Coming of Age At Fifteen

The summer of 1943 was the time I was initiated into adulthood. There are not
many places today where youths are provided this initiation. There are no tribes
of old men taking boys from their parents and going off into the wilderness for
rituals of endurance, returning them as grownups. I had unknowingly fallen into
such an opportunity.
World War II had been raging for two and a half years. I was fifteen, and a
freshman in High School. A representative of the school presented the students
with opportunities to spend their summer on various Midwestern farms, helping the
farmers. The military draft had taken most of the farm laborers to war, but the
farm products were vital to the war effort. I signed up, being lean and muscular
and a good match for the hard work on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. What a great way
to support the war effort, to get a new experience, and to occupy my summer. My
family concurred, since the program would be well supervised. Within days after
the semester ended I was living in the garret of an old farm house, some one
hundred miles north of Chicago.
My supervisor in the program was Seth Phelps, who came by the farm monthly to ask
how I was doing. He reminded me by his presence that I had made a commitment to
serve the war effort all the way through the summer, until school began again. My
farmer boss, Henry Strohm, laid out the ritual and discipline against which I
would batter my body and my will.

GETTING INTO IT

There was no end of things I had to do for the first time. The days were
filled from beginning to end with instructions and sweat. I had never worked on a
farm before. Farms were places my dad’s parents lived, where I would visit on
Thanksgiving, play with my cousins, and maybe hunt rabbits with the men. This,
however, was serious business, and each hour of the day I learned a new lesson: to
milk a cow (we had Surge electric milkers), harness a horse, run a mower or dump
rake, put up hay, plough the garden, carry the milk cans, clean the barn, feed out
silage, call the cows, wash the cream separator. Henry gave each lesson briefly,
and I proceeded to follow up with failures and successes.
The weeks passed. There was a series of hay cuttings and they had to be raked,
bailed or piled onto the wagon, raised into the haymow and pitched under the
sloping barn roof. Twenty-two cows had to be brought into the barn twice each day
(before dawn and at dusk), after I had cleaned their cow pies from the gutters
that ran behind them and fed silage into the mangers in front of them. Then Henry
and I carried one of the milking machines to each cow, wiping clean her warm, full
udder, placing the funnels onto each of her teats.
There was something peaceful and comforting about the bovine body, her willingness
and thankfulness to be relieved, and the swak-sook noises of the milking line. As
each container, hanging under her belly, was full of milk I would unhook it from
her, carry it to the waiting milk can and empty the contents. Then I would place
the machine on the next cow, as she patiently chewed her breakfast or supper.
After this relatively quiet operation, I placed these 100 pound milk cans on a
rickety two-wheeled cart and rolled it about half a city-block down to the milk
house. That building was situated where a spring of fresh, cool water flowed into
a tank. I lifted the heavy cans off the cart, into the milk house and up over the
edge of the tank, where they were kept cool until the fellow from the milk company
came to pick them up the next morning.
One of the least pleasant chores assigned to me was cleaning out the chicken
house. It was a task so smelly and revolting on a hot summer day that I became
repulsed by the sight of eggs fresh from the henhouse with their dung-covered
shells.
One day Henry told me a calf was being born down in the field, and to sneak along
the lane where I could lie quietly along the fence row and watch this special
miracle. That I did, and it was indeed an awesome sight. The mother immediately
got up, cleaned and cared for the newborn. City boys, like I was, never got to
see such things growing up.

