Footprints in the Ozarks, page 7
At first the flow of silage through the pipe was spasmodic. But when all hands were at work, there was a continuous stream through the long pipe as wagons waited their turns to draw up beside the cutter and unload.
“It keeps me busy putting up doors and taking off sections of pipe,” Gus said. In the middle of the morning I poked my head into the chute just as he lowered a piece of blower pipe on a rope. I untied it and stacked it in the corner of the shed along with several other sections and tied on another door for him to pull up and fit into place. The silo was already over half full.
“I wanna go up there,” begged my three-year-old son, David, whose pleadings to see the siloing brought me from the kitchen and the cooking. I eyed the tall narrow chute running up the side of the silo and the widely spaced rungs of the ladder and started to shake my head.
“Tie this rope to his overall galluses and I'll pull him up,” Gus suggested. “That boy's got to help, too.”
The prospect so excited David that he could hardly hold still for me to tie the rope on him. I fastened it around his waist, as I didn't trust his overalls. Gus hauled him up while I climbed the rungs in the chute just under him.
“You go on and cook dinner,” David ordered after he explored the small circular space. He mimicked the actions of the men as he strutted back and forth. Now there were four to tramp!
Outside, Lane and his cousin were feeding the cutter from the wagon drawn up alongside. A neighbor drove up a loaded wagon to await his turn. I could see two men in the field stacking on their wagons the bundles which others on the ground threw up to them. The corn binder was eating into the corn, regularly throwing off tied bundles. The binder itself was a recent addition to the siloing job. When labor to cut the fodder with corn knives ceased to exist, the binder became a necessity.
There were seven tractors working, red, green, and gray ones. Shorty's lone pair of beautiful sorrel mules looked out of place in the mechanized outfit.
“Daddy, look!” David had exclaimed. “Look at the funny horses.”
“Those are mules, son,” Lane answered. “There's not many of them left in the country anymore.” Though David could already guide a tractor and talked about batteries, brakes, and radiators, he would probably never have occasion to harness a mule or know the meaning of hame straps, breechings, and tail cruppers. “Fifteen years ago we used as high as seven teams of mules for filling the silo. The tractor that ran the cutter was the only one we needed.”
“Yes,” Dad mused, “I've said many a time I could never put out a crop without a pair of mules. I knew for sure there were some jobs a tractor couldn't do.” His eyes squinted humorously. “I haven't had a mule on the place for five years.”
Before I returned to the house I asked how many men there would be for dinner.
“Twenty-seven last count.”
I hurried back to the house with my information. The momentary lull in the dinner preparations was over. The men would soon be ready to eat. Lane's mother and sister Ethel and two neighbor women were busy putting the finishing touches to the dinner when I returned. The heat from the wood range was welcome after the chilly air outside. The numerous pans steaming and those pushed back to keep warm sent forth such aromas as to make one impatient to eat.
I helped lengthen the table to set ten plates. We opened a jar of blackberry jelly, one of grape jelly, and one of tomato preserves. We cleaned some onions and set them beside the pickles, fresh peppers, and sliced tomatoes. Already the table was crowded!
“I hope they won't be long,” Ethel said, placing the hot beans on the table. We saw Dad drive to the field in the pickup as those from the silo entered the lawn gate. “Dad's calling them in. We better get everything on the table now,” she added.
I ran out to the well curb with towels, wash pans, and soap for the men gathering to wash. David was with Dave waiting his turn like a man.
“Hungry?” I asked a young neighbor.
“You bet. What you got for dinner?”
“You needn't worry. Cordie sets a good table,” his father assured him.
The first ten men tramped in and seated themselves around the table. They piled their plates with food and settled down to eat. The only comments were those of necessity.
“Pass the chicken.”
“Here, girlie, give me some more coffee.”
“I'll take a little more of that beef and dressing.”
“Can you reach the noodles, Lane?”
“Anyone ready for pie yet?”
Ethel and I poured coffee and refilled water glasses which always seemed to be empty. The pile of light bread and of cornbread vanished. I replenished the cabbage and sweet potatoes. Then I passed out the dessert, pies and cake and dishes of canned peaches and apples. One little man humped up in the corner ate half of the dish of kraut beside him before Ethel noticed him and passed him some meat. We couldn't decide whether he was too shy to ask for anything else or if he supposed kraut was all we had. His eyes never left his plate.
After the initial hunger of the men was satisfied, conversation became more animated.
“I've been studying about getting a field cutter next year.”
“It's the coming thing,” another added.
“We're forced into it,” Dave said. “We can't get the crew anymore. You can't blame the boys for going to town to get those big paying jobs. We can't pay no six or seven dollars a day for hands.”
“There ain't as many boys now,” another said. “Take me, for instance. My dad had five boys and I've just got one.”
When the first group finished, Ethel and I quickly washed the place settings for the next table of ten men. We had three groups to feed before we could eat. As the last man finished, the older women returned from the living room where they had rested and visited while we waited on the tables.
Mother took one glance at the table and exclaimed, “You forgot to put on the fruit salad!”
Ethel and I looked at each other in dismay. On the groaning table there wasn't room for another dish; it couldn't have been missed. But it “made a dish on the table.”
