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Some of My Roots, Longwinded Story and Pictures Too

14K views 26 replies 13 participants last post by  Jim in NC 
#1 ·


After stopping by a cousin's house the other day to fix her furnace, I stopped by our old home place that has been turned into a city park for our home town. A grant from Uncle Sam back in the early '80's allowed the city to purchase the property in one piece. There's lots of history to this old barn as it is in this hayloft that I met my bride (of 38 years) to be. I was home on leave from the Marines and met her as a friend of a cousin (girl) that shared rides to college. Putting up hay she was helping my cousin slide the bales back to where I was stacking in the north end of the barn...

This is also the barn I spoke of earlier where a budding country singer named Eddie Arnold performed at barn dances and tried to get one of my aunts to elope back in the 30's or early 40's. Going through some papers my dad was burning years ago, I found the original plans that were used to build this back in the day. I have to defer to my much older brother or an uncle to check the actual year of construction though.

On the north end (right side of the picture) was the old stave silo whose use had been discontinued by the time I came up in the '50's. It has since been torn down, but I retained some of the cast iron components that held circular supporting rods together. The right end also was the cow lot where the dairy herd was let in to the milking stanchions twice daily. What you are looking at here is actually the back side of the barn and directly in front of the sliding door in the middle was the annual manure pile. Built over the course of every winter one wheelbarrow at a time it would then be hauled and spread in the spring. Bedding of the dairy cattle at night consisted of a mixture of straw and sawdust from the huge pile at the sawmill 80 yards to the south of the barn.

Mastering an oversized wheelbarrow at a very young age allowed me to push a heavily loaded load up the plank, dump it and in one sweeping motion drop the handles behind my back and scoot back down the plank towards the barn and the next load tugging it backwards behind me. More than once a loooooong leaping jump had to be made off the plank when the loaded wheelbarrow didn't cooperate with a 10 or 12 year old kid. Many times the leap was NOT fully successful and a right or left leg would be buried up to the knee right at the edge of the pile....

Now one thing that needs to be pointed out here is that the plank was probably only 10" to 12" slab of wood about 3" thick with the center worn down from the years of use and thousands of loads. Attached to the top of a cedar post it rested a good 6 feet up in elevation and the manure would soon be built up to that level. The good thing about freezing weather was that when my balance was lost on occasion a quick side step to the top of the frozen pile was all that was required and not the looooooong leap.

The fattening pen for the hogs was on the outside of the right half of the barn and enclosed with salvaged graveyard fencing. An opening in it allowed them to leave the confines of the smaller area and into a larger muddier area where they appeared to be much happier rolling in the muck. It was in the fattening pen that twice daily during milking, skim milk would be dumped into troughs to help in fattening them up for shipment to the slaughterhouse. The troughs were galvanized water tanks cut in half lengthwise with old plow shares welded to the bottom for stability.

It sure was a trick to get the pails of milk all poured in before the hogs would attack the troughs and more than once knocked the pail cleanly from my hands.... A latecomer would invariably run his snout under the hind legs of an unsuspecting lucky one in the front row. With a huge thrust the frontrunners hind end would be tossed high enough so the other could rapidly get his snout into the fresh milk having slipped from the rear to the front of the line.

The new concrete silo cannot be seen on the West side of the barn, but it is just North of another silding door in line with the one on this side. Nightly I would climb the silo and fork silage into the silage cart rounding it to overfull. Once full, climbing back down the cart would then be backed up slightly and pushed into the center of the barn and turned to go down the middleway to toss an ample supply of silage in front of each cows stanchion. Once emptied, the silage would then be topped off with a scoop of ground feed dead center of each pile. I can smell all the smells as well as though it was yesterday....



This is the South end of the barn where we always butchered beef on the concrete slab. I was about 13 and Dad, myself and Uncle Chippo had just killed a beef and about halfway through skinning we noticed that the Missouri Pacific train that passes literally at the Western boundary of the farm and less than 100 yards to our side had stopped. We thought it was quite strange because a train hadn't stopped for 30 years or more. Dad said something must have happened, but not hearing a crash or anything kept on skinning the beef. Finishing the beef, hanging it in the smoke house and going on about our daily business until lunch the incident was all but forgotton.

