cont)
Sunday morning was beautiful, sunny and breezy, still a tad muggy though, wind from the southeast. Dad and I met up with Harvey in the barn. “Rain’s over!” I announced. “Guess we’ll be mowing hay tomorrow.”
“We might be mowing hay tomorrow,” Harvey responded, “but the rain isn’t quite over. Wind’s still the wrong way. It will pump moist air in from the ocean. Besides, the old saying is, ‘When a rain stops during the night, it’s not finished raining’. It will rain today again.”
“You believe that, Dad?” I asked.
“Harvey’s dad believed it,” he answered.
“So did my Uncle Lester and your great-grandfather,” Harvey added. “It held out for them, many, many times.”
“All the times?” I quizzed.
“Well, probably not,” Dad replied, “but just like every other old saying, every time it did hold out, that built up the credibility of the saying. And when it didn’t hold out… well, that was kinda forgotten.”
Harvey chuckled, and then added, “I reckon your Dad’s right, but now mind you, the corollary isn’t true though.”
“Huh?” I went.
Dad explained, “what’s not true is the opposite: when a rain stops during the day, it is finished raining.”
“Right,” Harvey agreed, “then it can go either way.”
“I’m still confused,” I said.
“So, just watch and learn,” Dad exhorted. “Later today we’ll see who’s right.”
We had a little church service at Poppop’s house just before noon, and then, sure enough, a little thundershower came through about midway through the afternoon. Why are these old guys always right? The wind had shifted to a northeast one and by evening from the north.
“Now we’re cooking,” Harvey announced. “I’ll make the final call tomorrow morning, but every one get a good nights rest; I suspect we’ll go at the hay tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s Labor Day,” Amy lamented, “won’t we be having a picnic?”
“That’s right sweetie,” Uncle Jeremiah answered. “Tomorrow is Labor Day, and that’s what we’re going to do. And if you call the fine meal that Sandy and Jean will prepare and we’ll eat under the trees next to the hayfield a picnic, then, yep, we’re having one of those too.”
The wind blew all night. By morning it was from the northwest. “That’s the ticket,” Harvey gave the word. “Everyone eat a good breakfast, there’s a lot of work to do today.” Larry almost wanted to skip breakfast, so anxious he was to drive tractor again. “Let the air do its work a little, first,” Harvey told him. “It’s drying the grass and the ground. Everything will go better as the fields dry out.”
With all the cattle taken care of, Brutus was hitched to the wagon of tools and before we could all pile on, Larry started up his tractor and up the road with the mower he went. He was once more in his element. I believe everyone felt happy for him. Before we left, Mom brought out a dozen bonnets she and Jean had made from some old pillowcases that we had plenty of. When they found the time to sew them by hand, I had no idea.
“Everyone keep your head covered,” she ordered. “That’s still a summer sun out there.” Some of the men and boys had straw hats. Others had baseball caps like I wore. The women who weren’t raised working outside on a farm weren’t used to wearing hats, but no one needed sunburn either, so they dutifully followed Mom’s order. In spite of the hot temperature, several of our crew wore loose fitting long sleeved shirts, too, to keep our arms from burning.
When we got to Crystal View farm, we stopped at the water trough and filled up a few water jugs. Mom stayed at the house with Clare to watch the younger children as Donna Smith and Julie the teacher headed to the field with the rest of their families. Poppop drove Brutus about halfway down the edge of the field and unhooked the wagon, then tied him in the shade of the meadow near the creek. By then, Larry had mowed three times around the field and had parked the tractor. This gave us plenty of room to work. He also said the outside of a field is usually the hardest to dry, so it received a head start, plus the grass that had been mowed with the machine was conditioned or crimped by it. That would help it dry faster.
We split into four groups, headed by Harvey, Joe, Jeremiah, and Larry. Each group went to a different corner, so we wouldn’t get in each other’s way. Adding Butch’s tools to the stockpile provided one or two scythes and three or four sickles, for a total of five cutting implements per group. There were seven or eight workers in each group, so there were always two or three waiting in the wings to spell someone, or to run for water if we needed it. I was in Jeremiah’s group with Ben and his wife, Denise, one of their sons, Clark, Dad and Robbie. Everyone started with fervor with the men manning the scythes. It looked pretty awkward at first; only a few had ever used a scythe. It has a long handle with about a three foot blade. It works best with a long sweeping motion. Once they got the hang of it, they could really knock a lot of hay down, but we with the sickles learned to stay out of their way. You see a sickle only has a short handle and blade, so you have to bend over and get close to your work. We didn’t need our noses cut off by a scythe, so we kept our distance. In due time, as the mowers progressed down the edge of the mowed crop, the distance between us lengthened, decreasing the danger factor. As most of us were right handed and because scythes were built that way, the motion was always right to left. Because you wanted to pull the fresh cut hay away from the hay that was still standing, we kept migrating to our left or clockwise around the field. Even though we had started at the corners, we were soon strung out all around the outside of the unmown portion of the field.
While we were mowing it gave a lot of time for talking, even singing. In Larry’s group I heard Mel, Amy and Lynette singing some pop songs, but also a couple hymns. Uncle Bruce’s family was in that group and they were just singing right along. Soon it spread over the whole field for part of the morning.
It was Robbie who did the most talking. First, it was just chit-chat about the food or the cows. Did we still have cocoa puffs? But then his inquiries turned toward my cousin, Jennifer. Jenn and Vanetta both sort of stood out in the crowd. They weren’t dressed like farm girls, but then again, neither were half the other young women in the crew that day. Both had long well-kept hair and very light, smooth complexions. I wondered how long they stay that way after three or four days of hay making.
“Who is she?” Robbie asked.
“My Mom’s brother’s daughter,” I answered. “She’s my cousin, Jennifer.”