“It will just give us women more to eat,” I consoled her as we helped ourselves to the remains of a banquet. By the looks of all the left-over food, I didn't think Mother would have to cook again for several days.
Our work was almost done. After finishing the dishes, I returned to the silo with David just as the last two loads of corn were coming in from the field.
“Look,” David said, pointing to Dave and Gus standing on top of the silo. “I . . .”
“No, you can't go up there,” I said firmly. The men stood upright on the top of the narrow structure as they rounded off the last of the ensilage.
Lane pointed triumphantly to the field. About twenty-five rows of the corn that we planned to put in the silo remained uncut. I thought that the corn must have been good for so much to be left.
“It was way yonder better than we thought. It took only six acres to make eighty-one tons of silage,” Lane boasted.
I sat on the edge of an empty wagon bed to watch the men leave. David ran the length of the wagon squealing and calling me to watch. Dad and Lane paid off the hired hands and promised others help in return for today's work.
“How much do I owe you?” Dad asked.
“Just whatever is right,” Gus answered. Dad looked slightly annoyed then produced a five dollar bill. Gus pocketed it. “I just want whatever is right,” he repeated, but I knew he was more than satisfied.
“I'm proud that job is done,” Lane said. He picked up David and tossed him into the air.
“Do you think we'll get a field cutter next year?” I asked.
“We're thinking about it.”
Somehow that made me sad.
The Threshers are Coming
Like siloing, threshing the wheat and oats took a large crew. The yearly job of threshing was a cooperative effort of men swapping work in the field and at the separator and women cooking for the men when the owner of the machine would pull into the neighborhood. Neighbors traded work, so that during the threshing season Lane and his dad were helping neighbors to repay them for helping us. And I helped his mother in the kitchen, though I'd have much rather been out in the field! In the 1950s women didn't work in the fields when there were men to do the work.
Unlike farmers in the western counties of Missouri and in Kansas, the fields in the Ozarks sown to wheat or oats were small--five, eight, or ten acre fields usually. Only those on river-bottom farms or on the uneroded level plains areas raised wheat. It was not a money crop. The grain raised was consumed on the farm as feed for the poultry and stock.
Because of the small fields, the practice of using the movable threshing machine from farm to farm continued until the early 1960s in our part of the Ozarks. After that with such small acreages involved, when combines came into general use, the cost of equipment to raise grain and effort involved made it impractical to continue growing wheat. This was especially true when the government began the program to control the wheat acreage to help with the national surplus of wheat.
In late June or early July, one man who owned the threshing machine, first powered by horses, then by steam, and later by gasoline tractors, moved from farm to farm. The farmer cut his wheat with a binder which threw out bundles of wheat. He stacked these into shocks of about 5 or 6 bundles per shock with the heads up. He spread one or two bundles over the top to cover and protect the grain heads from rain. When the grain was completely dry it could be threshed.
In addition to the men with the thresher, it took at least three men to drive hay wagons through the field to the shocks for an equal number of men on the ground to pitch the bundles up onto the wagon. When the wagon was loaded, it was driven to the separator where the bundles were thrown one at a time into the self feeder.
The bundles traveled through the noisy and shaking machine through the cylinder, the grain pan, the cleaning fan, and other parts of the thresher. The straw was blown out the blower pipe into a stack as the clean grain tumbled out the grain auger into a waiting grain wagon. So there would be no interruption in the process, each crew had about three grain wagons. One loading, one waiting, and one unloading into the grain bin. As the grain spilled into the wagon, the man would shovel it into place. When his wagon was full, he drove it to the barn or granary where he shoveled it out. Another wagon pulled in to retrieve the grain.
Threshing took a minimum of eleven men, not counting the youthful water boys who brought fresh water from the spring or well to the workers.
At noon the men shut down the thresher as the workers trouped to the house. They washed up at the outside pump where there was soap and towels. They lounged and visited until their turn at the table. With so many men, there wasn't room for all to eat at once.
In the house, the women had worked all morning and probably some the day before preparing dinner for the hungry men. Just as the men helped one another to have a crew to get the job done, the women in the neighborhood helped one another. At least two other women would come to help prepare the meal. It usually consisted of fried chicken or chicken and noodles, mashed potatoes and gravy, peas, green beans, navy beans, slaw, wilted lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers, onions and peppers, fruit salad, yeast bread and cornbread, butter, several kinds of jams and jellies, coffee, and different kinds of pies, cobblers and cakes.
One of the women was kept busy serving the men, refilling bowls, coffee cups and water glasses. She cleared out the dirty plates and set fresh ones for the next group of men. Another was busy washing plates, silverware and cups.
Though it was a lot of work, people had a good time. Farming is often a lonely job. Threshing, like siloing, brought the whole neighborhood together. The women enjoyed visiting as they prepared the dinner, as did the men as they worked in the field. There they were not by themselves plowing or mowing, but working with at least eleven other men. They had time to visit, to joke, to tell of the big fish that got away, while waiting their turns to unload at the separator or to pull into the machine to get the threshed grain.
