Growing up on a Northwest Iowa Farm in the 1930s-1960s
Iowa Homestead Farm circa 1948
There was a generation in my family of cousins that grew up together in the 1930’s to the 1960’s. They shared many things in common. Most grew up on farms within twenty miles from each other in Northwest Iowa. Many received their elementary education in country schools two miles away from their farmsteads. All experienced the transition from horses to horsepower. With few exceptions, all grew up under the tutelage of two parent families. They were friends to each other during the many years of schooling and church participation. All were active members of their churches. Marvelously, they married spouses with similar lifestyles and values. All became responsible citizens and contributing members of society.
The passage of time has witnessed the passing of some of those cousins. The loss of their presence is a void for us today, knowing that they too could have contributed even more had their lives not been cut short.
It is with great honor and respect that we write these stories. Many have endured great hardships, survived overwhelming challenges, and made admirable achievements in their quiet productive lives. These stories are dedicated to them and many others who lived during this period of time in America. There are millions of todays older generation who lived similar lives. May these stories also be a tribute to their steadfastness and resilience.
They are the salt of the earth.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Norm Te Slaa
The passage of time has witnessed the passing of some of those cousins. The loss of their presence is a void for us today, knowing that they too could have contributed even more had their lives not been cut short.
It is with great honor and respect that we write these stories. Many have endured great hardships, survived overwhelming challenges, and made admirable achievements in their quiet productive lives. These stories are dedicated to them and many others who lived during this period of time in America. There are millions of todays older generation who lived similar lives. May these stories also be a tribute to their steadfastness and resilience.
They are the salt of the earth.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Norm Te Slaa
Story Index:
4. The Storm Cellar
3. The Corncrib Butchery
2. The Bright Red and Blue Mobile Grocery Store
1. Prologue to Farm Stories
4. The Storm Cellar
INTRO TO STORM CELLAR: The storm cellar, no matter if it was in the interior of a farm home, in the basement of the home, or an underground hole somewhere on the farmyard, is often overlooked as one of the most important spaces on a farm. Weather forecasting in the middle of the twentieth century was speculative. Farm families were constantly aware of incoming weather because in some cases, their lives depended upon it. The fear of severe weather and the remedies of crowding into dark, confined space only heightened those fears. If you have your own experiences with a storm cellar, let Norm know about them. Your comments may add detail and color to the experience of the storm cellar. Thank you.
Mom looked out the kitchen window. She knew that during the hot days of July and August the dark, threatening clouds would often begin to gather on the western horizon of the family’s Northwest Iowa farmstead, many times building in the late afternoon during evening chores. It was looking like today would be one of those days.
Her experience had taught her that, no matter whether it was day or night, when a severe storm was soon to hit, the air would be heavy with humidity. As the storm traveled closer, the winds would occasionally come to a standstill.
Distant lightning would flash across the darkening sky, silhouetting ominous shapes of the dark and menacing clouds. The delayed rumbles of thunder that followed the flares of lightning told them their distance from the storm: when the thunder was immediate, the lightning and storm was very close.
Night tornados and high winds were the most frightening when the clouded sky shut out the moon, making night storms, unseen other than flashes of lightning cutting through the darkness. That lightning allowed only momentary glimpses of the growing battle in the sky, giving updates on the progress of this night thief and escalating anxiety about the pending arrival of this unwelcomed guest. Deafening claps of thunder followed the lightning, and its decibel-shattering explosions were even scarier than the lightning.
Tornados and windstorms formed quickly from a stiff breeze growing to howls slicing through the trees, careening around buildings, and rattling the farmyard windows. The intense winds played eerie, stringed, wailing pitches on the wire fences, power lines, and clothes lines. As the wind swirled around the buildings in multiple directions, doors, if not latched down properly, would wildly open and slam shut with the vengeance of an angry god.
Now, the family watched the summer sky for tornado signals. Mom’s sensibilities about tornados and windstorms were keen and experienced having seen these storms develop into life-threatening events many times in her lifetime, beginning as a child.
Seeing no funnel cloud in the distance, Mom moved away from the window and picked up the clothes basket. Having just completed putting the Monday wash through the ringer washing machine, she carried the wicker basket to the three clotheslines and set it on the lawn.
She walked back and forth under the four heavy wires that stretched between four white painted posts, stretching her arm to the wires above her head as she tightly clenched a rag in her hand, cleaning the wires as she walked. She paused to look at the western sky again, assessing the potential danger of the threatening clouds. Flashes of lightning spread across the distant sky. Hesitantly, she decided to hang the wet clothes on the clothesline.
As she reached down into the wicker basket full of newly washed clothes, Mom picked up the first white Sunday shirt. She always began hanging the clothes on the clothesline beginning with the shirts and trousers and saving the socks, and especially the underwear for the line farthest from the road, out of view from passing neighbors.
She methodically clipped the Sunday white shirts to the clothesline with wooden clothespins, holding one or two clothespins in her mouth to make the work go faster. She was nearly done hanging the white shirts upside down when she glanced again at the sky. Even as the turbulent clouds moved quickly in her direction, there was still no funnel cloud in sight. She glanced to the storm cellar only a few steps away.
She had gone to the storm cellar only last Saturday, opening one of the potato sacks and selecting about a dozen potatoes for Saturday baking and Sunday dinner. That same day she brought three buckets of wintergreen apples from the orchard to the cellar, the coolest place on the farm, in preparation for canning them this week. Constructed by her father-in-law in 1920, when he was building the farmhouse, the storm cellar was a refuge of last resort in severe weather.
The sight of a funnel cloud had made her own mother deathly afraid of tornados and high winds. Years before, she had experienced a touch-down tornado and often told the story of when it hit her daughter and son-in-law’s farm. Its rage had upended a tree, which crashed down onto their house, causing major damage to their home yet mercifully sparing the lives of her family. Mom, Dad, and the children knew this story well inspiring their own respect for high winds and tornadoes.
He had hand-dug the eight-by-five, six-foot-deep hole in the lawn next to the house, then constructed the walls of bricks and topped it with a wooden, arched roof. He then mounded an additional thirty inches of dirt on top of the buried edifice. There was no electricity in this dark pit. From the driveway and the nearby country graveled road, the storm cellar appeared like an on-farm gravesite.
From the seat of his cultivator tractor, Dad was also watching the sky. As he neared the end of a half-mile row of four-week-old corn next to the farmyard grove, he glanced back and forth between the rows of corn and up to the sky. He was anxious to get as much done as he could, trying to complete all the second-time cultivating by Sunday. He was about to turn around with the two-row cultivator to begin another half-mile round of cultivating when he noticed the blackening clouds in the west.
Dad, like Mom, had experienced similar dramatic clouds many times in his life. As before, although today he could not feel any wind turbulence, he recognized the violent evidence of it in the distant clouds and the wind was increasing. Still, he didn’t see a funnel cloud signaling a tornado. Perhaps it could be one of those devastating summer windstorms, skirting on the fringes of a tornado yet falling short of its full fury.
As Dad began turning around the tractor for another round of cultivating, he hesitated. “Should I do another round of cultivating, travelling at a slow second gear of the tractor? Do I have the time to cultivate four more rows of corn if the storm stayed away?” He knew if he began another row, it would be another fifteen minutes before he could return to the farmyard.
He decided to take the chance. He hand-levered the shoes of the cultivator into the ground, pushed ahead on the throttle of the A John Deere, and started a new round, turning away from the farmyard.
But all the while he kept a close eye on the sky but being extra careful not to get too distracted from his work. If he didn’t pay close enough attention to only the cultivating, the eight-inch-high corn plants might get plowed under by the cultivator shoes.
So, every few seconds, he momentarily took his eyes off the checked corn rows to glance at the sky.[1] About midway away from the farmyard and half-way to the end row, he stopped the tractor and, with the cultivator shoes still in the ground, took the tractor out of gear. Hed turned and gave his full attention to the developing storm. He sat silently studying the western sky. Although there was still no sign of a funnel cloud, he knew a storm could gather in a matter of minutes. As he watched, he now noticed large swaths of swirling clouds, like a boiling cauldron taking over the sky. The storm had moved noticeably closer. He wondered, “Should I continue to cultivate or turn the tractor around mid-field, trample on several rows of corn plants, and head for the farmyard?”
Suddenly, his decision was made for him, as a bolt of lightning struck a tall cottonwood tree in the neighbor’s grove. The flash of the lightning and the crack of the bolt was instantaneous. Dad shuddered and shook with surprise.
This was more serious than only a few minutes ago. He didn’t even think what he should do next. He hastily pulled on the lever, lifted the cultivator shoes out of the ground, turned the tractor around toward the farmyard, jammed the transmission stick into fourth gear, and pushed the hand accelerator to its highest speed.
The quarter mile back to the farmyard was a race against time which now seemed to go more slowly than ever. The cultivator’s shoes were spitting up the fledging corn plants and creating puffs of black loam soil as he sped home. The flashes of lightning and claps of thunder continued in a quick dialogue with each other.
Dad was now travelling through the corn rows as fast as the fourth gear would allow. Any driving misstep could wipe out eight or ten hills of corn plants in a moment. The tractor bounced along, seemingly objecting to the speed, as it crossed the hills of dirt from the first cultivation of the checked corn rows. He knew he had no choice but to continue with the fastest speed the tractor would go.
Finally, Dad approached the farmyard, and the soft soil of the cultivated field gave way to a well-traveled field road complete with holes, bumps, ruts, and sharp turns. The cultivator and the tractor seemed to be falling apart from the clanging, dangling steel of the cultivator.
The wind was now stirring up clouds of dust around him. Large drops of rain began to pelt the steel housing of the tractor, making sharp metallic sounds. Small pellets of hail were growing into pea-sized ice stones.
Rather than park the tractor and cultivator in the machine shed as he normally would do, he drove the tractor right up to the fence of the house, threw the tractor out of gear, and hit the brakes as the tractor skidded to a stop, nearly hitting the fence. In a single motion, he switched off the ignition and dismounted from the tractor.
Mom came running out of the house carrying their youngest child in one arm and a bag of clothes in the other, in the event the storm destroyed their home. The younger kids followed immediately behind her.
The oldest girl was shaking in fear. She knew exactly what was happening. This would be her fourth time sprinting to the safety of the storm cellar with her family, she in her work shoes and clinging to her coat. Clinging to her coat in one hand, she was holding the next youngest child in her arms. As they all ran to the storm cellar, which was on the far side of the house in the lawn, she remembered what it was like in there. But the smallest two children were experiencing this run for the storm cellar for the first time.
The oldest boy, who had also experienced three tornados and several high wind storms before, came running from the barn, leaving the cows in their stanchions, the milking machines full of milk, the lights on, and the barn doors open. He reached the storm cellar door only steps before the rest of the family.
The cellar door was slanted into the side of a man-made rise in the lawn. Two hinges secured the wooden door on the left, and there was a handle and clasp on the right. With all his strength, the oldest boy lifted the heavy, wet, wooden door, and in a battle against the northerly wind, opened it. He braced himself against the door, giving all he could to keep it from slamming shut in the increasingly violent wind, the stinging rain, and small hail.
Dad was right behind him, and together they held the door open for Mom and the kids to descend into the dark, damp cave. As the small children were carried down the narrow, steep wooden steps into darkness, they noticed the sacks of potatoes from the previous fall harvest. The two youngest children had never been in the storm cave before. Their faces were stricken with fear.
Dad closed the door and latched it on the inside to the hasp. Mom wrapped her arms around the two smallest children and pulled them close to her. Dad put his arms around two other kids sitting next to him. He felt thankful for this cellar. Many farmsteads had to settle for the basement or a small interior room in their houses.
The darkness was total. No light came through any of the door’s seams, in part because the light outside had turned the late afternoon light to a dusk-like evening.
Their eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. They could make out the gossamer shapes of their family. The potatoes were sprouting, and the small children saw long, white effervescent fingers escaping through the loose fabric of the entombed gunny sacks. The potatoes’ fingers seemed to be everywhere. Every sack of potatoes had dozens of pencil-like accusatory fingers pointing at them. To the children, the fingers were alive and reaching for them to grab and hurt them. They were gasping with fear, overwhelmed by the howling wind, the noise of the hail, the darkness and the devil-like pointy fingers of the sprouting potatoes. They could no longer contain their fear and began to sob uncontrollably.
The older children held their breath, too frightened to move. The wind pulled and pushed on the wooden door like a relentless, demanding violent intruder. They feared that any sound or movement would alert the beasts outside this tomb to their whereabouts. They imagined a howling monster, a creature trying to force its way into their hiding place, clawing its way into their cave, and sucking them out through the door. Everyone felt fear. The hail and rain pounded on the wooden door like a crazy drummer, demanding to be let inside. The wind howled like a passing freight train and banging on the door. When deafening thunder clapped, it suspended their hearing for moments at a time, overwhelming them.
