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.

Three Possible Routes

Once across the Mississippi River and in the state of Minnesota, there were three possible routes we could take, depending on where we were headed. We could go northwest to Rochester where my father’s mother lived until she retired and moved back to Burr Oak, IA where my father had grown up. My father’s sister Carol also lived in Rochester, up high on the bluff above the town on an estate owned by her husband’s family. We could go “due west” to Lanesboro where Aunt Norma and Uncle Ray lived. Her mother, my father’s father’s mother, lived across the street in a sort of nursing home until I was around twelve. Or we could go southwest to Albert Lea where the farm was where my mother’s parents lived. Her brothers also lived in or near Albert Lea.

The way to Rochester looked much like the rolling farm country of Wisconsin, with the addition of vegetable crops to the corn, other grains, alfalfa and dairy cows. We knew we were getting close to Rochester when we passed the water towers that were painted to look like tomatoes and ears of corn. These were for Green Giant factories where they canned various vegetables grown in the area. Different ones were packed at different times of the year. Sometimes we drove by when they were canning peas. Peas were “picked” commercially by pulling up the stems and all and then the peas were separated out at the factory. The stems, leaves and pods would be piled up two or three stories high outside the factory and stank to high heaven! I think they were collected and used to make fertilizer or something, but in the meantime, even driving past with the windows closed was an ordeal. It took several minutes to pass all the buildings with the piles outside and it was not possible to hold one’s breath the whole time. But we tried. Rochester itself had about the same population as Appleton, but it had a lot more tall buildings which we could see for many miles before we actually arrived. They were all hospitals. The downtown was full of hospitals, and the Mayo Clinic, which were the major industry of the town. The Mayo doctors would diagnose patients’ ailments and then the hospitals in town would try to cure them. My grandmother worked in the kitchen of the Worrell Methodist Hospital for many years. She was in charge of the kitchen before she retired. (3/18/09 I just discovered that if you Google Rochester, MN you can find photos of the corn water tower and of Lanesboro.)

The road to Lanesboro was the most winding for the longest distance of any road I have ever been on. It seemed like it was going one direction and then it would sort of shake itself and go the other way! The west side of the Mississippi Valley was filled with steep hills with little valleys between cut through by streams. Lanesboro was located on the Root River which was small and very twisting. We girls would try to count how many times the highway crossed over the river, but the number was so high that we always lost count. Lanesboro was a charming little village with a downtown about two blocks long. Uncle Ray’s dental office was located over a store across the street from the lawyer’s office which was located over another store. Their names and professions were painted on the windows in black with gold highlights. They were both the only one of their professions in the town. There were only two churches, the Methodist where Aunt Norma played the organ and the Lutheran one. (3/18/09 The downtown looks just the same in the Google photos as it did then.)

The highway to Albert Lea ran through more excellent farmland. We arrived at the town from the northeast, drove right on through the downtown, and out again on the highway heading south. Then we turned off onto a gravel road with a few curves and corners and when we saw the little one-room schoolhouse, we turned east onto the driveway right beside it.

Across Wisconsin by Car

You may be wondering why there are so many French names in Wisconsin. While the western parts of the United States were explored mainly by Spanish conquistadores or Spanish priests, the eastern parts and the Midwest were explored by the French. Wisconsin was the domain of “Marquette et Joliet” which are names that were repeated over and over in my grade school years. One of them was a trapper and the other was a priest, but I am no longer certain which was which. For the most part, the early names were either Indian (spelled in French phonetics) or French in origin. Later on, when the region was becoming properly settled, names were English.

The first little town we came to after turning west at Oshkosh and going through Lake Butte Des Morts was Omro. After a while there was Redgranite. Then came Wautoma, which we never called by its proper name. We called it “Blue Stools Town” because of the little café where we often stopped for a piece of pie (and a potty break). Most cafes and diners of the time were decorated in black and white with red trim. So the benches in the booths, the chairs at the tables and the stools at the lunch counters were upholstered in either black or red vinyl. But this little diner was different. I do not remember its real name—something like Dan’s Diner or Flo’s Café, probably—because we just called it Blue Stools because its vinyl was sky blue. We never knew why that was so, but we girls found it enchanting. Our parents always preferred to sit in a booth, but we girls always wanted to sit up at the counter on the tall stools. We usually won. (There were three of us and only two parents.) Thus fortified with pie and milk, we proceeded through Coloma, Necedah, and Wyeville.

