Drama on the Farm

While most of the time I spent on the farm was pleasant and uneventful, there are a few incidents which stand out in my mind. One was when I was about fourteen and we were driving out from Albert Lea on our way for Easter vacation. Easter was not particularly early that year, but we were surprised by a big snowstorm, almost a blizzard. This was not a problem until we left the main highways just south of town. The snowplows did not bother with the farm roads until everything else was clear, especially when the schoolbuses were not running. We were driving a Pontiac Tempest, sort of like a Cavalier, not the best car for such conditions. It was all right until we turned the last corner and headed south. The road was drifted so full of snow that the car became stuck and we had to get our suitcases out of the trunk and hike through snow up over our knees--or waist for Missy! The car was about a mile from the driveway to the farm, but Grampa was looking for us with the tractor, which was set much higher than a car. Only two of us could ride with him, so he had to make three trips, but we all got there finally. We were able to retrieve the car the next day. One year when I was maybe seven I spent most of the summer on the farm and there was one sow (adult female hog) who was unusually gentle. Many hogs are downright dangerous, but she was easygoing and we could even ride her. I don't remember what we called her, but she had a name and everything. I was sorry to leave her when I went home in the fall. We went back there for Christmas, arriving late in the evening. We went straight to bed, but I got up early in the morning. Over breakfast we got all the news of the farm. Children did not speak much at the table, but during a break in the grownups' talk I asked Grampa how that hog was. He looked at his plate and said that he thought she was really good--as sausage! I did not eat any more of it on that trip! Sometimes when we were there in the summer it was really hot, even at night. I would lie on the bed and look out the east window, sort of diagonally to the north, at the blinking radio towers off between the farm and the town. There was some light from the town off that way, too, though the town was not all that big. One summer night we had a big storm and were enjoying the thunder and lightning from our beds when all of a sudden there was a huge crash just outside the south window! There were two big elm trees in the yard on that side of the house and one of them had been struck by lightning. It did not catch fire, fortunately, and we settled back to sleep after a while. There were usually pancakes for breakfast and every morning Gramma would take whatever scraps there might be (I think she made extra pancakes on purpose.) and tear them into a metal pan. Then she would step outside the back door, calling, "He-ere, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty!" Then cats would appear as if by magic from under the woodshed, out of the woods, squeezing through small gaps in barn and shed doors, etc. and running pell-mell toward her. They shared amicably the contents of the pan, which might include eggs, bacon, sausage, oatmeal, etc. as well as the constant pancakes. Any dogs that were about also understood that that call meant food, but they were made to wait until the cats had had their fill. If there was anything left, the dogs could have it, but they did receive dog food in the evenings and the cats were not fed otherwise to keep them hungrier for mousing. That closed-off room the front door led into was an attractive place when it wasn't too hot or too cold. The piano was terribly out of tune, but it was fun to read books my mother had read when she was little and play with her toys. There was one item which had been her father's as a boy! It was a viewer with glass plates about one by six inches with pictures of places in Europe like the Eiffel Tower, the Parthenon, Big Ben, etc. I wonder what happened to it. It would be very valuable by now, if it still exists. There were three or four Bobbsey Twins books. These were about a family with two pairs of twins, a boy and a girl in each. It made me really wish for a twin brother, but I never got one. It was on the farm that I learned the importance of leaving a gate the way you found it. One day I was out on the west side of the barn with Uncle Bob. We finished whatever we were doing and headed back up to the house. (It was probably time for dinner.) The gate just west of the barn was a big long one, wide enough for two semis to pass, I think, and it was hard for a little girl to manage. Knowing that my uncle was right behind me and the cattle were on the other side of the field, I left it open and continued uphill toward the house across the circular drive. Then came a bellow which I recognized as my name! I ran back to the gate where my uncle proceeded to berate me for leaving the gate open. He had paused to fix some little thing and looked up to see me halfway to the house and the gate standing wide open. No livestock were near, but that was not the point! You never leave a gate open that you found closed! Never! City kids were useless, spoiled, etc. They were full of book-learning and had no sense! I don't remember just what else he said, but it stung. And I have not left a gate open since. That corner of the barnyard was a low spot where water collected when it rained. There would be a puddle there for days after it dried up everywhere else. So that was where the little daisy flowers grew. They were just weeds, but I liked them. I have since learned that they were chamomile flowers. Usually we would have Christmas at home and go to visit the relatives just afterwards. But one year we all were at the farm for Christmas. That made for a full house! There were eight adults and fourteen children of all ages. Most of the others slept at their own homes, but everyone was there for dinner. Gramma roasted a goose and a turkey, basing the turkey with the goose drippings. It was scrumptious!

