Ted writes: "The first water source I remember at the Benson place was the old pump in the back porch which was at the top of a sand point merely driven down into the ground. That pump for a while also fed, via a metal gutter, a cow tank just outside. The well was drilled when I was nine, as I recall, so that would be about 1954, the year you graduated from high school." I didn't remember where we got our water when we moved to the Benson place, but I remember the well digging, and we did have a good well after it was dug. Besides having to get winter fuel, people had to get water. I recall that there was a pump in front of the Yarnell school, and, in addition to furnishing water for the school, neighbors came and got large containers of water from it, at least in the winter. I'm not sure they used it all year.

We had, like most people, an outdoor privy. Sometimes we had toilet paper, sometimes we had old catalogs, which weren't well suited to absorption, but were free, and were fairly good reading. We never used corncobs, in case you are wondering. In the winter, or at night, we used a slop pail, which had to be dumped out, in the outdoor toilet, in the morning. It was our usual practice to run out to the toilet just before going to bed, no matter the weather. We did get indoor plumbing eventually. We had one bathroom. Your mother was greatly surprised to find that, not only did everyone share the bathroom, but all of us (including her) used a single washcloth. We did, or were supposed to, rinse it out.

We didn't have electricity, or a phone. (We may have had electricity at the McLean Ranch, and probably did in Edgewater.) We used kerosene lamps for light. If we needed a bath, we heated the water on the stove. We did the same for clothes washing, cooking, and for any other purposes. There was always a teakettle of water on the kitchen stove, and there was always a fire in it, until it went out at night. There was a bigger stove in the cellar, which heated most of the house in winter. There was a door in the side of the house for the purpose of providing wood to the cellar. (Most people had such an arrangement. Once I went to see the Campbells, some later friends of ours. They weren't home. I got in to their house through the wood passage. Actually, the door may have been unlocked, but it was more exciting to use the wood passage.)

George says: "The kitchen wood stove also had a 'reservoir' of water on one end, and when the fire was going, the reservoir would have warm water, which was wonderful for washing with in the winter. We would also occasionally sit on the reservoir in the luxury of the warmth, usually with smells of cooking."

You've never used an outdoor toilet in dead of a Wisconsin winter. It's an experience, believe me. The poop piles up in frozen stalagmites under the holes. All of us have some vivid memories of attempting to relieve ourselves in the winter.

Wars
As I said above, World War II certainly affected our family. My father got work, and, I believe, had to do something for the war effort, by law. I was aware of the war, as it didn't end until I was about 7. I remember rationing a little bit.

Dad worked on the Alcan Highway, the road that was being built between the lower 48 states and Alaska, through Western Canada. I guess that is still the main land route to Alaska, and, no doubt, George, Joan, and George II and Leslie have driven it. It was probably pretty interesting, and rough sometimes, but I don't remember him telling anything about it. He also worked in Superior in the shipyards. I suppose that they were building warships, but I'm not sure. Ted says that Dad was working on Liberty ships. Dad was either too old, or had too many kids, to be drafted. Perhaps both.

Much later in my life, I went to college, and was trained to be a high school science teacher. I liked student teaching, and might well have been happy as such a teacher, but that was not to be. However, one reason for seeking high school science certification was that this gave some protection from the draft for the Korean War. We had the idea that the Russians were beating us in science, and wanted to do anything we could to catch up. This was a boon, at least in some ways, to the science enterprise in our country. Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, was a shock to the US.

I took the first year of AFROTC (Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps) in college, which was University of Wisconsin-Superior. (Then known as Superior State University.) Almost all males did, as it was a requirement. The remaining years were optional. I remember it as being pretty Mickey Mouse. There was a lot of marching, which I rather enjoyed, and some theory. The commandant asked me to come by his office and sign up for the second year, but I wasn't interested. (He had heard that I was a good student, I guess, and was under some pressure to sign up officers for the Air Force.) Your Uncle David took all four years, and then went into the Air Force as a career, after getting a Master's in Physics. He had a tour of duty at the Air Force Academy as a professor.

Ted served with the US Army Band. George and I never got beyond the first year of AFROTC. Neither Ted nor David ever served overseas.

Farming
My father was born and raised in Huntington, Indiana, which is more or less the size of Anderson, SC. He had no experience with farming. Mom did little or no outside farm work as a child. We couldn't afford a large farm with good land, and the land wasn't really great where we lived. It was OK, but not great. One joke was that the ground was so poor that you couldn't raise your voice. When we acquired the Benson Place, we started a dairy herd--milk cows. I suppose Dad had had some experience with them on the McLean ranch. We also had some chickens. Once in a while, we had a pig or a sheep. George had a pet sheep, which, in spite of its gender, he named George. Somehow George the sheep lost her two hind feet to frostbite, but she could surely get around.

Pigs were used for meat, of course. Sheep could be, too. I don't know if George the sheep was eventually butchered. She was sheared, I'm sure. You can shear sheep and get wool from them. Some of the guys I went to high school with were very good at sheep shearing. I never did it. I don't remember who sheared George. You should shear sheep in the warm part of the year, because they need their thick wool in the winter, and having their wool sheared lets them be cooler in the summer.

When we got serious about farming, we needed a horse. Dad bought a horse from Leon Coolidge. He had survived the winter outdoors, which was a big plus--it showed that he was healthy, and a survivor. For some reason, Leon didn't use him for fox feed. Bob was a good horse. He pulled the cultivator, pulled the hayfork, pulled the manure boat out to the fields in the winter, etc. He didn't give us any trouble, except once when he ran away. I was delegated to go get him, at about 10 years old, I suppose. I went to the Coolidge place, which was about 6 miles from the Benson place, where we lived, probably by car, and he was there. I guess he wanted to be fox food. I walked him home, without any harness. I just pulled on his chin hairs to get him to move in the right direction, if he seemed balky.

Mosquitoes, deerflies, horseflies, and perhaps other insect pests were a real problem in the summers. Mosquitoes are small, but their bite can be painful, and it can itch. Deerflies are a little larger, with eyes that have colored checker patterns in them. Horseflies are even larger, and have striped eyes. They all bite, and the bites can hurt. They take blood, too. Bob stayed in a pasture that was partly in the woods. He had a trail that he walked through the woods, apparently to brush off the flies. He wore it down so that his path was perhaps an inch below the rest of the ground. Horses, of course, have tails that switch back and forth, and are pretty good flyswatters, but they aren't long enough to cover the whole horse. There are a lot of ticks in Northern Wisconsin, too, but they don't hurt when they bite. Often you don't know you've been bitten until  you see them.

