harryschultz  

                                                                             
                                                               I Remember
                                                          Harry Schultz, 1977

   Events of the past need to be recorded.  They help us to understand the present and thus better prepare us for the future.  This is the contribution historians of every age and nation have made.

  Historical societies are allies of historians.  They seek to preserve the past of their community.  For this purpose the Historical Society of Presque Isle County, Rogers City, MI was organized.  I shall deposit a copy of I REMEMBER with the Historical Society of Presque Isle County of which my wife and I are members.

  I REMEMBER concerns primarily the home, school and church life of our family.  At the same time I should like for it to be representative of the families in our neighborhood as well as those of Moltke Township, Presque Isle County at large.  One remembers that best which one personally experienced.  Hence the large number of personal experiences.  I REMEMBER became longer in volume than I intended it to be, and still things that qualified to be included were overlooked or forgotten.  This led to an extra page, “After Thoughts”.  I cannot vouch for complete accuracy, particularly dates, ages, etc.  I had no diaries or any other resource material available, only my memory for which I do not claim any high degree of retention.

  Our two children, Dorothea Ebach of Saginaw, MI and Charles of Cedar Rapids, Iowa requested that I put in writing those things, which often related to them from my early life on the farm.  Since these occurred in an age so different from the present one they would like to see them preserved for their own and their children’s benefit.

  I called my sister, Mrs. Paul Domke of Ossineke, MI a couple of time for verification of dates and ages, and Marie Schmidt of Rogers City for information concerning teachers of School District 2.  I thank both of them.  I dedicate I REMEMBER to our two children and our grandchildren, John and Rebecca Ebach and Christian and Andrew Schultz.

<>                          Alpena, Michigan                                                         Harry A. Schultz
                          March 17, 1977
 
    
                                                          I REMEMBER

                                                           The Beginning

I want to write about life on the farm beginning with the turn of the century.  It will concern primarily our family.  But I would like to have the life of our family reflect the lives of the families in our community of Moltke Township, Presque Isle County, Michigan, post office, Rogers City.

My father was Charles Schultz, son of Mr. and Mrs. Julius Schultz and was born in Detroit, MI.  He had five brothers: Herman, William, Julius, Otto and Albert and one step-brother, Emil Peltz.  The family was bought up on the farm now owned by Charlie Sorgenfrei, one mile north of Moltke Corners, on the corner of North Ward Branch and Church Roads.  My mother was Augusta, nee Paulley, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Johann Paulley, born Germany along with her two brothers, Karl and Ferdinand.  Not long after her father’s death her mother came to America with her three children.

To located our farm one continues one mile west on M 68 from Moltke Corners to the Peltz Road, then one mile south to the Algenstedt Highway.  From there a quarter of a mile west to the Schultz Road on the right.  This takes one to what was our farm.  At first it was 160 acres of brush and timber.  Our family of five children was housed for the time being in a small log building located in a field across the road from the Karl Domke farm on the Algenstedt Highway.  Father and mother walked the distance several times each day to clear land.  My sister, Louise, nine years old at the time, was left to take care of us.  She was the oldest and I the youngest, having bee born the fall before.

Clearing the land of trees, sometimes virgin timber, and brush was hard work, with no other power than one horse.  Tools available for the task consisted of an ax, a grub hoe, crosscut saw, kanthook, chain, and a pair of skidding tongs.  Some of the finest trees, which sometimes included birdseye maple, all but extinct today, would be cut down and burned.  Since the trees were green the logs would be dragged together and rolled into a pile to dry during the summer and burned the following year.  No one knew or ever heard of air pollution.  If burning would have been prohibited the land could not have been cleared.  Fire was the pioneer farmer’s close friend.  But it also turned against him many times in the form of forest fires, destroying timber, brush fences and buildings, anything burnable in its path.  No fire fighting equipment was available.  I shall write about one such forest fire later on.

A home, stable and barn had to be built.  All were constructed of logs.  Logs from hemlock or tamarack trees were the best.  Cedar would have been even better but since that was too greatly in demand it was too costly.  Maple also was used but was quite inferior for log buildings.  Hardwood cracked easily from the hot sun, leaving an opening for rain and snow and causing the logs to rot and a premature deterioration of the building.  Birch was totally impractical.

It must be born in mind that our parents did not have the money to hire help.  This meant that mother had to be at the other end of the crosscut saw when logs had to be cut.  There were no power chainsaws in those days.  How often I think of this when I use this marvelous piece of equipment to cut cordwood for our wood range and wood heater.  What served as the first home for a couple of years consisted of three rooms, one for kitchen and living room and two bedrooms.  Later a lean-to, a frame building, was added which served as the kitchen.  One horse, called Maude, white and hence known as a “schimmel”, a couple of cows, a couple of pigs and a few chicken made up the extent of the livestock.

Incidentally, the stable and the barn with a threshing floor in between were demolished with a bulldozer only a couple of years ago.  The hardwood logs of the stable were badly deteriorated.  The barn of tamarack logs was still in excellent condition.

I have often wondered just why the parents selected this particular location for farming since the soil was of poor quality.  One reason could have been that the area was relatively free of hills, hills such as Moltke is notoriously known for.  Another reason may have been the price, lower than other acreage with better soil and more conveniently located.  This has also occurred to me.   My father was a lumberman at heart.  He had worked in the woods from the age of twelve years.  He dearly loved the woods.  This location put him within close range of cedar swamps.  This proved to be a great blessing since the family could never have been brought up alone on that which the farm produced.

According to an old Germany saying: ‘All beginnings are difficult’.  This one by our parents was no exception.  Clearing land by hand without the aid of power tools or equipment of any kind was hard, slow work and meant long hours.  Logs and brush that had been dragged, carried and thrown together during the day was burned after dark.  Burning piles could not be left alone or unattended until they had burned down.  But ‘Perseverance conquers all obstacles’.  Soon an acre of land, then two, then three and more were clear and tillable.  A beginning, the most difficult part of any undertaking, had been made.

                                                  FARMING

For the pioneer farm clearing, an annual task for several years, was a part of farming.  Each year a few more acres were added to what had been cleared previously.  This was usually done after sowing and planting had been completed.  Plowing the newly cleared land was hard work at its worst for man and beast.  There was no such thing as plowing a straight furrow in newly cleared land.  First of all, stumps had to be avoided.  The plow point would get stuck in the roots that spread out from the stump into the soil.  Sod and fine root systems where trees and brush had stood would gather and build up every few feet under the beam of the plow.  Then the horses had to be stopped, the plow plus soil evener and whippletrees pulled back by the one behind the plow, the beam freed of the accumulated mass under it and then go one, only to repeat the operation after a rod or two.  When the job was finished it did not look like a plowed field at all.  No satisfaction of having a nice looking job after it is finished.  It looked more like an area where a herd of hogs had rooted for a week.  This was followed by harrowing with the same problem.  The tines of the harrow would plug up a masses of sod and roots, large and small.  But this operation was easier and quicker, the harrow being wider than the plow and the horses would not have to be stopped to free the tines.  The driver would simply raise up one half of the harrow at a time.  It would clear itself as the horses continued.  But don’t think for one moment that this was an easy job for the driver.  Raising first one half of the harrow, then the other and doing this who know how many times before the field was finished, always walking in loose, uneven soil was no job for a weakling.  The next task, gather loose roots and piling them up next to stumps for burning the following summer was up to us kids.  We didn’t care for it one bit.  No questions were asked, however.  It complaints were made we were reprimanded for making them or they were ignored.  We had no reason for complaining.  Work was good for us.  We had food, clothing, shelter and love.  What more did we need?  It behooved everyone able to work to help keep the wolf form the door.  All pioneer farmers had done it this way.  Many were still doing it.  Our family was simply carrying on the tradition ever since the days of the first settlers in the United States.  Turnip and rutabaga seed, sown broadcast, was soon sprouting in the virgin soil.  The size and quality of turnips and vegetables harvested in the fall is almost unbelievable.

Potatoes were an important crop on our farm and many other farm as well in most of Presque Isle County.  Potatoes prefer a sandy loam.  Long before planting time potatoes had to be sprouted.  After the snow had left and the weather began to get warmed potatoes in the cellar ins began to sprout.  These had to be removed.  This was another job of the kids.  We sat nest to the pile, making ourselves as comfortable, take one potato at a time, rub it between both hands, in the process remove the sprouts from the potato and proceed to the next one.  Each potato was handled separately.  It was a good job in which to cultivate the virtue of patience.  The parents would cut them when planting time came, making sure that each slice of potato had at least two eyes for at least two sprout to come up after planting.  The planting was as tedious as everything else.  Father would hoe the holes, in a row, of course, so they could be conveniently cultivated later on.  One of us youngsters would carry a bucket of sliced potatoes, throw a slice in each hole.  Some one else would follow with a hoe and close the hole.  Not exactly a mass production operation.  Later hand operated potato planters were used.  This required only one person.  The beginning of unemployment?  Spraying for potato bugs was a job we definitely did not like.  But if we and others wanted to eat potatoes we could not let the bugs eat them.  It was and still is just that simple.  No need to spray for blight then; there was no blight.  I did not mind cultivating potatoes.  I recall when, as a teenager, I would remove my shoes and socks to experience the wonderful sensation of walking barefoot in the freshly turned up soil on a hot, summer day.  I do not know with what to compare this delight.  Nor will I forget the time I stubbed my big toe on a stone.  I had an ingrown toenail on that toe!  I do not know with what to compare this pain!