SILO CLEANING

For years I had admired the smooth silhouettes of silos as we would drive
through the countryside. They seemed to be always attached to barns, but I had no
idea how they were used. The Strohm farm had its solitary silo, a tall tank
attached to the cow barn. Within hours of my arrival at the farm I was inside of
it, and immediately discovered how it was used. It held chopped corn with stalks
that were fed out to the cows while they were in for milking. Silage fermented
over the months, and as the winters turned to spring the mash was terribly
pungent. Henry told me that some farmers placed open jugs at the bottom of the
silo before putting in each year’s crop. The fermented corn liquor collected to
create quite a powerful drink. Henry’s Lutheran commitment did not permit such
indulgences, but now I understood the jokes about “white lightening” as the
pungent odor overwhelmed me.
Sometime in early summer or late spring the remainder of the silage had been
covered over with tarpaper, held down by boards. My job was to uncover this pile
so that we could feed it out over the next weeks and have the silo empty in time
for refilling in September. I jumped down about four feet from the barn floor
into the sunken, circular space. Looking up at the tall empty space above me, I
became dizzy enough to lose my footing. I landed on the boards, and a loud SQUEAK
revealed a nest of mice right where I sat down. I peeled back the tarpaper and
discovered dozens of mice that had found homes and raised young in this
undisturbed hideaway of endless food. They all seemed a bit tipsy as they ran in
every direction trying to scramble up the walls, but most were unable to leap the
distance out of the hold. Some made it, but others fell back to be trampled by my
work boots according to the instructions I had received. I did “the dance of the
corn mash” as I pranced from side to side, killing mice. Several cats joined me
in the gruesome operation, and for me the place became the most abhorrent location
on the farm, that is next to the chicken house.
For several weeks I had to endure the awful odor of fermented corn silage while I
rationed it out to the cows. I was told it was a powerful stimulant for their
milk, and a little went a long way when blended with hay. I remember how one day
the loneliness of my situation rushed over me while shoveling out the day’s
silage, and I sat down in the mess to indulge in a good cry. Who was I to call
upon? Mom? Dad? God? Only God brought me comfort, though the pain was still
there.

MOWING

There was very little about farming that I liked as the summer progressed
except mowing the hay. I really enjoyed driving the tractor or the team of
horses, depending on which Henry decided to use that day. It was not clear to me
why horses would ever be used instead of the tractor, but I loved to harness the
big team and ride the mower behind them around and around the field. This job
took me out in the fields, away from the barn with its cow manure and silage and
hay. It was a job that didn’t take a whole lot of effort, and I would play games
with the symmetry of the swath I was cutting.
After the mowing there was the raking. The onslaught of the dump rake stirred up
rabbits, grouse and mice, which made it all the more interesting. Being close to
the horses, Jolly and Molly, was enjoyable. The interplay between them and me was
a challenge. Unlike most of my tasks, which required only muscular strength and
endurance, this one stimulated my mind.

THE DUMP RAKE

I must tell you about the dump rake. Henry had borrowed his neighbor’s, a wide
contraption carried between two large steel-spoke wheels. It worked like a comb
gathering snarls, as its curved teeth raked the ground pulling the mowed alfalfa
into windrows. Riding the metal seat the driver could look down and see when the
contraption was full, pull the trip lever, and the rake swung upward to deposit
the load. Each time around the field the load was dumped on the same lines,
called windrows. These were left to dry, and then the bailing machine would run
up the windrow pulling in the endless line of hay, compacting it, tying it with
wire, and spitting it out the other end. I marveled at the geniuses who invented
these machines. Each time we came in line with the windrow I pulled a lever and
the rake came up. It left the gathered hay, then lowered to start gathering
again. The trick was to raise it in such a timely manner that the added mop of
hay was exactly in line with the previous dump.
One day, before I had been taught to use the dump rake, it was time to take
the hay. Henry had not planned for me to do it, but I pleaded. “I can do it, I
can drive the horses and operate the rake,” I assured him. I thought this would
surely be better than cleaning out the chicken house, which Henry wanted me to do.