No one spoke.
The family could hear tree limbs breaking from the trees in the lawn. A tree cracked, broke and crashed to the ground in the nearby grove. Dad knew that branches were likely breaking in the orchard across the driveway, and Mom thought about the clothes left on the clothesline to dry, now flapping in the wind like a horse whip. Then they heard glass breaking.
Although they were hunkered down for perhaps only thirty minutes, it felt like hours. Slowly, the sounds and the fury of the wind, rain, and hail began to ease. The family began to breathe normally again. Then, almost as quickly as the wind, the rain and the hail had begun, it became serenely quiet. Had it been a tornado or just high winds? Holding their children close, grateful for everyone’s safety, Mom and Dad took deep breaths, as if to say: That was a close call. But now their thoughts turned to their farm—their home and livelihood—and wondered: What of our farm survived?”
Dad reached out and found Mom’s hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. It was time to discover what survived the fury of the storm and what did not. What buildings were damaged or toppled? Which animals were hurt or killed? What trees did not survive?
Carefully, Dad stepped onto the lowest step of the storm cellar, reached up, and unlatched the door. As he pushed on the door, a small beam of light pierced the darkness. He squinted, adjusting his eyes to the waning outside light. The children peered from their darkness-adjusted eyes to the dimly lit world beyond the cellar door.
Dad stepped up to the next step of the storm cellar and cautiously half-opened the door then looked back at his family to check on them. As the light illuminated their faces, he saw their apprehension and fear. They struggled to catch a glimpse of the sky. The clouds had calmed, the wind was now a brisk breeze, and the rain had stopped.
Dad opened the cellar door and laid it back on the grass. He first noticed that the lights in the barn and the house were no longer on. He glanced at the orchard across the driveway. It was strewn with branches, and several fruit trees had been uprooted. The windows on the west side of the barn were broken and missing. He let out a sigh of relief to see that the cattle and the two horses in the barnyard had found some refuge on the side of the barn, shielded from the intense wind. There were no birds.
Now Mom stepped to the top step of the storm cellar entrance. She looked all around the farmyard. All the clothes she had hung on the clothesline were strewn across the lawn and grove, their contorted shapes hanging like ghosts from fences and trees, like empty bodies dancing in the breeze.
She glanced at the branches scattered around the farmyard. The wind had ripped the granary door off its hinges and tore shingles from the roofs of the barn and house. Although branches had shattered windows in the barn, miraculously, all the house windows remained intact.
Mom looked at the large puddles of water that had collected in the yard, then turned and saw that the small pond in the calf pasture now covered the entire lower pasture. Only an hour ago, there had been a fifteen-foot-high stack of golden oats straw in the cow yard, but now it was all mixed with branches and leaves and strewn over the yard and the grove. She glanced up and noticed that the cupola on the barn had been blown off the barn. It was now lying against the corncrib.
Thankfully, the cows were only restless and jostling in their barn stanchions. The horses too were unhurt, having found refuge along the quiet side of the barn. However, the white angora cat was lying motionless along the house fence, picked up by the wind and hurled to its’ death against the fence. A dozen or so chickens caught outside of the chicken coop were lying lifeless in the grove.
Dad sighed and turned back toward the storm cellar to hold out his hand to the kids as they each navigated up the small, steep steps. He took the youngest child from Mom’s arms and set him on the lawn, then reached down to help Mom as she took her final step out of the cellar.
Silently, they paused and looked at each other, expressing in their eyes and faces relief for their family’s survival. There would be many days of hard work, as they made repairs and clean-ed up, but their family was spared! They said a quiet prayer.
Footnotes:
[1] Checked corn rows were planted forty inches apart, making it possible to cultivate the rows in multiple directions.
CONTRIBUTORS: Clarence and Dee Gorter, Cleo Te Slaa, Josephine Moore, Editor. Caesar Orosco, Web Master
Reader Comments:
Response to The Storm Cellar
Yes, we had a storm cellar. It was in the darkest corner of the basement and was several steps lower. There was an old creepy wooden door that squeaked every time you tried to go in there, which was quite regular because it was also used as our “fruit cellar” most of my mom’s canned goods ended up down there. And when we got lots of rain we would end up with some flooding in the storm cellar. AND, there was one little light bulb hanging by a wire in the middle of it. You had to feel around in the dark for the chain to turn it on. Yes, there were times as a little boy I didn’t really want to go down there.
As far as using it as it was meant to be. — a storm cellar — I can remember going down there only a couple times when it was storming outside. And the power would go off. And it would be dark. And my older brother would try to scare me.
-Gene B.
Mom looked out the kitchen window. She knew that during the hot days of July and August the dark, threatening clouds would often begin to gather on the western horizon of the family’s Northwest Iowa farmstead, many times building in the late afternoon during evening chores. It was looking like today would be one of those days.
Her experience had taught her that, no matter whether it was day or night, when a severe storm was soon to hit, the air would be heavy with humidity. As the storm traveled closer, the winds would occasionally come to a standstill.
Distant lightning would flash across the darkening sky, silhouetting ominous shapes of the dark and menacing clouds. The delayed rumbles of thunder that followed the flares of lightning told them their distance from the storm: when the thunder was immediate, the lightning and storm was very close.
Night tornados and high winds were the most frightening when the clouded sky shut out the moon, making night storms, unseen other than flashes of lightning cutting through the darkness. That lightning allowed only momentary glimpses of the growing battle in the sky, giving updates on the progress of this night thief and escalating anxiety about the pending arrival of this unwelcomed guest. Deafening claps of thunder followed the lightning, and its decibel-shattering explosions were even scarier than the lightning.
Tornados and windstorms formed quickly from a stiff breeze growing to howls slicing through the trees, careening around buildings, and rattling the farmyard windows. The intense winds played eerie, stringed, wailing pitches on the wire fences, power lines, and clothes lines. As the wind swirled around the buildings in multiple directions, doors, if not latched down properly, would wildly open and slam shut with the vengeance of an angry god.
Now, the family watched the summer sky for tornado signals. Mom’s sensibilities about tornados and windstorms were keen and experienced having seen these storms develop into life-threatening events many times in her lifetime, beginning as a child.
Seeing no funnel cloud in the distance, Mom moved away from the window and picked up the clothes basket. Having just completed putting the Monday wash through the ringer washing machine, she carried the wicker basket to the three clotheslines and set it on the lawn.
She walked back and forth under the four heavy wires that stretched between four white painted posts, stretching her arm to the wires above her head as she tightly clenched a rag in her hand, cleaning the wires as she walked. She paused to look at the western sky again, assessing the potential danger of the threatening clouds. Flashes of lightning spread across the distant sky. Hesitantly, she decided to hang the wet clothes on the clothesline.
As she reached down into the wicker basket full of newly washed clothes, Mom picked up the first white Sunday shirt. She always began hanging the clothes on the clothesline beginning with the shirts and trousers and saving the socks, and especially the underwear for the line farthest from the road, out of view from passing neighbors.
She methodically clipped the Sunday white shirts to the clothesline with wooden clothespins, holding one or two clothespins in her mouth to make the work go faster. She was nearly done hanging the white shirts upside down when she glanced again at the sky. Even as the turbulent clouds moved quickly in her direction, there was still no funnel cloud in sight. She glanced to the storm cellar only a few steps away.
She had gone to the storm cellar only last Saturday, opening one of the potato sacks and selecting about a dozen potatoes for Saturday baking and Sunday dinner. That same day she brought three buckets of wintergreen apples from the orchard to the cellar, the coolest place on the farm, in preparation for canning them this week. Constructed by her father-in-law in 1920, when he was building the farmhouse, the storm cellar was a refuge of last resort in severe weather.
The sight of a funnel cloud had made her own mother deathly afraid of tornados and high winds. Years before, she had experienced a touch-down tornado and often told the story of when it hit her daughter and son-in-law’s farm. Its rage had upended a tree, which crashed down onto their house, causing major damage to their home yet mercifully sparing the lives of her family. Mom, Dad, and the children knew this story well inspiring their own respect for high winds and tornadoes.
He had hand-dug the eight-by-five, six-foot-deep hole in the lawn next to the house, then constructed the walls of bricks and topped it with a wooden, arched roof. He then mounded an additional thirty inches of dirt on top of the buried edifice. There was no electricity in this dark pit. From the driveway and the nearby country graveled road, the storm cellar appeared like an on-farm gravesite.
From the seat of his cultivator tractor, Dad was also watching the sky. As he neared the end of a half-mile row of four-week-old corn next to the farmyard grove, he glanced back and forth between the rows of corn and up to the sky. He was anxious to get as much done as he could, trying to complete all the second-time cultivating by Sunday. He was about to turn around with the two-row cultivator to begin another half-mile round of cultivating when he noticed the blackening clouds in the west.
Dad, like Mom, had experienced similar dramatic clouds many times in his life. As before, although today he could not feel any wind turbulence, he recognized the violent evidence of it in the distant clouds and the wind was increasing. Still, he didn’t see a funnel cloud signaling a tornado. Perhaps it could be one of those devastating summer windstorms, skirting on the fringes of a tornado yet falling short of its full fury.
As Dad began turning around the tractor for another round of cultivating, he hesitated. “Should I do another round of cultivating, travelling at a slow second gear of the tractor? Do I have the time to cultivate four more rows of corn if the storm stayed away?” He knew if he began another row, it would be another fifteen minutes before he could return to the farmyard.
He decided to take the chance. He hand-levered the shoes of the cultivator into the ground, pushed ahead on the throttle of the A John Deere, and started a new round, turning away from the farmyard.
But all the while he kept a close eye on the sky but being extra careful not to get too distracted from his work. If he didn’t pay close enough attention to only the cultivating, the eight-inch-high corn plants might get plowed under by the cultivator shoes.
So, every few seconds, he momentarily took his eyes off the checked corn rows to glance at the sky.[1] About midway away from the farmyard and half-way to the end row, he stopped the tractor and, with the cultivator shoes still in the ground, took the tractor out of gear. Hed turned and gave his full attention to the developing storm. He sat silently studying the western sky. Although there was still no sign of a funnel cloud, he knew a storm could gather in a matter of minutes. As he watched, he now noticed large swaths of swirling clouds, like a boiling cauldron taking over the sky. The storm had moved noticeably closer. He wondered, “Should I continue to cultivate or turn the tractor around mid-field, trample on several rows of corn plants, and head for the farmyard?”
Suddenly, his decision was made for him, as a bolt of lightning struck a tall cottonwood tree in the neighbor’s grove. The flash of the lightning and the crack of the bolt was instantaneous. Dad shuddered and shook with surprise.
This was more serious than only a few minutes ago. He didn’t even think what he should do next. He hastily pulled on the lever, lifted the cultivator shoes out of the ground, turned the tractor around toward the farmyard, jammed the transmission stick into fourth gear, and pushed the hand accelerator to its highest speed.
The quarter mile back to the farmyard was a race against time which now seemed to go more slowly than ever. The cultivator’s shoes were spitting up the fledging corn plants and creating puffs of black loam soil as he sped home. The flashes of lightning and claps of thunder continued in a quick dialogue with each other.
Dad was now travelling through the corn rows as fast as the fourth gear would allow. Any driving misstep could wipe out eight or ten hills of corn plants in a moment. The tractor bounced along, seemingly objecting to the speed, as it crossed the hills of dirt from the first cultivation of the checked corn rows. He knew he had no choice but to continue with the fastest speed the tractor would go.
Finally, Dad approached the farmyard, and the soft soil of the cultivated field gave way to a well-traveled field road complete with holes, bumps, ruts, and sharp turns. The cultivator and the tractor seemed to be falling apart from the clanging, dangling steel of the cultivator.
The wind was now stirring up clouds of dust around him. Large drops of rain began to pelt the steel housing of the tractor, making sharp metallic sounds. Small pellets of hail were growing into pea-sized ice stones.
Rather than park the tractor and cultivator in the machine shed as he normally would do, he drove the tractor right up to the fence of the house, threw the tractor out of gear, and hit the brakes as the tractor skidded to a stop, nearly hitting the fence. In a single motion, he switched off the ignition and dismounted from the tractor.
Mom came running out of the house carrying their youngest child in one arm and a bag of clothes in the other, in the event the storm destroyed their home. The younger kids followed immediately behind her.