The Thompson Farm, Part Three

Grampa's barn was not one of the rounded ones, but it was painted classic barn red. Its peak was off-center with the east side shorter. That was the side with the concrete ramp down to the yard where the pigs lived. There was a gate, usually open, leading out to a big pasture with lots of oak trees. Most of the east half of the farm was wooded, with elm, oak, crabapple, ash and many other kinds of trees. All the pastures were on the east half, except the little one just west of the house and a paddock on the west side of the barn. When you went in the door on the south, facing the house, the barn was quiet and dim and smelled of hay and cows and pigs. Now these livestock odors were not strong. Grampa kept a relatively clean barn and the fragrances were pleasant. Immediately on the left was a big "room" where the horses used to live. They could move around in there and were not confined to stalls, even box stalls. Unfortunately, the horses had been gone so long that even their fragrance had disappeared, although there were bits of their tack around. If you went straight ahead, you entered the big room where the cows were milked once upon a time. The stanchions were still there, but by the time I was born, Grampa no longer kept cows that required milking. He did keep heifers for Uncle Bob who did have a dairy farm. What are heifers? They are young females of the bovine species who have not yet had a calf and therefore do not yet give milk. They may or may not be pregnant. Uncle Bob would bring his bred heifers over to pasture on Grampa's fields until they were about ready to calve. They have a nine-month gestation just like people. (Horses are pregnant for about eleven months before foaling, in case you wondered.) We would often play with the heifers and sometimes ride them, but their spines stick up and are very sharp and uncomfortable to sit on. Up above these "rooms" was the hayloft where the bales of hay were stacked. This was a wonderful place to play, but we had to be careful not to break the bales. If Grampa noticed any damage, we would be banished from this relatively cool and shady spot. There were also often kittens born in the hayloft and they were extra fun. Pigeons would fly around up there and swallows and sometimes a barn owl would make its home up near the roof. Just outside the barn near the northwest corner was the old silo. Farmers use silos to make silage, which is cornstalks cut when they are still green and layered flat in the silo and allowed to ferment. Then this silage is fed to the cows in the winter when there is nothing else green available for them to eat. It's sort of like sauerkraut. You can store other things, like grains, in silos, but this was the most common use. In the paddock west of the barn was the corn crib. This structure was maybe thirty feet long and six feet wide and ten feet high, made of woven wire except for the floor, which was solid. In this Grampa stored dried ears of corn to feed to the animals, especially the pigs. Horses like it as much as we like candy, too. The crib had to be well ventilated or the corn would go moldy. Squirrels and other varmints were always trying to get into the corn crib and it was not rare to hear the sound of a 22 when Grampa caught one. Then west of the paddock was the windbreak mentioned earlier. Along the west side of that ran the main tractor path out to the fields. The fields were not fenced, except along property lines, but had these paths between them so they were accessible by tractor. Grampa had different sizes of fields and rotated his crops according to the needs of the soil and the market he expected to have for corn, soybeans, wheat, barley, oats and alfalfa. The farm was divided about half and half between pastures for livestock and fields of crops, with a small part taken out for the house and barnyard. I forgot to tell about the sheep sheds east of the tractor shed, machine shed and granary. The sheep did not usually go into these buildings in good weather, so we could play in and on them. Their roofs did not slope much and they made great stages when we wanted to put on shows for our own benefit. I remember one time when Uncle Bill's daughter Carol Ann and Uncle Bob's daughter Charlotte, who were both a year older than I was, were also visiting and we got up on the roof of one of the sheds and Carol entertained us by singing and dancing to some old songs. She was pretty good. Char and I were too shy to do stuff like that, but I think Sue did some performing as well. Once when we went down to the sheep sheds, we looked into one of them and there were three rats sitting up in a group like they were having a conversation. Each was a different color, gray and brown and tan, and they were incredibly big, as big as cats! There was a windmill by the horse water tank and also a couple out in the pastures to fill the stock tanks out there. I still don't really understand how they work, but I always thought they were cool.

