Dave Wood

Last week I recorded my family’s preparations to revert to an old-fashioned way of harvesting oats, a real adventure for me and a pain in the neck for my dad back in 1943 when gas was rationed and he was forced to beg old Oscar Peterson to dust off his Rumley steam engine and bring it to our neighborhood. So here goes:

Morning milking in Sunnyside school district was finished and soon the neighbors arrived in their empty red hay wagons pulled by teams of Belgians (Lute Chapell’s were matched) clippity-clopping and heading out to the big field to bring in their first loads of bundles. T-Bone filled the engine boiler, his grease besmeared father Oscar tooted the ear-piercing whistle with an energy not seen since his Rumley engine had retired when he was much younger. Teamsters unloaded their bundles onto a canvas and lath conveyor belt that would transport the bundles into the bowels of the machine, where the separator did what men used to do by hand in the days of flailing: it cut off the straw from the kernels. The kernels were flushed outside to be gathered into gunnysacks, which were loaded onto wagons and hauled to our granary while the straw was blown out of the other end. When the blower’s straw began to make a small pile, Albert Knutson arrived in his 1933 five-window Ford Coupe. Our neighborhood was lucky to have Albert close by because he was the Michelangelo of straw stack architecture, if nothing else. His wife Eleanor brought in income as a cleaning lady, while Albert dabbled in his half-acre tobacco patch until threshing time and he could release his artistic energy.

Meanwhile out in the field, I struggled with a bluestone kettle of fancy coffee made with raw eggs for the field workers who got the fancy version because they were our guests. I was accompanied by our hired girl Matilda Berg, who struggled with a wicker washbasket loaded with various sandwiches, pickles and sweets.  

As an 8-year-old recently arrived from Eau Claire, I had never seen people sweat. On the farm that day sweat was everywhere: in the air, in the granary, and so there were frequent trips to the milkhouse where we hid the can of ice water. Procedure: Wipe your brow with blue denim shirtsleeve, remove red and white hanky. Open it. Spread it over the palm of your hand. Press right index finger tightly onto right nostril. Blow violently and catch contents of nostril (chaff, etc.) in hanky. Repeat for left side. Carefully fold hanky and insert in bib pocket. Enter chilly milkhouse. Find Dipper and drink several dippers of ice water. DO NOT DRINK DIPPERS OF PROPRIETOR’S MILK! Which may affect DHIA butterfat report! Finally, reach for the big jar of salt tablets and take as many as you dare. The tablets will help you retain the water you have just ingested; return to work. Expect to sweat some more.

Two hours later Oscar toots once more. Time for dinner and mom’s attempt to prove she’s a good cook even though she too has recently arrived from Eau Claire. Wash basins and towels are lined up on the porch. When the water turns gray, Matilda brings more from the cookstove’s reservoir. Diners toss their caps and hats on the porch, walking through the screen door. If tall, they duck the yellow strips of fly catchers suspended from the ceiling. They take seats from a variety of chairs around a long oak table that sags in the middle. In comes the food in large bowls carried by Mom. Matilda’s mother Leona Berg, nee Stutlien, who grew up on this farm, which is still known as “the Stutlien Place,” though it is owned by a wealthy out-of-towner.

The menu: “Egg coffee,” Watkins Nectar, coleslaw, mashed AND boiled potatoes. Cream gravy, roast beef, roast pork, Norwegian meatballs (there’s a difference), creamed corn, green beans.  beet greens (Dad’s request.) Three kinds of pie: Wealthy apple pie from our lone tree in the pasture, banana cream, lemon meringue.

After offering Mom and Leona their compliments, the farmers pile out onto the lawn for a “nap,” also known as B.S., plus smoking. “Camels if you can get ‘em cheap, Wisconsin made Marvels, if not.” The husky teenage boys kidded about sexual conquests, real and, not so, more likely. Out of Mom’s earshot the nappers are fulsome in their comments on the wife’s cooking and the silo-filling catastrophe years ago when a new bride from Madison served ice cream bars on a stick before racing back to the corn field. Uff-Da.

Back to work and mopping up. I don’t remember bushel count, but Dad seemed more than happy and receded to Blair and Kokum’s tavern and returned with a half barrel of Walter’s Beer, which the tired threshers couldn’t possibly finish before they returned late to milking and caught hell from their wives. Turned out Mom and Leona had already done the milking (24 cows, by hand), so Dad stored the Walter’s in the milk tank for the next day’s scheduled events—at rich guy Luther Chappel’s estate.

Upon delivery Dad told Lute, “The only beer we have to drink is beer itself.”

Revised Source: Franklin Roosevelt’s

First Inaugural Address 3/11/33