The oldest girl was shaking in fear. She knew exactly what was happening. This would be her fourth time sprinting to the safety of the storm cellar with her family, she in her work shoes and clinging to her coat. Clinging to her coat in one hand, she was holding the next youngest child in her arms. As they all ran to the storm cellar, which was on the far side of the house in the lawn, she remembered what it was like in there. But the smallest two children were experiencing this run for the storm cellar for the first time.
The oldest boy, who had also experienced three tornados and several high wind storms before, came running from the barn, leaving the cows in their stanchions, the milking machines full of milk, the lights on, and the barn doors open. He reached the storm cellar door only steps before the rest of the family.
The cellar door was slanted into the side of a man-made rise in the lawn. Two hinges secured the wooden door on the left, and there was a handle and clasp on the right. With all his strength, the oldest boy lifted the heavy, wet, wooden door, and in a battle against the northerly wind, opened it. He braced himself against the door, giving all he could to keep it from slamming shut in the increasingly violent wind, the stinging rain, and small hail.
Dad was right behind him, and together they held the door open for Mom and the kids to descend into the dark, damp cave. As the small children were carried down the narrow, steep wooden steps into darkness, they noticed the sacks of potatoes from the previous fall harvest. The two youngest children had never been in the storm cave before. Their faces were stricken with fear.
Dad closed the door and latched it on the inside to the hasp. Mom wrapped her arms around the two smallest children and pulled them close to her. Dad put his arms around two other kids sitting next to him. He felt thankful for this cellar. Many farmsteads had to settle for the basement or a small interior room in their houses.
The darkness was total. No light came through any of the door’s seams, in part because the light outside had turned the late afternoon light to a dusk-like evening.
Their eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. They could make out the gossamer shapes of their family. The potatoes were sprouting, and the small children saw long, white effervescent fingers escaping through the loose fabric of the entombed gunny sacks. The potatoes’ fingers seemed to be everywhere. Every sack of potatoes had dozens of pencil-like accusatory fingers pointing at them. To the children, the fingers were alive and reaching for them to grab and hurt them. They were gasping with fear, overwhelmed by the howling wind, the noise of the hail, the darkness and the devil-like pointy fingers of the sprouting potatoes. They could no longer contain their fear and began to sob uncontrollably.
The older children held their breath, too frightened to move. The wind pulled and pushed on the wooden door like a relentless, demanding violent intruder. They feared that any sound or movement would alert the beasts outside this tomb to their whereabouts. They imagined a howling monster, a creature trying to force its way into their hiding place, clawing its way into their cave, and sucking them out through the door. Everyone felt fear. The hail and rain pounded on the wooden door like a crazy drummer, demanding to be let inside. The wind howled like a passing freight train and banging on the door. When deafening thunder clapped, it suspended their hearing for moments at a time, overwhelming them.
No one spoke.
The family could hear tree limbs breaking from the trees in the lawn. A tree cracked, broke and crashed to the ground in the nearby grove. Dad knew that branches were likely breaking in the orchard across the driveway, and Mom thought about the clothes left on the clothesline to dry, now flapping in the wind like a horse whip. Then they heard glass breaking.
Although they were hunkered down for perhaps only thirty minutes, it felt like hours. Slowly, the sounds and the fury of the wind, rain, and hail began to ease. The family began to breathe normally again. Then, almost as quickly as the wind, the rain and the hail had begun, it became serenely quiet. Had it been a tornado or just high winds? Holding their children close, grateful for everyone’s safety, Mom and Dad took deep breaths, as if to say: That was a close call. But now their thoughts turned to their farm—their home and livelihood—and wondered: What of our farm survived?”
Dad reached out and found Mom’s hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. It was time to discover what survived the fury of the storm and what did not. What buildings were damaged or toppled? Which animals were hurt or killed? What trees did not survive?
Carefully, Dad stepped onto the lowest step of the storm cellar, reached up, and unlatched the door. As he pushed on the door, a small beam of light pierced the darkness. He squinted, adjusting his eyes to the waning outside light. The children peered from their darkness-adjusted eyes to the dimly lit world beyond the cellar door.
Dad stepped up to the next step of the storm cellar and cautiously half-opened the door then looked back at his family to check on them. As the light illuminated their faces, he saw their apprehension and fear. They struggled to catch a glimpse of the sky. The clouds had calmed, the wind was now a brisk breeze, and the rain had stopped.
Dad opened the cellar door and laid it back on the grass. He first noticed that the lights in the barn and the house were no longer on. He glanced at the orchard across the driveway. It was strewn with branches, and several fruit trees had been uprooted. The windows on the west side of the barn were broken and missing. He let out a sigh of relief to see that the cattle and the two horses in the barnyard had found some refuge on the side of the barn, shielded from the intense wind. There were no birds.
Now Mom stepped to the top step of the storm cellar entrance. She looked all around the farmyard. All the clothes she had hung on the clothesline were strewn across the lawn and grove, their contorted shapes hanging like ghosts from fences and trees, like empty bodies dancing in the breeze.
She glanced at the branches scattered around the farmyard. The wind had ripped the granary door off its hinges and tore shingles from the roofs of the barn and house. Although branches had shattered windows in the barn, miraculously, all the house windows remained intact.
Mom looked at the large puddles of water that had collected in the yard, then turned and saw that the small pond in the calf pasture now covered the entire lower pasture. Only an hour ago, there had been a fifteen-foot-high stack of golden oats straw in the cow yard, but now it was all mixed with branches and leaves and strewn over the yard and the grove. She glanced up and noticed that the cupola on the barn had been blown off the barn. It was now lying against the corncrib.
Thankfully, the cows were only restless and jostling in their barn stanchions. The horses too were unhurt, having found refuge along the quiet side of the barn. However, the white angora cat was lying motionless along the house fence, picked up by the wind and hurled to its’ death against the fence. A dozen or so chickens caught outside of the chicken coop were lying lifeless in the grove.
Dad sighed and turned back toward the storm cellar to hold out his hand to the kids as they each navigated up the small, steep steps. He took the youngest child from Mom’s arms and set him on the lawn, then reached down to help Mom as she took her final step out of the cellar.
Silently, they paused and looked at each other, expressing in their eyes and faces relief for their family’s survival. There would be many days of hard work, as they made repairs and clean-ed up, but their family was spared! They said a quiet prayer.
Footnotes:
[1] Checked corn rows were planted forty inches apart, making it possible to cultivate the rows in multiple directions.
CONTRIBUTORS: Clarence and Dee Gorter, Cleo Te Slaa, Josephine Moore, Editor. Caesar Orosco, Web Master
Reader Comments:
Response to The Storm Cellar
Yes, we had a storm cellar. It was in the darkest corner of the basement and was several steps lower. There was an old creepy wooden door that squeaked every time you tried to go in there, which was quite regular because it was also used as our “fruit cellar” most of my mom’s canned goods ended up down there. And when we got lots of rain we would end up with some flooding in the storm cellar. AND, there was one little light bulb hanging by a wire in the middle of it. You had to feel around in the dark for the chain to turn it on. Yes, there were times as a little boy I didn’t really want to go down there.
As far as using it as it was meant to be. — a storm cellar — I can remember going down there only a couple times when it was storming outside. And the power would go off. And it would be dark. And my older brother would try to scare me.
-Gene B.
3. The Corncrib Butchery
It was breakfast time. Dad had just finished reading from the devotional tract “Living For Today” and a selected passage from Psalm 32. He closed the Bible and began an extemporaneous prayer.
He had silently prayed a similar prayer on his way to the barn early that morning, thanking God for the rain and asking Him for guidance and family protection. Now, seated around the Formica topped kitchen table, surrounded by red and white vinyl and chrome chairs, the family was discussing what would happen, now that the rain had changed their plans for their normal house, field and garden work. Everyone knew that the normal work for the day would have to be postponed because of the rain-soaked fields.
But there were choices!
After spring rains had stopped, the family often went to the field to pull cockleburs and other weeds. The entire family would labor in the wet fields under the warming sun and humid air. If that was not possible, the boys would often hand pitch manure from the barn pens into a manure spreader using four or five tine pitchforks, loading the spreader one pitchfork at a time until it was heaping full of manure, only to have another empty manure spreader show up at the barn door, waiting to be filled. When not working in the field or garden, the women would cook the meals, bake bread and pies, patch overalls, wash and mangle clothes [1], clean out the storm cellar, wax the floors, pull garden weeds, clean eggs and a myriad of other household chores that kept them busy throughout the day.
The family sat silently considering the alternatives. All the rainy-day work alternatives had little appeal to them on any day, rain or shine!
Dad shifted in his chair and broke the silence. “I was at the town locker yesterday and I counted only sixteen packages of frozen beef in our locker. What do you think about butchering dry cow number 37? She’s been a poor milk producer now for a year and hasn’t given any milk for the last three months. I think she is already nine years old.” The boys nodded in agreement. Since all the cows wore a chain with a number around their necks, the boys knew exactly the cow he was talking about.
The family glanced around the table. They knew butchering was hard work and would take the time of the entire family the better part of the day. On the other hand, butchering, whether beef, pigs or chicken, held its own drama and fascination for them. It was different from their daily work and even had some enjoyable aspects to it.
Mom nodded her head enthusiastically in agreement. “Last week I checked and counted what we had in our cellar. We have only twenty-four quarts of beef, sixteen quarts of chicken and forty quarts of pork left. If we don’t get more butchering done soon, we may have to buy meat from the meat market.” Dad seemed a bit surprised by the rapidly diminishing stock of canned meat. “It seems like only last winter since we butchered that 600-pound heifer who was paralized from a slip on the ice. Do you remember we had to carry her to the granary with the front-end loader?” he said.
The oldest boy, who was the most experienced of the boys, reminded everyone, “You know that once we decide to butcher the cow, it will take the entire day. There will be all the preparation before hand, then the butchering, the processing and the cleanup. But, I think we can get this done today.”
Dad listened intently. He knew what his son was saying and wondered what other work they would have to put off until later if they began the butchering today. The family seemed relieved that the unpleasant task of walking the beanfield, pitching manure or house work might be put off to a later, drier day.
He agreed with his son about the time commitment. He also knew that the heavy rain of last evening would take the ground at least two days to dry before any field work could be done. He quietly reminded himself of the remaining stocks of beef, pork and chicken. He knew it would last them barely eight more weeks.
The family’s thoughts shifted in anticipation to the smells and mouth-watering tastes of newly dried beef on freshly baked bread, smothered with butter in their lunchboxes and daily meals for the next six months. Dad’s eyes widened with the thought of sucking the salty marrow out of the freshly butchered, boiled bones. Their mouths watered with the thought of freshly fried bacon, liverwurst and balkenbrij [2] for their morning breakfasts.
Their salivating thoughts won out in favor of beginning the butchering, and the family nodded their approval to begin the hard work of butchering. Even so, it would be a fun and special day,
“Ok, we’ll butcher today but we need to get moving. To butcher Cow #37, we can make the preparations this morning so we can begin butchering and canning after dinner this afternoon. At this point in the life of this cow there is only one use for her – the meat!”
The family pushed back their chairs from the table and waited for Mom to read the Bible. They listened quietly as she read from 2 Timothy 2: 1-13. Dad prayed asking God for guidance and protection in the coming afternoon. He knew from experience many things could go wrong with butchering.
With devotions over, the family began a final review for butchering. Every member of the family knew their part. Each had a job based on their strength and experience. They knew they had to work fast to keep the meat fresh and clean. They knew that butchering, whether beef, pork or chicken, was always challenging and fast paced, but in a strange way, fun and exciting.
The family began to realize the heavy, hot and tiring work ahead of them and what it meant to put their butchering plans into immediate action. The women knew they would need more help. Mom rang up her sister and asked the telephone operator to be transferred to Cynthia. Minutes later Aunt Cynthia agreed and said she would be at the farm within an hour.
There were 135 quart jars to be washed and sterilized. The thirty-gallon oval shaped copper tub had to be fetched from the basement storage, cleaned and filled with water and prepared for boiling. Zinc Kerr lids, rubber seals and white waxed butcher paper had to be bought from the Middleburg store, three miles away. The hand meat grinder had to be cleaned and attached to the basement table to grind the meat scraps for ground beef. The three-burner kerosene stove in the basement needed to be filled with three gallons of kerosene. They would have to wait until dinnertime to light the burners to bring the tub of water to a boil. The flour sacks and old bed sheets they had been saving for weeks had to be washed, cut and sewn into fourteen-inch-long bags, ready for stuffing with spices and ground liver for liverwurst and head cheese. Another table had to be set up just next to a floor drain to clean and sanitize the linings of the intestine, later to be filled with ground meat and spices for baloney. The sausage stuffer had to be cleaned and brought to the canning area and attached to a table. Glass and metal pans had to be cleaned for fat cracklings, flour and spices for balkenbrij. An additional locker in town had to be reserved for any part of the new butchering which could not be put into the quart jars.
