A Farmer’S Boy

Copyright © 2012 by Jerome Stanley.

All rights reserved including screen play and film rights. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-5056-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-5058-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-5057-1 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012917623

iUniverse rev. date: 09/25/2012

Contents

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Epilogue

In memory of Uncle John

Page 36 of Cook’s manuscript

 1

It was a bitterly cold winter night when Dr. Bailey was called to the Cook residence to deliver the baby. The doctor bundled up, put on his sheepskin cap with earflaps, and took his black leather bag with him out to the barn. The horses had not yet been unhitched from the buggy since he had come home only a short time before to eat dinner. Fortunately, it was a closed-top buggy open only in the front where the driver sat. At least he would be somewhat protected from the snow that had just begun to fall.

He jumped into the seat, threw the leather medical bag on the floor of the buggy, and snapped the reins. The horses trotted out of the barn into the snow. The whole landscape was eerie, draped in the silent black and white. The air was still, emphasizing the silence. The wheels of the buggy rolled over the new snow with very little noise. The most notable sight and sound was the heavy breathing of the horses and the white vapor from their mouths.

The trip to the Cook home took twenty minutes. He tied the horses to the hitching post and went up steps to the porch. As he knocked, he noticed that the door handle was broken. The midwife Lenora Brooks opened the door. She had prepared everything for the baby’s delivery. She led him to the bedroom. He smiled at his patient, whom he had known since she was a little girl. She was drenched in perspiration but managed a faint smile in return. With the help of Lenora and the doctor, the mother delivered a healthy eight-pound baby boy. The baby was given to the mother, and the two rested comfortably.

Mary Ann, what will you name the baby? the doctor asked.

We’re going to call him John Henry, she replied.

He smiled at her. Now, Mary Ann, you obey my orders to get plenty of rest, and let Lenora help you for the next day or two, said the doctor. I’ll stop by to see you later in the week. If you need anything, Lenora can let me know.

Lenora followed him to the front door, slipping out onto the porch with him and closing the door. She had a pinched and careworn expression. She whispered to him, pointing to the door.

Julius was in a rage because Nathan spoke back to him about something. I didn’t want them quarreling and upsetting Mary Ann, so I sent them both over to Ezra’s place.

That was very wise of you.

You know that Julius is a rigid taskmaster with a temper. As a mere twelve-year-old, Nathan has a streak in him, and he tries his dad’s patience. He really came into this world on the wrong foot as far as Julius is concerned.

Let me know if I can be of any help, the doctor said.

He stepped off of the porch and turned to look back at the house. The thought crossed his mind that this new baby, John Henry, would have a big challenge later in life to become independent from his tyrannical father. He climbed into his buggy and drove off.

John Henry began his schooling at age six in the rural Harmon School. His teacher at school was Eliza Brooks. Two of Eliza’s sisters were students at the school. One day Hanna, one of the sisters, lost her bustle made from a roll of brown paper. It fell out of her dress onto the floor. John was sitting in the seat behind the girl. Eliza spoke to the girl with a warning.

Don’t put that bustle back on here while John is looking, Eliza said.

Oh, he’s too young to notice anything, said the sister in an impish voice and proceeded to replace her bustle.

After school that day, Hanna and her friend Ethel Brooks left the schoolyard together to walk home. Ethel was a couple of years younger than John, and he thought of her as being a mere baby. They saw John walking ahead of them and ran to catch up with him.

Hi, John, said Hanna. We’d like to walk with you.

Sure, John said. But I have to hurry to get home in time to do some chores. Dad says that work on the farm is more important than schoolwork.

Is that why you don’t come to school sometimes? asked Ethel. She had a very sweet smile, John noticed.

Yeah, but I don’t like school much anyway, so the work at home is fine with me. Teachers are only interested in telling me what not to do. But when I work at home, I can be my own boss and stay around the animals. They are my friends. They don’t tell me what to do. And they like me when I feed them.

Just then, Lester Mitchell, the neighborhood bully, ran past them with a couple of boys shouting and calling John a sissy.

Look at John; he’s playing with the girls! Lester and his friends laughed and ran on ahead.

Don’t pay any attention to them, said Ethel. They are just stupid.