I have given the potato, frequently considered a lowly vegetable, considerable attention.  Nutrition-wise the potato rates high.  Read the article, “Praise the Potato!” in the December issue of the Reader’s Digest, 1976.  It may be a “homely tuber” but in reality it is “the world’s most important vegetable.”  “It is such a near-perfect food that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has declared that a diet of whole mil and potatoes would supply almost all of the feed elements necessary for a maintenance of the human body.”  Potatoes played an important part in the economy of our home as well as many others in Presque Isle.  Production was limited to a few acres.  As I recall we never had ore than six acres.  Compare that with the acreage of today’s big producers with hundreds, yes, almost a thousand acres which is what one grower in the southern part of the state harvested last fall.  But one has to stretch himself according to the size of his cover.  We never cultivated more than about sixty acres in all.  Everything necessary to produce potatoes was done by hand, always slow, not always sure.  It was, however, a sure thing that we would have sore backs after a dig of digging potatoes with the potato hoe.

The grain we grew included a little bit of everything: oats, rye, peas, wheat and barley.  Naturally hay for the horses and occasionally some for the cows had to be included.  I remember how haying was done at first.  This was before the days of horse operated machinery for us.  Father would cut the June clover or timothy or a mixture of both with the scythe.  Where the swath lay thick it has to be spread with a fork so as to dry.  Then it had to be raked.  A large wooden hand rake was used.  Finally it was pitched on a wagon with a small hayrack to which Maude was hitched and hauled in.  Then pitched off the wagon into the mow where it was wrestled from one to the other until it finally was in place.  After the haying season it was time to breathe a sigh of relief and to shout for joy.

Also I remember the first years of grain harvesting on the farm.  Again, no machinery was available.  Before my minds eye I can see father swinging the heavy grain cradle ever so deftly, ever so rhythmically.  I can  hear the “swoosh” as the large blade cut the straw stems and the “swish” as he laid the severed stems with heavy heads of rye or oats or whatever cradled on the wood times neatly in a row, the butt ends even at the bottom to forma straight swath and the heads at the top.  Try swinging a grain cradle, better still, cutting with it.  Upon second thought, better not.  You might rupture a disc in your back or throw an arm out of joint, to say nothing about cutting your left leg somewhere between the hip and the ankle.  I’m not kidding!  There are a few grain cradles hanging in barns or old granaries.  They are collector’s items now.  The next step in harvesting grain was raking and tying the grain into bundles.  This was often done at night after the straw had become damp and soft with dew.  I used to carry the lantern for my father.  Peas were pulled with scythe.

All the grain was hauled into the barn.  Naturally it has to be dry.  Anxious eyes were case skyward by eager farmers for cloudless, drying weather during the harvest season.  Insufficiently dried hay or grain can and frequently did cause internal combustion, resulting in heavy fire losses of building and contents.

Threshing time was a high point of the year, at least for us kids.  The sight of the steam engine with huge cleated steel wheels, puffing, pulling the separator, running the separator by way of a long, wide belt from the large flywheel to the smaller power wheel of the separator, Albert Hoeft, the engineer, Emil Felax, the owner, feeding the grain into the separator, grain pouring down the shaft into bags attached to it at the bottom, carriers hustling with filled bags on their shoulders to waiting grain bins, a straw stack emerging behind the elevator, hungry threshers eating heartily at tables filled with food, after first quaffing a glass or two of beer, and finally, three blasts from the engine’s steam whistle, signaling the job was finished, all of this added up to excitement for us children.  And don’t forget the sip of beer and thresher’s food.

The weather is a big factor in the life and progress of the farmer, any farmer.  He has much more at stake weather-wise than many others.  An extended drought can dry up his crops.  Excessive rain can drown them.  A heavy wind will smash ripening grain to the ground.  A hailstorm can cause a complete loss.  I remember such a hailstorm.  Father, whose emotions of laughing or crying surfaced quickly, sat in his rocking chair crying as hailstones cracked and pounded again the house.  Mother was stoic by comparison.  This enabled her frequently to keep the ship of our family on an even keel.  “Crying will do no good”, she said.  “We must take things as they come.”  This was her philosophy.

The next fifty years saw a big change in farming.  Agricultural technology completely revolutionized the industry.  Farming in my days was done on a level only a little higher than truck gardening in comparison with today in point of acreage, method, machinery and production.  We have experience what has been often a population explosion.  Statistics show that the agricultural industry has keep ahead of our population growth.  Today’s average farmer can does produce twice as much food as he did only ten years ago, thanks to American ingenuity, closely observed by other nations, especially the Europeans and Asiatics and copied in many instances.  I say with pride that I was brought up on the farm.  I lived with our family up to age fourteen.  For the next eleven years I spent three months of each summer on the home farm.  O loved farming as a way of life.  I still do.  I am an example of the truth of the statement, “You can take the boy off the farm but you cannot take the farm out of the boy.”  I view with regret that much farming today is done on the scale of big business.  But perhaps it must be this way in order to produce food in the amount to meet the demand.  However, I like to see farming done was a family way of life.  That’s the way it was when we were at home and in every other pioneer farm home throughout the length and breadth of America “beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain.”
 
 

                                                          LUMBERING

It may seem strange to some to read about lumbering in connection with farming.  We must bear in mind that there were expenses to be met long before there was enough acreage available for production to meet these expenses.  Hence, there had to be an income outside of farming.  With seemingly unlimited timber available many farmers sought employment in lumbering camps or lumbered independently which would be late fall to early spring.  We have a similar situation today.  Farming has to be done on a larger scale.  For many years we have been in the era of mass production.  The economy calls for it.  The large overhead of expensive machinery demands it.  The cost of hired labor enter into the picture also.  The small farmer cannot operate with this kind of overhead and operating cost.  In many instances he continues on his small farm on a reduced scale and limited time while being employed elsewhere for an additional income to make a living.  Or he abandons farming completely and makes a living otherwise.  He acreage may be taken over by an adjoining farmer, annexed, purchased by some one for another purpose or simply abandoned.  Indeed, times change.

My father, a lumberman at heart, spent most of the off-season in cedar swamps not far from home.  Frequently he hired Louis Meden, a dependable worker.  He made thousands of cedar posts and cedar ties.  The latter were sold for laying under rails to tie them together thus forming the familiar railroad tracks.  Would you believe that post sold for as little as five cents a piece and ties ten cents?   Both posts and ties had to be eight feet long.  Posts had to be a minimum of four inches at the top, ties eight inches and were hewed to a thickness of six inches.  All posts had to be peeled.  To do this the post is placed on a peeling buck.  The tool used is called a drawknife.  You stand beside the buck and post and simply draw the knife between the bark and the wood.  Sounds simple.  It is.  Come out to “the farm” some time and let me give you a demonstration.  I have peeled quite a few for fences since my retirement in ’67.  Father was a past master of the art of hewing ties.  I wonder how many thousand he hewed during his life.  To hew a tie block it had to be scored on the side with the ax.  The next operation called for deftly swinging the broadax to cut away the scored part in order to produce a flat but straight side.  The same operation was repeated on the other side.  “Hew to the line and let the chips fall where they may.”  This old adage must have had its origin with those who hewed cedar ties.  Father never used a line.  Experience produced “an eye” for the task.  I used to admire the skillful manner in which he ever so rhythmically swung the broadax with big wrists, biceps like a heavyweight wrestler and a pair of shoulders that seemed to bear evidence of every cedar post and tie block and in later years green poplar wood he had carried on them.  I remember calling on him one time while he was cutting excelsior wood.  He is it “starvation wood” because of the low price he got for it.  This was during the years of the great depression.  He asked me to shoulder one of the blocks.  Needless to say, it was a large one.  Quite obviously he wanted to see me stagger under it just for the fun of it.  Fact of the matter was I could hardly lift it on one end, let alone shoulder it.  With little exertion he raised the block on one end and with no lost motion he flipped it on his left shoulder, then with a grin of satisfaction, said, “See, boy!  That’s the way it’s done”, and proceeded to carry it out, climbing a steep incline on the way.  Old age – he must have been in the upper sixties – had scored a decisive victory over one in the prime of life.
 

                                                       CORDWOOD

This is fire wood piled in cords.  A Cord of wood measures eight feet in length and four feet in height.  The length of the wood varies according to the specifications of the one who is going to use it.  If it is to be used in a cooking range or a heater it is usually sixteen inches.  For the fireplace it may be twenty to twenty-four inches.  Cutting cordwood with a cross-cut saw was another hard-on-the-back job.  Beech and maple were used most frequently.  Birch was rarely used.  There were tow reasons for this.  One was that there were relatively few birch trees and the other that its heating qualities were low in comparison with the maple and the beech, the king and the queen of Northern Michigan’s hardwood forests.  Frequently firewood cutting bees were staged during the days of the crosscut saw and before the advent of the chainsaw which revolutionized the entire wood cutting industry, from big scale lumbering to small scale cordwood cutting.  The chainsaw and the small demand for firewood has made wood cutting bees unnecessary.  But then it was different.  It was good to see rugged farmers, many of whom were experienced lumbermen, zing – zing, zing – zing their crosscut saws across tree trunks and flash their double-bitted axes through the air as block after block of king maple or queen beech was reduced to firewood for the cooking range and the heater.  Felling a tree invariably provided an opportunity to sound with full, strong voices the call of caution and the jubilant shout of conquering lumbermen, “Timbe----r!”  I loved every bit of it.