“Jennifer…..” he oozed, “a beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”
“What?” I responded.
“Just what I said,” Robbie countered, “she’s hot!”
“We’re all hot today,” I wisecracked back.
“I really must get to know her.”
“Yeah right, and there’s a lot of hot air around here, too,” I retorted. “Do you know how old she is?”
“Was just about to ask.”
“Thirteen. She’ll be fourteen next week.”
“Aaaah, just right,” Robbie spoke like he was in a dream world.
“Get real,” I countered, “she’d be going to ninth grade. We’re only going to seventh.”
“No matter, ain’t no school anyway,” he said. “Yeah, you really have to introduce us.” Now I didn’t think that Robbie was so dense that he couldn’t sense my tone, so evidently, he being enthralled with Jenn was affecting his judgment. He still had the capability of reading the scowl on my face, however, for then he added, “Not that she compares to you.”
“Not that she what?!” I blurted out.
“You know, stacks up to you.”
“What, are we horses on the auction block, now?” I jawed.
Maybe, just maybe, Robbie was coming to his senses. He kinda stuttered a little and even thought a little before he finally said, “What I mean is… you see…. you don’t know….I thought… Well I guess… what I’m trying to say is that I know you. And you’re special. I know what’s inside you, and I like what’s in there. You’re tough and smart. Usually pleasant and very trustworthy and loyal.” (I felt like a boy scout.) “I like that you love animals, how hard you work, respect others and that you’re easy to talk to. I only see the outside of your cousin. Don’t know what’s inside her. Don’t even know if she has a brain. So what if she is a fox? Except she has that stupid bonnet on. You know you do look really good in that baseball cap; always thought you did. I should at least get to know her, though. I should be fair about it. Oh, forget it….. I’m an idiot….. and I talk too much.”
“Now that’s the first smart thing you’ve said,” I answered. “Don’t worry; you’ll get to talk to her.” Time would tell.
Wielding that sickle was both tedious and tiring. I was always glad to hand it off to Robbie or Denise. Whenever we were at the end of the field nearest to Harvey’s water trough, we’d go for water and carry jugs back for the men, who just kept rotating the swinging of those scythes and knocking down hay. That was how the men were spelled – just hand off their hay machine whenever they needed to. It was a chance for a drink, a bathroom break in the cornfield that ran alongside the hayfield, or to just plop down on the fresh mown grass for a rest.
While we were mowing, Butch and Poppop took one of Butch’s team of horses down to Harvey’s to bring up another wagon. On the trip back, they brought Lois, Grandmom, and Jean with our picnic. Would it be hot dogs, potato chips and cold soda? No, but they really did pretty well. Of course, the cold drink was milk – couldn’t escape that. They did surprise us though by using some of our dry packaged and canned food to make a monster macaroni salad that had a few cans of spam cut into it. With our cream, some mustard and some of the sugar Uncle Bruce had bought they created a pretty decent salad dressing. It was garnished with bits of onion and several handfuls of broccoli scrounged from Poppop’s garden. The “picnic” was topped off by the last watermelon we had bartered from Titus.
The afternoon went pretty quickly. I think by 3:00 PM we had the whole field mowed. Harvey said the field was about eight acres and would probably have yielded five to six hundred bales if we would bale it with a mechanical baler. That didn’t sound like a lot until Butch pointed out that an amount like that would feed his six horses for four months. That meant we’d only have to harvest the same amount two more times to provide a year’s supply. Of course, that wasn’t enough to feed all the cattle, but it gave some perspective to our labor; made it all appear worthwhile.
Before we loaded up for home, Larry hopped on his tractor and mowed three times around the outside of another hayfield on the other side of the cornfield.
“More to mow tomorrow?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Harvey answered, “just getting a head start, in case the weather still looks promising. That field is even bigger, so I wouldn’t want to mow all of it. I need to get a feel on how much time it takes us to put away the hay we’ve already mown.”
To be continued……Is that all there is to haymaking? Mort
“We might be mowing hay tomorrow,” Harvey responded, “but the rain isn’t quite over. Wind’s still the wrong way. It will pump moist air in from the ocean. Besides, the old saying is, ‘When a rain stops during the night, it’s not finished raining’. It will rain today again.”
“You believe that, Dad?” I asked.
“Harvey’s dad believed it,” he answered.
“So did my Uncle Lester and your great-grandfather,” Harvey added. “It held out for them, many, many times.”
“All the times?” I quizzed.
“Well, probably not,” Dad replied, “but just like every other old saying, every time it did hold out, that built up the credibility of the saying. And when it didn’t hold out… well, that was kinda forgotten.”
Harvey chuckled, and then added, “I reckon your Dad’s right, but now mind you, the corollary isn’t true though.”
“Huh?” I went.
Dad explained, “what’s not true is the opposite: when a rain stops during the day, it is finished raining.”
“Right,” Harvey agreed, “then it can go either way.”
“I’m still confused,” I said.
“So, just watch and learn,” Dad exhorted. “Later today we’ll see who’s right.”
We had a little church service at Poppop’s house just before noon, and then, sure enough, a little thundershower came through about midway through the afternoon. Why are these old guys always right? The wind had shifted to a northeast one and by evening from the north.
“Now we’re cooking,” Harvey announced. “I’ll make the final call tomorrow morning, but every one get a good nights rest; I suspect we’ll go at the hay tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s Labor Day,” Amy lamented, “won’t we be having a picnic?”
“That’s right sweetie,” Uncle Jeremiah answered. “Tomorrow is Labor Day, and that’s what we’re going to do. And if you call the fine meal that Sandy and Jean will prepare and we’ll eat under the trees next to the hayfield a picnic, then, yep, we’re having one of those too.”