Ted asked if I recalled "cases of the Army version of 6-12 [mosquito] dope that Dad must have brought back from the Yukon? And the old mosquito netting? Didn't we also spray the cows (and maybe the milk) with DDT in the summer? I still remember that sweet smell." I don't, but I'm sure he is correct.

One of our farm enterprises was beans. Stokely-Van Camp contracted with farmers to grow beans for their canning and grocery sales. We had 5 acres of beans. When these beans get going, they produce well. It can take a good picker hours to pick two rows. We got the McLeans, and Maizie, and the Emerick and Updike kids, who lived nearby, to pick. We also got Indians. There is a reservation perhaps 12 miles from where we lived, and Mom or Dad would drive up there and pick up a car full of pickers. Sometimes Stokely would bring a busload of them. I was a good picker. So was David. George was, too, if properly motivated. I don't think Ted picked much--he was younger. We paid 3 cents per pound. 200 pounds was a very good day. I don't know what Stokely paid us. Often, David or I were put in charge of the crew. Dad did other work, and Mom did the housework, including looking after Ted.

Good bean pickers did two rows at a time, being careful not to pull up the plants--just pick off the beans, so that there would be another picking when the next batch of flowers matured. You had to be careful of thistles. Thistles have prickers, or thorns, which are especially hurtful when the plant dies. Sitting on a dry thistle is not a good idea.

We mostly put up loose hay. We didn't have a baler. This meant that we cut the hay with a mower. The mower had sharp triangular blades, with two cutting sides, and one side attached to a long arm that moved back and forth. The triangles were about 3 inches in dimension. When you pulled the mower, the blades moved back and forth, and cut the grass. Once we had some visitors, old friends of Mom and Dad from Indiana. Ted, I think it was, showed one of the boys how the mower worked, and cut off the end joint of the boy's finger in the process. I remember that his father was glad to have found the lost joint on the ground, and I guess they took him to the doctor. I don't know if they sewed the joint back on, or not.

When the hay is cut, it has to dry. You had to pay some attention to the weather, because if it rained, the hay wouldn't dry. If it didn't dry enough, it would mold in the haymow. It might even undergo spontaneous combustion. Once in a while, some hay that had been put up wet would have fungus growing in it, and the process would generate enough heat that the hay would catch on fire. You usually lost your barn if that happened.

After the hay had dried, we had a hayrake that worked like a leaf rake, only much larger, and you pulled with the horse. It was used to put the hay into piles, as opposed to just lying on the ground. Putting it in piles made it easier to pick up, and also helped to dry it out, if the piles weren't too dense. After the hay was raked, we'd come along with a large wagon, perhaps 10 feet by 20, with a scaffolding on each end. People on the ground would throw the hay onto the wagon, and someone on the wagon had to skillfully pile it. It was very important that it be piled correctly, because, if it wasn't, the whole load would slip off onto the ground when you went around a curve or up a hill. I remember Mom helping put hay on the wagons. She picked beans, too, but most farm work she didn't do. There was plenty of support work to do.

The barn's top floor was the hayloft, or haymow. It was perhaps 25 feet high at the peak, large enough that we put a basketball goal in the haymow. (We couldn't use it when the mow was full, of course.) There was a giant fork, with four prongs, or tines, perhaps 4 feet in length, curved. The fork was attached to a pulley system that would let it down onto the wagon. You plunged the tines into the hay, and Bob pulled on a rope lying on the ground, which pulled the fork up into the haymow. Then you did it again, until the load was all in the mow. (We always lost some of it onto the ground, of course) There was a trip mechanism, and you pulled on a trip rope when the fork was in the part of the barn where you wanted it. I once put one tine of the fork into my foot, perhaps a half inch or so. It exposed some muscle underneath. I don't think I was seriously discommoded as a result.

Somebody named Ron Fraser did a pencil sketch, which looks quite accurate, of the barn and much smaller milk house. The haymow door is visible near the peak of the barn roof. That's one of Dad's boats lying in front of the left side of the barn. The lower part of the barn was made of logs, which, I was told, were obtained from pine trees torn down in a tornado, several years before we moved to the Benson place.

You couldn't just haul the hay up and dump it. If you did, you would have a high row of hay under the track the hayfork traveled on, but there wouldn't be any hay in the edges of the mow. Someone had to "mow back," it was called. That was hot work. Wisconsin, in the summer, actually gets hotter than South Carolina, probably because the days are a lot longer. The mow had no air conditioning, and only two small windows, and the haydoor that the hayfork came in and out of. It was high up, next to the roof, and there was little breeze on the surface, until the hay was piled up many feet thick. When we mowed back, we usually removed our shirts, if they weren't off already. That was cooler. However, it exposed the skin to scratches from hay stubble. Not only that, if Dad wasn't sure that the hay was dry enough, we had to salt it. Salting, like salting ham, or putting sugar in jelly, kills the bacteria and fungi. Salt in a recently opened grass cut isn't pleasant.

We needed the hay so that we could feed the cows in the winter. Cows eat a lot, and they can't get food for themselves, although deer, and even horses, can, when there is snow on the ground.

But the hay came in handy for other things. We could dive off the haydoor into the hay. There were also shafts on both sides of the haymow, reinforced so that the hay wouldn't go into them, so that you could climb up, and fork down hay for the cows to eat. We could climb up into these shafts, and dive into the hay. We even slept in the hay sometimes, in the summer, anyway.

There were cats wandering around the place. One or two of them usually came up into the haymow if we slept there, and snuggled down with us. There were also swallows that lived in the barn. They flew in the windows, or, in the summer, in through the haydoor, which was kept open all summer. They nested inside the haymow. In the summer, when the sun rose before 5 AM, you were awakened by swallow babies griping about not getting enough to eat. There was a sheet metal roof on the barn, and, if it rained, you might be awakened by the hammering of rain on this roof.