Felling a tree was not always a success.  Sometimes things did not go according to the book.  Even though calculations of the direction of the wind and the natural lean of the tree to be felled had been made it would still hang up on another tree occasionally.  The unwritten law of the woods was, “Do not meddle with the leaning tree or the tree against which it leans.”  The careless or over ambitious woodsman some times dared to ignore the rule and paid with his life or serious injuries for his carelessness.

I love to made cordwood.  Lydia loves to burn it and to cook on the wood range.  Neither of us really cares about taking out the ashes.  But the nostalgia of it all, from felling trees to carrying out ashes, makes it worth while.  It’s nice to see the wood smoke curl out of the chimney just like it did at home.  It’s nice to smell wood smoke just like it smelled at home.  Pleasant memories are nice.

                                                      FOREST FIRES

Forest fired were a natural sequence to lumbering operations.  After year or two the area lumbered became a huge tinderbox.  There were few if any restrictions on the use of fire in the open.  Fire was the pioneer farmer’s big helping hand.  Without fire farms could not have been cleared.  Not infrequently it would burn out of hand.  Let me tell you of one such instance as it happened in the life of our family.  It was in 1909.   The threshing machine had been there in the forenoon, leaving a stack of straw on the outside next to the barn.  Bill Bruder to the north of us had set fire to a field of stumps.  Between us the Mr. Bruder’s farm was a cedar swamp which had been lumbered a year or two before.  When he started the fire the wind was favorable.  During mid-afternoon it shifted, carrying sparks from the burning stumps into the dry cedar shavings which soon was concerted into a raging inferno.  Father was at the neighbor’s with the threshing machine.  I remember mother’s fear as we stood in the garden watching the approach of the holocaust.  Fire, calmly burning stumps, had become a wildfire with the power of the behind it.  Immense blood-red flames swept upward as they swooshed and swished through heavy green boughs of beautiful spruce and balsam trees, leaving black skeletons in their wake.  An occasional birch stub with tattered dead, dry bark hanging loosely provided ready-made torches to be sent on their way on the wings of the wind, endangering areas far away.  Father came running home.  Surveying the impending danger he took the single barrel shotgun and standing on the hill behind the house he fired three shots.  This was commonly interpreted in the community as the signal of danger and call for help.  Two neighbors responded, Alex Domke and Louis Meden.  Ales brought a 3 gallon sprayer with him.  In our age we might be amused at their equipment.  As if an elephant hunter would hunt elephant with an air-rifle.  Actually nothing better was available.  Perches on the peak of the barn they could see both sides of the roof as well as the straw stack.  Whether they actually had to dowse any flames I never found out.  Father and mother with the helping hand of the older children started carrying out furniture.  What I remember most clearly is father burying the cupboard in the apple orchard.  He had bought it as a gift for mother.  The parents decided that the small children should be taken to a neighbor.  Louis Meden hitched Maude to the wagon and took us to the Domke farm.  We slept in the tool shed, taking it in the spirit of adventure.  When we returned the next morning the little farm with its modest logs building was surrounded by smoldering logs, remnants of fences.  Green trees were gray stalks and skeletons.  Ashes lay thick where the fire had swept through.  Rain late in the evening had dampened the fire and saved the buildings.  Father and mother showed the strain of a fearsome night.  An area ravaged by a forest fire is not an inspiring sight.  Wild life suffers greatly and the all-around loss seem irreplaceable.

But the recuperative powers of nature are amazing.  A forest fire is, indeed, a bane.  But out of its ashes comes forth a blessing.  “It can cause damage, but it can also help to regenerate the forest.”  No one would advise starting fired indiscriminately just for the sake of new growth.  But if controlled by those who are authorized and experienced in the practice of burning over waste land the new growth that follows is more luscious and abundant than ever.   The ashes of a fire replace needed minerals and nutrients in the depleted soil.  The year after the fire we children picked 35 quarts of wild strawberries.  We had more will canned strawberries and strawberry jam than ever before or after.  Those of you who know this wild fruit also that more than an average amount of patience and time is required to pick it.  Wild strawberries are small.  They are also the most delicious of all wild fruit.

Vegetation flourished following fires.  Grass grew better than ever in the lowlands for feed for our cattle which never grazed on the farm.  They were turned out every morning and were on their own with acres upon acres in the area around the farm available to them.  Of course, the feed was still inadequate for them for a good production of milk but there was no other alternative.  Getting them in the evening was a daily chore.  Some time we walked miles before we found them.  Bells on their necks and ringing with every movement of their heads signaled their location.  A good cow dog to get them started out of the cover and on the cow path home was a valuable asset.  One experience of “getting the cows” stands out in my memory.  I found them in what we had come to call Uncle Emil’s marsh.  The water level was high that spring and the marsh was filled with water.  Penny, a fairly good dog, refused to obey.  The order “get ‘em out, Penny” fell on deaf ears.  She apparently did not want to get her feet wet.  There was nothing else to do but for me to take off my shoes and sox and get mine wet.  Cows are not intelligent animals.  It appeared that ours were particularly dumb, at least on this occasion.  They can also be very ornery and stubborn.  Ours all of that too this time.  They stood and looked at me in a manner of stupid amazement.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have blamed them.  Be all of that as it may, I got them started one by one.  The last one I grabbed by the tail which sent her “high-tailing” out of there.  I hung on and has no trouble keeping up.  I wanted to get out in a hurry.  I did.  Penny was the lone spectator on the shore.  I assume she enjoyed the show.  The wonder was that I came out of it without even a minor scratch on my bare feet.

Wild life came back in larger numbers than ever after the fire.  The rabbit population reached unbelievable numbers.  Knowing the proliferation potential of rabbits this was not surprising.  I will be telling about rabbits again later on.  I will also tell about blueberries in another chapter and how they rebounded after the forest fires.  Roots where trees had been before the fire put forth shoots, producing jungle-like undergrowth.  The poplar, now commonly and also correctly known ‘popple’ grew in much greater numbers than ever before.  It is possible that I am exaggerating the positive results from forest fires.  Undoubtedly the natural phenomenon of cycles in nature also a significant role.  Be that as it may, this tree, the ‘popple’, has played an important part in the economic life of our community and others in Michigan.  The Abitibi Corporation of Alpena, manufacturers of paneling has made this possible.

As long as there are forest I suspect there will be forest fires.  Some are started by arsonists, maybe by lightning, e.g. the fire in Seney National Forest in the Upper Peninsula last fall.  Others are started accidentally.  Our forests are one of our most valuable assets.  The Department of Natural Resources is alert to the problem of forest fires and has succeeded in greatly reducing the number of them.  The ultimate in carefulness should be exercised by every citizen in our country in preventing forest fires.  Be careful with fire; you could start a forest fire.

“There is no ill wind that does not blow some one a favor”.  Land could be cleared more quickly imme4diately after the fire.  More acres meant better farming equipment.  Stumps left after clearing could be avoided with the scythe or grain cradle but not with the grain binder.  Many of them had already been removed by hand with the grub hoe, ax, and horses.  But a speedier method had to be found.  Father decided on the use of dynamite.  I remember our return trip from Millersburg where he had bought a supply of dynamite, caps and fuse from Mr. Hawks, the hardware dealer.  Caps are the most dangerous; he put them in his pocket.  When we came to the first corduroy in the road he handed me the lines with the instruction to drive the horses while he held the box of dynamite on his lap.  This precaution really was not necessary.  But having had no experience with dynamite he not know.  “Better safe than sorry”.

I was my father’s helper blasting stumps though I was a lad of only twelve years.  He would drill the holes.  I would ready the dynamite charge for loading while he would be drilling the hole under the next stump.  Then he would shove the stick of dynamite with the cap and fuse attached into the hole under the stump, close it with clay, cut off the fuse, split the end with his jackknife for easier lighting and go on to the next stump.  Seeing the stumps explode was a thrill for a youthful observer.

The cleanup job was by far the worst phase of blasting stumps.  It was simply another clearing task with roots and stumps scattered over the entire field.  Father had a flat-bottom dray. On this my brother Art and I carefully piled the roots and hauled them to the fence, there to be burned later with another land clearing effort.

                                                          THRIFT

Let me say something about thriftiness at this point.  It had to be practiced by pioneer fold in order to survive.  It is more readily practiced by some than by others.  It our home mother set the pace.  The circumstances of her home life in Germany did not allow luxury or wasteful living.  Her father died when she was six years old.  Her mother decided it would be best for her to come to America with her family.  For over ten years they lived in a one room log cabin.  The two boys worked for farmers and later in logging camps to support the family.  A small plot of ground was enough for a garden and to raise feed for a few chickens, some geese, a cow and a yoke of oxen.  Mother told us how she would have to drive the oxen while one of the boys would hold the plow.  She dreaded the gander who was determined to keep her away from his harem.  Many times she walked from home to Rogers City and back again all by herself.  The distance was about eight miles one way, always carrying eggs and butter to town and some groceries back.  Some time she was fortunate enough to get a ride.  The family had to practice the ultimate in thrift in order to survive.  Mother was a product of the environment of thrift and of work.  It was part of her life.

We were brought up under the circumstances of thrift and work.  They are by no means all to the bad.  No one of us suffered from either, thrift or work.  Like all youngsters we probably would like to have had more time for play.  It would be untrue to say that we were not allowed to play.  I thing is safe to say that thrift and work were among the principle emphases of our home life. 