The wind blew all night. By morning it was from the northwest. “That’s the ticket,” Harvey gave the word. “Everyone eat a good breakfast, there’s a lot of work to do today.” Larry almost wanted to skip breakfast, so anxious he was to drive tractor again. “Let the air do its work a little, first,” Harvey told him. “It’s drying the grass and the ground. Everything will go better as the fields dry out.”
With all the cattle taken care of, Brutus was hitched to the wagon of tools and before we could all pile on, Larry started up his tractor and up the road with the mower he went. He was once more in his element. I believe everyone felt happy for him. Before we left, Mom brought out a dozen bonnets she and Jean had made from some old pillowcases that we had plenty of. When they found the time to sew them by hand, I had no idea.
“Everyone keep your head covered,” she ordered. “That’s still a summer sun out there.” Some of the men and boys had straw hats. Others had baseball caps like I wore. The women who weren’t raised working outside on a farm weren’t used to wearing hats, but no one needed sunburn either, so they dutifully followed Mom’s order. In spite of the hot temperature, several of our crew wore loose fitting long sleeved shirts, too, to keep our arms from burning.
When we got to Crystal View farm, we stopped at the water trough and filled up a few water jugs. Mom stayed at the house with Clare to watch the younger children as Donna Smith and Julie the teacher headed to the field with the rest of their families. Poppop drove Brutus about halfway down the edge of the field and unhooked the wagon, then tied him in the shade of the meadow near the creek. By then, Larry had mowed three times around the field and had parked the tractor. This gave us plenty of room to work. He also said the outside of a field is usually the hardest to dry, so it received a head start, plus the grass that had been mowed with the machine was conditioned or crimped by it. That would help it dry faster.
We split into four groups, headed by Harvey, Joe, Jeremiah, and Larry. Each group went to a different corner, so we wouldn’t get in each other’s way. Adding Butch’s tools to the stockpile provided one or two scythes and three or four sickles, for a total of five cutting implements per group. There were seven or eight workers in each group, so there were always two or three waiting in the wings to spell someone, or to run for water if we needed it. I was in Jeremiah’s group with Ben and his wife, Denise, one of their sons, Clark, Dad and Robbie. Everyone started with fervor with the men manning the scythes. It looked pretty awkward at first; only a few had ever used a scythe. It has a long handle with about a three foot blade. It works best with a long sweeping motion. Once they got the hang of it, they could really knock a lot of hay down, but we with the sickles learned to stay out of their way. You see a sickle only has a short handle and blade, so you have to bend over and get close to your work. We didn’t need our noses cut off by a scythe, so we kept our distance. In due time, as the mowers progressed down the edge of the mowed crop, the distance between us lengthened, decreasing the danger factor. As most of us were right handed and because scythes were built that way, the motion was always right to left. Because you wanted to pull the fresh cut hay away from the hay that was still standing, we kept migrating to our left or clockwise around the field. Even though we had started at the corners, we were soon strung out all around the outside of the unmown portion of the field.
While we were mowing it gave a lot of time for talking, even singing. In Larry’s group I heard Mel, Amy and Lynette singing some pop songs, but also a couple hymns. Uncle Bruce’s family was in that group and they were just singing right along. Soon it spread over the whole field for part of the morning.
It was Robbie who did the most talking. First, it was just chit-chat about the food or the cows. Did we still have cocoa puffs? But then his inquiries turned toward my cousin, Jennifer. Jenn and Vanetta both sort of stood out in the crowd. They weren’t dressed like farm girls, but then again, neither were half the other young women in the crew that day. Both had long well-kept hair and very light, smooth complexions. I wondered how long they stay that way after three or four days of hay making.
“Who is she?” Robbie asked.
“My Mom’s brother’s daughter,” I answered. “She’s my cousin, Jennifer.”
“Jennifer…..” he oozed, “a beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”
“What?” I responded.
“Just what I said,” Robbie countered, “she’s hot!”
“We’re all hot today,” I wisecracked back.
“I really must get to know her.”
“Yeah right, and there’s a lot of hot air around here, too,” I retorted. “Do you know how old she is?”
“Was just about to ask.”
“Thirteen. She’ll be fourteen next week.”
“Aaaah, just right,” Robbie spoke like he was in a dream world.
“Get real,” I countered, “she’d be going to ninth grade. We’re only going to seventh.”
“No matter, ain’t no school anyway,” he said. “Yeah, you really have to introduce us.” Now I didn’t think that Robbie was so dense that he couldn’t sense my tone, so evidently, he being enthralled with Jenn was affecting his judgment. He still had the capability of reading the scowl on my face, however, for then he added, “Not that she compares to you.”
“Not that she what?!” I blurted out.
“You know, stacks up to you.”
“What, are we horses on the auction block, now?” I jawed.
Maybe, just maybe, Robbie was coming to his senses. He kinda stuttered a little and even thought a little before he finally said, “What I mean is… you see…. you don’t know….I thought… Well I guess… what I’m trying to say is that I know you. And you’re special. I know what’s inside you, and I like what’s in there. You’re tough and smart. Usually pleasant and very trustworthy and loyal.” (I felt like a boy scout.) “I like that you love animals, how hard you work, respect others and that you’re easy to talk to. I only see the outside of your cousin. Don’t know what’s inside her. Don’t even know if she has a brain. So what if she is a fox? Except she has that stupid bonnet on. You know you do look really good in that baseball cap; always thought you did. I should at least get to know her, though. I should be fair about it. Oh, forget it….. I’m an idiot….. and I talk too much.”
“Now that’s the first smart thing you’ve said,” I answered. “Don’t worry; you’ll get to talk to her.” Time would tell.