While all this was going on in the house, the farmyard too bustled with activity. Dad and the boys went into the cattle yard and culled out Cow #37 and herded it to to the loafing shed [3].
They carefully removed all water, feed and straw bedding so the cow could not eat the straw. A large tarp was laid across the corncrib floor. The block and tackle [4] was now readied to hoist the carcass to the rafters. They checked the ropes and rafter to see if it could hold the 1100-pound cow. They checked the rafters for any damage. They attached a one- and one-half inch steel chain to the block and tackle and tied it to the middle of corn crib rafters.
Dad brought the 22-gauge rifle from the gun rack in the hog house and laid it in a corner of the corn crib. One of the boys laid a bullet next to the rifle. Another boy carried five-gallon buckets of water to the corncrib to flush the blood and waste off the concrete floor before and after butchering. The granary floor was one of the few places on the farm where the butchering of cattle and pigs could take place. It was relatively clean with a concrete floor but still had to be swept and flushed with buckets of water before butchering began.
Meanwhile, one of the boys sharpened the butcher knives on a pedal-driven emery wheel [5] in the machine shed. Other boys carried handfuls of apple tree limbs to the smokehouse in the grove to prepare the brisket and one of the shoulders for smoked, dried beef. A meat locker in town was reserved for any butchering their food cellar could not hold.
As noonday approached, they were ready. The house and yard preparations for butchering had taken the entire morning. The family sat down for dinner. One of the boys prayed. On the table, Mom placed a bowl of beef gravy and a heaping bowl of mashed potatoes, crowned with a large dollup of butter. The girls followed with a large bowl of canned beef swimming in meat juice. Other bowls of garden beans, canned sweet corn and a small bowl of canned beets followed.
The family was quiet throughout dinner. Their minds occupied with the work they were about to do.
With dinner over, the family moved to their ‘stations’. The boys boxed Cow #37 into a corner of the loafing shed. Dad slipped a rope around its neck and wound it back over its snout, creating a halter-like control of the cow. Their trek to the corncrib began.
The cow was unaccustomed to being led by anything and mightily resisted any movement. It seemed to know there was something different the family had in store for her. The cow would not budge. The cow’s legs stiffened as she weaved and bobbed, making slow progress from the loafing shed to the granary. She had never before been subjected to such restrictions on her freedom of movement. One of the boys raised the tail of the cow ninety degrees, forcing the cow to move ahead, a trick he had learned from Grandpa Henry.
One of the boys went out to the outhouse and tore pages out of the Montgomery Wards catalog. He walked into the grove to the smokehouse and lit a smouldering fire under a pile of apple tree branches.
Mom, the girls and Aunt Cynth went to the basement and lit the kerosene burners. They gave one last pass over the emery board to sharpen the knives, and prepared the buckets for the meat, fat and waste.
The boys began to assemble the block and tackle. Mom and the girls watched with interest from the porch of the house as they pushed the cow up a slight incline and into the center of the granary. The boys attached two ropes to its neck, and they pulled the rope tight from opposite sides to keep her head steady.
It was time for Dad to do one of the most difficult jobs as a farmer…killing one of his animals. Grandpa had been a skilled teacher to Dad in the art of farmyard butchering. He too had felt pangs of remorse for this part of the butchering process.
Reluctantly, Dad picked up the 22-caliber rifle laying on the floor of the granary and inserted a bullet into the chamber. The cow’s eyes were wild with fright. The boys held the ropes tight from both sides of the cow’s head, not allowing any movement of her head. He placed the rifle muzzle between the eyes of the cow and pulled the trigger. Immediately, the cow fell limp on the corncrib floor, but the eyes of the cow remained open, as if accusing Dad of the ultimate betrayal.
Dad turned aside and breathed a sigh of relief, slowly placing the rifle on the floor of the corn crib.
The boys quickly attached the block and tackle to the hind legs of the cow. The pully system of the block and tackle allowed them tremendous leverage. With one end tied to the hind legs of the cow and the other end tied to the joist of the granary, and inch by inch, they pulled up this half-ton-plus animal toward the rafters. The rafter creaked and groaned as the back hooves of the cows approached the rafter. When the hooves touched the granary joist, the cow now stretched twelve feet from the rafter to the concrete corncrib floor, with her snout only inches from the floor.
Stretched out, she seemed to be a much larger animal in death than in life!
The family was now ready to function like a well-oiled machine with every member assuming their part. They worked with a practiced efficiency. Dad quickly slit the throat of the cow. Warm, deep red blood rushed from the slit in the cow’s neck. He immediately took the hack saw and cut through and severed the head. One of the boys lifted the forty-five-pound head and laid it on a Sioux City Journal newspaper to the side. One of the boys slipped a five-gallon bucket under the headless carcass. Blood gushed into the bucket.
What little was left in all the cow’s four stomachs began to drain from the cow’s throat on to the granary floor. Steam rose from the warm carcass. The putrid smell of water and partially digested silage and kernels of corn made Dad and the boys instinctively turn away from the acrid smell for a moment. Regaining their composure, they quickly washed the floor with gallons of water.
Dad began by making a long knife cut down the underside of the hide from the anus to the base of the neck. The boys began to skin the animal from top to bottom, their sharp knives easily separating the hide from the carcass, like a warm knife cutting through butter. Their cuts to the hide and carcass were precise and practiced. Within minutes, the intact hide was freed from the carcass, like slipping off a warm coat in the middle of winter.
With a new blade in the meat saw, Dad sawed through the flesh and bones from the anus to the neck, this time cutting through the belly to the back. He pulled the rib cage open and began removing the internal organs. He knew care had to be taken not to contaminate the meat with the animal waste. He carefully cut out the intestines and lungs. He began removing the edible internal organs, the heart and the liver, while one of the boys removed the tongue from the head laying on the floor. Fat, edible organs, chunks of meat and intestines were placed in separate buckets.
With the hide and the internal organs and intestines removed and using a meat saw, Dad sawed the carcass down the middle, splitting it into two halves. He then cut off the front quarters, separating the front legs from the shoulders. The removal of each shoulder required three boys, two to hold on to the eighty-pound shoulder and one to cut the front leg free from the shoulder. Within minutes, two of the boys carried the first shoulder, and another boy carried two buckets of edible organs to the house.
The women heard the labored steps of the boys as they maneuvered the front quarter of the carcass down the narrow, steep stairs to the basement and placed it on the table. Mom and the girls were ready. The water was boiling, the jars were clean, the knives were sharpened, and their aprons tied neatly and tight around their waists.
Immediately, the women put the edible organs into boiling water. The larger cuts of meat were cut into smaller pieces and put into quart jars of water and spices, arranged at the end of the table. The smaller pieces of meat were placed into the throat of the hand meat grinder, turned by one of the younger girls. They cut off the layers of fat and put them into a bucket off to the side of the table. They cut off smaller chunks of meat, placed them in the hand-cranked meat grinder turned by the youngest girl and into the awaiting quart jars. When the jar was filled, Mom filled the jar with water and seasonings, leaving enough room for a smidgeon of fat on the top of the jar. One of the girls put a rubber seal around the mouth of the jar and pressed it on to the jar lid with a butter knife to seal it in place. She placed a metal Kerr cover over the mouth of the jar and tightened a metal lid over the cover, securing the rubber seal on the jar. The first jar was placed into the copper tub filled with boiling water on the kerosene stove.
After the second front quarter was finessed down the stairs and processed, three buckets of other internal organs arrived. The first bucket contained the intestines. Mom set about to wash out the intestines in preparation for stuffing them with ground beef for ring bologna. In the second bucket was the brain. The third and fourth buckets were stacked high with fat.
For the next three hours, a steady flow of fresh meat came from the corncrib butchery to the basement cannery. Mom bent over the floor drain as she cleaned and removed the linings of the intestine. She was the only one of the butchering crew willing to take on that distasteful task. They worked in concert together with happy chatter and laughter filling the air.
In the granary, Dad and the boys were cutting the rear quarters of the animal. The rear quarters were butchered like the front quarters except the weight of each was about 100 pounds. Soon the boys were carefully descending the bloodied, slippery steps with their heavy load.
The family had a use for each part of the animal. The heart would be boiled and sliced for bread. The kidneys and the liver would be ground up and put into sacks for liverwurst. The `tongue and heart would be boiled and cut into thin slices and served on bread for their lunches. The lining of the intestines would be cleaned, boiled and used for casings for the ring baloney. The brain would be made into head cheese. Any remaining fat on the bones was boiled off and used for hand soap, soup and lye soap. Large bones were boiled, releasing any meat remaining on the bones. They carefully put aside the large bones and laid them in a wicker basket. They knew that some members of their family treasured the bone marrow, sucking it out from the cracked open bones.
The buckets of fat had many uses. Some fat would be heated and made into lard. The lard would be a sumptuous addition to their pie crusts, cakes, cookies, breads and fet en stroop [6]. Other fat would be boiled leaving only schottchies [7], curiously shaped curls of rust brown cracklings. Flour and spices would then be added to the cracklings and ladled into eight by twelve-inch pans to be cooled and stored. Later, the thick, paste-like gray blob would be cut into half-inch slices, fried, and covered with butter and Aunt Jamima syrup. It was one of the family favorites for their morning breakfasts.
The boiled liver was put into the meat grinder. Lard, salt, pepper and spices were added and mixed together for liverwurst. Juices and fat oozed through the pores of the cleaned, flour sacks they had sewn into small bags earlier in the day.
By late afternoon, the butchering in the corncrib was finished. The heat of midday in the corncrib, and the hot humid air of the basement, had tired the entire butchering crew. The air was stifling. Sweat dripped from their faces soaking through their overfalls, shirts, blouses and aprons. They were quietly craving a moment when they could sit, rest and recover.
The granary floor was swashed clean. The knives were cleaned, and the 22-caliber rifle was put back on its rack in the hog house. The block and tackle was hung on the wall of the machine shed. But the canning was not yet complete.
Dad and the boys walked to the basement and began to help the women finish the canning. Together they collected the butcher knives, cleaned the tubs, tables and meat grinder and washed them in a nearby sink. The greasy and bloody floor and steps were mopped. They began to fill empty wooden peach boxes with packages of meat, wrapped in white waxed paper destined for the town locker.
Together they took the jars of canned meat out of the boiling copper tub, dried them off and gently put them in rows of shelves so as not to break their seals. They paused as they admired the 123 quarts of Mason jars of freshly butchered Iowa beef standing in formation like proud soldiers in parade dress.They looked with pride at all they accomplished on this late spring Iowa afternoon. Their smiles, chatter and laughter confirmed the relief they felt for a job well done.
They were exhausted but their work for the day was not yet done. There were cows to milk, calves to feed, climbing the silo and throwing down silage for the beef cattle, a coop full of chickens to feed, baby pigs and matronly sows to slop. The women still had potatoes to boil, garden vegetables to harvest and cook, all before their corncrib butchering day would come to an end.
But they were happy!
[1] A mangle was a machine that pressed towels, bed sheets and linens. It used the heat from two rollers, moving in contrasting motion to press the fabric flat without creases.
[2] Balkenbrij started with fat cracklings, then flour and spices were added. It was put into an 9x12 sized pan, cut into pieces, fried and served with butter and syrup.
[3] Loafing shed was a holding shed for cattle. Sometimes used to isolate sick or injured animals.
[4] Block and tackle was a system of two pulleys with a rope that threaded through the pulleys making it possible to leverage the lifting capacity.
[5] An emery wheel was a circular, foot pedal driven stone used for sharpening, grinding or polishing.
[6] Fet en Stroop – Fat and syrup. A family favorite. Bread slices were dipped in hot fat, put on the breakfast plate and smothered in syrup.
[7] Schottchies, a Dutch name for what remained after the fat was boiled off, leaving only cracklings.
CONTRIBUTORS: Dee Gorter, Clarence Gorter, Cleo Te Slaa, Arlen (Dutch Te Slaa), Freida Vander Sluis, Kathy McKinstry, Cathy Te Slaa, Caesar Orosco, web master, Josie Moore, editor
He had silently prayed a similar prayer on his way to the barn early that morning, thanking God for the rain and asking Him for guidance and family protection. Now, seated around the Formica topped kitchen table, surrounded by red and white vinyl and chrome chairs, the family was discussing what would happen, now that the rain had changed their plans for their normal house, field and garden work. Everyone knew that the normal work for the day would have to be postponed because of the rain-soaked fields.