My mentor was reluctant, “This dump rake isn’t mine. It belongs to a

neighbor and we don’t get along too well anyhow,” he said. “If anything happened
to it…”
I interrupted, “I’ll be very careful. I know I can do it.”
Henry surrendered, and soon I was on my way with Henry’s caution in my ears,
“Be very careful when you bring the horses along the fence row. Keep them at a
slow pace and wide from the fence. If that big wheel got caught in the fence it
would be a disaster...”
The image was vivid. He didn’t have to finish the sentence.
The afternoon went well and I had the small field of hay laid out in
windrows for the sun to dry. I thought about how complicated it was for the
farmer; so many steps to get in his crops, so many hours expended! The horses
were eager to get home. It was time to eat and they knew it, so when I turned the
dump rake out of the field and into the lane toward the barn the team took off. I
held them back at first, conscious of the fencerow that we were passing, post
after post. Soon, however, they broke into a trot, and the breeze felt good on my
sweaty face and body. The fence posts whizzed by with increasing speed and
Henry’s warning replayed in my mind. The horses became erratic, weaving left and
right as I tried to pull them in. The huge iron wheel with its long thin spokes
veered dangerously close to the fence, and I pulled hard to the left on the reins
to get the team away. Suddenly they were in a gallop, and just as suddenly I was
lying in the lane in front of the horses who had stopped dead in their tracks.
The momentum had carried me over their heads. To my horror I saw the great wheel
was entangled in the fence, buckled inward on one side.
I do not like to rehearse this. After these many decades it is still one of
my most painful moments. Frankly, I have suppressed the rest of the story. I
don’t know why Henry didn’t send me home that night. I think he was shocked and
saddened, and probably blamed himself for letting a kid talk him into driving the
borrowed dump rake. I vaguely recall that he and I went to call on the neighbor
for my confession of sin. Other than that, apparently Henry and his neighbor
worked it out. I don’t know who paid for the damage, how or when it was fixed. I
do know the horrible experience probably helped set my resolve to stick it out
with Henry, and try to make up for what I had done.

PUTTING UP HAY

After cutting and raking the alfalfa, the third step was to get it into the barn.
I recall one time Henry borrowed a bailer, and while he drove the tractor I sat on
the bailer and fed in the wires for the bales. Later the horses pulled a hay wagon
and we would toss the bales up onto it, jumping up often to stack them. The full
wagon was taken to the barn where a long delivery belt, driven by the old tractor
(a real relic that powered everything on the farm that needed powering), carried
the bales up to the open door of the haymow. I stood up there with a hay hook in
my hand, a murderous instrument. I grabbed each bale by the wire with one hand
and slammed the hook into the end, piling them up in the mow until they reached
the ceiling rafters. This was hot and dirty work, taxing every muscle in my body.
Sometimes we would not bale the hay if the borrowed bailer was not
available, but it still had to be gotten in from the field before rain caused it
to mold. The horse drawn hay wagon proceeded along the windrow while we pitched
the loose hay onto the wagon. Often Henry pitched while I stood on the wagon,
taking each forkful and packing it into a neat pile. I couldn’t believe how high
we stacked it. As it built up I kept on top of the stack. The upright stays at
the front and back of the wagon disappeared from my sight and the flatbed wagon
swayed from side to side. I had a time of it to keep my footing. Henry’s 80-acre
dairy farm could not support all the necessary machinery, so he would rent such
things or barter for them with a neighbor. The trade-off was usually labor, and
during the summer I got in a several such trades.
At the barn the loose hay was lifted from the wagon to the mow in the
following manner. The horses were unhitched from the wagon, and harnessed to a
long rope that went up through a giant pulley over the open door of the third-
floor high haymow. At end of the rope a huge three-tong collapsible hook was
attached. Henry would set the open hook into the top of the hay on the wagon,
jump off and take the reins to drive the horses slowly away from the barn. The
tension on the rope would set the hook and lift the large bundle of hay to the
mow. There I reached out and grabbed it with the hay hook, pulling it in through
the door as the horses backed up to give slack. Then I released the hook, and
sent it back for another load. The terribly dirty, itchy, dusty hay would go down
my shirt while I attempted to stack to loose hay in the mow. I could hardly wait
for a bath at the end of the day.