Wielding that sickle was both tedious and tiring. I was always glad to hand it off to Robbie or Denise. Whenever we were at the end of the field nearest to Harvey’s water trough, we’d go for water and carry jugs back for the men, who just kept rotating the swinging of those scythes and knocking down hay. That was how the men were spelled – just hand off their hay machine whenever they needed to. It was a chance for a drink, a bathroom break in the cornfield that ran alongside the hayfield, or to just plop down on the fresh mown grass for a rest.
While we were mowing, Butch and Poppop took one of Butch’s team of horses down to Harvey’s to bring up another wagon. On the trip back, they brought Lois, Grandmom, and Jean with our picnic. Would it be hot dogs, potato chips and cold soda? No, but they really did pretty well. Of course, the cold drink was milk – couldn’t escape that. They did surprise us though by using some of our dry packaged and canned food to make a monster macaroni salad that had a few cans of spam cut into it. With our cream, some mustard and some of the sugar Uncle Bruce had bought they created a pretty decent salad dressing. It was garnished with bits of onion and several handfuls of broccoli scrounged from Poppop’s garden. The “picnic” was topped off by the last watermelon we had bartered from Titus.
The afternoon went pretty quickly. I think by 3:00 PM we had the whole field mowed. Harvey said the field was about eight acres and would probably have yielded five to six hundred bales if we would bale it with a mechanical baler. That didn’t sound like a lot until Butch pointed out that an amount like that would feed his six horses for four months. That meant we’d only have to harvest the same amount two more times to provide a year’s supply. Of course, that wasn’t enough to feed all the cattle, but it gave some perspective to our labor; made it all appear worthwhile.
Before we loaded up for home, Larry hopped on his tractor and mowed three times around the outside of another hayfield on the other side of the cornfield.
“More to mow tomorrow?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Harvey answered, “just getting a head start, in case the weather still looks promising. That field is even bigger, so I wouldn’t want to mow all of it. I need to get a feel on how much time it takes us to put away the hay we’ve already mown.”
To be continued……Is that all there is to haymaking? Mort
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Chapter Fifteen - We Made Hay While The Sun Shone
I had assumed the goods Uncle Bruce’s family brought were personal effects, mostly clothing, toiletries, maybe some food or tools. But as we started unloading and inventorying them to their proper location in the kitchen, we found it to be much more than that. We started yanking clothing that was stuffed into the car and uncovered two cartons of toilet paper, each with 72 rolls in. Okay, we had figured out how to do without it, but it would sure be nice to have some in the meantime. Some of the other items came in cartons also. They had cartons of toothpaste, shampoo, Clorox, laundry soap, matches, and duct tape. We found fishing tackle and line, 20 packs of sewing needles, and maybe 50 spools of thread. They had a couple wood saws and axes. It was great, for other than the soap, these were all things that we would have difficulty manufacturing.
In addition, there were a dozen new bicycle inner tubes, four new bicycle tires, and a box of tire repair kits, plus a 12-volt air compressor. We were not using much equipment with rubber tires like we would have with a steady supply of fuel, but we did use bicycles and wagons and boy, would those repair kits come in handy. There were no tire repair shops to take flats to. We even came across two of those flashlights/radio combos. They were the kind you wound up to charge the batteries, so you could keep them charged without electricity. They had some replacement batteries for them and a box of regular “D” cell flashlight batteries. Even if we couldn’t depend on them forever, it would still be nice to have them as the days got shorter.
Of course, they managed to bring us some food, too – canned fruit and canned beans. But not a few cans – a few boxes, maybe 70 to 80 cans. There were six cans of black pepper and even 50 pounds of flour. That would bring joy to the bakers in the bunch, for the boys still hadn’t perfected a working flour mill. And to go with the flour, they had brought twelve, ten pound bags of sugar. Sweet!
Everything had been jammed into the two cars with their clothing, shoes and boots filling in the crevices. I think we found about 30 dozen socks - men’s, women’s, kid’s, brand new, still in the plastic packages. They were used to top off boxes that weren’t quite full, inside of boots and shoes, and stuffed into what would have been any empty space in the load. Near the end, we found three boxes of additional treasures – medical supplies. They contained Epson salts, Kaopectate, Preparation H, Motrin, Midol, Maalox, Benadryl, calamine lotion, antibiotic cream, cotton swabs, band-aids, surgical tape, and gauze pads. Not just one or two bottles or packs of each, now mind you, but one or two boxes of each; six, ten, fifteen or more of some of the items. There was a carton of Vicks Vapor-rub, witch hazel, cold tablets, zinc lozenges, vitamin C, lycopene, and other assorted multi-vitamins. I think we tripled the amount of medicine in Lois’s dispensary.
Finally, under the seats, we uncovered about 75 boxes of shotgun shells and a small cache of silver coins, including a few gold coins and a stack of Euros. Questions abounded. Where did you get all this stuff? Why did you buy that? How did you get the gold? You don’t even own a shotgun; why the ammunition? After supper, we started getting answers.
“The cars full of stuff,” Bruce responded, “originally were accumulated because I heeded some warnings and advice before the collapse. After the collapse, doing some careful and calculated bartering produced the modified bounty that we unloaded this afternoon. If you want, I can relate what happen between then and now?”
“Please do,” said Grandpop.
“Being in the banking business, I could easily see things happening. We’d look at indexes and charts and then predict what was coming down the road. Usually the quirks in those charts or graphs were dismissed as anomalies and considered nothing to worry about. The experts in both the finance industry and the government said, ‘Everything will be fine’. But there were things occurring that charts, graphs, and indexes couldn’t show us. We had to read people – people whose wages didn’t even come close to meeting their financial needs – people who had trouble paying their rent or mortgages. Some were trying to refinance, some were going through the process of foreclosure, or had started to file for bankruptcy. As fuel and food prices soared, people needed to use credit just to pay for those basic needs. And we just kept providing it; it was our biggest mistake. Or perhaps listening to the Federal Reserve was our biggest. We just did what they wanted – ‘Provide more credit,’ they told us – ‘That will pull us through,’ they said – ‘It will stop inflation,’ were their lies. Hell, it made it worse.” Bruce concluded.
