Hoosier Farm-Boy: Memoir by Gary William Steele
Chapter 5 : Junior-High Memories
Section 5.1 : Muskrat Love / Skunk Revenge
When I was in junior-high, my dad discovered that our farm pond had almost been totally drained of water. Muskrats had infested the pond and dug a hole through one side of the dirt bank on the side. The water ran out into the neighboring field and my dad and uncle John patched the hole with cement. Soon rainwater again filled the pond with water. The problem remained about how to eliminate the muskrats. This where I came into the picture. Dad said that if I trapped the muskrats, then I could keep the money I got for selling them myself. A good size muskrat could be sold for four to six dollars depending on the size and condition of the pelt. Always a businessman, I jumped at the opportunity.
After purchasing about twenty traps, I had to learn how to set them in the pond in order to catch the critters. I learned quickly how to set the trap without setting off the trap on my fingers. Next I needed to learn how to set the trap in the pond. You had to stake the trap with a short chain on the bottom of the pond close to the entrance to the muskrat home on the bank. It had to be set deep enough that once it was caught, it would drown without being able to reach down and bite off its trapped foot. I had to learn this the hard way after catching the “feet only” of many a muskrats.
My most interesting adventure was when I accidentally caught a skunk in one of the traps accidentally. I was checking my traps before school about 5 A.M one morning, before going to school, and discovered the skunk. I had to go back to the house to get the 22 rifle in order to shoot the skunk before removing him from the trap. Unfortunately, the little stinker sprayed his odoriferous scent all over my shoes. These were the same shoes that I wore to school later that morning. I still remember the stink of those shoes in the bus and in the classrooms at middle-school. In music class he smell was so bad I had to sit in the far-corner.
In the end, the muskrat trapping adventure was very interesting and made my farm background even more of an adventure. I trapped the muskrats that whole winter of my 7-th grade year and used the money to feed my appetite for reading with more books.
“Sometimes when you get in a fight with a skunk,
you can’t tell who started it.”… Lloyd Doggett
Section 5.2 : Mutual Grain Company
At 5:45am on a school-day morning, I waited outside the Servia, Indiana grain elevator in my dad’s pickup truck. I am 14 years old and the first one in line to open the Mutual Grain Company at 6am. The grain elevator bought grain produce from the farmers. We called it the “elevator” when we took a load of grain there, because they had huge elevators to lift the grain to the gigantic storage bins.
Ears of corn filled the truck to the brim. Beside me in the cab is a huge pile of burlap sacks to hold the feed. I had loaded the truck with corn last night and now hastened to get the load processed and drive home to catch the bus to school at 7:30am.
Regardless of not having a drivers license, I had done this many times. Farm boys didn’t worry with the little things. I had been driving trucks and tractors for as long as I could remember. In retrospect, it now appears strange that I thought of this experience as normal. Families worked together to do the job. We didn’t feel exploited or overworked, just everyday survival. My sisters worked without complaint (ok, maybe that’s a stretch) in the house and garden, and dad and I worked hard on the farm chores.
I remember shoveling corn to fill-up the pickup truck. The dust from the corn as I was shoveling would stick to my sweat-laden arms, neck, and face. I would pull-out a big red or blue bandanna handkerchief from my pocket and wipe the sweat out of my eyes. How glorious doing hard work, sweating, and feeling your lungs burning with exertion. My dad and I plowed the fields and prepared them for planting. We planted the corn and tilled the fields for weeds., and harvested the corn. Now was the time to take the corn to turn it into feed for cows and pigs. What a great privilege to have the chance to do this when few people now can have that unique experience.
Now, I don’t mean to say I appreciated the experience at the time: quite the contrary! Any more than kids appreciate being disciplined by their parents. It might take decades as an adult to bring one to that knowledge. If you had “interviewed” the 14-year-old boy doing the corn shoveling back then in Indiana, the version of this story would be different to what I am portraying now.
What I mean to say is that I wish that more kids today had the chance to experience this farm life. Being instilled with this discipline. I failed my daughters while they were growing-up. I know now that being stricter with your kids and making them responsible is necessary. We don’t do our kids any favors by not being the “parent” to them. My daughter, Amy, taught me that after she was grown-up and had kids of her own.
The morning of the trip to the “elevator”, I had my alarm-clock set to 4:30am. A cold November morning greeted me as I woke-up in my upstairs, unheated bedroom. The truck was full of corn and the gas-tank full and ready to go as I scraped the frost from the windshield and warmed-up the truck. Instead of a defroster, there was a little rotary fan hanging from the cab roof. It whirred when I turned it on to blow air on the windshield. You could see the ground through the floorboard of the truck where the gearshift stick protruded through the floor. I sat there for ten minutes until there was enough clear space through the windshield to see the road.
The transmission gears stubbornly protests as I shifted into first gear and thrust forward with a big jolt. It was two miles to Servia and the elevator. Servia is and was little more than a wide-space in the road. The internet reports that the population of Servia is: “Too small to count”. This was our closest “town”. North Manchester has about 4,000 population at a distance of five miles.