Besides hay, we fed silage. Silage is cut up corn. It has more food value than hay. We had a silo. To put up silage, we needed to borrow or rent equipment to cut up the corn, leaves, stalks, and ears, into pieces about 1 inch long, and blow the result up a tube into the top of the silo. Generally, we worked to pay off such borrowing. Farming, as we did it, was labor intensive, and not everybody had 4 boys. So Dad, or one of us, or a combination of two or more, would go over, usually to the Updikes, to work for him for a while. Updike had more equipment than we did, but not as many hands. Like hay, silage has to be forked down into a chute (you can climb up it) in the winter, then spread out for the cows. There was a silo and chute in the Harrison Ford movie, "Witness."

In the summer, if there weren't beans to pick, hay to get up, or some other crop to harvest, or the garden to cultivate, there was always rock picking. The rocks were pushed up by the frost every year, and we had to get them out. They interfered with, for example, the mower, and could damage it beyond repair, I suppose. If there wasn't rock picking, there was fence fixing. Cows were pretty hard on fences, and sometimes broke them down and got out. So you had to patrol your fences, looking for weak spots, and repairing them. Cutting pulpwood logs, for the excelsior mill, I guess, was another summer occupation.

As I wrote above, the cows spent the winter in the barn, fed by hay and silage that we put up during the summer. That didn't stop them from pooping and urinating. The barn had a trough, called a gutter, that ran behind the cows. Most of what they did went into it. Every day, we had to pull the manure boat, or sledge, into the barn, and scoop out the gutter, then Bob would pull the boat out onto a snow-covered field (it was a lot easier to pull on snow than in the barn) and we would shovel it off onto the snow. It helped the field be more fertile next year.

True enough, in many ways we lived like the Amish, but not by choice. Dad did get a couple of tractors, which supplemented, or replaced, Bob eventually. But tractors took gas, which we had to pay for, and occasionally needed repairs.

Another chore was milking the cows. That, and gathering the eggs, were jobs that had to be done every day. Milking was done twice a day, at about 6 AM and 5 PM, more or less. In warmer weather, we had to round up the cows from whatever field they were in, and take them back to the field after milking. One summer, when I was about 12, my folks decided that it was about my time to start taking full responsibility for this. I got up at about 4, read a little, and then went out to get the cows. We had about 12 or so, usually. They had names, and they certainly had personalities. Black-eyed Susan was one that was particularly assertive. She had a daughter, named Sue. I don't remember much more about their names.

Milking was, as we said, done with armstrong milkers. Strong arms, in other words. You sat on a stool under the cow, and put a milk pail between your legs, and started pulling. You set up a rhythm, and squirted the milk into the pail. We could also squirt the milk elsewhere. Sometimes we squirted each other, and sometimes we squirted the milk at a cat. The cats would usually open their mouths and enjoy. Most of the milk went into the pails, though. We put it into large milk cans, holding several gallons, and every day, the milkman came from the creamery in Rice Lake to pick it up. Dad did all the milking at first, of course. Later we did some, or all of it. He subscribed to at least one pulp science fiction magazine, and he used to read while he milked, with the magazine on one leg. I'm not sure I ever tried that. There was a radio in the barn, on a shelf fairly high up. In those days, radios had vacuum tubes that got warm. In the winter, one of the cats was usually up against the radio, for warmth. The cats would also lie on top of the cows sometimes. There was no heat in the barn other than that, but the cows put out a fair amount of body heat. I don't think it ever froze in the barn in winter.

Back about when George was born, I guess, and when we lived in Yarnell, Dad had some goats delivered. I guess that's where George got his goat's milk. Dad went someplace to take delivery. I was 3 years old, and got it into my head that he was going to the railroad crossing to get the goats. If we had something delivered, and it was too big to mail, it was set out at the crossing. So, I suppose without telling Mom, I walked to the train crossing. No goats, and no Dad. So I kept on walking down the track, for at least a couple of miles. Some time along then, Dad came back, and I wasn't with him. Mom and Dad started letting the neighbors know that I was lost, and before too long, the news had gotten as far as the radio station in Rice Lake, and people were yelling into the woods, and searching for me. Eventually, I heard the grader. I was always interested in the grader, and liked watching it. The roads were dirt roads, and got uneven as time went on, so they were scraped back to smoothness in the summer. In the winter, the grader had plenty to do to keep the roads clear of snow. The grader man and I got together, and he took me to someone else, who took me home. Mom says that Bob Mingaye, the mailman, is the one who brought me back. My parents were very glad to see me, and others were, also.

Besides all of the above, there was always wood to get up. Winters were cold, and it took a lot of wood to keep a house even partly warm. Much wood gathering took place in the winter. The snow made it easier to pull sledges full of wood, or trees that had been cut down. We cut wood in the summer, too, when there wasn't anything else to do. Often we just stacked the wood in the woods until winter. One time I was about nine and David about seven, and we went into the woods to work. Somehow David's axe bounced off a tree, or something, and cut him on the rebound. I tied my handkerchief around his leg for a tourniquet, and carried him out of the woods. Dad, I think it was, took him to the doctor, which was a rare occasion, indeed. Dad was doing some other farm work, I'm sure. I told Mom "If it had been me, you'd have told me to go back to work." I'm not sure why I said that, and I'm sure it wasn't true.

As I say, getting wood was necessary and serious. I remember seeing Jerry Van Gilder walking into the woods, with his axe over his shoulder, with snow on the ground, from the school bus window. Jerry was too young to go to school at the time. He wasn't going by himself, but he was going.

David was rather accident prone. We had a tree in front of our house, and he was swinging from it by his hands, with his tongue between his teeth. He fell, and bit his tongue. It had to have stitches. He couldn't speak for at least a few days, and his tongue stunk. He was quite a pest trying to communicate without speech. Another time he fell off a roll of snowfence, and landed with his back on a large nail. I'm not sure why it was there. Snowfence was made of slats, about an inch wide, and about an inch apart, which were put up perhaps 50 feet from the roads, in fields, in the winter. I guess they were put up by the County, or the Township. Blowing wind would have its path obstructed enough by the snowfence that snow would fall out of the wind, and drifts would form on either side of the snowfence, depending on which way the wind was blowing. This was to keep some of the snow out of the roads. I suppose it worked.