“So what really is inflation, anyway?” Jake asked.
“Depends who you listen to,” Bruce answered, “what do all of you think?”
“When prices go up,” Harvey replied.
“And the dollar can’t buy what it used to,” Sandy added.
“When the government puts more money into the system,” Joe said.
“But are the products worth more or the dollars worth less?” Dennis asked.
“Products have the same value, so the dollar must be worth less,” Aaron said.
“Well, I guess it’s all those things,” Bruce responded. “Maybe the best functional definition is when too much of a currency is infused into an economy compared to the value of the goods in that economy. And our government doesn’t even have to ‘print the money’, like some people would say. They just had to expand credit. Heck they had to, so there would be money there for them to loan, too, beings they were always spending money they didn’t have.”
“What actually happened, like I mentioned before, was that families needed more and more money to meet their obligations. At the bank’s end, this is what we saw: First saving’s accounts were closed, and then insurance policies and CD’s cashed in. Next stocks, bonds, and mutual fund shares were sold. U.S. saving’s bonds were redeemed, which by the way, really put extra pressure on the feds. As people’s assets were reduced, they started to use credit, which many had already been doing.”
“What did everyone need the money for?” Lynette wondered
“Why, what did all of you need money for the last six months?” Bruce countered.
“Seed and fertilizer,” Larry said.
“Food and fuel,” said Jean.
“Energy,” Dad answered, “our electric company received an 8% rate increase last January.”
“But none of us got an 8% wage increase!” interjected Jeremiah.
“Nor for the 50% that gasoline had gone up,” Barry added.
“Nor the extra for medical bills and health insurance,” Lois chimed in.
“Nor for the tax increases,” Poppop said.
“Right,” retorted Bruce, “but what really did us in, discounting the war in the Middle East and China’s play, was when the banks were forced to discontinue credit to everyone, including our own federal government. Then when the feds asked foreign banks to extend credit, they just told us to kiss off. Pow – no money supply – that’s when everything stopped and got us to this point. Now here’s the kicker – not everyone needed the money for the present – many were cashing in for the future.”
“The future that is now,” Dad caught on, “you were one of them.”
“Yep,” Bruce agreed, “and some of you did, too. But just the few of us are not responsible for this mess. Millions of others did the same thing. In my case, I cashed in my savings, secured some Euros, and bought food, ammunition, and most of those other goods you saw earlier. Some of the goods you saw I traded for. That’s were I got the gold and silver coins, the air compressor and some of the batteries. We had a lot more food that we traded to our neighbors and some that we left behind for them. I even had more ammunition; some of it I traded for goods. I also used food to barter for gasoline to make sure we had enough to make the trip to retrieve Leticia.”
“Yes, Leticia,” Mom quizzed, “you said you would tell us about her experience.”
Kristen started it. “Most of you probably don’t know, but my mother was city born and city raised. After my father died, we tried unsuccessfully to get her to move up closer to us. As you noticed earlier today, she has a mind of her own and would not leave. She was doing well now mind you – had a nice apartment and a very dependable roommate. The last time we visited her in the beginning of August we pleaded with her to come back with us; all to no avail. We called her every day, and even the last time the phones worked, she still said everything was fine and insisted she stay. When the electricity went out, things were chaotic at home: people coming and going; uncertainties; neighbors in need. Finally, Friday a week ago, we knew someone had to go for her.”
“Deciding who should go was the first issue,” Bruce continued. “I thought it was too dangerous for Kristen to go.”
“Yet we didn’t know if Leticia would listen to Bruce alone,” Kristen added.
“Also, I didn’t like the idea of leaving Kristen behind, unless Dean would also stay to watch out for her, Jenn, and Vanetta,” Bruce said.
“Plus, I’d have been worried sick if they would have left me behind,” Kristen said. “But in the end, we decided to let the men go. We had solid neighbors who would stay with us, support me, and keep the neighborhood safe. As they drove away, I cried, thinking I might never see them again. I’ll let Bruce tell you about the trip.”
“Well the best thing about it was the result. That you know – we rescued Leticia. Driving was terrible. We wanted to get an early start and couldn’t sleep anyway, so we left in the dark of the morning. The moon was waxing gibbous; gave us light almost till the time the sun started coming through the clouds. We needed it. There were no street lights, no billboards shining, no stores lit up, and no traffic signals. I mean our headlights worked; we could see. And we needed to. Every road we traveled had obstacles. There were abandoned cars and trucks, including police cars and ambulances. Run out of gas I guess - a lot were in the middle of the road. There were accidents that had never been cleared away, some with wires down, that we had to drive onto the medial strip or shoulder to get around. Least we didn’t have to be concerned about live wires. Traffic wasn’t a problem though. We might have driven half-way there, about 25 miles, before we saw another moving vehicle. By the time we got to the city limits, it was full light and we started seeing more people on the sidewalks. Some weren’t moving. That kept us sober. Part of me wanted to stop and check on them, but it was way too risky. From the living we sure got some strange looks; looks that made us not want to stop and fraternize with them either. But stop we had to when we reached Leticia’s apartment.”
Dean took over. “That created a dilemma,” he said. “Dad didn’t want to leave me alone with the car. I didn’t want him to go into the apartment alone. Didn’t know what each other might encounter. It was about nine o’clock; we just sat there and started praying, asking God what we should do?”