But there were choices!
After spring rains had stopped, the family often went to the field to pull cockleburs and other weeds. The entire family would labor in the wet fields under the warming sun and humid air. If that was not possible, the boys would often hand pitch manure from the barn pens into a manure spreader using four or five tine pitchforks, loading the spreader one pitchfork at a time until it was heaping full of manure, only to have another empty manure spreader show up at the barn door, waiting to be filled. When not working in the field or garden, the women would cook the meals, bake bread and pies, patch overalls, wash and mangle clothes [1], clean out the storm cellar, wax the floors, pull garden weeds, clean eggs and a myriad of other household chores that kept them busy throughout the day.
The family sat silently considering the alternatives. All the rainy-day work alternatives had little appeal to them on any day, rain or shine!
Dad shifted in his chair and broke the silence. “I was at the town locker yesterday and I counted only sixteen packages of frozen beef in our locker. What do you think about butchering dry cow number 37? She’s been a poor milk producer now for a year and hasn’t given any milk for the last three months. I think she is already nine years old.” The boys nodded in agreement. Since all the cows wore a chain with a number around their necks, the boys knew exactly the cow he was talking about.
The family glanced around the table. They knew butchering was hard work and would take the time of the entire family the better part of the day. On the other hand, butchering, whether beef, pigs or chicken, held its own drama and fascination for them. It was different from their daily work and even had some enjoyable aspects to it.
Mom nodded her head enthusiastically in agreement. “Last week I checked and counted what we had in our cellar. We have only twenty-four quarts of beef, sixteen quarts of chicken and forty quarts of pork left. If we don’t get more butchering done soon, we may have to buy meat from the meat market.” Dad seemed a bit surprised by the rapidly diminishing stock of canned meat. “It seems like only last winter since we butchered that 600-pound heifer who was paralized from a slip on the ice. Do you remember we had to carry her to the granary with the front-end loader?” he said.
The oldest boy, who was the most experienced of the boys, reminded everyone, “You know that once we decide to butcher the cow, it will take the entire day. There will be all the preparation before hand, then the butchering, the processing and the cleanup. But, I think we can get this done today.”
Dad listened intently. He knew what his son was saying and wondered what other work they would have to put off until later if they began the butchering today. The family seemed relieved that the unpleasant task of walking the beanfield, pitching manure or house work might be put off to a later, drier day.
He agreed with his son about the time commitment. He also knew that the heavy rain of last evening would take the ground at least two days to dry before any field work could be done. He quietly reminded himself of the remaining stocks of beef, pork and chicken. He knew it would last them barely eight more weeks.
The family’s thoughts shifted in anticipation to the smells and mouth-watering tastes of newly dried beef on freshly baked bread, smothered with butter in their lunchboxes and daily meals for the next six months. Dad’s eyes widened with the thought of sucking the salty marrow out of the freshly butchered, boiled bones. Their mouths watered with the thought of freshly fried bacon, liverwurst and balkenbrij [2] for their morning breakfasts.
Their salivating thoughts won out in favor of beginning the butchering, and the family nodded their approval to begin the hard work of butchering. Even so, it would be a fun and special day,
“Ok, we’ll butcher today but we need to get moving. To butcher Cow #37, we can make the preparations this morning so we can begin butchering and canning after dinner this afternoon. At this point in the life of this cow there is only one use for her – the meat!”
The family pushed back their chairs from the table and waited for Mom to read the Bible. They listened quietly as she read from 2 Timothy 2: 1-13. Dad prayed asking God for guidance and protection in the coming afternoon. He knew from experience many things could go wrong with butchering.
With devotions over, the family began a final review for butchering. Every member of the family knew their part. Each had a job based on their strength and experience. They knew they had to work fast to keep the meat fresh and clean. They knew that butchering, whether beef, pork or chicken, was always challenging and fast paced, but in a strange way, fun and exciting.
The family began to realize the heavy, hot and tiring work ahead of them and what it meant to put their butchering plans into immediate action. The women knew they would need more help. Mom rang up her sister and asked the telephone operator to be transferred to Cynthia. Minutes later Aunt Cynthia agreed and said she would be at the farm within an hour.
There were 135 quart jars to be washed and sterilized. The thirty-gallon oval shaped copper tub had to be fetched from the basement storage, cleaned and filled with water and prepared for boiling. Zinc Kerr lids, rubber seals and white waxed butcher paper had to be bought from the Middleburg store, three miles away. The hand meat grinder had to be cleaned and attached to the basement table to grind the meat scraps for ground beef. The three-burner kerosene stove in the basement needed to be filled with three gallons of kerosene. They would have to wait until dinnertime to light the burners to bring the tub of water to a boil. The flour sacks and old bed sheets they had been saving for weeks had to be washed, cut and sewn into fourteen-inch-long bags, ready for stuffing with spices and ground liver for liverwurst and head cheese. Another table had to be set up just next to a floor drain to clean and sanitize the linings of the intestine, later to be filled with ground meat and spices for baloney. The sausage stuffer had to be cleaned and brought to the canning area and attached to a table. Glass and metal pans had to be cleaned for fat cracklings, flour and spices for balkenbrij. An additional locker in town had to be reserved for any part of the new butchering which could not be put into the quart jars.
While all this was going on in the house, the farmyard too bustled with activity. Dad and the boys went into the cattle yard and culled out Cow #37 and herded it to to the loafing shed [3].
They carefully removed all water, feed and straw bedding so the cow could not eat the straw. A large tarp was laid across the corncrib floor. The block and tackle [4] was now readied to hoist the carcass to the rafters. They checked the ropes and rafter to see if it could hold the 1100-pound cow. They checked the rafters for any damage. They attached a one- and one-half inch steel chain to the block and tackle and tied it to the middle of corn crib rafters.
Dad brought the 22-gauge rifle from the gun rack in the hog house and laid it in a corner of the corn crib. One of the boys laid a bullet next to the rifle. Another boy carried five-gallon buckets of water to the corncrib to flush the blood and waste off the concrete floor before and after butchering. The granary floor was one of the few places on the farm where the butchering of cattle and pigs could take place. It was relatively clean with a concrete floor but still had to be swept and flushed with buckets of water before butchering began.
Meanwhile, one of the boys sharpened the butcher knives on a pedal-driven emery wheel [5] in the machine shed. Other boys carried handfuls of apple tree limbs to the smokehouse in the grove to prepare the brisket and one of the shoulders for smoked, dried beef. A meat locker in town was reserved for any butchering their food cellar could not hold.
As noonday approached, they were ready. The house and yard preparations for butchering had taken the entire morning. The family sat down for dinner. One of the boys prayed. On the table, Mom placed a bowl of beef gravy and a heaping bowl of mashed potatoes, crowned with a large dollup of butter. The girls followed with a large bowl of canned beef swimming in meat juice. Other bowls of garden beans, canned sweet corn and a small bowl of canned beets followed.
The family was quiet throughout dinner. Their minds occupied with the work they were about to do.
With dinner over, the family moved to their ‘stations’. The boys boxed Cow #37 into a corner of the loafing shed. Dad slipped a rope around its neck and wound it back over its snout, creating a halter-like control of the cow. Their trek to the corncrib began.
The cow was unaccustomed to being led by anything and mightily resisted any movement. It seemed to know there was something different the family had in store for her. The cow would not budge. The cow’s legs stiffened as she weaved and bobbed, making slow progress from the loafing shed to the granary. She had never before been subjected to such restrictions on her freedom of movement. One of the boys raised the tail of the cow ninety degrees, forcing the cow to move ahead, a trick he had learned from Grandpa Henry.
One of the boys went out to the outhouse and tore pages out of the Montgomery Wards catalog. He walked into the grove to the smokehouse and lit a smouldering fire under a pile of apple tree branches.
Mom, the girls and Aunt Cynth went to the basement and lit the kerosene burners. They gave one last pass over the emery board to sharpen the knives, and prepared the buckets for the meat, fat and waste.
The boys began to assemble the block and tackle. Mom and the girls watched with interest from the porch of the house as they pushed the cow up a slight incline and into the center of the granary. The boys attached two ropes to its neck, and they pulled the rope tight from opposite sides to keep her head steady.
It was time for Dad to do one of the most difficult jobs as a farmer…killing one of his animals. Grandpa had been a skilled teacher to Dad in the art of farmyard butchering. He too had felt pangs of remorse for this part of the butchering process.
Reluctantly, Dad picked up the 22-caliber rifle laying on the floor of the granary and inserted a bullet into the chamber. The cow’s eyes were wild with fright. The boys held the ropes tight from both sides of the cow’s head, not allowing any movement of her head. He placed the rifle muzzle between the eyes of the cow and pulled the trigger. Immediately, the cow fell limp on the corncrib floor, but the eyes of the cow remained open, as if accusing Dad of the ultimate betrayal.
Dad turned aside and breathed a sigh of relief, slowly placing the rifle on the floor of the corn crib.
The boys quickly attached the block and tackle to the hind legs of the cow. The pully system of the block and tackle allowed them tremendous leverage. With one end tied to the hind legs of the cow and the other end tied to the joist of the granary, and inch by inch, they pulled up this half-ton-plus animal toward the rafters. The rafter creaked and groaned as the back hooves of the cows approached the rafter. When the hooves touched the granary joist, the cow now stretched twelve feet from the rafter to the concrete corncrib floor, with her snout only inches from the floor.
Stretched out, she seemed to be a much larger animal in death than in life!
The family was now ready to function like a well-oiled machine with every member assuming their part. They worked with a practiced efficiency. Dad quickly slit the throat of the cow. Warm, deep red blood rushed from the slit in the cow’s neck. He immediately took the hack saw and cut through and severed the head. One of the boys lifted the forty-five-pound head and laid it on a Sioux City Journal newspaper to the side. One of the boys slipped a five-gallon bucket under the headless carcass. Blood gushed into the bucket.
What little was left in all the cow’s four stomachs began to drain from the cow’s throat on to the granary floor. Steam rose from the warm carcass. The putrid smell of water and partially digested silage and kernels of corn made Dad and the boys instinctively turn away from the acrid smell for a moment. Regaining their composure, they quickly washed the floor with gallons of water.
Dad began by making a long knife cut down the underside of the hide from the anus to the base of the neck. The boys began to skin the animal from top to bottom, their sharp knives easily separating the hide from the carcass, like a warm knife cutting through butter. Their cuts to the hide and carcass were precise and practiced. Within minutes, the intact hide was freed from the carcass, like slipping off a warm coat in the middle of winter.
With a new blade in the meat saw, Dad sawed through the flesh and bones from the anus to the neck, this time cutting through the belly to the back. He pulled the rib cage open and began removing the internal organs. He knew care had to be taken not to contaminate the meat with the animal waste. He carefully cut out the intestines and lungs. He began removing the edible internal organs, the heart and the liver, while one of the boys removed the tongue from the head laying on the floor. Fat, edible organs, chunks of meat and intestines were placed in separate buckets.
With the hide and the internal organs and intestines removed and using a meat saw, Dad sawed the carcass down the middle, splitting it into two halves. He then cut off the front quarters, separating the front legs from the shoulders. The removal of each shoulder required three boys, two to hold on to the eighty-pound shoulder and one to cut the front leg free from the shoulder. Within minutes, two of the boys carried the first shoulder, and another boy carried two buckets of edible organs to the house.
The women heard the labored steps of the boys as they maneuvered the front quarter of the carcass down the narrow, steep stairs to the basement and placed it on the table. Mom and the girls were ready. The water was boiling, the jars were clean, the knives were sharpened, and their aprons tied neatly and tight around their waists.
Immediately, the women put the edible organs into boiling water. The larger cuts of meat were cut into smaller pieces and put into quart jars of water and spices, arranged at the end of the table. The smaller pieces of meat were placed into the throat of the hand meat grinder, turned by one of the younger girls. They cut off the layers of fat and put them into a bucket off to the side of the table. They cut off smaller chunks of meat, placed them in the hand-cranked meat grinder turned by the youngest girl and into the awaiting quart jars. When the jar was filled, Mom filled the jar with water and seasonings, leaving enough room for a smidgeon of fat on the top of the jar. One of the girls put a rubber seal around the mouth of the jar and pressed it on to the jar lid with a butter knife to seal it in place. She placed a metal Kerr cover over the mouth of the jar and tightened a metal lid over the cover, securing the rubber seal on the jar. The first jar was placed into the copper tub filled with boiling water on the kerosene stove.
After the second front quarter was finessed down the stairs and processed, three buckets of other internal organs arrived. The first bucket contained the intestines. Mom set about to wash out the intestines in preparation for stuffing them with ground beef for ring bologna. In the second bucket was the brain. The third and fourth buckets were stacked high with fat.