Many places had hardwood, but the Benson place had more popple than anything else. Popple seems to be a local name for quaking aspen, which, I believe, is the more common name. Popple grows rapidly, reaching its full height in less than 30 years, I believe. The green leaves are succulent, and serve as browse for deer and cows. You could tell whether cows were in a forested area by whether or not you could see into the woods. If you could see in for some distance, cows had taken the branches and leaves they could reach.

Popple was easy to cut down, and cut up. However, the down side was that it burns rapidly, without giving out as much heat per log as, say, oak. But, on the other hand, oak is much harder to cut down, and cut up.

School
My mother had been a teacher before she and Dad were married, and she became one again after we all were old enough to go to school. That is, she was paid for it during those periods. She never stopped being one, and still is one. At least she corrects people's grammar and spelling, or wants to. She taught all of us to read, I think. Me for sure. I knew how to read pretty well at age 3, I'm told.

We didn't have a lot of social life, with little transportation except our feet, and not many people nearby. I wasn't well socialized, or lacked social skills. For whatever reason, probably that one, Mom and Dad didn't enter me in school until I was 7. The school district was a combination of three former one-room grade school districts, namely Yarnell, Edgewater, and another one, Wooddale, nearer Birchwood. The district combined them all into a single school, with a single teacher. I think they may have decided which building to use based on the number of children from each area (I don't think Wooddale ever got used after that consolidation). I began school in Edgewater. I recall that the teacher had to decide where to put me. I recall that Lewis Shrock felt free to advise Miss Granicia that I should go into the 1st or 2nd grade. She decided that 4th grade was where I belonged. Dale Emerick and Betty Ruch (Pronounced Roo) were the rest of that class. I don't know what they thought of my joining them.

We were our own social life, much of the time. This is Ted in the wagon, near the back porch. The ice box would have been inside the screen door. I'm holding Ted, George has his eyes shut, and David is on the right. I think that that's part of a washing machine at the left.

David and George also skipped grades. I think David skipped the first, and George the second. Perhaps they didn't do that by the time Ted went to school. Although I was born in 1938, and Ted in 1945, we were, thus, spread out more in school than our ages would have ordinarily caused. There were two grades between David and I, and two between David and George, and two between George and Ted. In other words, whenever one of us was a high school senior, another was a freshman, until there were no more brothers.

Lessons in a one-room school were certainly different than lessons in most schools today. The teacher would call some group to the front, for example 3rd grade reading, and the rest of us could listen to her teach, and the students answers. So, if you listened, you could learn quite a lot. I suppose she gave us seatwork, although it's hard to imagine what the 1st graders, if there were any in a particular year, could do without help. At least some of the teachers let us talk quietly to each other. I remember looking over the World Book Encyclopedia with Jerry Van Gilder, probably when he was a first grader. At least one teacher let some of us go outside to study on good days. Needless to say, all that we did out there wasn't studying, at least not studying what we were supposed to. At one such session, Bill Van Gilder took a box of crayolas, and demonstrated that Jack Stowe was colorblind, to a small audience. That was on the front steps of Yarnell school, and we were probably supposed to be working on something or other--not on colorblindness. However, that lesson stood me in good stead in teaching biology and genetics classes.

We had a library. It wasn't large--one cabinet, but it was better than what any of us had at home, or at least different. I read, and others did, too. I first met R. D. Blackmore's Lorna Doone while in Yarnell school. I think we got the Weekly Reader. I read a lot while waiting on other classes. Most other students did too, I think.

There was something called the Traveling Library. You could get the state library to send you a box of books. I don't know if you could ask which ones to get. We got some once in a while, or other families did. You had to send them back, of course. Please remember that there was no TV yet, although it came along by the time Ted was born, or thereabouts. We didn't have one until I left for college, or probably even after I graduated. The signal wouldn't have been very good, that far away from large cities with TV stations.

I had some trouble in getting along. I was easy to tease, and talked too much (to other students, not to the teacher, at least not usually). It took quite a while to realize that others might not be really interested in my opinion on any subject, or that it was wiser to keep quiet. Also, of course, students often resent someone who knows more answers than they do, and I often did, because of my wide reading, and because of listening to the other classes. A couple of boys took the lead in trying to get me to "swear," by which they meant use various kinds of bad words. I didn't, or usually didn't. At least once, they threatened to put me down the toilet hole, and for some reason I believed them.

Michael Stowe, Jack's cousin, was more my age, and he got along with others. During my second year, I hooked up with him quite a bit. He was interested in insects, and so was I. We looked at bugs. I believe that he is a poet living in Seattle. There's a little on the web on him, but not much.

There was a fight with the teacher during my first year. I don't have any idea how it started. Miss Granicia won the contest, vanquishing a male seventh or eighth grader, which took place at the back of the room, with all of us watching, eyes popping out of our heads. When it was over, she announced, in a rather shaky voice, "I may be small, but I am strong." There were no principals to send anybody to, no phones to call anyone. It was all up to the teachers. Most of them probably didn't have but two years of college--Miss Granicia may have been only 20 at the time. She did OK that year, as I recall, but she didn't return. I have no idea what happened to her.

I believe that that first year was the only year we went to Edgewater. The rest of my career, and that of my brothers after I went to high school, was at Yarnell. During the last year of that school, there were some really flaky things that happened, and some parents were glad to close the system, and merge with Birchwood. I wasn't there at the time, but was in high school, but I think that my brothers reported that the teacher changed clothes with a student, for one thing. Hauer, another one-room school, merged with Birchwood at the same time.

One reason that we might have gone to Yarnell was that they had quite a few kids. There were 4 or 5 Ways, 4 or 5 Ruchs, a Stowe or two, a Shrock, and 4 or 5 Van Gilders. Delbert Van Gilder, Sr. became the grader man at about that time. This was probably a good job, although sometimes the hours, and working conditions, must have been killers. The grader tried to keep the roads clear in the winter, even during snows. Milk had to be picked up every day, if at all possible, and most of the people in that country had milk cows, and milk to send to the creamery, probably as their only source of income during winter. The milk truck had its own snowplow on the front, when necessary. I'm not sure that the public grader was responsible to plow driveways. Even if he was, there was no way he could always get them all done in time for the milk truck.