Back to the routine of the day, finishing the milking and the barnwork in the evening it wasn't until then we found out that our little old neighbor lady had been hit and killed by the train. I want to say she was 86 or 88 at the time and would daily cross the tracks to visit or take a home made snack or treat to a family that had several small children. It was cold as the dickens, the wind was blowing and covered with coat and scarf, she probably wasn't even aware of the northbound train. Her name was Bracie Scoble, rest her soul.... Its funny what memories an innocent picture will bring to the surface.

At the end of the slab of concrete was a few smaller building mounted on skids was the storage for my uncles DeLaval milking machine parts. One of the old buildings was called the "Herkimer Shack" named after an old "Knight of the Road", another name for a railroad Hobo that would travel the rails jumping a train and stop here and there for a free meal and sometimes to work for a spell then travel on.

Old Herkimer was apparently well thought of by my grandfather and he had the little shanty built for him to stay in on his itinerant visits. He stayed a number of times in an old limestone cave on the East side of the farm boundaried by the Frisco Railroad, and one time while going after the cows and at the same time rabbit or squirrel hunting as a young boy I found a beat up old hatchet inside the cave with a whittled handle. Bringing it home when I showed it to dad, he took one look at it and said: "That was old Herkimer's hatchet, you must have found that in his old cave" !!!! Guess what, Herkimer's hatchet is sitting on my fireplace hearth this very minute and has been there since the brickwork was done.

Annnnnnnd, you know what else is sitting here on the homestead don't you? Yes, Herkimer's Shack is sitting right by my shed stuffed with tractor and motorcycle parts...... It served as a pigeon coop when my two daughters were into homing pigeons for a 4-H project though....

How the heck does a story get so sidetracked anyway !!! ???

Talking about being sidetracked, may as well go one step farther....Dad always said the old hobo's had a marking system on the sides of the rails in line with homes or farms that would either give them a free meal or a little work. Marking on the side of the rails with chalk they let others know whether or not to venture off the tracks. I remember hearing of old Herkimer, Smokey Mountain Red and several others whose names escape me for the moment, but they were certainly a part of our culture and a piece of real American History !! Dad always said there were a lot of really good hard working men and smart men too that had become "Knights of the Road".



This is a pond on the East side of the barn. Many, many hours were spent ice skating here as a youngster. We had the silly old speed skates up in the barn that were decades old and so huge that I'd stick wads of newspapers in the toe and lash up as tight as tight could be to keep them from flopping left and right like crazy. It was nothing to rub a blister the size of a quarter on my heal in an hour or so, but that didn't stop the fun.

Then one year Dad splurged and bought me a pair of girls white figure skates at Goodwill for 25 cents !!! I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Not caring that they were white at all because after the blistering pain my feet suffered as a result of the huge and looooooong bladed speed skates this was pure ecstacy !!! Suddenly I could skate backwards as well as spin around and go as fast as the devil !!

I crawled the length on my hands and knees with a 6' ruler to measure it one time. I added it up to be 510' long whether or not that is accurate I don't know, I was only 10 or 11, so who knows for sure....

One time I was out there skating away while dad and uncle Chippo was doing the barn work and low and behold the old boar hog wandered out on the ice about ten feet and there he lay. All spraddle legged and grunting. I had to get my shoes on, go get dad and we roped his hind leg and drug him back to the bank. You heard that saying: "As independent as a hog on ice" ?? Well, let me tell you that hog wasn't going anywhere on his own accord.



Soccer fields now adorn the little 4 1/2 acre corn patch that was just East of the hog pen. The Joachim creek passes just further to the East separating this side of the old home place with the Frisco Railroad and the single largest Silica sand mine in the United States. This was the littlest of the fields and I don't recall anything but corn for sure, but vaguely recall getting the old Massey Harris combine through the tight gate to combine wheat or barley. I'll have to defer to the much older brother on that account too....

The wash water and drain-off from the Silica Sand mine would dump into the Joachim right about here and the fish were deemed hazardous to eat, so I've never fished this section of the creek Northward. We'd sure gig the dickens out of catfish back the other way though. That's another story though.