For the next three hours, a steady flow of fresh meat came from the corncrib butchery to the basement cannery. Mom bent over the floor drain as she cleaned and removed the linings of the intestine. She was the only one of the butchering crew willing to take on that distasteful task. They worked in concert together with happy chatter and laughter filling the air.
In the granary, Dad and the boys were cutting the rear quarters of the animal. The rear quarters were butchered like the front quarters except the weight of each was about 100 pounds. Soon the boys were carefully descending the bloodied, slippery steps with their heavy load.
The family had a use for each part of the animal. The heart would be boiled and sliced for bread. The kidneys and the liver would be ground up and put into sacks for liverwurst. The `tongue and heart would be boiled and cut into thin slices and served on bread for their lunches. The lining of the intestines would be cleaned, boiled and used for casings for the ring baloney. The brain would be made into head cheese. Any remaining fat on the bones was boiled off and used for hand soap, soup and lye soap. Large bones were boiled, releasing any meat remaining on the bones. They carefully put aside the large bones and laid them in a wicker basket. They knew that some members of their family treasured the bone marrow, sucking it out from the cracked open bones.
The buckets of fat had many uses. Some fat would be heated and made into lard. The lard would be a sumptuous addition to their pie crusts, cakes, cookies, breads and fet en stroop [6]. Other fat would be boiled leaving only schottchies [7], curiously shaped curls of rust brown cracklings. Flour and spices would then be added to the cracklings and ladled into eight by twelve-inch pans to be cooled and stored. Later, the thick, paste-like gray blob would be cut into half-inch slices, fried, and covered with butter and Aunt Jamima syrup. It was one of the family favorites for their morning breakfasts.
The boiled liver was put into the meat grinder. Lard, salt, pepper and spices were added and mixed together for liverwurst. Juices and fat oozed through the pores of the cleaned, flour sacks they had sewn into small bags earlier in the day.
By late afternoon, the butchering in the corncrib was finished. The heat of midday in the corncrib, and the hot humid air of the basement, had tired the entire butchering crew. The air was stifling. Sweat dripped from their faces soaking through their overfalls, shirts, blouses and aprons. They were quietly craving a moment when they could sit, rest and recover.
The granary floor was swashed clean. The knives were cleaned, and the 22-caliber rifle was put back on its rack in the hog house. The block and tackle was hung on the wall of the machine shed. But the canning was not yet complete.
Dad and the boys walked to the basement and began to help the women finish the canning. Together they collected the butcher knives, cleaned the tubs, tables and meat grinder and washed them in a nearby sink. The greasy and bloody floor and steps were mopped. They began to fill empty wooden peach boxes with packages of meat, wrapped in white waxed paper destined for the town locker.
Together they took the jars of canned meat out of the boiling copper tub, dried them off and gently put them in rows of shelves so as not to break their seals. They paused as they admired the 123 quarts of Mason jars of freshly butchered Iowa beef standing in formation like proud soldiers in parade dress.They looked with pride at all they accomplished on this late spring Iowa afternoon. Their smiles, chatter and laughter confirmed the relief they felt for a job well done.
They were exhausted but their work for the day was not yet done. There were cows to milk, calves to feed, climbing the silo and throwing down silage for the beef cattle, a coop full of chickens to feed, baby pigs and matronly sows to slop. The women still had potatoes to boil, garden vegetables to harvest and cook, all before their corncrib butchering day would come to an end.
But they were happy!
[1] A mangle was a machine that pressed towels, bed sheets and linens. It used the heat from two rollers, moving in contrasting motion to press the fabric flat without creases.
[2] Balkenbrij started with fat cracklings, then flour and spices were added. It was put into an 9x12 sized pan, cut into pieces, fried and served with butter and syrup.
[3] Loafing shed was a holding shed for cattle. Sometimes used to isolate sick or injured animals.
[4] Block and tackle was a system of two pulleys with a rope that threaded through the pulleys making it possible to leverage the lifting capacity.
[5] An emery wheel was a circular, foot pedal driven stone used for sharpening, grinding or polishing.
[6] Fet en Stroop – Fat and syrup. A family favorite. Bread slices were dipped in hot fat, put on the breakfast plate and smothered in syrup.
[7] Schottchies, a Dutch name for what remained after the fat was boiled off, leaving only cracklings.
CONTRIBUTORS: Dee Gorter, Clarence Gorter, Cleo Te Slaa, Arlen (Dutch Te Slaa), Freida Vander Sluis, Kathy McKinstry, Cathy Te Slaa, Caesar Orosco, web master, Josie Moore, editor
2. The Bright Red and Blue Mobile Grocery Store
It was Friday afternoon during a hot dry July in a far corner of Northwest Iowa. It was not unusual for a mid-summer day in 1952 for the farmstead to be so parched and stifling with temperatures reaching into the high nineties.
The family was waiting for a visitor - one special visitor! Throughout the week, many visitors showed up at the farm, all unexpected but regular visitors. There were visits from neighbors, friends, and relatives. Others came to the farm to work. There was Chris, the corn sheller, and Mr. Grevengood, the ear corn grinder and the rendering truck driver. There were cattle buyers and sellers, who a day or two later would be followed by the drivers of strait trucks and semi-trucks, hauling livestock to and from the farm. Less frequently but no less important was the preacher from the Middleburg Free Grace Reformed Church coming to check on the health of their souls.
Many salesmen came to the farm since to save the farmers the many miles of travel it would take for them to come to the salesmen. There were salesmen such as the Watkins man, who sold bottles of vitamins and varieties of elixirs; the Raleigh man, who championed the gastronomical benefits of castor oil and cod liver oil (Mom always seemed to be low on both); the Fuller brush salesman, who came by every few months selling what he said were the best, longest-lasting brushes the world had ever known; and feed and supplement salesmen too. One of the family’s favorite feed salesmen was the handsome and curly-haired Ray Van Pelt, who ventured all the way from the distant nine-mile-away town of Orange City to sell his protein bags of Moorman’s Calf Manna.
But, by far, the weekly family favorite was the Friday visitor who was about to arrive. The kids and mom were waiting for him on the porch of the house. That special visitor had come to their farm weekly for years. They knew that, for a short while this afternoon, he would make their day full of sweets, fun and laughter.
That special guest was Mr. Hank Brinks.
Mr. Brinks owned and operated, along with one helper, a grocery store and mobile peddle wagon[1] from a one-room, wooden 1920s building situated in the village of Middleburg. The fifty-two-person town was named after a place in the Netherlands, as it was located almost an equal distance of seven or eight miles from several larger Dutch settlements including Hull, Orange City, Sioux Center and Boyden.
For most farm families in the 1950s, the three- or four-mile trip from their farms to the Middleburg grocery store was a significant distance and a cost of time and money. Mr. Brinks knew that busy farm families had little time to travel to his Middleburg store, so years before he decided to meet those families on their farms. Mr. Brinks had several routes with his peddle wagon, and Friday afternoon was his stop at Mom and Dad’s farm. It was a joy for him to visit the farms of his friends and neighbors, and his patrons returned the joy.
Mom and the kids knew that Mr. Brinks would soon be coming over the hill near the Vander Wilt farm, nearly a mile down the gravel road to the south. They would be his next stop. His weekly summer visits were as predictable as the church bells ringing on 9:30 Sunday mornings to mark the beginning of Free Grace Reformed Church worship services. Now it was only minutes before they would see his brightly painted, fire-engine-red, and deep-ocean-blue, mobile grocery store come into view.
And then, right on time, it appeared!
The colorful relic lumbered painfully slow as it inched its way to their farm. Gravity gave help to this little peddle wagon as it picked up speed coming down the hill. Mr. Brink’s peddle wagon was powered by a Model A, four-cylinder Ford engine. He, or someone before him, had attached to these four skinny tires, a painted blue frame. Hanging on for dear life to this frame was a collection of red painted boxes and bays of odd sizes and shapes, popping out here and there from its strung-together body. Somehow, this blue contraption with its attendant red cubicles, moved in a miraculously discordant unity.
The minutes went by slowly for the waiting kids. Finally, the peddle wagon passed over the wooden bridge of the West Branch Creek, only a pasture’s length away from their driveway. By the time Mr. Brinks had made his slow turn into the farm’s newly leveled, gravel driveway, the kids and Mom were all waiting at the end of the sidewalk.
Excitement rushed over the kids as the treat wagon slowly came to stop at the end of the sidewalk. It was at that moment when the five pennies in their pockets, given to each of them for their weekly allowance, began to jingle in their pockets. Their fingers pinched the pennies checking to see if they were still there.
Mr. Brinks turned off the engine and smiled at them from behind the steering wheel. They returned his smile with laughs, waves of greeting and smiles of their own. Mr. Brinks was a kind, patient man.
Mr. Brinks slowly stepped out of his peddle wagon. He sauntered to the waiting assembly. His walk reminded the kids of the story of a sloth that their teacher, Mrs. Bomgaars had told them. The older kids smiled knowingly at each other.
He greeted each of the kids by name in his easy-going speech. His affection for them was obvious. His eyes showered kindness over them as they crowded around him. His quick smile and the sparkle in his eyes were genuine, and they were memorable.
Memorable, because it took some time for his smile to travel to the far corners of his mouth. His smile seemed to open his droopy eyes and creases in deep horizontal lines appeared on his forehead.
His broad smile also revealed a man who seldom, if ever, had visited a dentist. His eye teeth were missing on his upper jaw, there were some empty spaces between teeth on his lower jaw. The older kids had heard a neighbor talk about smiles like Mr. Brinks’ as “summer teeth” – som-er here and som-er there! It never occurred to them that his tooth-missing smile, slow gait, and the peculiar tilt to his body was in any way different from most of their family, friends, neighbors, and fellow church members. Most of them also had some form of modified facial appearance, characteristic body limp, or leaning acquired from one of their many life challenges.
Mr. Brinks approached the family with a modest nod and greeting to Mom. He surveyed the family with slow, eye-to-eye recognition of each child, smiling broadly to them and addressing each of them by their first names in a breathy, soft-spoken slow drawl. Their returning smiles mirrored their admiration for him. The children, barely able to contain their excitement, waited patiently for Mr. Brinks to finish his greetings while secretly thinking, Let’s get over the hi’s and hellos, Mr. Brinks, and get on with buying our treats!
Mr. Brinks moved to the driver’s side of his mobile store. For perhaps the umpteenth time that day, he began to place large metal support rods into metal pockets of the peddle wagon to hold up the wooden sides. The now-opened peddle wagon revealed cubbies, compartments, doors, drawers, and boxes, some of them were held with a latch and a fastener. Others were drawers that opened with brass pulls and white porcelain knobs, some were held in place with a clasp and a pin attached to a chain, while still others were like tables that dropped down and held in place with flimsy chains.
Every section he opened was like celebrating Christmas Eve in the middle of a hot July day. As he opened his Pandora’s wagon of treats, he continued his casual conversation with the kids. Finally, all the doors and drawers, cubbies, compartments, and tables were opened.
Mr. Brinks declared he was ready for business.
The kids clamored around the peddle wagon, trying to get a better look. The drop-down tables were higher-than-eyeball view for the kids. They could see the myriad colors and shapes of their sweet choices. There were foot-long braids of red and black licorice. In other drawers there were white
and pink unwrapped peppermints, selling for fifteen cents for thirty peppermints. In the next drawer were small packs of Black Jack and Juicy Fruit gum.
In another drawer were small metal containers with “Sin-Sin” inside. The kids called the contents Sin-Sin because they only tasted them when sitting sleepily on hard church pews. Mom knew them as Sen-Sen, a candy with a lofty purpose, -- to stay awake in church! The kids knew about “sin” but not” sen”. For years they had incorrectly heard Dad and Mom to refer to them as “Sin-Sin”. They had no idea what ‘Sen-Sen’ was! So, the bitter, distasteful bad breath treatment of ‘Sen-Sen’ persisted as “Sin-Sin” in their minds.
The kids’ favorite was the soft, gooey goodness of the pink bubble gum: They knew what would happen if they chewed just a single chunk of gum: bubbles would grow so large that they would cover their faces, popping in a muffled poof, leaving bubble gum stuck to their mouths, chins, and noses. The kids also knew what would happen if they packed two of the gummy wads into their mouths. It would pop with an even softer “poof,” but the bubble would settle slowly, covering their faces from their chins to their foreheads and cheek to cheek. They knew the feat of blowing the biggest bubble with a double bubble gum would give them bragging rights and garner the admiration of the other kids.
