Party Line

Once, when I had a bad cold, I was allowed to stay home from school. It was winter and the mile walk to Zilley school was not fun, even when I felt OK. Besides, staying home while my brother had to go to school was really nice. He was in seventh grade and was a real pain.

Mom went out to do some chores. I wasn’t sick enough to be in bed. Besides, at age five or so, I was all jiggle and wiggle with no patience. Well, as I was scouting around for something to do, the telephone rang, one long and two shorts. We lived way out in the country and had a party line with eight families on it. One long and two shorts was the Maxworthy’s ring. They lived about a mile down the road from us.

When it rang a second time, my curiosity really took hold of me. I waited. It didn’t ring again. Now I knew that usually the operator would let it ring four or five times before giving up. That meant that Mrs. Maxworthy had picked up and was talking.

The urge to listen burned my ear something fierce. I got a chair from the dining room table and brought it over to where the old phone box hung on the wall. Very carefully I lifted the bell-shaped black receiver off its hook and put it to my ear.

Sure enough, Mrs. Maxworthy was talking to some lady whose voice I didn’t recognize. I snickered quietly to myself as I listened to their conversation. I didn’t get any kick out of what they were saying - I just liked the idea that I was a secret spy listening in without being detected.

After a few minutes I heard the outside screen door open. I put the receiver back in its cradle as silently as I had picked it up, then hurriedly put the chair back. I was smugness itself, already sitting in a chair when Mom came into the kitchen, stamping snow off her boots. I felt that a career as a spy might be just the thing for me when I got a little older.

All was normal until just about noon. The phone rang again, one long and one short. That was our ring. We didn’t get many calls and so I was immediately interested and couldn’t wait for Mom to answer. She ex- changed pleasantries for a minute, then said that she had been outside a bit earlier.

Then there was a silence and Mom looked at me, first in surprise and then with the simmering glower than foretold a storm of epic proportions. She hung up quickly. She turned to me. “Young man, were you listening on the phone while I was outside?”

“Gee, no Mom, I was just playing in my room.”

Well, that little lie precipitated a personal World War II for me (since this took place before the real World War II). Not only did she get me for listening, but she also punished me for lying.

How did she know I was listening? Well,we were the only people in the whole area who kept canaries. They had been singing sweetly all the while I was keeping so quiet. Of course, I was so used to hearing them I never even gave them a thought.

That night, my behind was sorer than my throat. It is truly uncomfortable to cry and sniffle when you have a stuffy nose already. As I sulked in my room, I abandoned the idea of being a spy. Too many hazards in that line of work.

Parlor

On the north side of my grandapa's house was a large parlor. This room was only used for special company, and had double pocket doors that kept it closed from the rest of the house. There were four large windows and a smaller door that led out onto the porch. The furniture in this room was kept covered with sheets unless company was coming. It was cleaned twice a year when the windows were opened, the rugs were taken outside and beaten and the furniture beaten and cleaned. As a child, I was in awe of this room. It had an eerie smell that I know now was a musty smell, but because it was unrecognizable to me as a child, it was mysterious. I loved to sneak in there and look at the elegant furniture and feel the sofa and chairs. What a wonderful place.

I remember the furniture as being upholstered in muted colors of browns and purples. The material on the chairs was like brocade. There was fringe on some of the upholstered furniture. An old up-right piano sat against one wall. It had an ornate three-legged stool on which to sit while playing. The seat, when rotated, raised or lowered. It was fun to sit on it and go round and round. I used to sneak into the parlor (strange that we were afraid to just go in) and play the piano. It was never tuned and so the notes were somewhat random sounding. However, it made music and I loved it.

Outhouse

When I was in first or second grade, I got locked in the outhouse at school during recess. The boys and the girls each had a separate outhouse, a two-holer. 

The boys had a trough in which to pee so we didn’t mess up the two-holer. I went to the outhouse just before the bell rang to end recess. Some of the older boys thought it would be fun to lock me in. It was easy to do because the latch mechanism had a big hole in it into which a padlock could be put. They simply put a small stick in that hole, and I couldn’t lift the latch from inside. So I tried to leave, found the door locked, and started to bang on it and yell. The recess bell rang and everyone else went inside. The teacher noted my absence and asked who had seen me. Strangely enough, no one knew where I was. She surmised the truth, however, and dispatched one of the older boys to the outhouse. I was liberated, and the miscreants were never apprehended. 