The big hay field is the clearing just past the fence row in the center of the picture, the cows would travel in and out the lane between these two fields. To the right where the small thicket of cedar can be seen is just the southeastern boundary of the picnic grounds. There annually the local KC Hall would have their picnic there with booths, tents and all sorts of goodies. It was a beautiful rolling hillside bordered by the green water of the Joachim creek and almost totally shaded with towering Red Cedar. Cedar exceeding 20" diameter was the normal tree in here.

There were permanent outhouses built on the top of the hill at the end of the lane, just a bit northward. A vivid memory of mine is one of being the unfortunate first one in to disturb a swarm of bumblebees. I was maybe 6 years old and wearing shorts. They swarmed my ankles and stung my lower legs and one ankle severely. I'm talking major stings, major swelling, major itching (eventually) and wow, did that hurt !!! Like I said, it is a vivid memory.



A couple hundred yards South of the hog pen and a little East of the blacktop rests these picturesque and stately railroad abutments spanning the creek. I don't remember which of the two it was, Frisco or MoPac but one of them was re routed at one time or another and this reminder of the past remains as testimony to hard work and harder times. Plowing the fields to the West of here turns up a definite darker strip of dirt directly in line with these abutments marking the former route of the tracks.

This may have been a sidetrack over to an old lime kiln that was operated on this property in the 1800's. Again, I must defer to the ones in the family blessed with the factual knowledge and not leave this to my conjecture. If I get the needed input, I will edit and include it here for sure. As a matter of fact, if I do find some inaccuracy of fact I will edit those to correct them also.



The abutment on the far side of the creek is at the edge of a good sized pasture that sometimes the cows decided to graze. Many times when they didn't come in to dad's call from the back of the barn, I'd have to walk out the lane, down through the picnic ground and cross the sometimes chilly creek to bring the cows in.

The lead cow during my time was an aggravating old goat and that became here name: "Old Goat". Old Goat was the one with the bell on a leather strap and the others would slowly follow the old Holstein to whatever pasture she deemed to graze. Big cow, small curved horns and more white than black, she was a pretty fair milker and was there for a long time. It was on one of these trips going after the cows and packing the old Mossberg .22 and just East of this abutment about a 100 yards that I found old Herkimer's hatchet in the small cave.

One time in the '70's I was riding my motorcycle right by these abutments when a big old water moccasin was disturbed by the noise and shot across the path at just the wrong time. He shot perfectly through my front tire and instantly went flop, flop, flop through the forks of the motorcycle and my face and forearms became splattered with snake blood and snotty snake internal parts !!!! I didn't stop until I got to the creek to wash the nastiness off myself. Yeah, raw snake doesn't taste good at all. Bummer for me, but really really bad for the snake...



You just gotta wonder how long these monuments to times long gone will remain standing...

I could've taken a hundred pictures and written a hundred more pages but I guess it really doesn't matter one way or another anyway but I do sincerely hope the next generation starts asking questions earlier than I did.

So there you have some more Sunday morning ramblings of someone who should have paid more attention to the older generation to get even a better understanding of where he came from.... At least I have a pretty good idea of where I'm going.... yeah, it'll be warm.
 
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#3 ·
Wendell just read your book. That was a good start on your book . You really need to write a book for those girls to have later.
You write it so entwining along with the history. Make for good reading . Love the picture also. Sounds like you grew up learning to work just like I grew up learning to work. Thanks Wendell for sharing that ,was so good. Now write that book and put my name on the first one.
 
#4 ·
Thanks, Wendell for the walk back thru your childhood & all the many enjoyable memories. You are a good writer & make reading your thoughts very enjoyable, maybe if I'd of had "books" like this to read in school I'd have had better book reports.
 
#7 ·
I really enjoy reading stories like this. It is neat how the old barn still stands and the area has been turned into a park. Most of the buildings on my childhood farm have been removed for "progress". Your posting brings back many of my own memories from our farm.
 
#8 ·
Wendell, from the stories my Dad told about the old barn, it was finished in 1935. Grandpa bought a train load of cypress lumber from southeast Missouri to be used in the construction of the barn. Dad said that countless loads of creek gravel was hauled up from the nearby Joachim Creek by the mule team that Grandpa had to be used for the barn's foundation & floor.