The Thompson Farm, Part Two

After opening the door to the stairs, you stepped up one step to a small landing where there were coats, umbrellas, etc. hanging on pegs, then you turned to the right and climbed up the stairs to the north. At the top of the stairs was an octagonal landing with each side little wider than the width of a doorway. Immediately to the left was the door to the spare room. In my lifetime this was used only for storage, but had been used for guests at one time. It was in the southwest corner of the house with windows on the south and the west and it could really get hot in there! Then came a bit of wall without a door. In the northwest corner was the bedroom my mother's brothers shared when they lived at home and which my parents used when we visited. The double bed with the high dark heavy wood headboard and footboard was still there and the old dresser and mirror. When Missy (Merry) was maybe three years old, she was jumping on that bed and lost her balance and hit her mouth on the footboard and killed a front tooth. It turned blackish and looked funny for a while until she got her adult teeth. Then came a door to a closet whose contents I never saw, linens I suppose. In the northeast corner was Gramma and Grampa's bedroom. I am not sure I ever entered it, but from the doorway it looked pretty much like the boys' bedroom. The bathroom was on the east side of the landing. I remember taking baths in that tub when it was necessary to heat water to boiling on the wood stove in the kitchen and carry it upstairs in a big teakettle. Then we would add a bit of cold water from the tub tap to make it a bearable temperature and bathe in about two inches of water. All three of us girls used the same water and then our parents shared another batch. I suppose Gramma and Grampa did this, too, but I don't really remember. To the right of the stairs was the door into the room in the southeast corner that was my mother's when she lived at home and which we girls used when we visited. The big pipe from the woodstove rose up from the floor and through the ceiling in that room, so it was the warmest in the winter. Very little heat got upstairs from that heating oil stove in the front room and it was chilly to say the least in the winter. We would jump out of bed and rush over to dress beside the stovepipe where it was a little warmer. We appreciated the fact that Gramma got up so early to bake and cook and fire up that woodstove! I have mentioned that the flower gardens were on the west (front) side of the house. Gramma had banks of gladiolas, peonies, lilies, and other flowers for cutting. She put bouquets in the dining room and parlor all the time that flowers were available. She also had beds of begonias, ferns, calla lilies and many other flowers whose names I do not know or do not remember. Gramma was a serious horticulturist and flower arranger, regularly winning prizes at local and state fairs. The yard on the east side of the house sloped down (The house was on the highest point of the whole farm.) and was mostly grass, with a two- or three-foot border of flowers all around. Right outside the back door there was a huge elm tree with a wooden board swing hanging by a long chain from a branch high up. The woodshed was just to the south at the end of the sidewalk. When they installed an electric cookstove in the kitchen, this shed became the brooder shed. That is where the baby chicks were hatched and raised until they were big enough to look out for themselves with the other chickens. It was handy to have it right by the house because chicks need so much care at first. It was also a good playhouse when not in use by chicks. South of the house was the vegetable garden. That was at least as big as ours on Shulsen Lane (a quarter acre) with a lot more land devoted to berries. Behind the vegetable garden to the south was the "midden" which we would call the dump. They did not have garbage pickup in the country, so anything that chickens could eat was given to them, anything that could be burned, was, and anything else was thrown into the midden. When you went out the gate from the driveway (or they would have called it the gate from the barnyard) and turned to the right, or east, you came first to the pump house. It looked rather like an outhouse in size, but without the crescent cutout in the door. This is where the water came from. They had an electric pump on a well and the water tasted wonderful! I was too young to really appreciate it then, but I wish I could get some of that water now. It was full of minerals, especially calcium. Just beyond the yard fence to the east was the tractor shed, like a garage but without a door. It was open on the one side so that fumes could not accumulate. Beyond that were the paths to pastures and the sheep sheds. On the left (north) of the tractor shed was the machine shed for the combine, baler, plows, harrows, drills, discs, etc. It was open on the south, also. There was even horse harness hanging on the walls in there. They hadn't used horses since sometime in the 1930s! On the north side of the machine shed was the granary. This is where the corn, oats, barley, etc. used to feed the animals was kept in huge elevated bins. Grampa put a bucket under the spout and pulled open a chute and the grain ran into the bucket by gravity. There were stairs up to the top of the bins, but we were not allowed up there because it was so dangerous if you fell in. You would almost certainly drown. North of the granary were the chicken sheds. Their lights were on timers so that the amount of light stayed the same, winter and summer, so the hens would continue to lay eggs. West of the chicken sheds was the big horse water tank. This also worked well for cows, of course, and had sort of spouts low down suitable for pigs or sheep. Or dogs. The tank was at least twelve feet across and sometimes did duty as a swimming pool for small grandchildren. It was kind of mossy and slimy, though, and I did not really like it. Then west of that was the main barn.