                                                               FOOD

There always was enough food on the table at meal time.  No one ever left the table hungry.  It wasn’t fanciful and the variety was limited but what we had was substantial.  Father liked meat, particularly pork.  Meat, potatoes and gravy were staple food.  Fresh vegetables were a treat during summer and fall.  Pie was served rarely.  Occasionally mother baked an apple cake but more frequently molasses or sugar cookies.  Ice cream was never served at the table.  One or two cones at the Fourth of July picnic was the full extent of our ice cream consumption except during later years when a few attempts were made at making home made ice cream with not much success.  Homemade bread was the staff of life also at our house.  Mother baked excellent bread.  She was a good cook all around.  Her roast wild rabbit was something else.  No milk was ever drunk at our house except in coffee and there it had to be used sparingly.  If some one should help himself too generously he was cautioned, “Go easy’ others want some, too”.  Mild had to be saved and separated for the cream with which to make butter.  The separated milk was fed to the calves and pigs.  Butter and eggs were sold for groceries.  Eggs were served at the table only once in a while.  I had better say a great while.  We could have butter or lard or syrup or jelly, if there was any, on our bread.  Never two at a time.  Syrup was consumed by the pails full.  My sister Lillian and I carried home more than one gallon pail of syrup from Tony Dullack’s store at Moltke corners.  We would take the butter and the eggs to the store and bring the groceries back, walking in the ruts of sleigh runners and tracks of horses’ hooves more than two and a half miles one way.  We would take turns sitting on the pail to rest.  Butchering was done in December when several hogs would be slaughtered.  This would mean fresh liver and blood sausage.  Also a type of metwurst, which, when smoked, then baked in a large bread pan in the oven has to be described as a mouth-watering goodness unsurpassed and unequalled.  This was always a treat.  Mother always served the first metwurst of the season on Christmas morning.  We did not look forward to toys or gifts of any kind for Christmas.  For an obvious reason very few Christmas gifts were exchanged in any of the home of our community.  We looked forward to the Christmas morning metwurst.  Beef was also slaughtered for home use.  Threshers got tired of mutton; beef or pork was a treat for them.  Canned fruit was a popular item on our table.  Mother would can as many as 500 quarts of fruit.  There usually was a variety: blueberries, blackberries, wild raspberries and apples.  Generally they were served for breakfast.

                                                       BERRY PICKING

We picked a lot of berries, more than a lot of other families.  Hardly a summer passed when we would not pick and sell several hundred bushels of blueberries, thereby earning three, four and five hundred dollars during the time from shortly after the Fourth of July through Labor Day.  We always walked the distance to the berry patches and home again, carrying empty pails, food and drink going and pails pull of berries coming.  Father and mother used yokes for carrying milk buckets full of berries measuring fourteen quarts to each bucket.  Father and Art and probably one of the older girls would stay home while mother, Clara, Lillian and I and later Carl and Eleanor would be at the Kleine See [Uncle Emil’s Marsh], the Gold Berg [the Gold Hill], Gorman’s Camp, Die Eich Buescher [Oak Bushes], the Hohe Berg [High Hill], or the big plains.  Mention any of these places today to any of us who remain and we will know immediately what place you re talking about.  Blueberries grew plentifully after the forest fires when the frost would spare the blossoms and when ample rain fell.  It is hard to believe the great abundance in which they were available.  One summer the berries were scarce around home.  We heard of a place in back of Ocqueoc near Rainy River.  Early one morning father, Art, Clara, Carl and I drove out there.  We hit it just right.  A small marshy area had burned over recently.  We had virgin picking.  No one had picked here yet.  We were early birds to pick the berries.  They were fully ripe, no green ones.  Carl and I challenged one another.  Each of us had a milk bucket, that, when picked in and heaped up measured fourteen quarts.  We started at about 9:30.  Berries were wet with dew in the mornings and had to be dry if picked for the market.  By about four o’clock the area, a rather small one, was covered by us pickers.  Carl and I had not met since the race began.  When we met Carl asked me, “How many”?  “One hundred quarts”, I told him.  I asked him,  “How many”?  “One hundred quarts”, he replied.  We used no pickers, only our fingers.  Hard to believe, I know, but it is true.  Blackberries also grow abundantly.  The last two years were failure but prior to that we had exceptional yields.  Canned blackberries are a delicacy for those who do not mind the large seeds.  The flavor of wild blackberries is most pleasing.  So is that of wild raspberries.  However, they are all but extinct.

I count the days I have spent in the woods, the wilderness, at the berry patches among the most cherished of my life.  I remember the day I drove from Saginaw to Sand Lake near Tawas City to pick blueberries.  Thrilled with the pleasure of having had such beautiful berries to pick all day and with yet another patch spread out before me like a huge blue blanket I sang with a full voice and unrestrained fervor in God’s cathedral of the great outdoors, “Praise God from Whom all blessing flow”, etc.  Perhaps it was an emotional response.  I am not about to apologize.  I do not know who of men may have heard me.  Nor do I particularly care.  I know One who heard me, i.e., “God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth”.

                                                     TRANSPORTATION

I remember the transportation system of the early days very well.  How can I ever forget”  We walked, period.  We walked to school two and a half miles.  We walked to church across from the school.  We walked to the store at Moltke Corners over two and a half miles.  We walked to the neighbors.  We walked whenever and wherever we went berry picking, always carrying home at the end of the day what we had picked during the day.  We walked when we went hunting and fishing.  We walked to get the cows.  We never used horses to go to church.  They needed to rest on Sunday, too.  Never was anyone taken to school with horses.  We did drive with horses to Rogers City, a distance of eight miles or any other longer distance driving that had to be done.  Accidents were all but unheard of.  I have read about runaway horses hitched to wagons or farm equipment but have never seen one.  I never heard of a single one in our community.  No tire or engine trouble and you never ran out of gas.  You fed them oats and hay, watered them, harnessed and hitched them up and you were on your way, slow, but sure.  About an hour was needed to go to Rogers City.  Life was at a slow pace all around.  As I remember it now it was good.  We did not think so at the time.

I had my first automobile ride when I was about ten years old.  A Mr. Radtka of Rogers City was one of the first owners of a car, a Ford.  He came to our house one Sunday afternoon.  When he left father picked me up and put me in the front seat alongside. Mr. Radtka to close the gate.  Thrilled”  No doubt about it.  But no more than when the threshing machine was on its way to our farm and I would go to meet it and father would pick me up and stand me alongside the engineer.  I was fascinated the way he could steer the monster with one hand and with the other control the power and the speed with a simple little lever.

In 1917 father bought a second hand brass head Ford from Bill Bruder.  We were riding in class.  We had it made.  We had fast transportation.  We had an automobile.  Bill Grossman was the first to have one in our congregation.  Those who had a car were the envy of others who still were without one.  I think the transition form horses to automobiles has to be the single biggest change in our life at home.  It was greater than the transition to the telephone, the radio, the television, the computer, space travel, you name it.

                                             HUNTING AND FISHING

Father loved the outdoors, this included hunting.  There always was a gun in our house.  Who would have dreamed in those day about gun control or regulation of guns.  Some considered a gun a necessity.  It offered a means of securing food.  The sport of hunting was incidental, an extra bonus.  We grew up with guns in our house.  We did not have the benefit of gun safety lessons but were constantly cautioned about the danger of a loaded gun.  I grew up with the awareness that a gun must always be regarded as loaded, just like a gasoline tank always contains gasoline.

Rabbit hunting was the most popular of all sports while we were on the farm.  Forest fire contributed immeasurably to this.  Out of the ashes of the fires emerged food and cover for all form of wild life.  Rabbit with their high reproductive capacity increased greatly.  Fox, owls and coyotes depend largely upon rabbits for food.  Hunter, the number of which greatly increased with the advent of the automobile, also increased the pressure upon the rabbit population.  All of which the furry little fellow withstood well until the underbrush disappeared due to the growth of larger trees and browsing of an ever increasing deer herd.  This left the rabbit exposed to predatory animals and hunters.  The inevitable law of nature, the cycle phenomenon, asserted itself.  But long before that period arrive my father, my two brothers and I had rabbit hunting at its best.  Rabbit hunting grounds were virtually unlimited.  No one paid any particular attention to ownership of property.  This did not happen until the advent of deer.

We always had a rabbit hound on the premises.  At first we tried it with Snoopy.  He was just a little long-haired black house dog with a white spot on his chest.  He just did not have it in him.  He was replaced with Sport, a big black and tan dog.  Big dogs had the stamina required in the deep snow of January and February.  Because of the hard going with which he is faced the life span of a hunting dog is quite short.  Sport was replaced with Jack, an even bigger red bone.  Rabbits were so numerous that many were bagged which were not chased by the dog.  We called them “sneakers”.  The snowshoe changes the color of his coat from brown in the summer to white in the winter.  This serves as a protective measure.  But when there is no snow on the ground and the season is still open he is in trouble.  He is easily detected by the hunter who does not even need the help of a hound.