Dad was on the local school board at one time. One time Dad came home from a school board meeting, which was public, with a black eye. Next morning, we asked him what had hit him, was it a tractor? He said "bigger than a tractor," and then we learned that it was a female member of the school board. Apparently Dad said something to the effect that she wasn't easy to get along with, or disagreed with him, or something, and she took exception to what he said. I don't think he hit back.

Dad served as the school bus driver for a while, using a van we had. I suppose he bought it for that purpose. (I don't know if he was on the board and drove at the same time--probably not). It was a spartan vehicle. He put in handmade seats, and cut windows in the side, and put in glass, but it worked. (This was before seat belts) When we merged with Birchwood, Lawrence Stowe was the bus driver, picking up Yarnell, Hauer, and Edgewater in one sweep, but he had a standard sized bus. Ted says it was red, white and blue, which, I suppose, were school bus colors in those days. When Mom taught high school, she usually rode the bus, too.

The Edgewater school was in the village of Edgewater. Edgewater had the store, run by the Skars for many years. Last I knew, a Skar, or Skar descendant, still ran it. There were also two or three resorts. Edgewater was on Lake Chetac, and people used to come from Chicago and Muncie, Indiana, and other places to spend a week or two in cottages on the Lake. This was only in the summer, of course. When Mom and we kids lived in Edgewater, while Dad was away, we lived in a house next to the store.

The Yarnell school was by itself. The Libby house was a block or so away, but that was all there was to Yarnell--the Libby house and the school, and you couldn't see the Libby house through the woods. There was a field--perhaps someone's pasture, on one side of the school, and a woods around the rest, except for the road in front. At recess, sometimes we would go out into the woods. There was a brushpile, or something, that some of us thought was a bear's winter den. Maybe it was. There were bears in that country at that time.

Birchwood High was small, even with students from our section of Sawyer County. There were 15 in my graduating class, including Judy McLean, Betty Ruch, and Joe Hart, an Indian from the Hauer area. They all rode on the same bus I did.

One year, the school board fired the principal--I've no idea what for--and Mom served as principal for part of the year, along with her teaching duties. That wasn't easy for her, nor was it easy for us, having our mother as principal.

While I was in high school, I fell in love with Mendel's laws, and read a book entitled The New You and Heredity, which had considerable influence on me. I wrote to the genetics department of the University of Wisconsin for a graduate catalog, and pored over the pages concerning that department.

Sports
You might not think that I had much experience with sports, as isolated as we were. In a sense, that is true, but I had some experience.

Some of this was in grade school. We did play softball, and football (tackle, and the girls played, too) in grade school. We had swings, and a device that, I suppose, used to be common in playgrounds, called a "giant stride." A giant stride was a metal pole, set in concrete, with about 4 cables attached to it, and two handles at the ends of each cable. You grabbed the handles, and started running around the pole, until you had enough speed that you could let the cable swing you several feet, hence the name. Since the handles were metal, too, there was some danger of kids having their brains bashed in by flying metal handles, and I haven't seen one of these for years. (I couldn't find a picture of one.)

We also played marbles, and various games, such as hide-and-seek, and red rover. At least once, someone bought some rather exotic play stuff for us, and Bert Lewis, who was retired from high school coaching, and was probably a great teacher, tried to teach us some new game. We weren't very receptive. I was usually one of the last kids chosen. Of course I was two years younger than "normal" kids in my class. Besides, I may not have been very athletic. But I tried.

We also did some winter sports, outdoor ones. There were snowball forts and fights. Sometimes someone brought a sled to school, and we could sled a little. We used the swings even in winter. You could pile up a lot of snow out some distance away, and let yourself fly out of the swing, and land in the snow. One winter, somebody decided that playing poker would be a better way to pass recess, and most, eventually all, the kids played poker with little sticks for chips. I decided either that playing poker was against my principles, or just that I would rather be outside. I went out to swing at 52 below, which may not have been too bright, but I was OK.

We also had sports at home. Early on, there was playing in the snow. I'm sure it was colder then than it is now, and I'm talking about Northern Wisconsin. It also snowed more. Global warming, or something, has mellowed the climate. We all had snowsuits, which went on over our regular clothes. They were a necessity for small children. We sledded, and skied, and skated. I wasn't very good at skating--my ankles were too weak, or something. George still likes to ski. I haven't done any for about a half a century.

The grader came up our driveway every now and then, and pushed the snow to the side. Eventually, there was a pretty good pile on either side of the driveway, and, at the Benson place, our driveway was about a block long. Those piles were wonderful substrates to dig out. We made tunnels in the piles. We also slid down them.

Don't forget that all of this winter stuff was interspersed with going to outdoor privies, at home and school. People didn't usually spend much time there in the winter--on and off as fast as possible.

In high school, I went out for basketball one year, my sophomore year. I was 13, a year younger than most freshmen. I was the last sub on the B team. I didn't hurt Birchwood High much, as we were in the second year of what would be a 3-year string of no wins by the A team, and only one by the B's. I was put in for a minute or two during the B game, so I was part of that victory.

Practice was after school, and I was on my own getting home after it. I could often catch a ride with workers going home from the Birchwood wood mill, but sometimes I didn't. Usually someone else picked me up. More than once, I walked all the way home from the high school, about 8 or 9 miles.  Dad had the cows to do at about that time, and Mom had to get home (she was teaching high school math and English by then) to fix supper for the rest of us.

I didn't even have a full uniform. I wore bathing trunks, and a regular team jersey, but they didn't have pants to fit me, or something.

I only played one year. David played at least one year, and George played all four, I believe. He also played on the baseball team, and, I believe, he was on Birchwood's first football team, which was 8-man football. Most high schools didn't have enough guys to play 11-man football. There was something called the school tournament. That meant that all the boys in the school played for the rest to watch, Freshmen vs. Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors. I almost made a basket in one of those.

The high school PE classes, which were segregated by sex, also had a contest to see who could hold their feet about six inches off the floor longer than anyone else. The coach had 4 or 5 athletes go, and a winner chosen, then 4 or 5 more, then 4 or 5 more, then all the rest of us (by that time I was a senior). I was determined, and held out longer than about 12 other guys. Then I beat the 3 athlete champions. All I had to do was hold up my feet.