That is also the time the barn dances started. Your Dad was the bouncer & my Dad sold beer. Grandma & our aunts would cook hambugers & hot dogs to be sold to those who needed nourishment to continue on with the night's frivolity.

Not wanting to take away you story telling title on this forum, I will close for now.

Lumberlady
 
#10 ·
Really like the stories like this. I wish you had taken more pictures and told a few more stories. I wonder if the city knows Eddie Arnold used to play in the barn, they might want to put a plaque up so people visiting would know. One picture I would have liked to seen would have been the look on your face when the snake wound up in the front rim on your dirt bike. I think its neat that you will be able to take your grand kids back to where you grew up and be able to show them and the same general farm layout still be visible, most are covered with houses now. I say keep them coming. Stories and pictures never go out of style.
 
#11 ·
Lumberlady, jump in anytime with additional information...after all, it was your furnace that caused me to stop by the old place to take a few pictures anyway....

I knew the barn was built sometime in the 30's but was unsure of the exact year. The much older brother still has the worn out old Deputy Sheriff star that Dad wore during the Saturday nite dances...

Thank all of you for the very kind words in response to the anecdotal story. I guess maybe spreading the proverbial manure pile might still in my blood just a little....

As a slight continuance, here is a shot of old Herkimer's hatchet..... Preserved quite well for having been whittled out of a tree branch over 70 years ago, you can clearly see the hand made handle. You can almost visualize it in the grizzled and boney hand of a gaunt hobo chopping kindling under the protection of the small limestone cave......



...However, forever retired, it is sitting appropriately on the side of our fireplace next to an old American Explosives wooden dynamite box that has served as our kindling box now for a few decades....
 
#13 ·
Wendell, thanks for sharing your life experiences with us. The pics and farm are all so beautiful, and I know it was a great place to be as a youngun. How large was the farm, and how many cows were milked? Looking at the barn and reading your post, I'd say it was a pretty busy place most of the time. ;)
 
#14 ·
Jim in NC said:
Wendell, thanks for sharing your life experiences with us. The pics and farm are all so beautiful, and I know it was a great place to be as a youngun. How large was the farm, and how many cows were milked? Looking at the barn and reading your post, I'd say it was a pretty busy place most of the time. ;)
We farmed two locations, the home place was right at 184 acres and the other place five maybe six miles away was 330 acres. When Dad and the uncles ran the milk route from back in the 20's up until the brothers left for WW II they were milking a good number. But by the time I came around in the early 50's it was down to only 14 maybe 16 head. But at that time we were only shipping cream and fattening hogs on the "blue-john"...skim milk.

This came about with the change in the requirments to utilize "bulk tanks" to minimize the bacteria count in the milk. They elected to not to go through the added expense of that new system, instead just shipping cream. We'd ship several 10 gallon cans of cream every Thurdsay and get a weekly report on the bacteria count from the St Louis producers.

We ran over a hundred hogs at different times and also beef cattle, white face and hereford along with the Holstein herd of dairy cows. There was a Guernsey and a Jersey thrown in the mix also.

Corn, alfalfa, barley, wheat, milo, johnson grass hay, one field of timothy and some lespedeza were some of the crops. Filling silo was one of my all time favorite tasks, right up there with plowing. I still own the old Massey Harris 101 Super we used on the belt for the blower because of the higher rpm 6 banger of the Plymouth engine that replaced the almost identical 6 cylinder Chrysler industrial. Prior to that, there was a MH model 25 used on the blower because of the huge pulley it had...plus the ponies to pull it. The much older brother still has the old Model 25 in his corral.

In addition to the normal farm work, we were always sawing lumber on the old Fisher and Davis sawmill powered by an old Buick in-line 8 power plant when there was nothing else to do. They rolled the body off of it, removed the rear end and replaced it with a carrier bearing at the back end of the driveshaft fitted with a clamp on flat belt pully.

Yes Jim, it was surely a busy place...something to do all the time. Heating with wood, spare time was spent cutting and splitting by hand. There was also the butchering of hogs and beef annually. We always went to some of the uncles farms to do their beef, our own done here at home. On rainy days, we'd back a broken implement or whatever into the south facing double doors of the blacksmith shop and go to making repairs as necessary. I've had the grand pleasure of being on the business end of the forge, hammer and anvil drawing out more plow shares than anyone should have had the opportunity to enjoy.