“And I was praying, too,” Kristen inserted. “Almost the whole time they were gone. But about nine, I got this feeling that they really needed something. I gathered Jenn, Vanetta and a few of the neighbors, held hands and prayed. After a few minutes, I had a peaceful feeling come over me, so we went back to our business.”
“Bout that time,” Bruce continued, “we looked up and saw a gang of youth approaching our van. Now what should we do? Drive away? Sit tight? As they neared, the apprehension increased. ‘Does that one have a gun?’ I asked Dean. He didn’t think so, but then he said, ‘I think one’s a priest.’ And sure enough, one was. Well, at least one was dressed like a priest. What if it was a ruse? One quick prayer later, I decided I’d have to trust Jesus with the situation. The leader positioned himself to the front of the group, came to the driver’s window, signaled for me to put down the window and asked if there was anyway they could help us.”
“I told them they could indeed, that my mother-in-law lived in this apartment building and would they give us a hand. Of course they would was the answer. ‘These are good boys,’ the priest answered. ‘Jose and Elmadeo will watch the car, while I and the others accompany you.’ As the elevator was useless, we took the three flights of stairs to Leticia’s apartment. The door was locked. Fortunately, Kristen had given me an extra key that her mother had given her. We arrived none too soon. Leticia sat in her chair, half asleep, half awake, with an empty water bottle in her lap. Her clothing was soaked with perspiration. We quickly gave her some water that Dean had carried in. And then we opened the windows and let some fresh air in. Her roommate was no where to be found.”
“There was an open pack of cookies on the kitchen counter. She was able to eat a couple and then shortly regained her strength. She was in no position to argue about whether to stay or not. After getting her into some dry clothing, the boys carried her and her walker down the steps to the van. We had two boxes of food inside the van that Dean offered to the youth for their assistance. We also had several empty boxes along that the boys brought back up the steps so I could pack some of Leticia’s things. I was most concerned about her medicines, so I cleaned everything out of the medicine cabinet and off her dresser top. Found some on the kitchen counter, too. Not knowing what clothing she might need the most, we just carried her dresser drawers out intact, piling clothing and shoes from the closet on top. The van was getting pretty full and there were still things in the apartment we could have used, but so could others. I gave the key to the priest and told him to use the contents for anyone that had the need, especially if the roommate returned.”
“We thanked them and wished them luck as we headed for home. The priest told us that we’ve done them a favor, too. He realized there might be other people in the same situation as Leticia was. Just in case there were, he and his boys would search the rest of the building and others in the neighborhood.”
“On the way back, Leticia told us her roommate had gone out Wednesday in search of water. She had never returned. I feel the worst may have happened. We got out of the city as quickly as we could and made it home by three in the afternoon with no problems - truly a blessing from God,” Bruce concluded.
There wasn’t a dry eye in the butcher house. Nor was it dry outside either. All through Bruce’s tale we heard rumbling and saw flashes of lightning outside. Just before Bruce finished, a heavy downpour had started. Grandpop said, “God certainly is wonderful. We’re blessed by Leticia’s rescue and your return to us. Your mother and I were worried about you. We’re blessed by having a place where we can feel safe, have water and food. We’ve Harvey as well as God to thank for that.”
“Thank God,” Harvey said.
Grandpop agreed, “Yes, thank God, and also for the rain and the crops; and that my son had the foresight to accumulate and bring us all these wonderful goods.”
“I just made hay while the sun shone,” Bruce replied.
“Yes,” replied Harvey, “I guess that’s what it was. And that’s also what we have to do … as soon as this rainy spell ends.”
That was our cue to get to bed. It only poured a few minutes and then slowed to a gentle rain; slow enough to head to the house without getting drenched. We were getting a houseful. Jenn and Vanetta had squeezed into my room. Leticia, Kristen and Bruce were set up in the living room. Dean stayed with my brothers somewhere in Harvey’s house. I didn’t sleep real well that night, thinking about the things that were said, wondering if something like that could happen here, and planning hay making in my mind. I’m sure Harvey was too. I should have been able to sleep, though. The rain had cooled things off quite a bit and the steady dripping and easy breeze sounded so peaceful. I just lay there and took it in. I guess around midnight it stopped raining altogether and I fell asleep.
To be continued…. Finally time for mowing? Mort
In addition, there were a dozen new bicycle inner tubes, four new bicycle tires, and a box of tire repair kits, plus a 12-volt air compressor. We were not using much equipment with rubber tires like we would have with a steady supply of fuel, but we did use bicycles and wagons and boy, would those repair kits come in handy. There were no tire repair shops to take flats to. We even came across two of those flashlights/radio combos. They were the kind you wound up to charge the batteries, so you could keep them charged without electricity. They had some replacement batteries for them and a box of regular “D” cell flashlight batteries. Even if we couldn’t depend on them forever, it would still be nice to have them as the days got shorter.
Of course, they managed to bring us some food, too – canned fruit and canned beans. But not a few cans – a few boxes, maybe 70 to 80 cans. There were six cans of black pepper and even 50 pounds of flour. That would bring joy to the bakers in the bunch, for the boys still hadn’t perfected a working flour mill. And to go with the flour, they had brought twelve, ten pound bags of sugar. Sweet!
Everything had been jammed into the two cars with their clothing, shoes and boots filling in the crevices. I think we found about 30 dozen socks - men’s, women’s, kid’s, brand new, still in the plastic packages. They were used to top off boxes that weren’t quite full, inside of boots and shoes, and stuffed into what would have been any empty space in the load. Near the end, we found three boxes of additional treasures – medical supplies. They contained Epson salts, Kaopectate, Preparation H, Motrin, Midol, Maalox, Benadryl, calamine lotion, antibiotic cream, cotton swabs, band-aids, surgical tape, and gauze pads. Not just one or two bottles or packs of each, now mind you, but one or two boxes of each; six, ten, fifteen or more of some of the items. There was a carton of Vicks Vapor-rub, witch hazel, cold tablets, zinc lozenges, vitamin C, lycopene, and other assorted multi-vitamins. I think we tripled the amount of medicine in Lois’s dispensary.