BATH

The farmhouse had no plumbing, another new adventure for this city boy. The
outhouse with its proverbial path leading “out back” became a familiar
environment, with its rough toilet paper supplemented by a Sears catalogue. As
for washing face and hands, a basin and pitcher in my bedroom was the source of
refreshment for the morning, and basins outside the back door were the place to
cleanse the grime from arms, neck, and face before entering for a meal. It was
near the end of my first week there that Carol, Henry’s wife, mentioned a bath.
The method she revealed gave me a fright. I would bathe in a back room off the
kitchen in a steel washtub that was set in the middle of the rough wooden floor.
It was terrible to consider being so naked and vulnerable in that stuffy room with
this family only a door away. I felt condemned and sentenced to some new torture
as she poured the boiling hot water into the tub. It cooled rapidly, mixing with
the cold water already there. I watched her disappear behind the closing door,
and I quickly shed my clothes – work shirt, socks, blue jeans. Finally, with a
further glance at the door I turned my back and yanked off my under-ware, stepping
into the tub. I imagined the wife peeking at me through the crack in the door,
lustily watching my muscular youthfulness revealed from top to bottom, watching me
bend over as I stepped into the water to soak off the impediments of four days of
work.
In fact, she was long gone from the doorway, refilling the kettle at the
pump in the sink, and probably laughing with Henry at this shy boy who had never
bathed in an egg-room before. This room was also the storage place for eggs,
where Carol cleaned and sized them for market. I did not often collect eggs
because I was busy with the cows.
There was one other way to take a bath on the farm. There was a nearby
pond. I was hard put to know which was the most embarrassing. It was either in
the small washtub off the kitchen, or skinny-dipping. One day Henry drove me in
his truck to a swampy area where springs seeped out from under the oak trees, and
a swimming hole had formed in a manmade excavation. We parked under the trees,
got out on the wild course grass, and Henry began taking off his clothes. His
skinny body and bald head was lily white compared to his arms and face that were
so brown. I remember watching in awe as the overalls came off, arms pulled out
through the cross straps and dropped to reveal a peculiar single-piece
undergarment. Slowly Henry unbuttoned the front of the long johns, all the time
ordering me to get undressed for the cleansing plunge. It was an awkward moment
for my modesty.
I knew there was no one in miles to see me. The road was out of sight, over
a knoll, but Henry was there; my boss who still seemed like a stranger to me. He
had done his best to be kindly and understanding of my inexperience at skinny-
dipping. I was still unbuttoning my shirt when Henry peeled down the speckled,
off-white union suit over his mid section, and then stepped out of it, lifting one
leg out and then the other. It seemed reasonable that this grown man would have
turned his back and not revealed himself so fully. It was the first full-sighted
glimpse of a naked man I had ever witnessed. Our family had always been rather
modest as I was growing up.
Without waiting, Henry leaped into the water and I recall seeing that snow-
white butt flying through the air to disappear in the chilly pond. It was my
opportunity to turn away from the pond, quickly strip, turn and plunge into the
water. It was great! Refreshing, cooling, cleansing. I loved it, and after that
our trips to the bathing pond were without trepidation.

WANTED TO QUIT

How often I wanted to quit. Just up and quit! Why did I stay? I have to admit I
did not remember the patriotism associated with what I was doing. The family was
at the summer cottage on Lake Michigan, responding to my whining letters by urging
me to give it up and join them there. I was lonely, and I never bonded with the
Strohms, nor did I find nearby peers. I guess I was too shy, too introverted. The
work seemed like unpaid, painful, dirty slavery. Why did I stay? Pride perhaps. I
cared about what the school would think, where I had volunteered for the job. I
cared what this farm family would think, and I knew I could not leave Henry in the
lurch. He needed me, as evidenced by the assignments he gave me and by his
forgiving spirit when I messed up. Perhaps most of all it mattered what I thought
of myself. Something deep within held true to the commitment I had made for the
entire summer – part of June, all of July and August, and into September. As
stumbling as I was on the job, costing Henry money by my mistakes, what would he
do without me? There was no one to fill my place. Carol usually worked beside
her husband, but the new baby changed all that. I had to stay until school
started, that is all there was to it! But through it all I was becoming an adult.
The boy was fading. I would never see the world the same after that.

