1969 The Summer of My Life
I was doing lunch dishes as I watched him make the long walk up my drive, the dust billowing from under his shoes with every step. It reminded me of when I was a girl and Uncle Clarence would let me take the reins as we rode the hay wagon. I would be mesmerized as I watched their hooves hit the ground, a puff of dust flew each time a hoof landed. With Uncle Clarence behind me I would smile broadly as I felt the tug of the reins, the feeling I had as a nine year old girl controlling all that power, controlling the four thousand plus pounds harnessed to that wagon. King and Queen, as we had named them, knew exactly where we were going, I could have dropped the reins and they would have still ended up in the hay mow.
Our farm and Uncle Clarence's were the result of the original 40 acres and a mule promised to emancipated slaves after the Civil War. Their granddad settled in Northern Missouri where he eeked out a living to start with, but through hard work and frugality he became a successful dairy farmer. By the time my granddad had taken over the farm a local creamery wanted to buy more milk for cheese production, my granddad took the opportunity and became even more successful. As a little girl he told me stories about how negroes weren't respected much in those days, but if you worked hard and paid your way, most of the time you were left alone.
Fond memories of days gone by, it was Clarence who kept my old man on the somewhat straight and narrow, as straight and narrow as he could be, I guess. My dad was a mean resentful drunk, always blaming his parents for needing him on the farm, the Army for rejecting him for duty at the onset of WW2 because he needed a double hernia operation, and the list went on, nothing was ever his fault. The depression years seemed to rob him of any civility he once possessed. He got himself off the bottle a few years, during that time Alice Barnes foolishly married him, they had me in '32 and she was gone within five years.
By gone I mean dead. Her fall from the top of the hay mow was ruled an accidental death, but everyone except the law figured he'd gotten tired of her trying to make him tow the line and got rid of her. Nobody cared much about a negro woman dying anyway, not in 1937. As miserable as my old man was, I have to credit him with making sure every penny we had was pinched until Lincoln screamed. After the depression years he swore he'd never go without again.
The farm was paid for, there was money in the bank, and we owed no one other than to pay taxes each year. He drank at night, but as soon as he sobered in the morning, he worked hard all day. There were no black taverns in our town, but moonshine was cheap and there was an abundance of it. When I was a girl he wasn't as bad as he was when I entered my teens. Our farm was just a bit over two miles from town, there was a one room school for negro children a half mile or so from us, I walked it every day wet or dry.
Had it not been for Uncle Clarence and Aunt Mary either the old man or I would have been in prison. Clarence was dad's younger brother and farmed the next place up the road, hence he or Mary were at our farm every day. Black and white marriages were not something to be tolerated in those days, Mary was Mexican and somehow that was okay, I never have figured that out.
My aunt was livid when I told her he made me undress, bathe, and dress while he watched. I wasn't much to look at as a young lady, but he apparently got his jollies making me disrobe and dress in front of him. The day I told her I should have been off to school already but instead was struggling to milk by myself. She asked what was going on, I told her he was still drunk and asleep. I broke down crying, telling her in between sobs what he made me do when I bathed and that he was so drunk the night before he tried to get in my bed until I kicked him in the groin causing him to stumble off to his room.
"That son of a bitch. This ends now, I'm not going to be responsible for a 13 year old being raped because I did nothing to stop it." Aunt Mary yelled.
Mary quickly fetched Clarence who returned with an axe handle. Together we went into the house, Mary went to the sink and got the old man's straight razor. He was asleep on his back as she pulled the sheet down revealing his naked body, as she looked at Clarence, he nodded and prepared to beat him if need be. Aunt Mary grabbed his dick, stroked it a few times until it began to stiffen as pa was waking. She had that razor at the base of his dick and when he flinched it nicked the skin enough to make him cry out. With his dick in her hand and the razor about to slice it off she spoke.
"Listen to me, you filthy bastard. You will never touch this girl or make her strip for you again. If I find you did, I'll come back and cut your dick off, then I'll shove it down your throat and watch you choke to death on it."
As she pressed on the razor enough to cause him pain he said he'd never touch me again.
"Good, and this cut on your dick, that will remind you every time you pull it out to piss for the next month."
My world changed from that day on. He kept his distance from me at all times, which meant I also never received affection of any kind other than from Clarence and Mary. I was harnessing the team by myself and taking a load of corn into the feed mill every other week, then do what shopping we needed to do while they ground and sacked it. My shopping generally consisted of flour, sugar, salt, bacon and ham, everything else we took care of or didn't use. We had chickens and raised a few hogs for eating, it was simply easier to buy bacon and ham instead of making it ourselves. The boys at the mill would load the wagon for me and I'd head home. Everyone in town knew I always paid cash on the spot, I never asked for credit, they also knew he was a drunk, they seemed to feel more comfortable dealing with me.