Dad started making splitting mauls out of sledge hammers so the broken round handles could be cut off and reused just a little shorter. The exaggerated oval eyes of the actual store bought mauls meant a fellow might have to "buy" a new handle when broken....and we lived quite frugally. He'd let me heat and beat until it got to the critical final shaping of the heads, then he'd take over to then complete the shaping, temper and put the edge on. I'm sure the much older brother got in on that too.

I sometimes wished there was a "counter" to fit my right arm to see how many strokes it took to draw an 8 pound sledge out to the rudimentary shape of a maul... I sure liked to hear that old forge blower howl with the turn of the crank though.

Many, many memories of a lot of hard work tempered with a lot of goofing off quite often bring a smile and a wistful stare.... You did it again, Jim, you got me started.....
 
#16 ·
Thanks for sharing, I am not as experienced in life as most on this post, But the stories still take me back to my childhood. I was fortunate enough to grow up on grandpa's farm and enjoyed the old way of life. The barn and sheds are now gone and the hay fields now are full of cousin's houses. I still cut wood in the wood lot but everything else has changed. It is nice to reflect on those years of exploring the barnyard and being a kid again. Thanks for the memories.
 
#17 ·
Wendell, yalls is a farm that was probably as close to any that could provide most everything yall needed. In this part of NC, the farms were alot smaller. There were a few dairies. Most of the milk was sent to a commercial plant for processing and packaging.

Most everyone grew tobacco for their main source of income. Five acres of it was alot. Farmers here raised 2 or 3 hogs for their own use, chickens, and a milk cow. They would often sell a calf soon after birth, as the milk and what could be made from it was more valuable. Many of the farm women made butter, and it was often sold along with any "extra" milk. There were a few beef cows scattered around.

Big vegetable gardens were the norn, and lots of canning was the method of preserving until some farmers began to buy freezers.

Corn and wheat were the primary grains raised. Corn was used mostly for feed, and some would be pulled from the stalk when it was in the "blister" stage for human consumption. I went numerous times with my Grandpa, who lived here, to peddle fertilizer sacks of corn to local grocery stores. There was no sweet corn like we have today, and it was only tender enuff for us to eat it for a few days.

My grandpas had a neighbor farmer combine their wheat. I also helped him a little later in my teen years. His family is the original owner of the Farmall H I have. He used that H and mostly a 12A JD combine to harvest the wheat, and once in a while, oats. It had no bin, so a rider bagged the grain as it was cut. The bags were placed in the chute and dropped at about the same place as the combine went round and round the field. Now loadin' a 200lb fertilizer sack of oats weren't too bad, but a sack of wheat would make one be lookin' rite quick for the last one to come off the combine. ;) Mom's dad would always bring some fresh-ground flour home from his wheat crop.

I'd help my grandaddy get out good sacks to put his grain in, and cut baler twine from hay bales into thirds fot tying up the sacks. I could probably still tie a miller's knot if I had to. :!:

You mentioned a counter of hammer swings. I'd like to have had a counter on my arms to add up the number of hoeing chops I have made over my lifetime. I surely haven't done nearly as many as my grandpas, but add the nail-drivin' swings, and the "beatin'-something-stuck-off" swings and I have done my share.

Most of the tobacco farmers here had a horse or mule up until the early to mid 1960s to pull sleds between the tobacco rows for hauling leaves to the barn. Some had 2 row sprayers rigged on sleds with a small gas engine. pump, and small barrel to spray insecticides and the newest thing, MH-
30 for sucker control. The gas engines had starting ropes that had to be wound around the flywheel pulley. There were no spring-assisted rope rewinders :!: :eek:

Often after layby and just before topping, a farmer would use the horse to pull a wide sweep through the row middles to knock down the weeds and grass one final time. Once the tobacco was topped, and the leaves spread and got heavier, the middles wer shaded and that kept the weeds down.

Spending a week or two a few hours at a time hand-suckering tobacco would surely test any farmer, whether young or old.

Wendell, I could go on more since I am only near the end of July. I didn't want to hijack the post. I'm saying that even though farmers do different types of farmin' across the country, we all work really hard at it, and it is more than a job, it is a lifestyle.