It was strange to live in such proximity to a family and yet feel so isolated.
Henry was generous and patient, and prodded a growing response from me. We began
to establish camaraderie. Henry, around 40 years of age, seems to have missed
this because he was late to marry Carol and have their one daughter, Joy. She was
a few months old when I arrived on the scene. I think as the weeks passed I began
to be a surrogate son, replacing the one Henry would never have. However, it did
not occur to my youthful insensitivity to respond to the members of the household
as if they were family. I saw myself as a boarder, a hired hand, the misplaced
son of another family far away. For me this was an ordeal, a discipline I knew
instinctively must be endured.
Such an outlook made my summer commitment more of an incarceration than a
pleasure. I did not enter in to the fun. I do not remember the light moments, only
the work. Times of laughter or table fellowship or evening relaxation simply faded
from memory as they passed. I count this a terrible loss, and wish I could have
that summer back with the wisdom of later years.

THRESHING

As the wheat and oats turned golden in July it was time for threshing. This is the
process by which the grain is beaten out of the husks and separated from the
straw. The threshing machine was old, like the ones I had seen in pictures of
antiques. It was not quite old enough to be driven by a steam engine, but by an
old McCormick tractor, the 10-40 I had learned to drive on the farm for cutting
hay. The long belt from the stationary tractor turned an apparatus as complicated
an anything I had seen, and noisier than the trolleys or elevated trains of
Chicago. It not only thrashed the wheat, it thrashed the ears of everyone around
it. My job was to hold burlap bags under the spout where the grain came forth, as
the men brought wagonloads of wheat bundles in from the fields and pitched them
onto the moving table. At a certain point I had to slam the door closed on the
chute, tie the bag, and carry it to a nearby shed where it was stacked. Where
these bags of grain went from there I neither knew nor cared. I only thought about
finishing the day and getting out of there, away from that all-consuming machine.
It spit chaff and beards and dust down into my neck and shirt. I itched, my ears
were ringing, my muscles ached, and this went on for several days as the crew of
neighbors joined in the labor. I began to get the idea that the threshing machine
was owned by one man and rented by each of the others. All the men from the
surrounding farms formed a crew, going from one place to the other, sharing their
labor until the wheat harvest was in.
It did not occur to me that this was a great idea, a cooperative effort that
showed the best of barter and neighborliness. The camaraderie was strong, the
gossip and joke exchanges went on all day, men bantering, teasing, bothering, and
supporting each other. I felt so unattached that my mind began to take off in
fantasy. At fifteen I was not yet a man, yet I was doing a man’s work. The talk
seemed so shallow, so irrelevant to me. My mind was on how the machines worked,
and why this job had to be so hard, so itchy. When would it be over? How clean
and fun it would be to be on the beach in front of the family cottage. Perhaps I
could yet go there, and leave all this. Tonight I would announce my departure, and
tomorrow I would be on my way. Henry would take me to the train. No, Henry would
be thrashing wheat, so I would hitch hike to town where I could get a bus.
The lunch bell sounded! It was more than welcome. Even the men feeding the
bundles onto the table stopped in the middle of a load. The wheat quit flowing,
and I left the partly full bag standing under the shoot as I headed for the house.
We lined up at the several washbasins outside the back door. I had never seen a
meal like this one. The men sat at a long narrow table and were served heaping
dishes of food by almost as many women. There were chops, potatoes, three
vegetables, bread in great stacks, and, later, a variety of pies. Looking down
the table I saw a dozen blue-shirted arms striking out and pulling back with
objects of food on their forks. The remarks and laughter slowed, overcome by the
clatter of knives, forks, and spoons against pottery. There was the chomping of
busy jaws, some of which still mumbled half understood remarks. I ate in silence.
Why couldn’t I feel part of this? It was as though I was an invisible participant
in a strange ritual.

POKER

One day Henry informed me that some men were coming by that evening for
poker, and I was welcome to play. At home my friends and I spent occasional
evenings in what we called “poker parties.” I knew the hands and felt secure in
the rules of the game, so I agreed to sit in with their table that evening. The
players included Henry and two of his friends. Soon it was obvious these fellows
spent many cold winter days together at one or another’s kitchen table playing the
game. I was no match for this, and I never won a hand all evening. The betting
was small, but so was my salary of ten dollars a month. That meant thirty dollars
for the whole summer. Of course, salary was not why I was there, but the idea of
the pocket money when I went home was nice to consider. After a little over an
hour the thirty dollars had been squandered, two thirds of it on loan from Henry.