Before I bring this section on rabbit hunting to a close I must tell you about my first rabbit hunting experience.  It was on a Saturday afternoon with the sun shining from a cloudless sky.  I asked mother if I could go rabbit hunting.  “Are the chores done”?  I assured her they were.  “Does your father know about it”?  “No, he did not”.   “You better go and ask him first”.  No problem.  He was in a cedar swamp nearby cutting posts and tie blocks.  In no time I was back with his consent.  I was on my way with shot gun and shells and frolicking little dog named Snoopy.  It his tracking ability would have equaled his enthusiasm he would have been a top notch rabbit dog.  A place we frequently hunted at that time was just a matter of rods northest of the buildings.  It was a heavy stand of alder on the edge of a cedar swamp.  In the middle of it a large cedar lay broken down with the top on the ground and the butt still attached to the eight feel high stub.  Many times father had walked up the sloping fallen tree and I with him.  It was an advantageous elevation.  Hence, father, who had already named many places, added one more to the list.  He called this elevation the “Kanzel” [the pulpit].  Was it prophetically significant in that it was the first “pulpit” I ever ascended?  At any rate this was the first time I ascended this one as a hunter.  Up to this point I had only been the hunter’s assistant.  Having taken my stand I sent my little dog on his way with the customary, “Hunt ‘em up, Snoopy”!  Snoopy took off with all the energy and enthusiasm of a full-blooded beagle.  And sure enough, almost quicker than you could say “Snoopy” a quick “kiff, kiff” came from the squeaky voice of my little dog.  I readied myself and scanned the general direction form which the “kiff, kiff” came.  It was only a matter of seconds and I spotted the movement of the little white creature.  He was coming good.  I let him come closer and then puckered my lips for a couple of short whistles just like Dad and Art used to do.  If the rabbit wasn’t running too scared it usually worked.  He would stop and listen.  But no whistle came out of my puckered lips.  Accomodatingly, the rabbit stopped without being whistled down.  Cautiously I got down on my haunches, pointed the 12-gauge shotgun with its twenty-four pounds of recoil in the direction of the sitting rabbit and pulled the trigger.  The shot went that a way in the general direction of the rabbit, I assume.  And I went this a way in the opposite direction of standing alders, branches of the fallen cedar tree, the deep snow and ultimately the ground, all about as quickly as the recoil of the shotgun.  Two laws of physics had just asserted themselves.  The first: To every action there is an opposite and equal reaction.  The second: Simply the law of gravity.  I freed myself from snow, trees, and branches and reentered the “Kanzel”.  To my amazement the rabbit was still sitting on the very same spot.  Snoopy, true to form had long lost the track and probably decided to take a rest.  The rabbit was being entertained.  Why should he move on?  I’m sure he could not believe what he had just seen.  He may even had asked himself, “Who is the dumb bunny now”?  Unruffled and with due deliberation I reloaded, settled down on my haunches one more but this time with my back against an upright limb I aimed more carefully and squeezed the trigger.  “Pow”!   When the smoke of the black powder had cleared away I discovered to my complete amazement that there was cause for jubilation.  I had shot my first rabbit.  This time I descended in a more orderly, less dangerous manner from my perch, proceeded to pick up the rabbit and was on my way with Snoopy who had already come to see what had happened.

There was more to happen on this eventful day.  Would history repeat itself?  Another place was chosen and another elevation selected.  This time it was just a plain cedar stump with a flat top.  I laid the gun across the top and laboriously pulled and lifted myself up and into a standing position.  Once more Snoopy was dispatched and once more he had a rabbit on the run.  And again the rabbit came running in my direction.  Since I did not succeed whistling the first time I didn’t even try this time.  Like his predecessor, this one, too, stopped without being whistled down.  This time I dropped down on one knee, aimed, fired.  What did I just say about history repeating itself?  Well, it did.  This is true!  The descent was sudden, clean, complete.  A-righting myself I discovered again to my surprise that the rabbit was not scared away.  Apparently he enjoyed his reprieve.  He was not disturbed by what he had just heard and seen.  This time I leveled the gun on the top of the stump, reliable and convenient, and need I add, much more prop, and proceeded to make it number two for the day.  I tied the hind legs of the two rabbits together and slung them over the gun barrel.  With the gun on my shoulder, two rabbits dangling from it, tired Snoopy trailing, nor frolicking, the twelve year old lad was on his way home, whistling a happy tune of success.

Many other rabbit stories could be told of rabbit hunting from about 1912 for the next twenty-five years.  Our location was the rabbit hunters paradise.  I’m glad father originally decided on this location.  The enjoyment the sport provided for us cannot be put into words.  Nor must the by-product of meat on the table be overlooked.  Mother was always pleased to see us go rabbit hunting.  As mother she naturally felt the responsibility of food on the table more than any one else.  Her roasted rabbit was always a lip-smacking, finger-licking good eating experience.

Rabbits decreased and deer increased as time went on.  Deer were first planted in the northern part of lower Michigan at the turn of the century by the Turtle Lake Hunting Club of Montmorency County.  From there they spread in all directions.  The first time deer tracks were sighted in our area was in August of 1930.  This was good news for hunter.  On through the years deep multiplied rapidly.  The food supply was equal to the demand well into the fifties when the herd reached its peak.  At that time the law of supply and demand reached the saturation point.  The demand became greater than the supply.  Not only was the greater supply of food consumed by the ever increasing deer herd but trees grown large and tall since the forest fire era were shutting off sunlight for the growth of food and cover.  The Department of Natural Resources was alert to the situation.  Studies were constantly made as a program of deer management was implemented.  The one buck law had been in effect since 1921.  This permitted the growth of the herd.  It was now time to reduce the herd so as to provide a better balance between growth of food and consumption of food.  The one deer law, which permitted the hunter to take either a buck or a doe, was introduced.  This brought the cry of “deer slaughter” from irate hunters who wanted the impossible, a continuation of the large her.  The law prevailed in the face of stern and vociferous objections.  The wisdom of the management of the DNR became evident.  The herd is much smaller bur fairly well in proportion to the amount of food available.

Deer hunting was as popular at our home as rabbit hunting.  John Keuler and John Kaminski, a relative and a friend respectively from Detroit, bought land to form a block of eleven forties.  This was made available to us, plus three adjoining forties my father owned and another owned by Paul Domke.  This provided us with excellent hunting land.  Later it was fences in for privacy.

Deer hunters sometimes were accused of being brutal, hard-hearted.  How can anyone kill such a beautiful animal?  His answer is, Domestic animals are beautiful, too.  How can anyone kill a lamb, a sheep, a calf?  Why shouldn’t wild life animals be left to die a natural death and food be wasted?  Should only domestic animals be used for food?  It doesn’t make sense.

Neither does it make sense when hunter kill wantonly, wastefully, just for the sake of killing.  Rabbits were killed for food by the vast majority of hunters.  They may not have been the specific purpose in some instances.  But still they were used as food.  Circumstances had changed when deer came along.  Venison was not a necessity.  Yet, the same concept of food ingrained in the years of childhood and youth remained through the years of adulthood.  If deer are carefully shot and carefully field dressed, and properly processed and the meat properly prepared a tasty dish of venison can be placed on the table for enjoyable eating.

Other game we hunted at home, though not extensively, was partridge.  The season was short, six weeks for the first of October to the fifteenth of November.  The first couple of weeks the hunter was and still is handicapped by leaves still remaining on the trees.  Lack of a bird dog is an even greater handicap.  To keep and feed two hunting dogs was too much.  We shot very few partridges.  They are delicacy to eat.

Fishing was a big part of our recreational life at home to say nothing about the fact that it was another source of food.  Brook trout fried in butter is seafood eating at its best.  The Little Ocqueoc River was an excellent trout stream of both brook and German browns trout.  Father dearly loved to fish.  I traipsed along, ever since I was a boys of seven or eight.  I carried the fish but did not fish at first.  We always walked.  Had about a mile to go.  The favorite place was upstream a ways of the bridge on the Algenstedt Highway.  Here there were several bends in the stream creating holes and hiding places for the wily trout.  Outside of hooks and sinkers and sometimes lines, the equipment was strictly of the home made variety.  We found a heavy line like the builder uses for plumbing to be most practical.  For bait we used the small earthworm in the early part of the season.  When dry weather set in grasshoppers or parts of a frog were used.  What a thrill it was to go fishing with Dad or Art or alone.  Carl was too young during the first years.   His choice as he got older was rabbit hunting.  The biggest fish was caught by my father, an eighteen inch German brown trout.  I was with him at the time, still just carrying the fish.  It was getting dark.  “Just one more try and we’ll go home”, Dad informed me.  I remember the incident so very well.  The stream was shallow at this point and flowed under a pile of cedar tops.  I should have stated earlier that Art and I always cut off an alder sapling at the stream that served as a fishing pole.  Dad was more particular.  He selected a straight alder sapling, peeled it, let it dry and then oiled it well with linseed oil.  This he preserved with the same care with which the modern fisherman preserves his expensive fishing rod.  Back to the big German brown trout I started telling you about.   Determined to give it one more try before going home, father wound the line up to a length of about ten inches, then hung the baited hook loosely at the end of his pole.  Carefully and quietly he shoved the pole under the brush pile and tapped the pole slightly.  “Boing” came the sound from under the brush pile in the twilight of the cedar swam as hook and sinker hit the water.  Pow!  The big German brown had struck.  Dad set the hook instantly.  He was an experienced brook trout fisherman.   It requires a special skill to take trout from a small stream that flows through heavy cover.  The battle was on between the fish and the fisherman.  The lone spectator watch with excitement as his father maneuvered the fighting, splashing fish from underneath the pile of cedar tops.  Proudly father held him out to me nearby on the bank.  But I did not want to touch him out of fear probably that I still might loose him.  I carried him home on a V-stick so as not to deform his body in a crowded bag.  As German browns run eighteen inches is not exceptionally large.  But it was the largest fish any of us caught in famous little trout stream, the Little Ocqueoc in Presque Isle County.

For those who like fish the climax of fishing is not reached until the fish are eaten.  Mother always fried them in the morning for breakfast.  We were easily lured out of bed on those mornings with the reminder, “Get up!  Speckled trout for breakfast”!  If you have never eaten brook trout fried in butter you have never eaten fish.