Orchard

Grandpa Toft had a large orchard with apple, pear, and plum trees. I have al- ways loved apples and was raised on them. Early in the summer all the trees put out the most wonderful blossoms, each variety a different color.  The smell was wonderful. The bees were everywhere, taking the nectar and pollinating the flowers.

The first apples to ripen were the Golden Transparents. They had a very thin skin and were plump. They were the best eating when they still had a slight greenish tint to their skin. In only a week more, they would turn a golden color. In a couple of weeks more they were past their prime. At their best, however, they had a wonderful slight acid/sweet taste. The texture was crisp. They were my favorites. I would pick them from the trees and eat as many as I could hold. There were no insecticides in those days so the apples were clean enough to eat without washing. Because of the acid in the apple, my teeth always felt exceptionally clean and slightly roughened from eating so many. Sometimes they would actually start to hurt. I think the acid in the apples was responsible.

Later in the summer the other red apples would ripen. By that time, I had had my fill. However, these other varieties were excellent for making pies, Brown Betty, and apple sauce. Mom would can as much apple sauce as she could and we would eat it all winter. Grandpa pressed many apples for cider. The smell of the apple pulp, cores, and skins was heady as the sugar in it began to ferment. The bees went wild feasting on the leftovers. The cider was put in big wooden barrels and sealed with a wooden plug called a bung. Though we drank cider as often as we wished, some of the barrels were set aside to turn into vinegar for later use. I don’t know what causes some cider to make vinegar while other barrels just fermented and got alcoholic. It is probably that different yeasts got the upper hand. Grandpa would look at a batch of cider and, if he saw a cloudy mass beginning to form in it, he knew it was going to be vinegar. This mass was called the “mother” of the vinegar.

Other batches were set aside to become hard cider (fermented). Some of this was served as it became more alcoholic. I loved hard cider because it fizzed. The carbon dioxide of the fermentation made it bubbly. I also liked the zing that the slight amount of alcohol and the carbonation gave it. It had a bite that fresh cider lacked.

The casks of hard cider that were not made available for drinking were allowed to continue their fermentation. The alcohol content was about the same as that of beer. When winter came, the hard cider froze. Because of the process of freezing, the water in the cider froze first. The outside froze before the inside. Therefore, the alcoholic cider was concentrated in the center of the barrel. When grandpa thought the time was right, he drew off the liquid from the center and put it in bottles. This was called apple jack and it had a high alcohol content. It was probably comparable to whiskey. Though I was allowed to taste it (it was too strong for my palate), it was definitely reserved for the men. I remember Dad and Uncle Jim sitting around with Grandpa Toft sipping small glasses of apple jack. They sat in the winter kitchen of Grandpa’s farm with a hot fire going in the cook stove. It was a warm and cozy atmosphere. There was usually a big hound dog of uncertain lineage stretched out in front of the stove.

Crab apples were also in abundance. These were smaller and were not used for eating. Mom cooked them up and made clear, reddish, crab apple jelly. It was wonderful.

Many apples were put in bushel baskets in the cellar where the temperature was very cool, but never froze. These were the winter eating apples. My distinct recollection of these apples is that we never got to eat any that were wholly good. Mom would go to the cellar and pick through the apples, taking out any that had mold spots on them. Left alone, the mold would quickly spread to other apples. These moldy apples were brought up and the bad spots were cut off. In my young years I never remember eating a winter apple that did not have some moldy spots cut off. It seemed that we stayed one step ahead of the mold; thus, the mold always got to eat good apples and we took what was left. 

Machine Shop

Dad was very inventive. Since he was an expert machinist, he could build most anything mechanical. When we lived in the contry east of Beloit, where we were born, Dad had a big machine shop and made money by fixing the machinery of neighbors for miles around. He had a big metal lathe and a drill press. 

I was fascinated by a forge which he built. A forge is a forced air-powered fire pot that burns coke at a very high temperature in order to heat metal to red or white hot heat. The metal can then be hammered into various shapes. This procedure has been used by metal smiths for thousands of years, but was largely unknown in a small shop. Dad built his own and had an enormous anvil on which to pound the heated metal. When he had finished working a piece of hot metal he would often drop it in a bucket of water or a bucket of oil, depending on the nature of the metal, and the rapid cooling would harden the surface of the piece. Of course, the piece made a wonderful sound as it hit the water and a fountain of steam arose. 

