Letters from Hillside Farm

by Jerry Apps

  I was absolutely speechless. Annie started handing me packages.

  “This one is from me,” she said. “Open it.” I tore open the paper and found a big red handkerchief, the kind Pa uses.

  I thanked her and opened the next package. I found a new shirt from Ma. Your package was in the pile, too, Grandma. Thank you so much for the new supply of writing paper and the new pencils, too. I also liked your card.

  The biggest surprise came from Pa. There was one tiny package left. I had no idea what it could be. I shook the package, but it made not a sound.

  I ripped off the paper and inside found a plain brown box. I lifted the cover, and there was a beautiful new jackknife with a bone handle and three blades.

  “You’re old enough to have your own knife,” Pa told me.

  “Thank you,” I said. I had all I could do to keep from crying. Grandma, there’s nothing I’ve been wanting more than a knife. I’ve been eyeing the collection of knives in the glass-covered display case at Johnson’s Hardware. Johnson’s has everything from tiny penknives to huge hunting knives that you carry on your hip in a leather sheath. Now I have my very own jackknife for whittling, cutting string, working with leather—doing all the jobs that require a knife.

  “Take care of it, George, and that knife will last a lifetime.” Pa said. He had a big grin on his face. I told him I surely will.

  Then he really surprised me. “One more present, George: no work for you today. You can do whatever you want—read, work with your leather, anything. It’s your day.” I just about fell off my chair.

  The first thing I did was hike up to Ginger’s grave, where I placed a couple roses from Ma’s rosebush. Depot went with me, of course. I sat under the big pine tree near the grave and listened to the wind move through the pine needles and breathed in the fresh smell of pine. Depot lay with his head on the grave. I thought about Ginger and all the good times we had together. I sat there most of the day. I had brought along one of my books, so I read a little, and I even took a little nap under the trees where the fallen pine needles have made a soft bed. Depot lay down beside me and napped, too.

  Ma had invited Grandma Woodward over after supper for birthday cake, and everyone sang “Happy Birthday” after I blew out the thirteen candles with one big puff.

  It was the best birthday I’ve ever had.

  Your grandson,

  George

  July 20, 1938

  Wednesday

  Dear Grandma,

  I heard the rumble of thunder during the night and woke up once to see my room as bright as daylight as lightning flashed. At five-thirty, when it was time to get up, rain was still dripping off the roof and splashing against my bedroom window. I heard the thunder growl, but it wasn’t as close as it was during the night.

  The cows dripped rainwater when Pa let them into the barn for milking. The smell of wet cowhide is something I can do without, but it’s a part of milking cows on a rainy morning.

  “Looks like a good day for fishing,” Pa said. It was too wet to work in our fields.

  By the time we finished milking and turned the cows back out to pasture, the rain had slowed to a mist. Pa and I dug earthworms back of the chicken house. (We use earthworms for bait.) We found our long cane fishing poles and the fish hooks that Pa buys at Johnson’s Hardware, and we headed for Church Lake, which is just down the hill from the Norwegian church. I have seen fish jumping nearly every Sunday morning when we attend church. Now I was hoping to hook one.

  Pa parked the car in the church lot, and we walked down to the lake. He lugged the fishing poles, while I carried the can of earthworms and the lunch Ma had made for us. Depot came along, too, and bounced along beside me. He is hardly a puppy anymore, he has grown so much this summer.

  Church Lake is not real big but not tiny, either. I suspect a good ball player could throw a ball across the narrowest part of the lake. It has several little coves that by this time of the summer are filled with pond lilies. Pa says these are good places to catch fish, as the fish like to hide under the lilies, where it’s a little cooler and where they can find plenty to eat.

  We unwound the line from our fishing poles, tied on cork bobbers, threaded fat worms on our hooks, and tossed out. The surface of the lake was so smooth it looked like you could walk on it. I saw a long-legged bird standing in the water near the opposite shore. Pa said it was a great blue heron and that it is better at fishing than we are. I watched the heron standing there like a statue, and then all of a sudden it slammed its bill into the water and came up with a fish. Just then my cork began jumping a little—not going under, just dipping up and down.

  “You’re getting a bite,” Pa said. “When it goes under, pull up your pole.”

  I noticed that Depot was watching my bobber as well, his head cocked to the side. I tightened my grip on the pole and watched. Dip, dip, dip, then gone. I lifted my long cane pole. I had snagged a big bluegill, and soon I had it flopping on the shore, the hook caught in its lip. Depot tried to catch the flopping bluegill but didn’t succeed. It was quite a sight: the fish flopping, and Depot jumping around after it. I grabbed Depot by his collar and asked Pa to hold him while I removed the hook from the bluegill’s lip. Then I shoved the fish into the old burlap bag Pa had brought along, and Pa tied the top shut and put it in the water close to shore. He explained that this would keep the fish alive as long as possible and keep the meat fresh.

  Soon both of us were catching bluegills one after the other. We stopped fishing at noon to eat our sandwiches and lay in the tall grass on the shore of the lake. A little breeze was blowing away the clouds and rippling the surface of the lake.

  After our break we got back to fishing. Before long I could scarcely lift the wet bag of fish out of the lake to slip in another one.