We had bicycles at some point, and kept them for the rest of our times on the Benson place. They were valuable in doing all sorts of things. Once George set a field on fire by mistake, and biked to Edgewater to get the fire brigade to come put it out.

Saturdays
After we started to work on the farm, we had less time for play. But our parents did allow us, usually (not during bean picking or haying seasons, I don't believe) Saturday afternoons off. In the summer, we often walked to Summit Lake, about a mile and a half away, probably. We fished, and swam. Generally one of us took the bike.

The road to Summit Lake used to be a railroad track, which ran through our place. The tracks, and the railroad ties, were long gone, but the roadbed was still there. Since it was a former train bed, it ran level, in spite of the surrounding land. That meant that there were places where we could look down, from a fair degree of height, to a pond or stream. We threw a lot of pebbles into these from the road. Like most roads, it was gravel--no blacktop. And, of course, there were plenty of rocks of all colors in the material from which it was constructed.

When the church was placed on our property, we often walked to church, probably a matter of 5 or 6 blocks, going in the opposite direction from the way to Summit Lake.

Mom almost always made navy beans on Saturdays. We called them Saturday beans. I suppose that they did what beans often did, because "Martin never runs out of gas" was a saying among my brothers.

4-H, a club for training in citizenship and farming, was held on Saturday afternoons. Most of the neighborhood kids, at least those who had anything close to a farm to live on, were in it. We had meetings. Amanda McLean was the director (or whatever the title was). The Hauer kids, plus the Edgewater area farm kids, were in it. We put on a play or two. We were encouraged to exhibit produce, or farm animals, at the county fair in Hayward. We learned songs in foreign languages. We also, after the meeting, played baseball, football, or basketball.

We got to regularly play one of these most Saturday afternoons, and often on Sunday afternoons. Basketball was the winter sport, played outdoors in the snow, or on the ice. Glen and Bill Strand's bucket was on a small hill. If you got too far away from the basket, you slid down a foot or so. Of course you often had help sliding, in the struggle for rebounds. Some of us got to be pretty good. Both Strand boys, Delbert VanGilder, Jr., and George were on the Birchwood High varsity for a season or more.

Wilson McLean was the guiding force behind most of our sporting ventures as a group. We had a baseball team that played other groups of kids occasionally. He was the captain/manager.

The football was tackle football, and could be pretty rough. I guess it was the mercy of God that no one got seriously hurt during all of this. Our parents, and most parents, seemed to allow quite a bit of leeway. They let us go swimming, usually unsupervised, for example. We could go off exploring in the woods, or walk to the neighbors.

Christmas
At Christmas time, when we were old enough, we boys went out to get a Christmas tree. Christmas trees were balsams, which grew commonly on our place. Mom and Dad were willing for us to select one. I suppose we trimmed it to fit, and added Christmas stuff. We had a few plastic or metal ornaments, but we also used chains made of glued rings of colored construction paper. Another ornamentation was foil icicles. We didn't have electricity at first, and there were candle holders that worked something link clothes pins, which we attached to the tree branches. We were careful to light the candles only when we were close to the tree, because the trees dried out, and could easily catch on fire. I think we also made popcorn balls sometimes.

We didn't get, or give, a tremendous lot for Christmas. I can't remember any specific presents. I'm sure we gave some pretty dumb things to our parents. One thing I do remember is that we used the same wrapping paper over and over again for years. Sometimes I cut out Christmas trees and pasted them on the packages. We were poor, I'm sure, but it didn't bother us. It did bother Mom and Dad, because there was a mortgage to pay off. Dad took odd jobs of various kinds whenever he could. For example, he and Kenneth Campbell, who went to our church, took a contract to clear brush along a road. Dad, and we boys, cut pulpwood bolts, so called, which are logs about 6 feet long. These were usually cut in the spring, when it was easy to peel the bark off the popple (quaking aspen). We sold those to the mill in Birchwood. Ted says, "The mill in Birchwood was known as Birchwood Lumber and Veneer in my memory. If there was excelsior, I don't remember it, and I worked there a summer or two. [While he was in college, I guess] I even belonged to the International Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America." George also remembers only veneer, not excelsior. Maybe there was an excelsior mill in Rice Lake.

In the winter, we sometimes made snow angels outside. You make snow angels by lying on the snow on your back and moving your arms back and forth in the snow.

We also made tunnels in the snow that the grader pushed up beside the driveway. We also had snowball fights, and made snowmen. All of these activities also took place at school, too.

Food
I mentioned our Saturday lunch beans above. Mom usually made bread on Saturday, too. We had some other quirks of eating, I suppose, although they seemed perfectly normal to us. One was that Mom generally made a pretty good Sunday meal. We often had company for that, but even if we didn't, it was good. Usually chicken, often plum pudding, applesauce cake, or some other dessert. Sunday evening, however, was different. She often just made fudge, or a pie, and that was it, with milk. Sometimes Mom made popcorn. Ted says that Dad usually had bread and milk. This was a bowl of milk, with bread torn up into it. Sometimes we did, too. Sometimes we heated the milk, and added a little butter and salt and pepper to it. We could always cut ourselves a slice of bread, and butter it, as a snack. The bread was always home-made, by the way.

We often had such a slice when we came home from school, before going out to do chores. There were no restrictions as to the thickness of the slice, or the amount of butter we could put on it, but we weren't allowed other snacks after school. We often poured sugar over the butter, too.

I guess I ought to say that we made our own butter. We took some of our milk for ourselves, and let it sit in as cool a place as we could, until the cream rose to the top. Then we used a ladle, and skimmed off the cream, which we set aside. We drunk the skim milk. Butter was made by churning the cream. I can't remember whether we had a butter churn, like in "The Three Little Pigs," or not. We did use what would now be called a mixer, and plenty of hand stirring, to get the butter to come together into a more or less solid mass. Then we put it into butter dishes. Mom used it in cooking, of course.