The Thompson Farm

I wish I knew how to draw a map and post it here so you could see how the farm was laid out. I will do my best to describe it so you can imagine it. As I said earlier, the road from town ran south along the west side of the farm. At what used to be the center of the west side was the driveway, marked by the one-room schoolhouse. As you drove east toward the house, you could appraise the crop in Grampa's field on the north side of the drive. You could also check out the crop in the Petersons' field on the south side of the drive. (After the sale of half the farm to them, whenever that was. Before my mother was born, anyway.) When you had gone almost half a mile, the drive forked southeast to the Petersons' and northeast to the Thompsons'. This fork was one of the most beautiful spots on the farm. There were tall elm trees whose branches met over the drive so it was like going through a green leafy tunnel in the summer. On the north side now there was the windbreak of young trees that had been planted to shelter the house, garage, little pasture and barn from the worst of the wind. On the south side was the paddock which used to hold the house where my mother lived when she was little. The only remnant of that house was the lilac bushes in the southwest corner. Grampa would put sheep into that paddock when they needed to be closely observed for some reason like a contagious illness in the neighborhood. Then it was the flower gardens and the house on the south. The whole great big yard was fenced to keep out stray livestock and, especially, chickens. Gramma became very upset if animals got into her gardens, either the flowers or the vegetables! There was no barbed wire on the farm because it damages sheep's wool, so Grampa used a woven wire fence with four-inch squares. There was a gate and sidewalk right where the circular drive came closest to the house. Then the drive continued around past the pump house, tractor shed, machine shed, granary, chicken coop, water tank, barn and garage with the gas barrels. By the time you got to the garage, you were facing west and just across the drive from the house. Going straight up the walk brought you to the back door of the house, the one everyone always used except for special occasions like weddings, funerals and golden anniversaries. Then you took a branch of the walk around the north side of the house to the front door on the open porch on the west side. The back door opened into an enclosed porch where everyone hung their coats and removed their boots. Over many years the dogs had dug a "cave" under the porch beside the concrete steps where they spent a lot of their "off-duty" hours, but in really frigid weather they came into the porch. It was not heated, but was warmer than outdoors, even their cave. King, the dog Grampa had the whole time I was growing up, would not come into the kitchen, even when enticed with treats. Gramma kept a rag rug on the floor between the door into the porch and the door to the kitchen. King would wait there for Grampa to go out again. The each room downstairs was about fifteen feet square. The door from the porch was in the middle of the east wall of the kitchen and the pantry door was just south of it, the swinging door to the dining room in the middle of the north wall and the door to the stairs in the southwest corner, opening to the west. So the dining room was north of the kitchen and it was open to the parlor to the west. The parlor had a big open doorway on the south wall to a rarely used room in the southwest corner of the house. That was where the piano was and also shelves with books and games and a toy chest holding toys that my mother and her brothers had used. The front door to the house opened into this room. The room was closed off from the parlor with a heavy curtain most of the time. In the kitchen the sink was in the southeast corner with the table beside it in the middle of the south wall under the window. (Remember the big spider plant hanging in front of that window? It tickled the necks of the grandchildren who sat on that side of the table!) There was also a small window to the east in the pantry. It had shelves all along the sides to the north and south. The cookie jar was kept in the southeast corner and its lid tended to rattle, a noise Gramma could hear from the north forty, it seemed! The refrigerator was on the west wall beside the door to the stairs and the wood stove was just east of the door to the dining room on the north wall. My mother mentioned the telephone on the wall beside the kitchen door and it was in the corner between the stove and the door. When I was little, they had a party line and their ring was "two long." For those of you too young to know about this, several houses shared a telephone line. Each house had its own ring, for instance the two long rings of the bell at my grandparents' house. You could pick up when the phone rang for someone else's house, but that was rude and nosy. The dining room had windows on the east and on the north with the doorway into the front room on the west. Beside this doorway to the south was an old bookcase full of farmers' reference books. I was fascinated by the veterinary science books and on rainy days would spend hours lying on the floor studying the diagrams and articles. Horse ailments have some pretty strange names. There are strangles, thrush, fistulous withers, lockjaw, parrot mouth, stringhalt, etc. When you went into the front room Gramma's rust-colored rocker was on your right in the northeast corner. Then a floorlamp and the matching couch along the north wall under the window. There were two windows on the west wall with a big rack full of violet plants in front of the northern one. The coffee table in front of the couch held magazines and a candy dish, always full. My adult relatives were always puzzled to see my interest in the magazines, both Gramma's gardening ones and Grampa's "Farm Journals." Grampa's chair was in the southeast corner sort of behind a big oil heating stove. He was a scrawny type and got cold easily, while Gramma was plump as a good cook should be. They both had a good view of the television set in the southwest corner, but they didn't watch much besides the news and Lawrence Welk.

