Don Growing Up 1

           

A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.
                                                                        -                                             --Longfellow.

           

           The thoughts of my youth are indeed long, long thoughts. It’s almost 72 years since I was born on a farm on a cold, cold night in February outside of Ovid, Colorado, about two miles from the Nebraska border. Life was a little different then.

A doctor came to our house, according to my older sisters, and delivered me - with the help of my mother, of course. Since I was the youngest of 14 (seven boys, seven girls), they had plenty of experience seeing my mother pregnant. I was basically raised with four older siblings (three boys, one girl) because seven of the brood were already married by the time I was 8 years old. (Two boys died before I arrived.)

            Our time on the farm was interrupted in 1942, after my oldest brother Paul went into World War II, and my dad had no one to work on the farm except teenage girls. My sisters Marge and Irene were his “righthand men,” but my parents thought we would be better off near relatives in Chicago. We moved there, where I, about 3 years old, lamented no dirt to play in, so, to my eventual disgust, we ended up back on the old place in 1945.

Colorado was freezing in the winter and roasting in the summer, but it didn’t bother me. I recall collecting eggs from the hens in the chicken house when I was about 5. I reached into one nest and felt something furry. I leaped back with a small cry, and what appeared to be a possum jumped out, landed at my feet and lay still. I took one look and dashed into the house, yelling for mom. She came out to see the source of my agony and saw – nothing. The possum was gone. It had been playing possum, of course. My mother smiled. She never got too excited about anything we kids did.

            “Well, be careful,” she said. “Finish collecting the eggs and come in for breakfast.” That was it. No hugs or coddling or pity. It was the farm. Get on with it.

‘           I really started working regularly at 5. (I think kids are a little older today.) I was delegated to follow the sugar beet loader down a row, picking up the ones which were missed and throwing them into the hopper. They usually weighed between 5 and 12 pounds. Anyway, they were pretty heavy for me, and I struggled with them but managed to dump them into the loader while trotting along behind. No easy feat for a 5-year-old.            Nobody felt sorry for me – except maybe my mother. Everyone had their own jobs to do, usually a lot tougher. Sugar beets were the scourge of all our lives.

            Also about 5, I slept in a bed with two older brothers. Dick was 7 and Larry, 10. I had to lay stiff as a board between them with my arms down by my sides. If I even bumped them, they would slug me on the shoulder. I was often sore for a week.

As I grew older – like 6 – I started to help thin beets in early June. My mother sewed pads on the knees of my jeans, and I crawled behind my older sister, Bebe  (Clara, who was 12), who hoed out the beets, leaving a clump of them about every 10 inches. The thinner, I in this scenario, would pull out all the beets but one so it had room to grow, kind of like thinning radishes or onions in your garden. I, of course, constantly fooled around, driving my more mature sister to distraction. It was back-breaking, mind-numbing work.  Our neighbors usually hired migrant workers to help. We kids worked for free. At 6, I never thought much about it. I was just happy to be out in the field with the big kids. I didn’t know any better.

 In early summer, we often went down row after row to hoe out the weeds. My dad also cultivated with the John Deere tractor, but his fields had to be pristine. In October, when I wasn’t chasing the loader and was slightly older, I got to join the other kids in topping the leaves off the beets with giant machetes (better known as beet knives) and tossing them into rows to be picked up by the loader. What fun!

As I grew, more chores were added. I was “allowed” to water and feed the chickens in the morning and evening and lock up the hen house at night - when it was dark and scary. I slopped the hogs, and looked after cats, dogs, rabbits and geese, ducks – even sheep and young calves.

I’ll never forget our first farm. It was about 1.5 miles between Ovid and Julesburg.  Ovid was a town of 400, and Julesburg the metropolis of a 1,000. We had a boxcar on the farm where we played, and a pump in the kitchen – our only running water. We had to take turns taking baths in a tub in the kitchen on Saturday nights – in the same water. My sister, Bebe, who  today lives in Anaheim, admitted years later to peeing in the tub when it was her turn in order to silently laugh at her often exasperating brothers. I was shocked, of course. I couldn’t imagine four boys causing her any consternation.

Since we had no bathroom, our outhouse was about 50 feet from the house, and it was mighty cold in the winter. I remember one Halloween one of our clan moved somebody’s outhouse back about four feet, and a lucky soul fell into the pit in the dark. We thought it was hilarious. My mother shook her head – but grinned.

My very first day at school in Ovid, I raised my hand, as instructed, to go to the bathroom. I found flush toilets which I had never seen before. I flushed one, and the water rushed to the top of the toilet and scared me to death. No way was I going to sit on that beast. I returned to the classroom without doing my deed. Soon, bless their little innocent hearts, my classmates were holding their noses and pointing at me. I had soiled my pants. The teacher called home, and my big, burly, taciturn father picked me up in his pickup. He didn’t look happy, but he never said a word. He took me home, my mother cleaned me up and sometime later enlightened me about the virtues of modern plumbing.

Ah, wilderness!

Don Lechman is a former reporter, critic and editor for The Daily Breeze. He teaches writing at Harbor College in Wilmington.