It was quite a stunt sometimes handling the clutch, brake, and accelerator pedal at the same time. To keep the truck from dying, I had to hold the clutch with my left foot and have my right foot on the brake and accelerator keeping enough gas flowing to keep the engine running. Many old trucks and tractors back then all had their own “tricks” to make them run properly. Sometimes certain gears were burnt-out or reverse didn’t work, or some other quirk. Farmers had to “make-do” with what they had, money was very tight.
At 6am sharp, the Mutual Grain Company was open for business and I was the first in line. I pulled-into the first building and centered the truck on the scale to weight it along with the load of corn. I turned off the engine and stepped out so that the scale would only get the weight of the truck and the load. One of the attendants would then drive the truck up to the next building onto the lift to empty the truck. He would open the hatch in the floor of the elevator where the large bin below would hold the corn. It was always exciting for me to see the big lift raise up the whole truck so that the contents slid easily out very quickly into the compartment below. The truck then was pulled back to the scales again so that the empty truck could be weighed in order to determine the weight of the corn.
The main building of the grain elevator was very tall and big. There were many conveyors and storage bins for grain and the noise and dust from all the motors and machinery was daunting and impressive for a boy. I remember a big chain with foot pedals on it that the attendants would hop onto that would carry them up to the next level of the elevator. It looked very dangerous since I didn’t see anything that protection against the chain and very little to hang onto on this make-shift one-person elevator. Thinking back on this time, I realize how unsafe everything was on the farm associated businesses. It’s a wonder that there weren’t more accidents on farms and machinery.
After dumping out the load of corn, I went to wait in the office of the grain elevator. The door to the office was together with the waiting area. The grinding and preparation of the feed took at least forty-five minutes. As you entered, the big counter with the staff was located to the left side and a long row of chairs was against the wall on the right side. The farmers in their bib overalls would be sitting smoking their cigars or pipes or chewing tobacco. The whole office was about twenty feet square and was usually filled with smoke and the smell of cow and pig manure from the farmers work-boots.
My dad always gave me ten cents to buy a candy bar and a “pop”. The soda pop tank was against the far wall with the bottles of pop sitting in cold water with a bottle opener on the side. The candy machine was above the tank with a little conveyor that turned with a knob on the side with a glass cover. You turned the knob until your candy selection was in front of the slot where you could take it out. There wasn’t any coin changer on the machines, you just took out the candy that you wanted and the pop.
On the office counter there was a large, empty coffee can with a large assortment of coins and small bills. Everything there was on the honor system. Customers put in their money for the candy and pop that they wanted and made their own change. I guess there might have been some theft, but I never heard of any. Everything back then was much more honest and people trusted each other with a handshake.
I remember grape Nehi, Hires root-beer, Royal Crown cola, Choco-cola, Orange Crush, red-cream soda, canada ginger-ale, Dr Pepper, 7-up, Big Red, and Squirt. I preferred the grape Nehi. Candy bar selection included my favorite “Pay-Day” as well as Necco wafers. bun, tootsie rolls, Herchies, Mr Goodbar, M & M’s, bit-o-honey, milk-duds, zagnut, and zero.
When the grain order was ready, I backed-up the truck to the big door of the main elevator building and loaded the bed with the burlap sacks of feed. The feed was loaded into the bags from a big overhead storage bin and handed to me to load in the truck. From there, I headed back home to get ready for the school bus at 7:30am.
The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings. . . . Masanobu Fukuoka
Section 5.3 : JFK Assassination and Dr. L.Z. Bunker
Dr Ladoska Zee (LZ) Bunker was 97 years old when she died at the age of 97 in North Manchester. I remember going to her office in town and was amazed at all of the vials and ceramic containers containing powders and all types of herbs and medicines. I believe that she was one of only a very few women in her graduating class at Indiana University Medical School. She was our beloved family doctor for all of my youth. She is the only doctor then and since that I have ever known to have made house calls. She would gladly come to our farm house five miles from town to visit us when we were sick. God Bless you Dr. Bunker, RIP.
I
n November of 1963 I was home sick with mononucleosis. I was told by our family doctor, Dr. Bunker, during a home visit, to stay home for four weeks to recover from my sickness. I remember my mother making out the couch in the living room as a bed so that I could rest in a warm room and watch television as well. My room upstairs was unheated and the only TV was in the living room. I was a freshman in High School at the time.
At 12:30 P.M. on Friday, November 22nd, 1963 president John F. Kennedy was shot and killed by the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. I was 14 years old at the time and JFK had been a hero of mine ever since he had become president. It was just a coincidence that during that whole time of televised experience, I was able to witness myself the amazing and horrifying television drama as it unfolded before my eyes. I watched the assassination coverage, the shooting of the suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, and the funeral. Like so many other Americans, it was a very sad time and something that changed my life and my view of the world.
I had already read a the book “John F. Kennedy and PT 109” about his experience as a lieutenant in the Pacific in WW-II as captain of a “Patrol Torpedo” (PT) boat. His boat was sunk on August 1st, 1943 by the Japanese. In the book Kennedy was asked “How did you become a Hero” and he answered “It was involuntary, they sank my boat”. I also had read his book “Profiles in Courage”. The fascinating accounts of his handling of the Cuban missile crisis with Nikita Khrushchev in October of 1962 was amazing.