Although I was young when he had the workshop, I have a reminder of it which I carry with me at all times. To cool the shop in the summer heat, Dad took an aluminum blade shaped exactly like an airplane propeller and mounted it on an electric motor. The blade was about 18 inches in diameter and when the motor was turned on, the blade disappeared because of the speed, leaving only a faint halo as it turned. He instructed us kids to stay away from the fan, but one day curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to see how close I could get my fingers to the blade. Well, I stuck two of them into the space occupied by the whirling blades. Luckily, I was near the hub of the fan where the blade is blunt. I only got a good gash in the two fingers. I can remember Mom running out of the house with a wash basin to hold under my bleeding fingers. I can’t figure out why she didn’t just bring a wash cloth to bind them up. We hurried into the car and went to Dr. Crockett in Beloit. He cleaned the cuts, and simply bandaged them, without stitches. They healed fine but left a couple of prominent scars to remind me. 

Electricity

We had no electricity in the house where I was born. On the dining room table we had a big Aladdin lamp. It burned a form of kerosene and had a mantle for light. The mantle was a fine mesh of some material which would not burn, but which would glow white hot when gasses were burned inside it. Although the glow was intense, it did not give out much light as compared with electric lights. But, in the beginning years of rural electricity, it was more reliable. 

In 1937, the REA (Rural Electrification Administration) of the federal government built electric transmission lines through our part of the state. The power was connected on August 15, 1937. I was four years old. What a thrill it was for farmers to have electric lights instead of kerosene lamps. 

Dad bought a Sears Silvertone radio. It had a wood console about four feet tall, with a lighted dial and real speakers. There were two networks in those days, the Red and the Blue. The dial of the radio was divided, red and blue. A big slender indicator needle swept across the various frequencies as the radio was tuned from station to station. The family would gather around the radio and we were enthralled by everything that we heard.

It wasn’t long before there were powerful radio stations in Chicago, 100 miles away. Regular radio program routines were established and we began tuning in every evening.. I remember seeing a Norman Rockwell painting some years ago that was a typical scene of families across the United States in those days. Everyone was sitting close to the big radio, captivated by the presence of sound coming from the air.

Dad also built a private telephone line between our house and Grandpa Toft’s house. It consisted of two handsets, like those of today, but more bulky. These were connected to a double wire which Dad and Uncle Jim had strung over the road, through the trees, a distance of probably 500 feet. A battery and a ringer at each end completed the system. To call, you would press a button, thus causing the bell to ring at the other end of the line. Someone (usually Aunt Sophia) would then pick up the phone and you could talk.

Since we did not have a telephone in our house, this intercom was very useful. If we got a call, Aunt Sophia would ring us on the private phone and we could find out who was needed. That person would dash over to Grandpa’s house to talk.

One time lightning struck the telephone wire near Grandpa’s house. It sent a bolt of electricity into the house, blew the phone box off the wall, and created a fireball right in the room. 

Cow Barn

I loved the smell in Grandpa Toft’s cow barn. The barn was cut into the hillside, and all the walls in the basement were made of massive rocks. The ceiling was low and supported by large wooden beams. The cow stalls were made of wood that had been rubbed by cow fur for years, making them shiny and smooth. The interior of the cow barn was all white from layer upon layer of white-wash (a calcium and water compound) that had been used as paint and had built up over time. 

The silo was attached to the cow barn and when silage was being doled out to the cows, they became excited by the smell. They loved it! It smelled of molasses and alcohol because it was made from freshly cut corn stalks which were allowed to ferment in the silo. One time I took a small pinch of silage to chew because it smelled so good and the cows enjoyed it so. It tasted awful. However, I never lost my memory of its good smell and can still conjure up the image of that barn.

Grandpa had a big bull which he kept to breed the cows. The bull was kept apart from the cows most of the time. It had a ring through its nose. When he wanted to use the bull, Grandpa would attach a rope to the ring and lead the bull from its pen to the barn yard. I remember the stories I was always told about how vicious bulls were and how dangerous it was to be around them. But I recall seeing this small old man leading the enormous bull. The rope was limp between man and animal, and the bull came along almost like a pet.