                                                   CLOTHING

We were always clothed well.  Mother was a good seamstress.  She made all of the dresses for the girls and shirts for the boys.  Slacks were never worn by mother or the girls.  Any women or girls showing up in public wearing a pair of slacks would have made themselves ridiculous.  This was really too bad since they were expected to work outside, in the hayfield, on the wagon loading hay, in the haymow, in the barn, doing anything and everything she was capable of doing.  Skirts were so impractical, but public opinion, style and custom prevailed.  Overalls, today’s blue jeans, were worn on the farm, in the woods, picking berries or hunting.  Never, but never in church or at social functions or on the street.  Style and custom combine to make a powerful force.

Socks and stockings and gloves for the family were all made of wool, homemade, homespun, home knit.  We always had a flock of sheep of about a dozen.  Mother would shear them, using a common pair of cloth cutting shears.  When it came sheep-shearing time in the spring Art and I would have to stay home from school for a day to help.  As much as would be needed for the winter, either for socks, stocking or gloves and quilts for beds mother washed and hung on the wash line to dry.  The rest would be sold.  Carding the fleece was the next operation, followed by spinning.  After washing the skeins of spun yarn it would finally be ready for knitting.  The unspun fleece would be used for quilts.  One of the images that remains with me of my mother is that she was always working.   Winter evening her customary place was near the kitchen table by the kerosene lamp knitting.  Her extensive practice had made her all but perfect.  With a speed that appeared quicker than the eye she could manipulate the shining needles back and forth, up and down, with uncanny accuracy, looking elsewhere and talking at the same time.  If cotton is king as TV commercials would have us believe then wool must be the queen.  It certainly was that in our home.
 
 

                                       HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE

We were a healthy family.  We children were born of healthy stock.  Father died in 1957 at the age of 87 and mother in 1967 at the age of 90.  Neither of them had ever been seriously ill.  Nor was any one of us eight children ever seriously ill.  Lillian was probably the only exception.  She had been complaining of severe stomach cramps, which later developed into alarming abdominal distress.  On the third day father took her to the doctor.  The diagnosis was appendicitis with no time to loose for the operation because the appendix probably already had burst.   But there was no surgeon or hospital in Rogers City.  Later that afternoon the freight train of the old D & M [Detroit & Machinaw] was leaving for Bay City.  Lillian made the trip on a cot in the baggage car.  The operation was performed late that evening.  The appendix had ruptured, possibly that morning already when she had felt relief.  Fortunately peritonitis had not and did not set in.  Who knew anything about antibiotics at that time?   I would guess the date to be 1917.  She recovered completely.  We regarded it nothing short of a miracle.

No special effort was made in the way of dental care.  There was no dentist in Rogers City for a long time until later when Dr. Alfred Grossman, a son of an older farmer in our community, established practice there.  Teeth were not filled.  If they ached they were pulled by some neighbor who was brave and daring enough to do so.  We had two such practicing “puller”; on was a blacksmith, the other a farmer.  I knew both of them.  I have good reasons for remembering one of them.  I have all of my own front teeth and some of the adjoining large one.  I have often wondered how many more I would have if I had gone to a dentist to have the small cavity of an aching tooth filled instead of to a farmer to have it pulled.  Why wasn’t I sent to the dentist?  The answer is simply; it would have cost more money.  One should always remember that money was very scarce in those days.  “Here is a quarter” my father told me on a Friday morning.  “On your way home from school you stop in and have the tooth pulled”.  Easy said!  When I got there the grandfather opened the door.  “Well, boy, what do you want”?  “I have toothache and Papa says I should have it pulled”.  I was invited in.  I became more apprehensive as time went on, waiting for the “dentist” to come in.  Was my tooth really still aching or had it all of a sudden stopped?  The psychological factor of auto-suggestion asserted itself with all if power.  I had to admit, the pain was still there.  No time left.  Will I ever forget that experience?  Never!  I sat on a kitchen chair.  I remember he sterilized the forceps in boiling water, exercising, to his great credit, the one most precautionary measure.  But even boiling water does not kill every type of germ.  His father held my head.  No novocaine or anything else was used.  Just a plain, raw extraction: the exact opposite of the modern painless method.  I walked home, two miles.  By morning I had a swollen jaw, the better to remember my confirmation the following Sunday, 30 April 1916.

My sister Clara had a similar dental experience.  Her case was worse since the wound hemorrhaged badly.  Fortunately it stopped by midnight.  I know of no case of infection or death as a result of these crude dental performances.  I am amazed every time I think of it.  I am convinced that divine Providence must have played a prominent part.

I want to tell you of the time I suffered from an unusual malady.  One thing that made it unusual was that it was self-imposed.  It was on a Sunday afternoon.  Art and I had to stay home from church.  “Curiosity once killed a cat”, so they say.  It almost killed me, too.  At least I felt sick enough to die.  “I wonder what it is like to chew tobacco”? we mused in curiosity.  Why not try and find out?  We tried and I found out.  Dad always used a knife to cut off a portion of the plug on the pantry shelf.  So Art used a knife, too, lessening the change of being found out.  The location of the fateful experience was behind the barn.  We sat and chewed and spat brown spittle on the white snow.  All went well for a few minutes.  Then everything went in circles and began taking on strange hues of brown and green and yellow.  “I’m sick, Art.  I’m going in the house”.  I got rid of my wad and left.  I did not get very far when a sudden eruption occurred. I made it to the davenport.  Not long after the folks came home and I hear Dad ask, “Where is Harry”?  “O, he’s in the other room lying on the couch”.  He came in, looked at me and asked, “Was is’ losz, Jung”?  O, I’m not feeling good”.  A bemused look on his face told me that my brother did not cut plug tobacco exactly like my father.  I never chewed tobacco again.  Honest!

                                              READING

Not much reading was done in the average home in those days.  There simply was not much reading material available.  There was no library in Rogers City.  There were no reading books to take home form school.  Once in a while a book would find its way into our home.  One of the children, usually Clara, would sit behind the kitchen table and ready by lamplight while mother would knit, father would sit in his rocking chair and the rest sit here or there and listen or find something else of greater interest to do.  This usually happened during the winter months.  The title of one of the books was “The Sinking of the Titanic”.  The Presque Isle County Advance, a weekly, was being published then already but we did not always subscribe to it.  Mother subscribed to “Das Kirchenblatt”, a church publication of the former Iowa Synod, but she was the only one who read it.

I must tell you how it happened that “The Harper’s Weekly” published in Kansas got to our house.  It occurred in 1915.  A subscription offer came in the mail one day.  By selling a certain number of subscriptions I could receive as a premium a boy’s baseball uniform and a catcher’s mitt.  A baseball suit and a catcher’s mitt!  Oh boy!  I sent for the material post haste and was on my merry way selling subscriptions to a publication no one out there had ever heard of.  It was on a Sunday afternoon.  First to Uncle Emil Peltz, to the Tulgetske’s, to Klann’s, to Domke’s to Luetzow’s, Alex Pommeranke’s, August Pommeranke’s, Wiesegart’s, Joppich’s Schlieben’s and finally Peetz’s.  By then it was getting late and I was tired and hungry.  I had walked about four or five miles.  Mrs. Peetz, bless here heart, invited me to eat supper with them.  Never did potatoes fried in butter and with onions, fried eggs, and homemade bread and butter taste better to me.  It got dark before I got home.  The road led through a stretch of swamp and hardwoods between Peltz’s and our house.  I did not like the idea of walking this alone.   I admit I was scared.  As I was about to enter the swamp I det3ected a form emerging from the side of the road and approaching me.  Now I was really scared.  “It’s me”!  The voice came from Art who had come to meet me.  I do not know how many subscriptions I needed or how many I got that afternoon, but I prevailed upon my parents to pay for the balance.  We got “Harper’s Weekly” for many years!  But for me that was not the most important thing.  I wanted the baseball suit and catcher’s mitt.  I liked to read but I like baseball better.

                                                     MUSIC

Music always occupied a prominent place in our home.  Mother like music and could sing.  But father was really the one with the natural aptitude for music.  He could sing and really loved to sing.  He could easily carry a tune.  He ad a natural gift of musical rhythm.  Mother would step on his toes, literally, when he unknowingly would tap to the music in church.  Marches with the simple –2 time were his musical delight.  He especially loved band music.  One Fourth of July he and I drove to town in the bass head model 1913 Ford.  Just as we were leaving town the band, appearing in the parade, struck up a march.  “Stop, Harry, stop!  I hear the band”.  I pulled off the street in front of the old St. John Lutheran Church and before I had brought the car to a halt Dad was out of the car and hurrying back to the corner of Third and Erie.  He loved to sing the few German folksongs he knew, like “Du, du liegst mir im Herzen”, or “Zu Lauterbach hab’ ich mein Strumpf verloren”, particularly when he had been down town and had imbibed a bit too much of the barley brew.  He loved to dance and could dance with the best, particularly the hopwaltz as it was known the, now the polka.  He would have delighted to hear Lawrence Welk.

All in our family could sing.  I think Louise had the vest voice of all.  She had a good ear for music so essential to singing.  Her voice wasn’t overly strong and she did not sing loudly.  It did not stand out, a very desirable quality.  It blended well.  All of her twelve children inherited her talent.  All of us sang in the church choir at one time or another.  Other names that come to me of those who sang in the choir were Pelt, Klann, Domke, Luetzow, Schmidt, Grossman, Meden.  Over the years there were others, of course.