Breakfast generally alternated between oatmeal and pancakes. Sometimes we had cream of wheat, instead. We called it Farina, which was the brand name, I think. This contributed to one famous event. Once Mom tried (by mistake, of course) to make cream of wheat with Duz. Duz was a powdered detergent, I suppose for the dishes, and superficially resembled the Farina. It didn't work too well. It's likely, although I'm not sure, that Mom had both of them in containers that she provided, rather than in their boxes. That would have made it harder to tell them apart. The Duz jingle on the radio in those days told us that "Duz does everything," but we knew that it didn't make cereal.

We had gardens, and Mom canned. Of course we helped, tending the garden, picking the produce, shucking the corn, shelling the peas, etc. Tending the garden meant planting, cultivating, weeding, and, occasionally, picking off the insects. Dad plowed the garden first. One year, maybe more, we shelled peas with a wringer. The wringer was part of Mom's clothes-washing apparatus. When sending clothes from the wash tub to the rinse tub, they were put between two rubber rollers, which squeezed out much of the water (and the soap). Mom never had an electric-powered wash machine until she moved to Michigan, and I don't think she used it there. What she had was hand-powered. It was regular at one time, but not later. But she stuck with her system. Clothes were washed on Saturdays, period, unless, I suppose, there was an emergency. They were hung on the clothesline. I guess we sometimes had to hang them in the back porch on rainy days.

I had a 4-H garden myself for a few years. I think it was part of the rest of the garden, but I was supposed to decide what plants went where, and take care of it. You were supposed to have an exhibit at the fair. I recall that the exhibit had to include beans, but I don't remember what else. A box about the size of a shoebox was enough to hold the exhibits. I'm sure that I got some advice from my parents on this.

As I said above, we fished, and if we caught anything, this made part of our meals. We also picked berries. There were wild blueberries, wild blackberries, wild raspberries, and wild juneberries, which, I understand, are also called serviceberries. These latter look much like blueberries, except they are more purple than blue, and grow on a small tree, or large bush, perhaps 10 or 12 feet high. Blueberries grow on bushes only a foot high or so there. There was a good patch of blueberries just off the road that ran through our farm. Once, some tourists drove by, looking for berries. I gave them directions. Mom was upset by that--I was giving away our livelihood. The directions must not have been much good, because they didn't find the spot. There were also chokecherries, which were awful to eat, but could, and were, made into good jam. A chokecherry would practically turn your mouth inside out, it was so sour. We had a plum orchard behind the house, and a currant bush, and used these, too. The garden had beans, tomatoes, peas, sweet corn, beets, carrots, lettuce, potatoes, asparagus, and probably other crops. There were several kinds of beans that we grew, including one we got from Mrs. Potter, the midwife. Mom still had seed of that a few years ago.

The canned food went into the basement. When it got extremely cold, the basement could freeze. If it did, the jars could freeze, too, which would break them, ice expanding when it forms. So we took large pans of water down to the basement, to protect from freezing. Water has such a high specific heat that it takes a lot of heat loss to cool it down to freezing. People also flooded the cranberry bogs when it was going to freeze, for the same reason.

Dad had a good imagination. I remember one story he told us. Some of us, me in particular, had a habit of eating the frosting off the cake last, saving it. He told us about a king who couldn't decide which son to give his kingdom to. So he gave each of them a piece of cake. One son gobbled up the frosting first, and got sick. One son ate the rest of the cake, carefully leaving the frosting. While he was doing so, the ants ate some of his frosting. The third son ate the cake, and the frosting, as he came to it. The king, of course, gave the kingdom to the third son.

We raised chickens, for both eggs and meat. We had cows, from which we got our milk and butter. We also butchered about one per year, for the meat. We had a pig or two, but not regularly. Dad got a few deer. He got a bear once, too. I don't remember if we ate that. Probably.

I guess my parents had a hard time making the mortgage payments. Some summers, Mom would get up early, fry some chickens, bake some long johns, which were sweet rolls, and maybe some bread, and send us with the results on our wagon to the resorts at Edgewater, where we peddled these goods. I suppose we did fairly well selling this. There were tourists, as we called the people who stayed there, who came back for a week or two year after year, and apparently expected to buy Mom's stuff from us.

Mom sometimes went to Michigan to see her family. When we were small, she took us, but not always when we were larger. Dad cooked then. He could cook OK, but he tended to experiment. One time he put mustard in the boiled potatoes, and even the chickens wouldn't eat it, but he usually did OK by us.

Since we didn't have electricity for much of my early life, how did we keep food from spoiling? Several ways. The milk went into large milk cans, holding several gallons, which went into a tank with water, which cooled it down some. The milkman only came once a day, so the evening milk sat in the cans until morning. I guess that was OK.

There was plenty of ice on Lake Chetac. In the winter, there would be ice-cutting. Various kinds of saws were used to get wagon-loads of ice from the Lake, and it was stored in Thorvald Skar's ice-house next to his store in Edgewater. He (or whoever helped him--Dad probably did some) covered each layer of ice with sawdust, as an insulator, and I guess the ice stayed ice through the summer, or some of it did. People could buy ice. We had an icebox, which was a large cabinet with a compartment, at the top on one side, for ice blocks. Things that needed to be kept cool went in there. Eventually we got electricity, and a refrigerator, but we still used the icebox for storage, in spite of the fact that it couldn't keep anything cooler than the room was. We never got sick from it. Most foods were eaten up right away, before there was time for spoilage.

Church
As I said above, my parents took me to church when I was two weeks old. We always went every Sunday, if possible. I suppose that we went to that same church, in the Yarnell schoolhouse, for the first few years, but I don't remember it.

At some point, I believe when we moved to Edgewater, or to the Benson place, my parents and the McLeans started having Sunday School in the Edgewater schoolhouse.

We also had church in the Hauer schoolhouse for quite a while. Rev. Bob Thrasher was a Wesleyan Methodist preacher, but he usually preached for others. Probably for more than half of his life he pastored a mostly Native American congregation, Whitefish church, on the Couderay (Officially Lac Court Orielles, or Lac Courte Orielles, but Couderay is also used) Reservation, which is perhaps 10 or 15 miles from the Benson place, usually while preaching at some additional place. (That's where we got most of the Indians for bean picking.) As I recall, the Hauer schoolhouse burned down, and we were without a place for church for a while. We went to the Stone Lake Wesleyan Methodist church, and Bob Thrasher was the preacher. I believe that we must have asked him to come to Hauer, too. Bob's wife, Pearl, was, like him, a good singer. Their daughters were Carol and Mary. Carol is about David's age, Mary probably a year or so younger than George. You may recall that Mary and her daughters came to Dad's funeral in Michigan. We put them with the family.