I felt that wave of loneliness again; the kind that could have been
comforted by a father’s reassuring word or a mother’s embrace. Neither was there
for me. Henry gave no indication that it might all be a joke and I had not really
lost the money. In fact, Henry simply smiled and with a tone of compassion said
something about the danger of a city boy gambling with men who played poker all
winter. Let it be a lesson, was the implication, though I thought it was a very
severe lesson. One I would not forget, and recalled for my benefit three years
later when I went to college. Feeling isolated from the others I made my
apologies and went up to bed.

DEAD HORSE

One morning as Henry and I approached the barn we were startled to see one
of the horses lying in the barn yard. It quickly became apparent she had gotten
into the corn that night and had eaten enough to kill her. She was terribly
bloated and dying. Henry seemed to know immediately what he had to do. He went
and got his rifle, and there as I watched, he put her out of her misery. Then he
did something that was traumatic. He got a large knife and cut off the head,
explaining to me that the summer heat would destroy her meat unless fresh air was
allowed into the carcass. He would telephone the rendering plant to come and pick
up the dead horse. All such dead animals on the farm were sold to the company
that could use the products. For example, from the horse came hooves to make glue
and gelatin; from the flesh would come dog food.
Then Henry had me do something extremely distasteful. “Put your arm down
inside and feel how hot it already is.” He was already thrusting his arm down the
open cavity into the horse’s insides. Like the kid whose daredevil motto had
been, “Try anything once,” I followed suit. It was terribly hot and I couldn’t
get my bloodied arm out of there fast enough.
The man from the rendering plant arrived and hauled away the poor creature’s
body. The rest of the day I was haunted by this event, and found a sob choking my
throat and tears in my eyes more than once.

SILO FILLING

I did take a vacation at my parent’s behest, two weeks at the family’s

Michigan cottage during August. Then I returned as promised to the Strohm farm in
Wisconsin to help Henry fill the silo. He and I walked through the fields cutting
the tall green stalks with a corn knife and throwing them into a tall-sided wagon.
When the wagon was full we pulled it up to the cutter table, and I went into the
silo while Henry pitched the corn onto the moving belt. The cutter belt fed the
green corn into a giant fan blade that chopped it into pieces an inch square.
This silage was then blown up a long tube that went over the top and back down on
the inside. I held the end and directed the machine-gun like barrage of chopped
corn so that it was evenly spread around the rising floor. As the level of the
silage raised, I removed another section of the stove-pipe like tube. Then I
would climb out of the silo and join Henry to go for another load.
We worked this way for days. One cool September morning I had worn a plaid
flannel short. By the time we came in with the first load of corn I was
perspiring and took the shirt off, laying it on the cutter table. Inside the
silo, my first several minutes of spreading included a flurry of red, green,
yellow and blue flannel pieces, about an inch square. Henry could not hear my
exclamations from his place by the noisy chopper. I wondered how we could come to
the end of the summer and I was still doing such stupid things. I also wondered
how, during the coming winter, my flannel pieces would digest and make milk.

HOME AGAIN

I think I was a week late in returning to school, but since it was from that
school that I had made the commitment, they allowed the lateness. As we were
leaving the farm my parent’s car was loaded with clothes all freshly washed by
Carol. Henry came up close and shook my hand. His white toothed smile matched the
white bareness of his bald head. I felt something pressed into my palm during the
exchange. It was the thirty dollars I had lost at poker.
Tears began to brim in my eyes. I would miss this dear couple who had been so
patient with me. Right then I felt closer to them than I had felt all summer,
warm and loving. Intuitively I knew that something terribly important had
happened to me that summer. I would never be the same person.
We did establish contact through the mail, and I had opportunity to tell them how
much they meant to me, and how they had blessed me with a growing maturity.
Through these exchanges I would also learn how I also changed their lives. They
had been blessed by the visitation. For one long, wonderful summer of mutual
struggle, they had had a son.
About thirty years later, after Henry had died and Joy had grown up, Carol and Joy
visited me at our home in Tucson, Arizona. They were passing through town and had
looked me up. It was a very special moment for each of us.