Meals on the Farm

When we were on my mother's parents' farm we ate well. Now, by today's standards, this was not very healthy food, but it was good and there was always a lot of it. Breakfast always included eggs (They had a couple thousand chickens, after all.) and bacon and/or sausage. These would be from their own pigs they had had slaughtered. Gramma fried these eggs in the grease from the bacon or sausage on a wood stove. I don't know whether it was because they liked them that way or because it was difficult to control the temperature with the wood stove, but these eggs were cooked fast and had "lacy" edges from the high temperatures. Grampa would put pepper on his until they were completely black and then salt them until they were entirely white. Two eggs a day with all that salt (and all the other foods I will tell you about shortly) and he lived into his late eighties! I think all the hard work they did helped to protect them from the harmful effects of their diet. Then there would be oatmeal, cold cereal, pancakes (never waffles), cake, cookies, pie, toast and sweet rolls available for the asking. It was common to have what we consider desserts like cake, cookies and pie for breakfast. Gramma got up very early every day to do her baking before anyone else was up and then prepared breakfast. When it was a few minutes from ready (6:00-6:30) she would open the door from the kitchen to the stairs, and holler up, "Breeak-fast!" and Grampa would get out of bed, pull on his farmer overalls, stuff his feet into boots and clomp downstairs. I would try to get up as soon as I heard the meat sizzling because I could not dress as fast as Grampa could. Gramma did not like anyone to be about when she was doing her baking, though, so I stayed in bed if I woke up while that was still going on. As soon as breakfast was over, Grampa went out to do chores and Gramma and any grandchildren old enough cleaned up the kitchen. Then work started on dinner. Now, we usually have lunch at noon and our biggest meal at the end of the day, but that was not the way on the farm. Every noon there was a beef roast, pork roast, steaks, chops, etc. with mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, salads, vegetables (two or three) and all the dessert foods that had been available at breakfast. Almost all this food was produced on the farm. When it was haying season, there might be extra men who came in to help (Grampa would go help them on their farms, too.) and the table would be full of adults (It seated at least ten.) and we children would have to eat in the kitchen, not in the dining room with them. It took a long time to do all those dishes! Especially since they could not be washed in the sink. It was sort of like a porcelain counter with a faucet and a drain. We would fill the dishpan there and then put it on the table to wash the dishes. From time to time Gramma would add hot water from a tea kettle on the stove to keep the dishwater hot. When all that was done, Gramma would retire to her upholstered rocker in the parlor for her hour's nap and we grandchildren were free to run off and play. Around 3:30 or 4:00 Gramma would call us in and ask us to take Grampa's "tea" out to him in the fields or wherever he was working. (I suppose that she took it out herself when we weren't there.) He would see us standing at the end of the row he was plowing or cultivating and stop when he got there. He could not have heard us calling because the tractor was so loud and it was not safe for us to go up to the moving tractor. Then he would get down and share his lemonade or cider or whatever and ginger snaps or oatmeal cookies or whatever with us. Around 6:00 to 8:00, earlier in the winter and later in the summer, supper would be cold sandwiches or dinner leftovers, again with the cake, pie and cookies. Gramma fit all her other work around preparing meals and often had to work in the garden in the heat of the day because of that. But then there would be berries still warm from the sun for grandchildren who helped her! Of course, then everyone had berries with cream so thick it had to be served with a spoon for tea or supper. She had a big china bowl with red and blue flowers on it to hold the berries and a special big flattish spoon to serve them. I wonder what happened to them.