 2

After his eighth birthday, John attended school for only about three months out of each year. The fifth grade was his final year in school. That year there were several teachers, each one staying for only a few weeks. One of them taught for three days and then went home sick, never to return. There was a problem with unruly kids in the school. They would often play mean tricks on the teachers. When Mr. Hall was hired to teach, he gave a stern introduction, saying that he would not put up with any jokesters. After that, things were fairly quiet except for two boys who sat on opposite sides of the room and occasionally made soft meows like cats.

Parents and grandparents lived in close proximity on the land, and large family gatherings were common. It was a tight-knit family, with everyone looking out for the others. Grandpa Lewis made John a pair of boots and gave him a white pig as a pet. John went with the pig outside to play one day, and the little animal bolted away to find its mother. John’s dad and grandpa were working together at the barn when the pig and John Henry ran past them.

What’s the matter with you, John? his dad scolded. Can’t you keep that blasted pig from running away?

John felt hurt by his dad’s remarks. He ran after the pig, put it in a sack, and brought it back home. Though his feelings had been hurt, he was proud that he had retrieved the pig on his own without any help. But he realized that his dad could not see this accomplishment as something important.

Julius owned a country store and operated his pig farm. He sold his pigs to the national stockyard in Chicago. When the pigs were mature, they were shipped to the stockyards where they were killed, cured, and shipped back. Julius had to pay the freight to and from Chicago plus commissions both ways. These expenses were passed on to the consumer buying the meat in the store. John learned from his dad about running the country store. In the grocery business of the 1870s, the merchant had to buy from a commissioner instead of directly from the farmer, and he added any commissions to the cost of meat and produce in the store.

The Cook family lived in a log house on the prairie near Shouse Chapel in Bible Grove Township. Outside the kitchen door was a water cistern that supplied the family with water until one year a drought caused the cistern to dry up. Uncle Bill Lewis dropped by one summer evening after dinner and sat on the porch talking quietly with his mom and dad about the need to dig a well. Neighbors often spent evenings visiting each other on their porches amid the singing of crickets in the grass and frogs croaking down at the pond. John had a keen ear and listened intently to these conversations that always taught him new words and ideas about the world around him.

I’ll come over tomorrow and bring a water witch to look for water, said Uncle Bill.

John had heard stories about witches, but he had never seen one, so he looked forward to seeing Bill’s witch the next day. But when Bill arrived, there was no witch. Instead, he was holding a forked willow branch lightly between two hands with the tip pointing forward. When he walked over a subterranean water vein, the tip of the branch pointed downward toward the earth.

Eventually five wells were dug. But these wells still were not sufficient to supply all of the needs on the farm. So his dad dug another well in the blackberry patch two hundred yards north of the house. Uncle Adolph came to help. John watched as they dug down eighteen feet. Adolph was digging at the bottom of the hole when suddenly John heard him shout.

Help me out! The water broke through, and it’s rising fast!

Someone ran to bring a ladder and put it into the hole. A few seconds later, Adolph’s head appeared. He was soaking wet.

I was up to my arms by the time that ladder came down, he said. Somebody go get some buckets. We’ve got to bail out as much water as we can so that I can build a brick wall around the well.

When the well was finished, the water stood five feet deep and supplied the threshing machine and all the cattle.

The well outside the kitchen door, where the family drinking water was drawn a few times each day, was quite intriguing to a small boy. John was drawn to it, and his mother constantly had to warn him.

John, don’t climb up on the well curb! she shouted. John turned his head toward her looking defiant, his hand resting on the side of the well curb.

If you fall into that well, it will be very dark and scary, and water will cover you so that you’ll be unable to breathe.

Finally, his mother had to get him and bring him into the house to prevent him from exploring the well.

Twenty acres of the Cook land was in timber that ran westward two miles to the Little Muddy Creek, where the neighborhood farm boys had their favorite swimming hole in summertime. John was allowed to swim there whenever his older brothers were with him. On hot summer days, he and his brothers jumped naked into the water and enjoyed dipping their feet into the cool mud on the creek bottom. Sometimes the boys fished there for crappie and catfish. John was a dreamer and often stuck his fishing pole in the ground and lay back, looking up at the sky and watching the big cumulus clouds. Someone always had to alert him when a fish took his line.

Timber also ran northward for one mile. John’s dad raised pigs that were allowed to roam free in the timber eating acorns and hickory nuts. In October of each year, they went out to the woods to find the hogs and select the largest one for taking home.

Now, John, his dad said, "it’s your job to feed corn to these hogs for the next few weeks.