Farmers work really hard not to be like everybody else, cuz we don't want to be like everybody else. ;)
 
#18 ·
Wendell, you could not only author a book, but be a great illustrator too! I agree with Betty, you should write down, every thing that you can remember from growing up, so that your children could pass on that legacy. Great story, really enjoyed seeing and reading.
 
#19 ·
smitty said:
Wendell, you could not only author a book, but be a great illustrator too! I agree with Betty, you should write down, every thing that you can remember from growing up, so that your children could pass on that legacy. Great story, really enjoyed seeing and reading.
Smitty sound like Wendell just sold his second book when he get the book finish.
 
#20 ·
I would give anything to be able to go back and write down all the stories my grandpa told me, I think you writing a book is a great idea, you are an awesome story teller and the content would relate to many people. At the least sit down and record your stories so your family will have them for generations yet to come.My Grandpa "Pappy" never had the chance he had a sudden heart attack and that was it I was 16 and can't remember enough now to put them all together. just a little here and there, Like I said I would give anything to have those stories now. And you can you can add me to the growing list of pre-orders for your book!
 
#21 ·
Jim, visualizing your descriptions of tobacco farming and viewing Gordons awesome pictures of he and his sons crop leave no doubt as to the level of labor that goes into tobacco farming.

We too would pull the select "roasting ears" just at and sometimes just slightly beyond blisters when the horse corn was most tender and sweet. Sometimes Dad would get a trifle aggravated when passers by would stop just out of sight on the blacktop and quickly slip through the barb wire and snatch a few ears here and there for supper. Its funny now to remember him cussing them... :lol: :lol:

Grinding feed was another reasonably fun job, as that chore is also remembered quite well.

There are many things I wish I would have paid attention to as a kid when the opportunity was there...and like you dsshultz, the door has closed with the passing of most of the older generation.

Smitty I think you, MissBetty and dsshultz and others are very kind to make the supportive comments that have been posted and I thank you all. But...you gotta remember just how lazy I am.... :oops:

Thanks again guys...
 
#22 ·
Wendell, I hope I did not get too longwinded and take away from your post. I have enjoyed treading this post and everyone's comments. Despite the long hours and hard work, most folks I know that have farmed or are farming take pride in what they do. I believe the hardest thing for a farmer to do is plan on taking some time off, then actually doing it :!: ;)
 
#23 ·
Jim in NC said:
Wendell, I hope I did not get too longwinded and take away from your post. I have enjoyed treading this post and everyone's comments. Despite the long hours and hard work, most folks I know that have farmed or are farming take pride in what they do. I believe the hardest thing for a farmer to do is plan on taking some time off, then actually doing it :!: ;)
Jim, you are adding to it....nothing you could say concerning farming could possibly be detrimental at all. And I do appreciate the comments considerably.
 
#24 ·
Jim, visualizing your descriptions of tobacco farming and viewing Gordons awesome pictures of he and his sons crop leave no doubt as to the level of labor that goes into tobacco farming.

The only thing I've ever found easy about farming is talking about it with others. The memories of days gone by and stories relived of the hard days work, near misses and just time spent with family on the porch at night retelling them all and the compliment always paid to the last patriarch of the family to have passed being the "hardest working man I ever knew" is the one tradition I always hope is alive and well.
 
#25 ·
Wendell,

Loved the story about the old barn and all the goings on back in the day! I remember your Dad too when he use to shop at Save A Lot where I worked at the time when it was down on Main Street. He was such a nice man, always smiling. And, he liked his twist tobacco! Keep the pictures and the stories coming! M.
 
#26 · (Edited)
Thank you ma'am for the comment and also for remembering Dad and his nasty old Cotton Boll Twist. He'd mix it with Union Standard and always had a wad the size of a golf ball in his cheek....hopefully NOT in the store though.

Glad to see you've joined the forum and as you already know, there are a lot of interesting topics and pictures here free for the looking. By the way, I really grinned at your username....as soon as I saw it I knew exactly who it was !!!!
 
#27 ·
Welcome to ATF U Scan Queen! When time permits go to the Member Introductions section and introduce yourself to the group. We are glad to have you with us.
 
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