Finally, under the seats, we uncovered about 75 boxes of shotgun shells and a small cache of silver coins, including a few gold coins and a stack of Euros. Questions abounded. Where did you get all this stuff? Why did you buy that? How did you get the gold? You don’t even own a shotgun; why the ammunition? After supper, we started getting answers.
“The cars full of stuff,” Bruce responded, “originally were accumulated because I heeded some warnings and advice before the collapse. After the collapse, doing some careful and calculated bartering produced the modified bounty that we unloaded this afternoon. If you want, I can relate what happen between then and now?”
“Please do,” said Grandpop.
“Being in the banking business, I could easily see things happening. We’d look at indexes and charts and then predict what was coming down the road. Usually the quirks in those charts or graphs were dismissed as anomalies and considered nothing to worry about. The experts in both the finance industry and the government said, ‘Everything will be fine’. But there were things occurring that charts, graphs, and indexes couldn’t show us. We had to read people – people whose wages didn’t even come close to meeting their financial needs – people who had trouble paying their rent or mortgages. Some were trying to refinance, some were going through the process of foreclosure, or had started to file for bankruptcy. As fuel and food prices soared, people needed to use credit just to pay for those basic needs. And we just kept providing it; it was our biggest mistake. Or perhaps listening to the Federal Reserve was our biggest. We just did what they wanted – ‘Provide more credit,’ they told us – ‘That will pull us through,’ they said – ‘It will stop inflation,’ were their lies. Hell, it made it worse.” Bruce concluded.
“So what really is inflation, anyway?” Jake asked.
“Depends who you listen to,” Bruce answered, “what do all of you think?”
“When prices go up,” Harvey replied.
“And the dollar can’t buy what it used to,” Sandy added.
“When the government puts more money into the system,” Joe said.
“But are the products worth more or the dollars worth less?” Dennis asked.
“Products have the same value, so the dollar must be worth less,” Aaron said.
“Well, I guess it’s all those things,” Bruce responded. “Maybe the best functional definition is when too much of a currency is infused into an economy compared to the value of the goods in that economy. And our government doesn’t even have to ‘print the money’, like some people would say. They just had to expand credit. Heck they had to, so there would be money there for them to loan, too, beings they were always spending money they didn’t have.”
“What actually happened, like I mentioned before, was that families needed more and more money to meet their obligations. At the bank’s end, this is what we saw: First saving’s accounts were closed, and then insurance policies and CD’s cashed in. Next stocks, bonds, and mutual fund shares were sold. U.S. saving’s bonds were redeemed, which by the way, really put extra pressure on the feds. As people’s assets were reduced, they started to use credit, which many had already been doing.”
“What did everyone need the money for?” Lynette wondered
“Why, what did all of you need money for the last six months?” Bruce countered.
“Seed and fertilizer,” Larry said.
“Food and fuel,” said Jean.
“Energy,” Dad answered, “our electric company received an 8% rate increase last January.”
“But none of us got an 8% wage increase!” interjected Jeremiah.
“Nor for the 50% that gasoline had gone up,” Barry added.
“Nor the extra for medical bills and health insurance,” Lois chimed in.
“Nor for the tax increases,” Poppop said.
“Right,” retorted Bruce, “but what really did us in, discounting the war in the Middle East and China’s play, was when the banks were forced to discontinue credit to everyone, including our own federal government. Then when the feds asked foreign banks to extend credit, they just told us to kiss off. Pow – no money supply – that’s when everything stopped and got us to this point. Now here’s the kicker – not everyone needed the money for the present – many were cashing in for the future.”
“The future that is now,” Dad caught on, “you were one of them.”
“Yep,” Bruce agreed, “and some of you did, too. But just the few of us are not responsible for this mess. Millions of others did the same thing. In my case, I cashed in my savings, secured some Euros, and bought food, ammunition, and most of those other goods you saw earlier. Some of the goods you saw I traded for. That’s were I got the gold and silver coins, the air compressor and some of the batteries. We had a lot more food that we traded to our neighbors and some that we left behind for them. I even had more ammunition; some of it I traded for goods. I also used food to barter for gasoline to make sure we had enough to make the trip to retrieve Leticia.”
“Yes, Leticia,” Mom quizzed, “you said you would tell us about her experience.”
Kristen started it. “Most of you probably don’t know, but my mother was city born and city raised. After my father died, we tried unsuccessfully to get her to move up closer to us. As you noticed earlier today, she has a mind of her own and would not leave. She was doing well now mind you – had a nice apartment and a very dependable roommate. The last time we visited her in the beginning of August we pleaded with her to come back with us; all to no avail. We called her every day, and even the last time the phones worked, she still said everything was fine and insisted she stay. When the electricity went out, things were chaotic at home: people coming and going; uncertainties; neighbors in need. Finally, Friday a week ago, we knew someone had to go for her.”
“Deciding who should go was the first issue,” Bruce continued. “I thought it was too dangerous for Kristen to go.”
“Yet we didn’t know if Leticia would listen to Bruce alone,” Kristen added.
“Also, I didn’t like the idea of leaving Kristen behind, unless Dean would also stay to watch out for her, Jenn, and Vanetta,” Bruce said.
“Plus, I’d have been worried sick if they would have left me behind,” Kristen said. “But in the end, we decided to let the men go. We had solid neighbors who would stay with us, support me, and keep the neighborhood safe. As they drove away, I cried, thinking I might never see them again. I’ll let Bruce tell you about the trip.”