Burr Oak general store

When I was about twelve my father's mother left the hospital kitchen and moved back to Burr Oak, having purchased one of the two general stores there. It came with a bit of property which was mostly grass with a stream running through it and rose bushes and other flowers along the north and west sides of the yard. There was also a little bridge over the stream. Somewhere I have a photo of Sandy trotting across this bridge. The west side had taller trees and the lawn was always shady with the store building on the east and the trees on the west. Midday we could play on the grass on the north side of the store. On the east side of the store was the highway and the main entrance by way of an open porch complete with benches for idlers in good weather. On the south side of the store was a gravel back road leading out to farms and the outside stairs up to the apartment over the store. The apartment had normal eight- or ten-foot ceilings, but the store's ceiling was two stories high, at least sixteen feet, maybe twenty. There was a sliding ladder on wheels that ran along the north wall where the hardware was. They kept the bins of nuts and nails and washers and stuff like that up high on that wall. It was my job to inventory those things every year between Christmas and New Year's Day, along with my family counting everything in the store. About two-thirds of the way to the back of the store there was a wood stove with chairs around it where some of the men would hang out and gossip in the winter when there was little to do on their farms. I remember the fuss when Gramma got in some little shopping carts that people could use instead of the baskets. She was hoping it would help people buy more stuff--and it did--once they got used to the idea. Every afternoon when we were there Gramma would ask us what we wanted for supper and we would just go get whatever it was right from the store and take it upstairs to cook. In 1971 when my parents moved to Lake Havasu City, AZ, Gramma sold the store and went with them.

Aunt Carol

I mentioned my Aunt Carol in my last post and so I decided that this is a good time to tell you what I remember of her. She was my father's only sibling. She was born two years, one month and one day after he was (March 3, 1929). I don't know a lot about her, except that she was not very domestic and was more adventurous than most girls. For one thing, when she was old enough to drive, she could not afford to buy a car, so she got a motorcycle. It was just barely acceptable at that time for a girl to ride behind a man on a motorcycle. It was not acceptable for a girl to purchase and drive her own motorcycle. But that is what she did. She also worked her way through college and medical school. She qualified as a doctor--not a nurse, but a doctor--when I was about four years old. That was the early fifties and there were not many women doctors back then. Unfortunately, it was about then that she married Uncle Bill Battersby who was the son of maybe the richest people in Rochester, MN at the time and so she never did actually set up in the practice of medicine. I was in the Battersbys' home a couple of times that summer and it made a big impression on me. The estate--and I do mean estate--was located at the top of a cliff above the river that ran through the town. (It seems like every town had a river running through it.) There were wonderful views of the valley below. The house was huge with the double staircase curving up from the foyer like you see in the movies. A pair of fawn Great Danes patrolled the grounds outside the mansion and a pair of red Smooth Miniature Dachshunds had the run of the inside of the house. There was parking near the house, but the garages were beyond the tennis courts back near the stables and kennels. There were all kinds of bird dogs in the kennels and horses used for hunting as well as pleasure mounts in the stables. Soon after Aunt Carol married Uncle Bill, they became Jehovah's Witnesses and they worked full time for that organization and donated all they had to it when Bill inherited his parents' estate. They never had any children, but I think that was by choice since children would have interfered with their travel and missionary work. Poor Gramma! Her only son became a Mormon and her only daughter became a Jehovah's Witness so she did not dare to go to church anywhere! I was often told that I was very like my Aunt Carol and even talked like her and used the same gestures. I could not have learned those things from her because I saw very little of her while I was growing up. She was always very nice to us, but of course Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe in recognizing birthdays or celebrating Christmas or anything like that. And they were very busy with their missionary work and traveling all over the world for that. She was devoted to her mother and phoned and wrote to her often and sent her random gifts. That was how we got our news of her, usually. I wish I had made more of an effort to get to know Aunt Carol, even if it had to be through the mail. Uncle Bill was nice, too, but seemed an awful Caspar Milquetoast for someone like my Aunt Carol. Still, he had the handicap of being born with a silver spoon in his mouth. It's bound to slow a man down!