But there also was a bonus to the pink, one-cent bubble gum: it came wrapped in waxed paper, on which was printed a six-panel, folded, comic strip…in color!! Some of the six-paneled stories were short stories of heroes overcoming tremendous odds, all told within those six panels. Others were stories of cartoon character’s humorous exploits that drew smiles and ‘ahs’ as the kids passed the stories around. It didn’t matter whether the kids could read them or not. The older siblings, Mom or Dad, would read the stories aloud as the kids followed along with the pictures.
Another of their favorite treats was jawbreakers. They came in every color imaginable, but each color seemed new and exotic to the youngest kids. There were so many colors that their country schoolteacher had not yet taught the youngest of the children the color names. The smaller jaw breakers sold for one penny each. The giant jaw breakers, nearly twice the size of the smaller ones, sold for two pennies each.
The giant jaw breakers were held in high esteem with the kids. They were so big that they could last for hours inside their cheeks. There were squeals of laughter as they tried to talk with the giant spheres in their mouths. There was no way they could be understood. It was gibberish. The kids found ways to overcome this babbled speech among the gaggled group. They could tuck the jaw breaker into one of their cheeks, giving the appearance of having a major toothache. Or, they could hold the sticky confection in their hands and continue to negotiate for additional treats in an understandable language.
By popping the jaw breakers in and out of their mouths, their sweet goodness could melt down for hours, until only a BB-sized-center remained, and with a strong bite of their grown-up teeth, crush it into sweet oblivion. The kids had another way of extending the life of jaw breakers and gum: storing them overnight on the top of the bedpost or on a nearby windowsill, the gum waiting to be softened and re-chewed again for another four or five days of enjoyment.
Two of the boys decided to combine their allowance and buy a package of candied Lucky Strikes. They were a bit smaller than the real cigarettes that the grown-ups smoked, but they did have a red colored tip, simulating a real-McCoy. It was fun to hang a cigarette from their loosely pursed lips and imitate some of the older boys smoking the real cigarettes. They figured for today they could afford to spend half of their allowance for a pack of candy cigarettes. Besides, they might be able to sell two of them for a penny.
While the children were making their precious .05-cent weekly allowance buying decisions, Mom went about doing her weekly shopping with Mr. Brinks. The two grownups walked around the back of the peddle wagon. Mr. Brinks already knew what Mom was going to order, as it was the same order she had made every week for many months.
On the back hung an additional box, not much larger than a trans-Atlantic steamer trunk. It was the ice box. Among the blocks of ice were processed meats such as red-dyed ring bologna, small packages of liverwurst, sliced salami, and more. Store-bought meat was the first item she examined as the squeaky hinges of the ice box were lifted. Processed meat was a special treat for a family normally accustomed to eating butchered and colorless home-canned meats for their daily meals and lunch pails. But Mr. Brink’s ring bologna was colorful, salty, perfectly formed, and tied up into an oval shape, with both ends held together with a waxed string.
On the opposite side of the wagon Mr. Brinks carried his bread and cereals. The bread loaves were wrapped in white plastic, printed with different-sized balloons of many colors. They came to know it as Wonder Bread. It was rare that Mom would indulge in any of the store-bought bread baked outside her own farm kitchen. She reminded herself that it was only last Saturday that she and the girls had baked six loaves of bread. She knew her family would object to her buying Wonder Bread. Her home-baked fresh bread, with buttery crusts and big holes in the slices, was one of their favorite foods. Everyone looked forward to smelling the freshly baked bread in their greased rectangular pans, with breadcrusts spilling over the sides of the pan. Wonder Bread had no such smell. It looked and tasted sterile. It had no air pockets of their sliced homemade bread. No, there was no need for store-bought bread.
The cereals were different and regularly caught her eye. She was accustomed to purchasing large, round cardboard containers of Quaker Oats oatmeal with a picture of a pilgrim on the side. One such container purchase would usually last two weeks of breakfasts and baking.
But there were newer cereals of interest to Mom. One was a newer General Mills cereal called Cheerios. Their taste, shape, and crunchiness were quite different from the eggs, meat, bread, balkonbrei, leberwurst, fet, and strop of their typical breakfast. Mr. Brinks could count on Mom to buy at least two boxes of dried cereal every week. But she recently had second thoughts about purchasing these cereals. Last month, one of the boys had poured out the Cheerios into his breakfast bowl only to find maggots writhing about in the milk and Cheerios.
Now with the shopping nearly done, it was time for Mom to barter with Mr. Brinks. Mom had set aside cartons of four dozen fresh, cleaned farm eggs on the sidewalk. She asked Mr. Brinks if she could exchange them for two rings of bologna, a small box of brown sugar, and a box of corn flakes. Mr. Brinks smiled with his approval. He was certain he could re-barter or sell them to other farmers or Middeburgans who needed eggs. It was only a matter of seconds before they both agreed to the exchange.
Finally, each kid made their buying decisions. They paid Mr. Brinks for their treats with their five-penny weekly allowance and celebrated their purchases. Mom looked at the kids with pride. They had learned a valuable lesson in making their own decisions. She then settled up with Mr. Brinks.
The kids barely noticed Mr. Brinks as he began to close the doors, drawers, and boxes of his bright-red- and-blue-peddle wagon. Their chatter and happiness were in full bloom. They laughed at each other with their jaw-breaker impeded-speech. Their eyes were wide with amazement as the pink double bubble gums popped, covering their faces. They guffawed as the oldest boy read the bubble gum stories to them.
Mr. Brinks surveyed this happy scene, then stepped on the running board of the jalopy and slid behind the steering wheel. He gave Mom a modest goodbye wave and turned the starter of his Model A, making the motor sputter to a wheezing start. Startled by the labored start of the motor, the kids’ attention suddenly turned to Mr. Brinks. He smiled at them, and they returned his smile with waves and enthusiastic goodbyes.
Suddenly, it was over as quickly as it had begun. Mr. Brinks was off to his next neighborhood customer, trailed by a small cloud of farm road dust.
The family had just experienced one of their favorite weekly visitors to their farm. Already, the kids knew Mr. Brinks would return next week, bringing with him store-bought groceries, colorful sweets, and fun! Even now, they could imagine Mr. Brinks coming down the Vander Wilt hill and turning into their driveway in his bright red-and-blue mobile grocery store.
They could hardly wait!!
[1] Peddle wagons were rather common in the 1920’s to 1950’s. It was so named because merchants travelled the countryside, selling their goods from a wagon. The body of the peddle wagon could be almost anything if it was powered by some sort of a motor. The peddle wagon depicted is a precedent of peddle wagons 15 years prior to Mr. Brink's wagon.
CONTRIBUTORS: Cleo Te Slaa, Dee Gorter, Clarence Gorter, Mitchel and Emily Punt, Arlene Schovald, Vicki Trautman, Pat Haverman, Cathy Te Slaa, Proofreader, Josephine Moore, Editor. Caesar Orosco, Web Master
The family was waiting for a visitor - one special visitor! Throughout the week, many visitors showed up at the farm, all unexpected but regular visitors. There were visits from neighbors, friends, and relatives. Others came to the farm to work. There was Chris, the corn sheller, and Mr. Grevengood, the ear corn grinder and the rendering truck driver. There were cattle buyers and sellers, who a day or two later would be followed by the drivers of strait trucks and semi-trucks, hauling livestock to and from the farm. Less frequently but no less important was the preacher from the Middleburg Free Grace Reformed Church coming to check on the health of their souls.
Many salesmen came to the farm since to save the farmers the many miles of travel it would take for them to come to the salesmen. There were salesmen such as the Watkins man, who sold bottles of vitamins and varieties of elixirs; the Raleigh man, who championed the gastronomical benefits of castor oil and cod liver oil (Mom always seemed to be low on both); the Fuller brush salesman, who came by every few months selling what he said were the best, longest-lasting brushes the world had ever known; and feed and supplement salesmen too. One of the family’s favorite feed salesmen was the handsome and curly-haired Ray Van Pelt, who ventured all the way from the distant nine-mile-away town of Orange City to sell his protein bags of Moorman’s Calf Manna.
But, by far, the weekly family favorite was the Friday visitor who was about to arrive. The kids and mom were waiting for him on the porch of the house. That special visitor had come to their farm weekly for years. They knew that, for a short while this afternoon, he would make their day full of sweets, fun and laughter.
That special guest was Mr. Hank Brinks.
Mr. Brinks owned and operated, along with one helper, a grocery store and mobile peddle wagon[1] from a one-room, wooden 1920s building situated in the village of Middleburg. The fifty-two-person town was named after a place in the Netherlands, as it was located almost an equal distance of seven or eight miles from several larger Dutch settlements including Hull, Orange City, Sioux Center and Boyden.
For most farm families in the 1950s, the three- or four-mile trip from their farms to the Middleburg grocery store was a significant distance and a cost of time and money. Mr. Brinks knew that busy farm families had little time to travel to his Middleburg store, so years before he decided to meet those families on their farms. Mr. Brinks had several routes with his peddle wagon, and Friday afternoon was his stop at Mom and Dad’s farm. It was a joy for him to visit the farms of his friends and neighbors, and his patrons returned the joy.
Mom and the kids knew that Mr. Brinks would soon be coming over the hill near the Vander Wilt farm, nearly a mile down the gravel road to the south. They would be his next stop. His weekly summer visits were as predictable as the church bells ringing on 9:30 Sunday mornings to mark the beginning of Free Grace Reformed Church worship services. Now it was only minutes before they would see his brightly painted, fire-engine-red, and deep-ocean-blue, mobile grocery store come into view.
And then, right on time, it appeared!
The colorful relic lumbered painfully slow as it inched its way to their farm. Gravity gave help to this little peddle wagon as it picked up speed coming down the hill. Mr. Brink’s peddle wagon was powered by a Model A, four-cylinder Ford engine. He, or someone before him, had attached to these four skinny tires, a painted blue frame. Hanging on for dear life to this frame was a collection of red painted boxes and bays of odd sizes and shapes, popping out here and there from its strung-together body. Somehow, this blue contraption with its attendant red cubicles, moved in a miraculously discordant unity.
The minutes went by slowly for the waiting kids. Finally, the peddle wagon passed over the wooden bridge of the West Branch Creek, only a pasture’s length away from their driveway. By the time Mr. Brinks had made his slow turn into the farm’s newly leveled, gravel driveway, the kids and Mom were all waiting at the end of the sidewalk.
Excitement rushed over the kids as the treat wagon slowly came to stop at the end of the sidewalk. It was at that moment when the five pennies in their pockets, given to each of them for their weekly allowance, began to jingle in their pockets. Their fingers pinched the pennies checking to see if they were still there.
Mr. Brinks turned off the engine and smiled at them from behind the steering wheel. They returned his smile with laughs, waves of greeting and smiles of their own. Mr. Brinks was a kind, patient man.
Mr. Brinks slowly stepped out of his peddle wagon. He sauntered to the waiting assembly. His walk reminded the kids of the story of a sloth that their teacher, Mrs. Bomgaars had told them. The older kids smiled knowingly at each other.
He greeted each of the kids by name in his easy-going speech. His affection for them was obvious. His eyes showered kindness over them as they crowded around him. His quick smile and the sparkle in his eyes were genuine, and they were memorable.
Memorable, because it took some time for his smile to travel to the far corners of his mouth. His smile seemed to open his droopy eyes and creases in deep horizontal lines appeared on his forehead.
His broad smile also revealed a man who seldom, if ever, had visited a dentist. His eye teeth were missing on his upper jaw, there were some empty spaces between teeth on his lower jaw. The older kids had heard a neighbor talk about smiles like Mr. Brinks’ as “summer teeth” – som-er here and som-er there! It never occurred to them that his tooth-missing smile, slow gait, and the peculiar tilt to his body was in any way different from most of their family, friends, neighbors, and fellow church members. Most of them also had some form of modified facial appearance, characteristic body limp, or leaning acquired from one of their many life challenges.
Mr. Brinks approached the family with a modest nod and greeting to Mom. He surveyed the family with slow, eye-to-eye recognition of each child, smiling broadly to them and addressing each of them by their first names in a breathy, soft-spoken slow drawl. Their returning smiles mirrored their admiration for him. The children, barely able to contain their excitement, waited patiently for Mr. Brinks to finish his greetings while secretly thinking, Let’s get over the hi’s and hellos, Mr. Brinks, and get on with buying our treats!
Mr. Brinks moved to the driver’s side of his mobile store. For perhaps the umpteenth time that day, he began to place large metal support rods into metal pockets of the peddle wagon to hold up the wooden sides. The now-opened peddle wagon revealed cubbies, compartments, doors, drawers, and boxes, some of them were held with a latch and a fastener. Others were drawers that opened with brass pulls and white porcelain knobs, some were held in place with a clasp and a pin attached to a chain, while still others were like tables that dropped down and held in place with flimsy chains.
