The Journey to the West 13

Here it is again, another Sunday, another brief installment on my sort-of memoirs. I wonder if there will be enough Sundays.

I cannot continue without a digression here to report on my life on the farm. I didn’t spend all of my time growing up in what was sometimes referred to as “the biggest little city in the world.” No, indeed. Every summer, from the time I was about five (maybe earlier, I don’t remember) I spent a month or more on my grandparents farm in Post Falls, Idaho. Post Falls in those early days was little more than a wide spot in the road, a very few buildings and a population that probably didn’t exceed 100 or so. I don't know if my parents just wanted to get rid of me for a while or if they thought it was good for me, probably both. My maternal grandparents had a farm nearby. I don’t know the size of the farm but I doubt it was even 100 acres. But it included a large pasture and several 10 acre plots where they grew mostly potatoes, but also wheat, oats, alfalfa, corn, and I don’t know what else. They lived in a good-sized substantial two-story farmhouse with a windmill, well, barn, chicken coop, pig pens, and such. There was, when I first lived there, no running water, electricity, or indoor bathroom. The outhouse was a good 60 yards from the house, so we also used chamber pots. Grandmother and Grandfather were, of course, Norwegians. The family consisted of them, my mother, Judith, three brothers, Otto, Palmer (Parm) and Wade, a sister, much younger than all the rest, Verdie. There was also an adopted girl of my mother’s age named Mary. I’m sure she was not formally adopted but this kind of thing was fairly common back then. My grandparents died when I was only five or six, my uncle Parm decided to stay on the farm (which clearly would not have supported them all), and the others left to make their lives elsewhere. I don’t remember my grandparents very well. I remember, however, they had a large garden, as was common then. In the grocery stores they used to sometimes cut a triangular plug out of the watermelons to allow customers to see if they were ripe. Once I somehow got my little hands on a knife and went out into the garden and plugged every watermelon on the vine, thus killing them. I wasn’t punished for this but the realization of how stupid I was, was itself excruciatingly painful. I remember my grandfather holding me while they were all discussing this fiasco, Just another humiliation on my journey to the west. Not only that, there was also, I remember, a really aggressive rooster. When I went outside the small fence between the house and the barnyard this rooster, who had my number, so to speak, would rush at me with wings out and scare me. I would run through the gate that closed after me, sometimes to the amusement of the adults. The farmhouse had a large, screened-in porch on two sides. There was a large two-person hammock that I loved, and through the screen door you could see the lilac bushes. They are still there today, although the house was razed and replaced by a more modern style.

The Rathdrum prairie, where the farm was located, was not the greatest farmland by any means. Among other things, it was full of boulders. These rocks seemed to multiply over the years and one of the annual chores was using a stone boat (basically just a land-going raft), pulled by a horse to traverse the fields, pick them up, and toss them on a pile along the border of the plot. We farmed with horses then, right up until WW II. There was a hired man, Tom Reynolds, whose primary job was taking care of the horses, although he helped out in general as well. Farming there was a tough business and most of the small farms eventually went out of business and had to be sold for taxes. My uncle Parm managed to do quite well, because he was not only a farmer, but also an excellent mechanic, welder, and all-around most everything. As his neighbors went out of business he managed to take over their farms and thus expanded considerably on the original farm. Tom Reynolds lived in an old farmhouse about a mile away from us. He was a bachelor. He had a pool table in the living room which occupied the whole room. Like everyone else then, he used kerosene lamps. I remember vividly being in his kitchen one night when coyotes came right up to the door, their eyes shining in the dark. Tom decided to marry when he must have been about 70. We had an old-fashioned chivaree for them, with everyone marching around outside the house banging on pots and pans and making as much noise as possible. Tom and his wife retired shortly thereafter to run a small grocery in the town of Post Falls (such as it was).

I loved horses in those days and I thought Tom had the best job in the world. I watched him as he took care of them, harnessed them, drove them, and endlessly discussed them, breeding them, buying them, fitting harness, and so on. I remember being shocked to find him one day down on his knees with an ordinary handsaw, sawing away at the hoofs of his horses. I didn’t know that the hooves were pretty much like toenails. One horse in particular I remember was named Buster. He was a big roan that had served some time on the rodeo circuit. I expected him to be wild and difficult but he was gentle as could be (as long as you didn’t put a bucking strap on him). About the only other thing I remember about Tom was visiting him one day before he was married and finding him drying apricots on his ironing board.

During these early years it was just an old-fashioned farm. Tractors had not yet become common, nor had most of the machinery farms have nowadays. I remember when I was only 10 or 11 being allowed to rake hay with a team of horses hitched up to one of those old hay rakes. You had to work a lever to lower the tines, rake the hay in rows, raise the tines, and move on to the next row. It was hard for me to work the lever but I managed. We also used pitchforks to throw the hay onto a hay wagon, with one person on the wagon to arrange it and drive the horses. It was later thrown by hand into the barn. There was a separate building with no sides where we stored straw that was used for bedding animals and spreading around in the barn. There was also a silo where corn was made into silage. All of these small farms at that time kept milk cows that had to be milked by hand twice a day. The milk was transported to Coeur d’Alene by a small daily train we called “The Coeur d’Alene Dinky.”

The farm, in those early days of my life, still raised and butchered their own hogs. I remember them heating water in a huge metal container large enough to hold a whole hog. It would be heated, scraped, and then butchered. Virtually nothing was wasted, they made their own hams and bacon, head cheese, pork chops, and all. I don’t remember ever seeing them butcher a steer, but they probably did. They milked and churned their own butter, canned vegetables, made jam and jellies, and all. There were chickens, guinea fowl, calves, pigs, horses, everything you would have expected on a genuine old time farm. In those halcyon days my family was not wealthy but they were a hard-working, prosperous, middle class family probably representative of much of rural America.