The children had the best time of all. Boys too young to drive a wagon or pitch the bundles in the field carried water to the men. They participated in all the camaraderie. They felt grown up. Smaller children played in the grain wagons as the grain cascaded from the chutes. They rode in the wagon full of grain to the barn and continued to play and jump in the fresh grain. Barefooted, they delighted in the feel of the smooth wheat grains between their toes. They could jump high and land in a soft bed of grain that gave way for their small bodies.
And the meals they got to eat! Children had to wait until all the men had finished and eat with the women, but there was always plenty left. The boys gobbled down their meals to rejoin the men resting in the shade in the lawn before time to resume work. The girls ate more slowly as they listened to the talk of their mothers. But they were always smart enough to duck out before the women rose to wash the last dishes.
In the small fields of the Ozarks, the threshers would rarely be at one farm more than one day unless the machine broke down. In western Missouri and Kansas where the fields were bigger, up to several hundreds of acres, and wheat was their money crop, the threshers might be at one farm for several days.
In Vernon County, Missouri, at my father's farm, I remember one summer in the early 1930s when the threshers were there for five days. The five men with the thresher even camped out all night on our lawn. My mother had to cook both breakfast and supper for them as well as the big meal for the fifteen to twenty neighbors who swapped work.
Kathryn, one of my older sisters, complained so much about all the work that my mother sent her to visit her cousin in Arkansas until the threshers left. A neighbor woman came to help in her place. Not only was there peace in the house again, but I remember she made the most delicious homemade dumplings I've ever eaten.
The Battle of Fall-in-Bluff
Gigging Ole Blaze Face
After a siege of near zero temperatures late in December of 1951, the weather moderated to the upper 20s. Lane burst into the kitchen one evening after finishing the milking.
“Want to go fishing?” he asked eagerly.
“Tonight?” I asked in amusement.
“Yeah, gigging. The river's clear and the night is dark and still. We won't find a better night for it. Let's see if Dad will paddle the boat for us and try for a mess of suckers.”
While we dressed in the warmest clothes we had, Lane explained that gigging is fishing with a long-handled spear. During the winter the river gets clear enough that you can see the bottom of pools fourteen feet deep. The fisherman can see the fish by the light from a lantern fastened to the front of the wooden johnboat.
“We might see ole Blaze Face out there tonight,” Lane said.
“Blaze Face!” I laughed. “What's that?”
“A big redhorse. Last year I hit him too far forward on his head and the gig slipped off his nose. He got away but I sure marked him. Where the gig peeled off the skin it left a white mark that shows up like a luminous dial at night.”
“Is he still there?”
“Yeah, I've seen him a couple of times since in the Fall-In-Bluff Eddy.”
When we picked up my father-in-law and walked to the Osage Fork River, I was shivering from the cold and excitement.
Lane took the lead carrying the gas lamp, a burlap sack to bring home the fish, and a bucket to bail the boat. Dad came next with a gas can and a long gig resting on his shoulder. I stumbled along the rocky path behind them with the boat paddle. I hurried along at Dad's heels, holding the paddle in front as a buffer between me and the blackberry briars.
The boat was chained to an overhanging sycamore in the eddy by Dad's field. Dad paddled from the rear of the boat, though it was hard to tell front from back as both ends were blunt. I sat in the middle. Lane stood in the front, holding the gig ready to strike. He searched the water, illuminated by the light of the lantern in front of the boat.
“Do you really think we'll see Blaze Face tonight?” I asked as we settled in our places in the long boat.
“You never can tell,” Dad said.
“You better watch for him,” Lane warned. “He might turn the boat over.”
I glanced over the side at the icy water. Just then I wished I were waiting safely on the bank by a big fire.
“Couldn't we fish someplace else?” I suggested timidly. The laughter from the men convinced me they were teasing.
“Aw, how big is he really?”
“About a ten pounder, I'd judge,” Dad said. “He's about as long as your arm.” I was still amazed. I didn't know fish that large lived in this little river. The largest we ever caught on the hook was three pounds.
We searched the water as we silently floated along. Where the channel narrowed slightly, as the river detoured a drift of logs, I saw a shadowy form slide into the light, and then a whole school of fish swam past. Lane eased his gig into the water and the next instant knocked a flopping sixteen-inch sucker into the boat at my feet.
He struck again. The gig went deep into the water and another fish squirmed on the bearded tines of the gig. Dad paddled quickly trying to keep up with the scattering fish.
It was sure death for the fish, as Lane brought out a new one with every thrust. It looked easy, though I knew it took skill and practice to stand in a moving boat and hit a swimming fish in twelve feet of water. Lane's last thrust missed as the suckers disappeared.
“How many?” Dad asked from the rear. Watching Lane, I forgot how much of the success depended on the paddler. He was the one who sighted the fish and maneuvered the boat so the gigger could strike. Only an old hand at the paddle like Dad could move the long and narrow flat-bottomed boat so easily and silently.
I counted six fish now lying still in the boat.
Lane poked with his gig into the logs and brush of the drift where the fish scattered and scared out a sucker. Dad gave his paddle a powerful thrust. Just as we gained enough distance for Lane to gig it, it turned under the boat and was lost in the blackness.