“Well the best thing about it was the result. That you know – we rescued Leticia. Driving was terrible. We wanted to get an early start and couldn’t sleep anyway, so we left in the dark of the morning. The moon was waxing gibbous; gave us light almost till the time the sun started coming through the clouds. We needed it. There were no street lights, no billboards shining, no stores lit up, and no traffic signals. I mean our headlights worked; we could see. And we needed to. Every road we traveled had obstacles. There were abandoned cars and trucks, including police cars and ambulances. Run out of gas I guess - a lot were in the middle of the road. There were accidents that had never been cleared away, some with wires down, that we had to drive onto the medial strip or shoulder to get around. Least we didn’t have to be concerned about live wires. Traffic wasn’t a problem though. We might have driven half-way there, about 25 miles, before we saw another moving vehicle. By the time we got to the city limits, it was full light and we started seeing more people on the sidewalks. Some weren’t moving. That kept us sober. Part of me wanted to stop and check on them, but it was way too risky. From the living we sure got some strange looks; looks that made us not want to stop and fraternize with them either. But stop we had to when we reached Leticia’s apartment.”
Dean took over. “That created a dilemma,” he said. “Dad didn’t want to leave me alone with the car. I didn’t want him to go into the apartment alone. Didn’t know what each other might encounter. It was about nine o’clock; we just sat there and started praying, asking God what we should do?”
“And I was praying, too,” Kristen inserted. “Almost the whole time they were gone. But about nine, I got this feeling that they really needed something. I gathered Jenn, Vanetta and a few of the neighbors, held hands and prayed. After a few minutes, I had a peaceful feeling come over me, so we went back to our business.”
“Bout that time,” Bruce continued, “we looked up and saw a gang of youth approaching our van. Now what should we do? Drive away? Sit tight? As they neared, the apprehension increased. ‘Does that one have a gun?’ I asked Dean. He didn’t think so, but then he said, ‘I think one’s a priest.’ And sure enough, one was. Well, at least one was dressed like a priest. What if it was a ruse? One quick prayer later, I decided I’d have to trust Jesus with the situation. The leader positioned himself to the front of the group, came to the driver’s window, signaled for me to put down the window and asked if there was anyway they could help us.”
“I told them they could indeed, that my mother-in-law lived in this apartment building and would they give us a hand. Of course they would was the answer. ‘These are good boys,’ the priest answered. ‘Jose and Elmadeo will watch the car, while I and the others accompany you.’ As the elevator was useless, we took the three flights of stairs to Leticia’s apartment. The door was locked. Fortunately, Kristen had given me an extra key that her mother had given her. We arrived none too soon. Leticia sat in her chair, half asleep, half awake, with an empty water bottle in her lap. Her clothing was soaked with perspiration. We quickly gave her some water that Dean had carried in. And then we opened the windows and let some fresh air in. Her roommate was no where to be found.”
“There was an open pack of cookies on the kitchen counter. She was able to eat a couple and then shortly regained her strength. She was in no position to argue about whether to stay or not. After getting her into some dry clothing, the boys carried her and her walker down the steps to the van. We had two boxes of food inside the van that Dean offered to the youth for their assistance. We also had several empty boxes along that the boys brought back up the steps so I could pack some of Leticia’s things. I was most concerned about her medicines, so I cleaned everything out of the medicine cabinet and off her dresser top. Found some on the kitchen counter, too. Not knowing what clothing she might need the most, we just carried her dresser drawers out intact, piling clothing and shoes from the closet on top. The van was getting pretty full and there were still things in the apartment we could have used, but so could others. I gave the key to the priest and told him to use the contents for anyone that had the need, especially if the roommate returned.”
“We thanked them and wished them luck as we headed for home. The priest told us that we’ve done them a favor, too. He realized there might be other people in the same situation as Leticia was. Just in case there were, he and his boys would search the rest of the building and others in the neighborhood.”
“On the way back, Leticia told us her roommate had gone out Wednesday in search of water. She had never returned. I feel the worst may have happened. We got out of the city as quickly as we could and made it home by three in the afternoon with no problems - truly a blessing from God,” Bruce concluded.
There wasn’t a dry eye in the butcher house. Nor was it dry outside either. All through Bruce’s tale we heard rumbling and saw flashes of lightning outside. Just before Bruce finished, a heavy downpour had started. Grandpop said, “God certainly is wonderful. We’re blessed by Leticia’s rescue and your return to us. Your mother and I were worried about you. We’re blessed by having a place where we can feel safe, have water and food. We’ve Harvey as well as God to thank for that.”
“Thank God,” Harvey said.
Grandpop agreed, “Yes, thank God, and also for the rain and the crops; and that my son had the foresight to accumulate and bring us all these wonderful goods.”
“I just made hay while the sun shone,” Bruce replied.
“Yes,” replied Harvey, “I guess that’s what it was. And that’s also what we have to do … as soon as this rainy spell ends.”
That was our cue to get to bed. It only poured a few minutes and then slowed to a gentle rain; slow enough to head to the house without getting drenched. We were getting a houseful. Jenn and Vanetta had squeezed into my room. Leticia, Kristen and Bruce were set up in the living room. Dean stayed with my brothers somewhere in Harvey’s house. I didn’t sleep real well that night, thinking about the things that were said, wondering if something like that could happen here, and planning hay making in my mind. I’m sure Harvey was too. I should have been able to sleep, though. The rain had cooled things off quite a bit and the steady dripping and easy breeze sounded so peaceful. I just lay there and took it in. I guess around midnight it stopped raining altogether and I fell asleep.
To be continued…. Finally time for mowing? Mort
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