Though it was a crude instrument I tried valiantly at my father’s behest to produce music.  The inside of the kitchen was still unfinished at the time.  With an idea and some ingenuity father strung haywire between two upright two by fours.  Then he gave me two bolts and showed me how to strum the threaded ends over the taut haywire.  I tried it and it worked.  The haywire was no harp.  Singing, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”, and strumming at the same time, I produced sound that were more cacaphonically disturbing than harmonically pleasing to those who had to listen.  I confess the effort was not patriotically motivated.  But it was rhythmically satisfying to me but undoubtedly distressing to others.

In the early teen the parents bought a reed organ.  They got it from a Mrs. Sommers in Rogers City.  Lillian and I accomplished a degree of proficiency cording on it, imagining that we were accompanying a country musician like Bill Brege fiddling “Turkey In The Straw” for squaredancers to dance by.  Squaredancing was popular at picnics, birthday celebrations and weddings.  Reed organs were very common in those days.  In our community the Klanns, Domkes, Luetzows, Grossmans and we had one.  Our organ stood in the living room for many years were it was more than a musical instrument; it was also a piece of prized furniture.  Standing unused, dust and mice could soon render old reed organs useless and make their disposal inevitable.  Some have been carefully preserved and today are prized objects for antique collectors.

                                                  SCHOOL

An education did not have the high rating it has today.  This was true on all level from the one room country school to the univeristy.  Only a few of the pioneers had a grade school education.  Work in order to make a living had the highest priority.  Many could not read or write except their name.  Father worked in the wood at the age of twelve.  I do not know how far mother went in school either.  She could read German quite well from the practice she received reading the Kirchenblatt.  She could write some.  I have a letter in my scrapbook that she wrote to me when we were in Readlyn, Iowa, dated 12 June 1932.  I prize this letter.  It is the only one I ever received from her.  I do not know if she wrote any more.

The first school building in Moltke Township District 2 was located across the road from the parsonage of St. James Lutheran Church.   It was built prior to the founding of St. James which was in 1876.  At about 1910 the new one was built.  The old building was bought by Emil Peltz, Sr.. who moved it to his location on the corner of Algenstedt Highway and Peltz Road.  He converted it into a home which still stands at the same location and is now owned by Erhardt Karsten.  The new school was located across the road from St. James.  After the consolidation of schools it was bought by Harold Pommeranke who now lives there with his family.

I like the opening exercises in the morning which usually lasted fifteen minutes.  During this time the teacher would read or we would sing on alternate mornings.  I remember a few of the songs, old standbys like, “Shall We Gather by the River”, “in the Sweet Bye and Bye”, “O, Come Sweet May”, or some of the familiar Steven Foster songs like “Swanee River”, “Gone Are the Days”.  We sang them mostly from a songbook call “The Knapsack”.  Recreation for us boys consisted of baseball in early fall and spring and playing “deer” in the woods during the winter months.  Playing “deer” called for endurance.  You had to be able to run in the snow, and sometimes the snow was pretty deep.  Some were hunters armed with snowballs who would “shoot” with them.  If a “deer” was hit he was immediately transformed into a dog who would have to run down the deer if he could and hang on him until the hunter arrived.  The territory of deer cover was unlimited.  One time, I recall, we ended up in the hardwoods across the road from Otto Algenstedt when the one o’clock bell rang.  We were late, naturally, and got a scolding from the teacher, Isabelle Resteiner Aldridge.  I can’t recall her resorting to physical punishment.  And yet she had no disciplinary problems.  This usually tells us something about the caliber of a teacher, at least as far as disciplinary requirements are concerned.  Isabelle was an exceptionally good teacher.  Whoever had her could not blame the teacher if he did not learn anything.

This brings to mind the time Isabelle announces her retirement to the board of directors.  The children were disappointed when they heard about it.  Freddie Peltz who usually could be counted on to come up with his hare of ideas came up with this one.  He, Rudolph Schlieben and I went fishing.  He had the necessary equipment in his pocket.  No fishing pole was needed in the small Pommerenke stream to the north of the school.  It harbored a few small brook trout.  Freddie’s effort was not without success; he caught one all of five inches in length.  He put it on a V-stick and the bribe committee of three was on its way back.  With a smile of confidence we filed into school and stationed ourselves around Isabelle’s desk.  “Are you coming back next year”? inquired Freddie the spokesman.  Isabelle was not prepared to be put on the spot with an inquiry like this.  “We have something for you if you will come back”.  At this point he revealed the little speckle trout from behind his back, confident of the persuasive powers of his gift.  Gratefully Miss Resteiner acknowledged the token of honor which just had been accorded her.  While the incident was funny, it never the less, was surrounded with the aura of sincerity.  Miss Resteiner was only too well aware of this.  But she did not come back.  Clayton Aldridge of Rogers City persuaded her to give him her hand in marriage, and so another transition from schoolmarm to wife was completed.  Those of us who had her cherish her memory, as others, no doubt, have reasons to cherish the memory of the teachers they loved.   A school teacher plays an important part in the life of a child.

I must tell of another incident at school.  This concerned Arthur Peltz, Alfred’s brother.  While that of Alfred was funny this of Arthur was serious.  It could have been tragic.  Mr. Bauerman was the teacher.  One noon hour he suggested playing “shinney”.   It had omse of the ingredients of hockey; probably a backwoods version of it.  Alders with a curve at the bottom, chopped off with an ax served as sticks.  A 2” by 2” chunk of wood was used for a puck.  At one point in the game Art Peltz happened to be standing behind Mr. Bauerman when he swung back to strike the puck.  The sharp, wedge-shaped end of his stick struck Art on the upper lip, laying his upper teeth bare.  Blood gushed from the severe wound.  Pastor Schmidt from across the road was summoned to the scene.  A clean towel was pressed to the wound and he was rushed to the doctor in Rogers City in Pastor Schmidt’s cutter for medical aid as quickly as one oculd rush anyone in those days.  It took several stitches to close the wound.  Art retained the scar for the rest of his life.

Walking to school was an accepted fact by young and old alike, far and near, cold or warm, fall, winter or spring.  Once in s great while we would stay home because of a severe snowstorm or extremely cold temperature.  One time I came home with frostbitten fingers.  The cure in those days was rubbing them in snow, like fighting fire with fire.  It burned like fire, let me tell you.  There wasn’t a whole lot of difference in pain between this and the tooth extraction.  Fortunately to my knowledge such ill-advised treatments did not result in greater damage, to one’s amazement as one things back now.  People lived dangerously then, too.  Haven’t we always?

I remember the following names of those with whom I went to school:  Of our family it was Clara, Arthur, and Lillian; Arthur, Alfred, Emil and Anna Peltz; Sarah and Hannah Tulgetske; Wanda Domke; Margaret Meden; Willie, Roland and Elna Luetzow; Henry, Helen and Julius Wyant; Herman, Marie and Karl Schmidt; Hattie Wiesegart; Henry Martin; Arnold and Edward Joppich; Marie, Pauline, Rudolph Schlieben; Albert and Otto Schlieben; Anna, Frank and Otto Peetz; Marie and Amanda Dobbert; Joe and Myrtle Westerman; Albert Mamp.

Though it is long, I want to include a list of the teachers who taught at our school.  This list is complete except for those who may have taught there during the earliest years: Sam Covey, Sophia Dimke, Mrs. Bauerman, Isabella Resteiner Aldridge, Rillah Heslip, Alfred Karsten, Emil Peltz, Modesta [Mrs. Elmer] Kosloski, Evelyn Heller, Mildred Schmidt, Eleanor Brege, Mrs. Stevenson, Florence Kimbel, Shirley Wright, Beatrice Ingles, Ann Voss Schaedig, Dorothy Adair, Shirley Russel Zampich, Ann Maynard,,Eugene Plume, Miss Minier, Mrs. Engles, Mrs. Clara Mills Walter, the last teacher in ‘65-’66 before the consolidation.

Ah, yes, “School days, school days, Dear old Golden Rule days”.  The school is a vital part of our life.

                                         
                                                  HOLIDAYS

Of the legal holidays there were three that were observed.  The first was New Year’s Day.  It was and still is a church and a legal holiday.  For a child New Year’s Day worship service did not seem to mean more than a regular Sunday service.  I do not recall much of New Year’s Day of old.  But I do remember father taking the shotgun outside at midnight and firing several rounds into the air, “shooting the old year out and the New Year in”.  Then he’d come in and greet everyone with “A Happy New Year”!  In fact, this practice of my father must have given me an idea on New Year’s Eve that time I stayed with my brother-in-law, Christoph Domke and my sister Louise.  It was a daring stunt for a twelve year old but I did it, never the less and got by with it.  I readied Christoph’s double barrel 12-gauge shotgun and his six-shooter .38 caliber handgun secretly before I went to bed.  I set the alarm clock for a few minutes before midnight and went to sleep.  All went as planned.  I tiptoed out of the house, a weapon in each hand, stationed myself beneath the window of their bedroom and let go with the .38 revolver to signal the going out of the old year.  I should have used both hand but no one used both hand to fire a pistol in those days.  Why should I?  Obviously because the hand of a twelve year old just is not large enough for the grip of caliber that size, let alone fire it and hang on to it.  But I did- fortunately!   Mission one accomplished.  I laid the pistol down, brought the 12-gauge to my shoulder, raised it into the air with enough presence of mind to point it far enough away from the over-hanging roof and then let go with a double salute to the incoming New Year:  Boom! Boom!  Mission two accomplished.  The possibility of disapproval coupled with some painful disciplinary measure only now began to dawn on me.  But it was too late.  I replaced the guns and tiptoed quietly upstairs to bed.  I did not stop to wish Louise and Christoph a Happy New Year.  They said something as I went by their bedroom door.  It didn’t sound encouraging.  I descended with fear and trembling the next morning.  I got it alright but nothing more than not to try anything like that again.  I promised but not without a feeling of satisfaction that I had tried it once.  What ids won’t all do!