Wyeville was the smallest place of the whole journey. There was literally nothing there but a train depot in the middle of a large clearing in the forest. (The middle of the state was pretty much all forest, with the farms on the east and west sides of the state.) I have anxious memories of that train depot. One summer day when I was about ten, Sue maybe eight and Merry only four, we girls were put on a train to go to Minnesota by ourselves. We had to change trains at Wyeville. There was about a half hour between trains and I was extremely stressed out trying to keep my sisters close by and safe until we got on the next train. There was no one around but us. We did all survive, though I was very glad to hand over responsibility to adults when we arrived in Albert Lea!

When driving, we next came to Tomah and then Camp McCoy. Camp McCoy—now Fort McCoy—was something like Camp Williams, only much larger. (It is larger still today.) It was in the middle of the forest part with this one highway running through the middle of it. Every so often there were gravel crossroads and sometimes you could see barracks or other buildings a little way up the road, always to the north, but mostly it was just trees with fences and signs against trespassing, etc. It was boring and sort of scary, if you know what I mean. Once in a while we would happen upon a CONVOY. This would make my father extremely frustrated. You have to understand how my father drove. It was as though he were in a race. He would speed up and up until there was something in front of him that he could not pass and he would have to slow down. After a while it would be clear to pass and away we would go full tilt again! Well, convoys were required to maintain a very slow speed, for no reason we could see, and they were so long and the vehicles so close together that it was impossible to pass. So my poor father would have to drive SLOWLY for miles and miles until the convoy got to the crossroad where they left the highway. He did not usually keep his temper. We would then drive very fast indeed!

Soon after that we would pass Roche a Cri State Park. (Roche a Cri is French for Crying Rock.) One summer we camped there with some friends of my parents. My family arrived first and drove around looking for a good spot to pitch our tents. There was a lovely place with a big tree or two and ferns and things all around. We did not understand why no one else had taken this choice spot, but figured it was our good luck. A couple days later, when our friends came, we found out why. Some of the brush around the campsite was poison ivy! No one in our family had any problem with it, but our friends insisted that we move to another campsite. Apparently, it is an allergy and my family did not have it.

Another landmark in this area was Ship Rock. This was a huge rock left standing after the glaciers scoured off most of it in the area. It was about the size of the RCA Building, but all jagged and ragged, of course. Someone must have thought it looked like a ship, though I could never see it. But it was great fun to climb and clamber all over it and it was a wonderful break from riding in the car all day long. There is a part of southwestern Wisconsin that is sort of like Monument Valley, with huge rock outcroppings that the glaciers missed, but you can’t see them as well as in Monument Valley because of all the trees.

The next town was one of the biggest of the journey. Sparta must have been a county seat, I think, because that is where the orphanage was, right along the highway. (Or maybe it was even the state orphanage. I don’t know.) The orphanage looked sort of like my hundred-year-old elementary school multiplied several times over. Inside a very tall chain-link fence there were six or eight buildings around a gravel square with playground equipment in the center. There were other big buildings back behind the square, too. There were “houses” that looked like ordinary homes except that they were way too big. There would have been plenty of room for thirty children in each house. Sometimes there were children playing on the swings and slides and sometimes the place looked deserted. Either way, it looked sad.

After that we came to LaCrosse (French for The Crossing) where we crossed the Mississippi River. LaCrosse was the biggest city of our trip and had many interesting features. There was a small factory where they made giant fiberglass figures for advertising purposes. In the grassy back lot, which the highway bordered, they kept the mistakes and broken items. There were life-sized horses and cows, and way more than life-sized lumberjacks, jumping trout, chickens, etc. Many of these figures were twelve to twenty feet tall. LaCrosse also had a large cemetery. You might wonder why that was of interest to a little girl. Well, for reasons which escape me now, Sue and I had to hold our breath whenever we passed a cemetery. This was no problem with most of the ones we passed because they were only as big as a house lot or maybe a city block. But the one in LaCrosse was huge! It stretched for several city blocks. Usually, we could manage to hold our breath for that long, unless the traffic light right in the middle was red. Sue never could last when we had to wait at the light. Often I could, but not always. She generally accused me of cheating when I could hold my breath longer than she could, but I didn’t, really! She just hated me to best her in anything, but I was older and sometimes could do stuff she couldn’t. Another place of interest in LaCrosse was the Big Boy Restaurant where we usually ate lunch. Sometimes we ate after crossing the river at an A & W Root Beer stand where they kept the thick glass mugs in the freezer and the root beer stayed so cold! If the weather was hot, we went there. The Mississippi River itself was one of the most impressive landmarks of the trip. Already that far north the river was huge. It was over a mile across, but it wasn’t just water. There were lots of “needle-shaped” islands in the channels. We would go across a bridge to one and cross it in a few seconds and get on another bridge to reach the next island. There was a wide part on the west side without islands where the bridge was maybe a quarter mile long. Then we would be across into Minnesota. More on that next time!