At some point, the congregation decided to move from the Hauer schoolhouse. My parents gave land for a new location, closer to Edgewater, where there were more people, at least in summer. The congregation bought an old schoolhouse, from Chittamo, Wis, in the Northern part of Washburn County that was no longer being used, and had it moved to the Wayside Chapel location, where it still sits. I was in college by this time. Dad and David were involved in the move, which was at night, to avoid traffic. (There were no four-lane roads there at that time, and probably still aren't.) David, or somebody, rode on top of the building to fend off power lines, I think. That must have been at least a 40 mile journey.

The Thrashers tried to involve teenagers, and younger, in activities. They took us to a state park at least once. We had youth meetings, so-called, on weekday nights sometimes, with various activities. I say so-called because there were adults there. Dad had to take us to the Hauer location, because we didn't drive. We took the Updikes and Emericks sometimes. There were sometimes parties, or some such, at the Thrasher farm outside of Stone Lake. Thrasher, in addition to preaching, had cows. That must have made for very busy Sundays for them.

The Updikes, Lloyd and Laura, were neighbors on the farm across the road from the Benson place. Their buildings weren't straight across from ours, but some distance to the East. We could see each others' buildings through the trees. Lloyd, Junior, and Patty were their grandchildren. They raised them from perhaps age 2 or so. There was a sad story about all of that, I'm sure, but I've forgotten it. Updike had more cows than we did.

The Emericks lived on Lake Chetac, a mile or so South of the Benson place. Dale was in my grade at school. Betty and Karl were younger.

The Updike kids were in 4-H, and Mrs. Updike helped Mrs. McLean with directing it. The Emerick and Updike kids were, as I said, in church with us, but Mr. Updike and the Emerick parents didn't come. Mrs. Updike did. The Emericks moved to Rockford, IL, some time. Mom still wrote Dale, I guess, and he must have written back. He came to their 45th anniversary celebration, which we held before they moved back to Michigan.

While the church was meeting in the Hauer school, I was asked to teach a Sunday School class. As I recall, I was 12 years old at the time. I did my best, I guess, but probably didn't do well enough. The McLeans, Amanda, and Jane, and my parents, taught Sunday School classes, usually. Judy probably taught some, too. I taught into my college years.

(This page lists both Wayside Chapel and the Whitefish Presbyterian church, where Mary Grade, Bob Thrasher's younger daughter, is still pastor.)

When I went to college, Rev. Thrasher asked me to lead the singing at Wayside. I tried to do my best. Bob had to handle the preaching, and lots of other stuff, for us, and also for the Indian church, and probably another one or two. I almost always came home on weekends when in college. I helped on the farm, took my clothes home to wash, and brought food back to college.

After I left for graduate school, Jerry Grade, and his wife, the former Mary Thrasher, had two daughters, Kim and Lisa. The girls often sat with Mom and Dad in church.

Bob preached in the Methodist church in Birchwood for a while. This was on Sunday nights. He liked for Dad and Mom to come. Dad played the violin, and Mom the piano, and they played for offertory. Mom played for the other churches, too. There was always a piano, no matter where we went. Ted has Dad's violin.

We always went to church, even if we traveled. We had some interesting experiences that way. My Uncle George took David and Me (also Mom) to Yellowstone, probably when we were about 12 and 10. I remember visiting a Christian church with them, somewhere out West. I was impressed with communion. We seldom, if ever, had communion when I was a boy.

The farming required a lot of time, and we seldom took any time off, but sometimes, in the summer, Mom and Dad took us somewhere. They felt, sometimes, that they could go on Sundays. The nearest State Parks, Pattison and Copper Falls, were occasional destinations. We brought picnics with us. Once we pulled in to some small rural church on the side of the road. We were late, and all six of us sat in the back. The pew was a board, placed loosely on a couple of supports. Somehow or other, the board, and some or all of us, fell off. We made a hasty retreat. I don't think we spoke to anyone there, and I don't think they spoke to us.

Mrs. Thrasher's youngest brother, John, who was about my age, sometimes came with the Thrashers to church. We became friends. When I was wanting to go to graduate school, Pearl Thrasher's sister, Olive, and her husband, Floyd Titus, visited the Thrashers. The Thrashers made sure that I knew them. When I went to Madison, I became part of their Wesleyan Methodist congregation. The Tituses took me in a lot, especially on Sundays. It probably wasn't much of a strain, as they had seven kids of their own. Rich, the youngest, was a couple of years younger than I, but we got along fine--all of us, which was probably one of many good things that the Tituses did. Floyd and Olive came to Liberty to visit us, in their camper, probably before you were born.

At Madison, I taught Sunday School, worked with the youth, and was involved in the music of the church. For my last year or so, I was involved in working with the children. The Wesleyan Methodists had two campmeeting locations, one outside of Hayward, the other in the farmland and hills, about 100 miles from Madison. I went as a counselor for the children's camp for a year or two. Then, in an act of real courage, I was made the director for a couple of years of that children's camp. There was a lot of help, of course, but I did do quite a bit of work.

I also worked with Bible School in Madison.

Music
As mentioned above, music was always important in our lives. I believe Dad must have brought his violin with him when he and Mom went to Wisconsin on their honeymoon. I doubt if they had a piano until we moved to Edgewater, but we may have. Perhaps they got one when Dad worked for Hector McLean. I know that they often played together on the Benson place after we kids went to bed. Many times we went to sleep hearing music from downstairs. Apparently, when Mom lived in Edgewater while Dad was away, she played the piano there, and at least once, somebody knocked and asked to be allowed to come in to listen.

Mom tried to teach us all piano, and all of us got good enough that you could recognize what we played. We played out of a series called the John Thompson series. We started Stacy on the same series, somewhat updated. We also played hymns. As I recall, Jane McLean was better than any of us, probably because she worked harder. I think Mom gave her lessons, too. Dad tried to teach us the violin, but none of us got very far with it.