The second holiday was Washington’s birthday, significant to us only because we could stay home from school.

The third was the Fourth of July.  This was a big event for us kids because if meant a picnic, and a big picnic at that.  We did not look forward to earning money for the picnic.  Celebrating the Fourth meant going to the picnic, going to the picnic meant spending money and this in turn meant earning money, earning it by grubbing stumps, a dime per stump, five cents for Art and five cents for me.  No allowance in those days.  Art and I were allowed to grub stumps.  If we grubbed out six we had thirty cents a piece.  This was carefully budgeted.  Five cents for a box of crackerjacks.  It went a long ways.  You remember the slogan on it?  “The more you eat the more you want”.  We did not eat any more because we could not want any more.  Five cents for an orange.  This was consumed by slices, of course, to consume time.  Five cents for a bottle of pop, the first and only pop for the year.  Five cents for an ice cream cone, vanilla, the only flavor available at the picnic or elsewhere for that matter.  Five cents for a package of gum.  That remained unopened.  The anticipation of opening a new full package of chewing gum helped soothe the disappointment the next day that the Fourth of July celebration was all over for another year.  The picnic experience lingered as sure as the package of gum lasted for days, even weeks.  The gum chewed periodically during the day, was saved from day to day long after the last goodness had been chewed out of it.  Firecrackers, all of five cents a package, cracking early in the morning, usually below bedroom windows, signaled to those still in bed that the celebration of the day of the signing of the Declaration of Independence had dawned once more.

Speaking about chewing gum and doing it thriftily, I must tell you of my father’s ingenuity.  He had chewed tobacco ever since he was a youngster of twelve.  Let me say again he lived to the ripe old age of almost 87 years.  I would not advise any one reading this to draw a conclusion from this:  Anyway, chewing tobacco in church wasn’t practical.  So he chewed gum.  When he got home from church he put it between two pieces of peppermint candy to be “recharged” for the next Sunday.  I do not know how long before it was run down so badly that it would not take the “charge” any more.  On one occasion he handed Pastor Essinger a piece of peppermint candy with the comment, “This for the good sermon you preached this morning”.

The other holidays were Easter and Christmas.  The day following these two Church holidays were celebrated as Second Easter Day and Second Christmas Day.  This had been the custom in Germany for centuries.  This practice of long standing gradually fell into disuse.  We looked forward to these festivals as much then as now.

Confirmation was almost always held on Palm Sunday.  This was the practice throughout the Lutheran Churches in America, a custom brought here from Europe.  Since Pastor Schmidt served three congregations confirmation could be held only at on of the three on Palm Sunday.  We associate the delicately fragrant Mayflower or trailing arbutus with spring.  At that time it was legal to pick them.  On Easter we celebrate the miracle of life after death.  Even a child senses the joy of the miracle of the Resurrection.  Children, youth, the middle aged, the aged shared as members of the one holy Christian Church in the joy of the angel’s message, “He is risen”!

I remember the Christmas tree in our home and in church.  The memory of burning candles and the fragrance after they have been extinguished lingers.  Were they not dangerous?  I suppose so, but I cannot recall of fire ever starting in a home from lighted Christmas candles.  They were lighted to the accompaniment of the singing of “O, Tannenbaum”.

For the Christmas Eve Service each child of Sunday School age received a “Christmas piece” from Pastor Schmidt to recite.  The “piece” consisted of one or more stanzas of Christmas hymns or an appropriate Bible verse.  The Christmas story recorded in Luke 2:1-14 was always memorized by some one.  During the Service Pastor Schmidt usually sat on the organ stool so he could accompany the singing of Christmas carols on the reed organ.  He would have some of the children stand around him while others remained sitting in the pews in front.  Each would recite his or her “piece” as called on.  A humorous incident happened one time when he called on Delly Froehlich, who had just come in late, with the question, “Nah, Froehlich, was bringst du”?  Delly responeded with this statement, “Von Himmel hos da komm ich her, Ich bring euch gute neue Maer”.  “From heaven above to earth I come To bear good news to every home”.  It did not just happen that way.  Pastor Schmidt had a subtle sense of humor.  A never to be forgotten feature about the Christmas Eve Service was the distribution of Christmas bags.  If parents wanted their children to receive a bag they would contribute from twenty-five cents to a dollar.  They were distributed after the Service, not one per child but one per family.  The child whose name was called to receive the bag for the family felt honored.  The amount of goodies in the brown grocery bag equaled the cost the amount previously contributed.  This was often the only Christmas gift received.  This was the extreme.  Today we see the other extreme.  Which is the better way?  Perhaps it lies somewhere in the middle.
 

                                                 CHURCH

The church played an important part in the life of most pioneer farmers throughout the country.  They were mostly immigrants from Europe with a church background.  Church life in our congregation was in keeping with the times, -simple.  There were only two organizations, the Sunday School and the church council.  No Ladies Aid, no Luther League, no Brotherhood, no standing committees.  The Luther League was organized around 1925.  The Ladies Aid in the Thirties and the Brotherhood in the Forties.

My father and mother were confirmed and married in Immanuel Lutheran Church, Mo. Synod.  All of us children were baptized there except Eleanor.  She had been a member there since she married Arnold Karsten.  Moltke Township had a high percentage of Lutherans.  There never was and still are no other churches in the township outside of Immanuel and St. James.

Around 1906 the parents transferred the family membership to St. James.  It was almost four miles to Immanuel.  It was two and a half miles to St. James.

I remember the names of members at Immanuel during the first quarter of the century: Brege, Bruder, Boyke, Curtis, Domke, Felax, Grulke, Hein, Hoeft, Karsten, Paulley, Roeske, Schaedig, Sorgenfrei, Spens, Tulgetske, Voss, Wolgast, Zinke.  During the following years the names of many other members have been added.  The names of the four pastors who have served Immanuel during her entire history are: Druckenmiller, Steig, Meyer, Koch, Heinecke.  Pastor Meyer has been serving his second pastorate since July 1949.

As far as walking to church was concerned Art and I had the following experience.  It happened on a Sunday morning.  It had sleeted all day.  Paul Domke had skated from the Domke farm to our house, over a mile, and back again.  Art and I were the only ones to decide to risk life and limb and walk to church.  Before we got there, however, we wished we also would have stayed home.  Never have I experienced anything like it.  Walking up hill was an experience in frustration.  Our first encounter was the long hill east of Peltz corner.  Three times we were two young back-sliding Lutherans.  For an onlooker it would have been to laugh.  For us it was to cry.  We had three hills to maneuver and it was three down at each.  We were beat when we finally got to church.  I have no idea what Pastor Schmidt preached about that evening.  I spent my waking moment thinking about getting home.  The Kreuzberg was the worst.  We suffered only on reversal.  No one had to sing soft lullabies to put us to sleep that night.

Services, Sunday School, catechetical instructions, everything was in German.  It was an almost exclusive Germany community.  We spoke German at home.  The parents spoke low German to one another.  To us they spoke high German.  When I started going to school I could not speak English.  The transition to English at St. James was as gradual as it was inevitable.

The membership list of St. James Lutheran Church includes names such as the following: algenstedt, Cherrette, Grossman, Grote, Joppich, Lamb, Luetzow, Meden, Peetz, Peltz, Pommerenke, Ronschke, Schlieben, Schmidt, Schultz, Vogler, Wenzel, Wiesegart, Wirgau.  Pastors, in the order according to which they served:  Schwann, Schmidt, Dimke, Althoff, Braunschweig, Essinger, Scherer, Jaeger, Ferne, Schultz, Eichinger.

Rural congregations constituted the backbone of Lutheran church bodies in the early days.  Today they are fighting for their continue existence.  Decreasing rural population and increasing city population plus inflation have created this crisis.  The institutional church changes.  The One, Holy, Christian Church is changeless, as Christ her Head who is “the same yesterday, today and tomorrow”.   

 
                                                              AFTER-THOUGHTS

Art and Carl were feeding the cattle.  Art had finished throwing hay down from the top of the mow.  Thoughtlessly he tossed the pitchfork down.  It landed upright.  Sliding down he became impaled in the right thigh.  Car ran to mother for help.  She quickly withdrew the fork.  No infection set in.  Farming is dangerous.  Providence is benign.
 

Carl was only a little youngest when he suffered from an advanced case of diarrhea.  At home remedies had failed.  We were invited to the Medens.  Peanuts were passed around during the course of the evening.  Carl clamored for some.  Reluctantly mother consented.  Carl recovered quickly.  If I remember correctly this is one benefit from the lowly peanut Dr. George Washington Carver fail to discover.
 

What was first thought to be a black dog chasing our pigs turned out to be a bear.  Art rant for the shotgun.  The bear grabbed a piglet in his jaws and made for cover with Dad in hot pursuit barehanded.  He remained within sight and sound of the fleeing and frightened piglet.  A minute or two later Art sighted him and let go with a charge of buckshot.  He drew blood.  The bear escaped never to return again.  

During the hey day of deer it became necessary to guard potatoes standing in bags in the field during digging time.   Left unguarded deer would emerge from adjoining cover by the dozen.  Hunger is a consuming force.  

Art, a teenager, climbed a tree during noon recess to view a road repair crew.  An older member thought it would be funny if he would chop the tree down.  Art received only broken ribs as he the tree fell on a stone pile beneath.  Folly of both, young and old, could have turned into a tragedy. 
 
 
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