I left school in '48, the year I turned 16, it was fairly common in those days. I had my reading, writing and arithmetic well in hand, though I seemed gifted dealing with numbers, no way was this colored girl ever going to college. I was needed at home and made the decision to stop school. Electricity was brought to our valley in '49 and we connected immediately. No more stinky dirty lanterns, we had lights and power when and where we needed it. I was now doing all the household chores as well as helping milk, at least I talked him into buying me a wringer washer in 1950, that way I didn't have to do it all by hand.
Hanging clothes never bothered me but washing with a scrub board and a hand wringer was a tedious, strenuous job. He bitched and complained about the cost, but I badgered and carried on until he finally broke loose of $45 at an estate sale, it was two years old, but it worked and that's all that mattered to me. Forty five dollars doesn't sound like much, until you consider a dozen eggs was $.60, a loaf of bread $.14, a gallon of milk was $.82, gasoline was $.19 a gallon, pumpkins were a nickel apiece and apples three for a nickel. Our yearly income was between $1800 and $2200 depending on what milk prices were, so $45 was a lot of money.
When I turned 18 he included my name on the milk checks from the creamery, with my knowledge of numbers I took care of the finances anyway, it was as if he knew he wasn't long for this world. With me home all the time we bought six more cows, two Universal milking buckets and a vacuum pump. I no longer had to milk by hand, I thought it was the best thing since peanut butter. With the additional money from the six cows we bought another four bringing our milking herd to a total of 30, a good size herd in 1950. Our barn had room for forty, but both he and I felt that was too much at the time. I had reached the age of 19 when he keeled over dead plowing with a team of mules. Clarence, Mary and I buried him, I became the sole owner of our property and set about trying to milk 30 cows on my own.
The very first major thing I did after all the probate crap was over is have indoor plumbing installed. No more plunking my bare bottom on ice cold wood in the winter and having to tolerate the stifling heat inside the outhouse in the summer. With a well I didn't have to rely on the windmill 100%, if we had no breeze for three or four days, I would water the livestock using the well pump instead of the hand pump. I didn't have a shower to start with, but I sure loved my bathtub and water heater.
Clarence and Mary had three boys, the oldest 15, they sent him to work with me for a season and between the two of us we got it done. Clarence had always planted and harvested our crops, I continued hiring him to do so instead of buying a bunch of costly machinery. When I was 22, I bought what was called a step saver, meaning I would no longer have to carry the bucket all the way to the milk house, pour it in the strainer and walk back to milk the next cow. I could pour the milk in the step saver and keep on milking while the milk went directly into the bulk tank.
I never had money for clothes when I was younger and never caught the attention of boys, once I was old enough to buy clothes, I wasn't all that interested anymore. I wasn't skinny, but I had no fat either, I had an average every day body with rock hard muscles. There were a few guys called on me after pa died, but they only wanted to bed me, neither of those relationships lasted more than a few weeks. I subscribed myself to the fact that even though I had a nice body and was attractive when I applied myself, I was probably going to be a spinster milking cows until I was no longer able to. As the years progressed, I hired farm hands, bought a few pieces of machinery to spread manure, bale hay and minor things like that. The rest I still hired Uncle Clarence and his boys to do. I still used the horses and wagon for the feed mill and what shopping I did, it was something of the old ways I couldn't let go.
I was one of the first in our county to install a pipeline milking system in 1964, cutting my workload in half during milking. I put in a 400 bulk gallon tank thinking it was huge, little did I know the future would dictate a larger one. Having hired hands and not wanting them in my house alone, I built a small bunk house with a shower stall, a commode and a sink. I fed them at the main house and if they wanted to watch one of the three channels on TV, they were welcome to do so until 9, then they went to the bunkhouse. I didn't tolerate drinking on the farm, and if someone did, they were fired on the spot.
I had decided somewhere around 30 that I needed to start looking like a girl if I was ever to find someone as a life mate. I had the beauty shop ladies help me with my frizzy hair, styling it and showing me how to take care of it. I bought some nicer jeans to wear to town instead of the bibs that normally covered my 5'7" frame. I still liked to take the corn into the mill with the horses, it was almost expected of me, that and pulling somebodies float in the Memorial Day and Fourth of July parades. I began wearing nicer clothes on those feed trips, my new clothes showed off my body and the more I took care of myself the better I felt. I realized I had a nice figure and a pretty face when I took the time needed to bathe quickly and change from farm clothes.
The housing boom reached our area in the mid-sixties, subdivisions going up everywhere. Houses were relatively cheap, a simple three bedroom ranch was about $8000. In '67 I had a new place built with a separate bunk house area off the end of the garage. When it was finished, I invited our local volunteer fire department to come burn the old house and bunk cabin as a training exercise. Neighbors came from all over the valley to see it go up in flames.
All those years and little had changed. Here I was in the early summer in 1969 watching yet another guy trudge up the driveway. Vietnam was supposedly coming to an end, but you'd never know it listening to the news. I had cousins who returned from WW2 batshit crazy, I was hoping he wasn't like them.