Every section he opened was like celebrating Christmas Eve in the middle of a hot July day. As he opened his Pandora’s wagon of treats, he continued his casual conversation with the kids. Finally, all the doors and drawers, cubbies, compartments, and tables were opened.
Mr. Brinks declared he was ready for business.
The kids clamored around the peddle wagon, trying to get a better look. The drop-down tables were higher-than-eyeball view for the kids. They could see the myriad colors and shapes of their sweet choices. There were foot-long braids of red and black licorice. In other drawers there were white
and pink unwrapped peppermints, selling for fifteen cents for thirty peppermints. In the next drawer were small packs of Black Jack and Juicy Fruit gum.
In another drawer were small metal containers with “Sin-Sin” inside. The kids called the contents Sin-Sin because they only tasted them when sitting sleepily on hard church pews. Mom knew them as Sen-Sen, a candy with a lofty purpose, -- to stay awake in church! The kids knew about “sin” but not” sen”. For years they had incorrectly heard Dad and Mom to refer to them as “Sin-Sin”. They had no idea what ‘Sen-Sen’ was! So, the bitter, distasteful bad breath treatment of ‘Sen-Sen’ persisted as “Sin-Sin” in their minds.
The kids’ favorite was the soft, gooey goodness of the pink bubble gum: They knew what would happen if they chewed just a single chunk of gum: bubbles would grow so large that they would cover their faces, popping in a muffled poof, leaving bubble gum stuck to their mouths, chins, and noses. The kids also knew what would happen if they packed two of the gummy wads into their mouths. It would pop with an even softer “poof,” but the bubble would settle slowly, covering their faces from their chins to their foreheads and cheek to cheek. They knew the feat of blowing the biggest bubble with a double bubble gum would give them bragging rights and garner the admiration of the other kids.
But there also was a bonus to the pink, one-cent bubble gum: it came wrapped in waxed paper, on which was printed a six-panel, folded, comic strip…in color!! Some of the six-paneled stories were short stories of heroes overcoming tremendous odds, all told within those six panels. Others were stories of cartoon character’s humorous exploits that drew smiles and ‘ahs’ as the kids passed the stories around. It didn’t matter whether the kids could read them or not. The older siblings, Mom or Dad, would read the stories aloud as the kids followed along with the pictures.
Another of their favorite treats was jawbreakers. They came in every color imaginable, but each color seemed new and exotic to the youngest kids. There were so many colors that their country schoolteacher had not yet taught the youngest of the children the color names. The smaller jaw breakers sold for one penny each. The giant jaw breakers, nearly twice the size of the smaller ones, sold for two pennies each.
The giant jaw breakers were held in high esteem with the kids. They were so big that they could last for hours inside their cheeks. There were squeals of laughter as they tried to talk with the giant spheres in their mouths. There was no way they could be understood. It was gibberish. The kids found ways to overcome this babbled speech among the gaggled group. They could tuck the jaw breaker into one of their cheeks, giving the appearance of having a major toothache. Or, they could hold the sticky confection in their hands and continue to negotiate for additional treats in an understandable language.
By popping the jaw breakers in and out of their mouths, their sweet goodness could melt down for hours, until only a BB-sized-center remained, and with a strong bite of their grown-up teeth, crush it into sweet oblivion. The kids had another way of extending the life of jaw breakers and gum: storing them overnight on the top of the bedpost or on a nearby windowsill, the gum waiting to be softened and re-chewed again for another four or five days of enjoyment.
Two of the boys decided to combine their allowance and buy a package of candied Lucky Strikes. They were a bit smaller than the real cigarettes that the grown-ups smoked, but they did have a red colored tip, simulating a real-McCoy. It was fun to hang a cigarette from their loosely pursed lips and imitate some of the older boys smoking the real cigarettes. They figured for today they could afford to spend half of their allowance for a pack of candy cigarettes. Besides, they might be able to sell two of them for a penny.
While the children were making their precious .05-cent weekly allowance buying decisions, Mom went about doing her weekly shopping with Mr. Brinks. The two grownups walked around the back of the peddle wagon. Mr. Brinks already knew what Mom was going to order, as it was the same order she had made every week for many months.
On the back hung an additional box, not much larger than a trans-Atlantic steamer trunk. It was the ice box. Among the blocks of ice were processed meats such as red-dyed ring bologna, small packages of liverwurst, sliced salami, and more. Store-bought meat was the first item she examined as the squeaky hinges of the ice box were lifted. Processed meat was a special treat for a family normally accustomed to eating butchered and colorless home-canned meats for their daily meals and lunch pails. But Mr. Brink’s ring bologna was colorful, salty, perfectly formed, and tied up into an oval shape, with both ends held together with a waxed string.
On the opposite side of the wagon Mr. Brinks carried his bread and cereals. The bread loaves were wrapped in white plastic, printed with different-sized balloons of many colors. They came to know it as Wonder Bread. It was rare that Mom would indulge in any of the store-bought bread baked outside her own farm kitchen. She reminded herself that it was only last Saturday that she and the girls had baked six loaves of bread. She knew her family would object to her buying Wonder Bread. Her home-baked fresh bread, with buttery crusts and big holes in the slices, was one of their favorite foods. Everyone looked forward to smelling the freshly baked bread in their greased rectangular pans, with breadcrusts spilling over the sides of the pan. Wonder Bread had no such smell. It looked and tasted sterile. It had no air pockets of their sliced homemade bread. No, there was no need for store-bought bread.
The cereals were different and regularly caught her eye. She was accustomed to purchasing large, round cardboard containers of Quaker Oats oatmeal with a picture of a pilgrim on the side. One such container purchase would usually last two weeks of breakfasts and baking.
But there were newer cereals of interest to Mom. One was a newer General Mills cereal called Cheerios. Their taste, shape, and crunchiness were quite different from the eggs, meat, bread, balkonbrei, leberwurst, fet, and strop of their typical breakfast. Mr. Brinks could count on Mom to buy at least two boxes of dried cereal every week. But she recently had second thoughts about purchasing these cereals. Last month, one of the boys had poured out the Cheerios into his breakfast bowl only to find maggots writhing about in the milk and Cheerios.
Now with the shopping nearly done, it was time for Mom to barter with Mr. Brinks. Mom had set aside cartons of four dozen fresh, cleaned farm eggs on the sidewalk. She asked Mr. Brinks if she could exchange them for two rings of bologna, a small box of brown sugar, and a box of corn flakes. Mr. Brinks smiled with his approval. He was certain he could re-barter or sell them to other farmers or Middeburgans who needed eggs. It was only a matter of seconds before they both agreed to the exchange.
Finally, each kid made their buying decisions. They paid Mr. Brinks for their treats with their five-penny weekly allowance and celebrated their purchases. Mom looked at the kids with pride. They had learned a valuable lesson in making their own decisions. She then settled up with Mr. Brinks.
The kids barely noticed Mr. Brinks as he began to close the doors, drawers, and boxes of his bright-red- and-blue-peddle wagon. Their chatter and happiness were in full bloom. They laughed at each other with their jaw-breaker impeded-speech. Their eyes were wide with amazement as the pink double bubble gums popped, covering their faces. They guffawed as the oldest boy read the bubble gum stories to them.
Mr. Brinks surveyed this happy scene, then stepped on the running board of the jalopy and slid behind the steering wheel. He gave Mom a modest goodbye wave and turned the starter of his Model A, making the motor sputter to a wheezing start. Startled by the labored start of the motor, the kids’ attention suddenly turned to Mr. Brinks. He smiled at them, and they returned his smile with waves and enthusiastic goodbyes.
Suddenly, it was over as quickly as it had begun. Mr. Brinks was off to his next neighborhood customer, trailed by a small cloud of farm road dust.
The family had just experienced one of their favorite weekly visitors to their farm. Already, the kids knew Mr. Brinks would return next week, bringing with him store-bought groceries, colorful sweets, and fun! Even now, they could imagine Mr. Brinks coming down the Vander Wilt hill and turning into their driveway in his bright red-and-blue mobile grocery store.
They could hardly wait!!
[1] Peddle wagons were rather common in the 1920’s to 1950’s. It was so named because merchants travelled the countryside, selling their goods from a wagon. The body of the peddle wagon could be almost anything if it was powered by some sort of a motor. The peddle wagon depicted is a precedent of peddle wagons 15 years prior to Mr. Brink's wagon.
CONTRIBUTORS: Cleo Te Slaa, Dee Gorter, Clarence Gorter, Mitchel and Emily Punt, Arlene Schovald, Vicki Trautman, Pat Haverman, Cathy Te Slaa, Proofreader, Josephine Moore, Editor. Caesar Orosco, Web Master
1. Prologue to Farm Stories
Growing Up on a Northwest Iowa Farm in the Middle Third of Twentieth-Century America
These stories, essays, and vignettes mostly describe rural family life from the 1930s to mid-1960s America.
We are the grandchildren of immigrants who left behind various Dutch provinces to come to America - traversing a vast ocean, leaving their farms and families, surviving an extended depression, and bearing front-row witnesses to World Wars I and II as well as and the Korean War, all to start a new life. We are the inheritors of such a legacy.
Their descendants shared similar Dutch backgrounds and espoused similar social and conservative political values. Their deeply held religious convictions guided their social order, and they held a deeply-rooted affinity for the earth. They lived through the transition from the power of horses to the power of tractors.
Information about our first generation, late nineteenth and early twentieth-century American ancestors is sparse. We know more about our second-generation ancestors.
Most of these stories relay experiences of the third and fourth generations of our immigrant grandparents, those born in the middle third of the twentieth century. We are fortunate to be able to hear first-person recollections from some of people of these generations.
These are stories of experiences - not diaries - of a place in mid-America. They are presented as generic stories, most without the names of parents (referred to as Mom and Dad) or children. I do this so you can bring your own perspective to each story.
These stories are based on real events and circumstances. My hope is to share stories that uncover the challenges and spirit of these people, discerning their values, understanding their ethics and spirituality, and learning about them as people.
With the passing of our ancestors and contemporaries, so passes their histories. I hope these stories can lead to a deeper understanding of what rural life was during these years.
I welcome your participation in these stories. I hope you will be able to contribute details of their experiences to add greater depth, more facts and information, and more vivid color to each story. It need not be your personal experience, either. It could be a recollection of a grandparent, parent, or friend you’ve heard talk about the subject of any of these the stories.
Let me know if others in your family or friends would like to receive these stories, and I will include them in the story distribution list. I would love our children and grandchildren to respond to these stories.
Thanks to all of you. Let’s see where this will take us!
With respect and affection, Norm Te Slaa
These stories, essays, and vignettes mostly describe rural family life from the 1930s to mid-1960s America.
We are the grandchildren of immigrants who left behind various Dutch provinces to come to America - traversing a vast ocean, leaving their farms and families, surviving an extended depression, and bearing front-row witnesses to World Wars I and II as well as and the Korean War, all to start a new life. We are the inheritors of such a legacy.
Their descendants shared similar Dutch backgrounds and espoused similar social and conservative political values. Their deeply held religious convictions guided their social order, and they held a deeply-rooted affinity for the earth. They lived through the transition from the power of horses to the power of tractors.
Information about our first generation, late nineteenth and early twentieth-century American ancestors is sparse. We know more about our second-generation ancestors.
Most of these stories relay experiences of the third and fourth generations of our immigrant grandparents, those born in the middle third of the twentieth century. We are fortunate to be able to hear first-person recollections from some of people of these generations.
These are stories of experiences - not diaries - of a place in mid-America. They are presented as generic stories, most without the names of parents (referred to as Mom and Dad) or children. I do this so you can bring your own perspective to each story.
These stories are based on real events and circumstances. My hope is to share stories that uncover the challenges and spirit of these people, discerning their values, understanding their ethics and spirituality, and learning about them as people.
With the passing of our ancestors and contemporaries, so passes their histories. I hope these stories can lead to a deeper understanding of what rural life was during these years.
I welcome your participation in these stories. I hope you will be able to contribute details of their experiences to add greater depth, more facts and information, and more vivid color to each story. It need not be your personal experience, either. It could be a recollection of a grandparent, parent, or friend you’ve heard talk about the subject of any of these the stories.
Let me know if others in your family or friends would like to receive these stories, and I will include them in the story distribution list. I would love our children and grandchildren to respond to these stories.
Thanks to all of you. Let’s see where this will take us!
With respect and affection, Norm Te Slaa