Visiting Gramma Reed

I was always glad to take the northernmost route, the one to Rochester and my father's mother's apartment. It was very small and narrow, like a single-wide house trailer. The front door opened into the living room which might have been eight by ten feet. Then there was a galley kitchen opposite the bathroom. Two people could just barely pass in the hallway that led to her bedroom. It seemed odd to me that there was a door to the outside in the bedroom. I suppose it was for fire safety. She must have had a sofa sleeper in the living room for my parents and Missy (Merry) slept either with them or in the bathtub. (She had a problem with bedwetting until she was six or so.) It was all padded with quilts, etc. and looked cozy. Sue and I slept in Gramma's bed with her.

To help us fall asleep, she would tell us stories about our father when he was a boy. That was how I learned about Growler, the smartest dog ever. He played hide and seek, even waiting until they called out, "Ready!" Then he would go find them. He was a small black shaggy dog, but big enough to be useful on the farm. I don't remember any other stories, but I know there were lots of them. Maybe that was where I heard about how my father was so ill as a boy. He had scarlet fever when he was seven or eight and it took months for him to get well. Gramma taught him to crochet, knit and make rag rugs to keep him occupied while he recuperated. One spring day when the weather was finally warm enough, she put him out on the front lawn near the gravel road that ran between Burr Oak and Decorah so he could get some sun and watch whatever traffic there might be. Well, a circus had gotten off the train a little ways north of Burr Oak and was walking into Decorah a few miles away. When the ringmaster who was leading the parade saw little Glen in the chair with the blanket over his lap, he stopped everyone and had those acts that could perform in the road put on a little show just for him! So he got to see the liberty horses and the trick dogs and the clowns and the acrobats and even the elephants. He saw the lions and tigers in their cages on wheels pulled by brave horses. It was quite the memorable day!

There was not a lot for us girls to do at Gramma Reed's place, but there was a little neighborhood store just across the alley that ran along the south side of the building. Stores like that have mostly been replaced by 7-11s and Mavericks. They were about that size, but were not standardized. Each was unique, according to the ideas of the people, usually a married couple, who owned and ran them. This one had mostly food items (Twinkies were my favorite.), but also carried school and office supplies and gifts. Among the gifts were china figurines, including horses. One day when my father's sister, Carol, was also visiting I was given some spending money. I took it straight to the store to choose a new horse. Well, they did not have any horses I liked that day, so I bought a donkey. It was really cute, dark brown with a mane and tail tassel made of some black feathery stuff. When I got back to the apartment, Aunt Carol asked me what I was going to name it. I replied, "Well, I don't have any named Carol yet." Somehow my parents did not think it was a good idea to name my new donkey after my aunt! So I called it Kerry, deciding it must be an Irish donkey.

The apartment building was on a busy street, just a gas station away from an even busier one, so we were not allowed to go any further than the store or the gas station. But Gramma kept books and games for us, so we did not get too bored. We never stayed longer than a day or so and I really enjoyed listening to the grownups talk. They would often forget that I was quietly listening in the corner and I would hear very interesting stuff!

One year when I was very little Easter fell on my birthday and Gramma made a lamb cake to celebrate both. She must have had a mold and it looked just like a lamb lying down in a bed of Easter grass with shredded coconut all over it to look like wool. I did not want them to cut into it, but of course they did. It did taste good, but it was a shame to spoil the lamb.