  “Got enough for a couple good meals,” Pa said. “Let’s fish for a few more minutes and then head home.”

  My bobber floated quietly, no action at all. No bites, no fish. “Nothing biting,” I said. I had no more than said it when my bobber disappeared—no dancing on the water, no going under and then coming up again. It was just plain gone. I started lifting my pole, but I couldn’t budge whatever was in the water, grabbing my bait.

  I pulled harder, and then I heard a crack. The bottom three feet of my fishing pole broke off in my hands. I made a lunge for the rest of the pole and fell in the lake. I stumbled to my feet, wet and spitting water, but I still had hold of what remained of my broken cane pole. It was then that I noticed Depot in the water with me, paddling with all four legs.

  “You all right, George?” Pa yelled.

  “Yeah,” I answered when I finally stopped coughing.

  “Grab hold of the line,” Pa yelled. I pulled the jerking pole through my hand until I got the line, which I pulled hand over hand. The line jerked and tugged, and once I thought I was going head first into the lake again. Depot somehow got tangled in the fish line as well. Slowly I struggled toward shore, dragging the line with one hand and trying to hold onto Depot with the other as I trudged through the ooze and the tangle of pond lilies. I was soaked from one end to the other.

  “Here,” Pa said. “Let me help you with the line.”

  Pa grabbed the line, and slowly we retrieved it, both wondering what was on the other end. Just then there was a terrific tug. I lost my grip, but Pa held on.

  I crawled up on shore, pulling Depot with me. As I did, I saw Pa pull a giant northern pike out of the water. It flopped around on the shore, but this time a very wet Depot kept his distance.

  “I bet this fish will go five pounds,” Pa said. “Can’t wait to weigh it.”

  We retrieved our sack of bluegills and headed home, where we weighed the fish on Pa’s scale in the granary. “Quite a fish you got there. Weighs five and a half pounds,” Pa said. “We’ll ask Ma to bake it.”

  I had a chance to use my new jackknife when I helped Pa clean the fish. A jackknife sure comes in handy.

  We had fresh fish for three d
ays, Grandma. What a treat. Fried bluegills are tasty, but baked northern pike is even better.

  I can’t wait to go fishing again.

  Your grandson,

  George

  August 10, 1938

  Wednesday

  Dear Grandma,

  I knew it would happen, and it did. There wasn’t much I could do about it, either. Amos made good on his threat.

  We were threshing oats at Rachel Williams’s farm when it happened. A week ago Pa had cut our oat crop, and we had stood the oat bundles into grain shocks. Our neighbors did the same thing. Now it was time to thresh the grain.

  Threshing is different from anything else we do on the farm. It is a community event where all the neighbors go from farm to farm for what usually amounts to a day of threshing for each neighbor. Horse-drawn wagons go out into the oat field, where the driver loads grain bundles and hauls them to the threshing machine. A threshing machine is huge—three times bigger than our Plymouth car, maybe even bigger. It separates the oat seeds from the stems and blows the chaff and stems onto a straw pile.

  On Tuesday I drove our team and hay wagon over to Rachel’s farm. On the way I passed by Amos Woodward’s place, a plain-looking farmstead with a long driveway and buildings that need paint. The road is dusty and crooked, with a couple of steep little hills. Maud and Tony didn’t seem to mind as they walked along with me standing on the empty wagon.

  I noticed three other wagons already working in the Williamses’ oat field when I arrived, one of them driven by Amos. I made sure I worked on a side of the field as far away from his wagon as possible.

  But Amos and I arrived at the threshing machine at the same time. He pulled his load to one side of the machine’s feeder, and I pulled up to the other side. We scarcely exchanged glances. I could see several of the neighbors working around the machine; one was forking straw on the straw stack, and others were ready to carry the threshed grain to the granary.

  “You guys ready?” Joe Carlson yelled. He owns and operates the thresher, and he was sitting on his big red tractor, ready to set things into motion.

  I nodded, and so did Amos. The big threshing machine began shaking and shuddering. Its many belts started slowly turning, and the elevator that moves the bundles into the machine creaked into motion.

  Amos forked a bundle onto the elevator, and I followed. Amos, then me. It was going well until Amos started forking bundles faster. I, of course, had to keep up. Soon both of us were working furiously, pitching bundles as fast as we could.

  “What are you guys doin’?” yelled Mr. Carlson. But Amos didn’t hear or didn’t want to, and I figured I just had to keep up with Amos. Soon the threshing machine began to shudder and shake more violently, and then it growled to a stop.

  “You guys oughta know better,” Mr. Carlson yelled. “You’ve plugged the machine.”

  “It was George’s idea,” Amos yelled.

  I wanted to yell back that Amos had started it, but I didn’t say anything.

  “Well, don’t you ever do that again, either one of you,” shouted Mr. Carlson. It took a half hour for him to finish unplugging the machine and get the threshing started again.

  On our way to dinner, I asked Amos why he told everyone it was my idea to pitch bundles fast and plug the machine. He said, “’Cause I wanted to.”

  “You started it, and you know it,” I said.

  “You know that, and I know that, but Carlson and the rest of the men don’t, now do they?” Amos said.

  “You’re mean,” I blurted out.

  “I’m tough,” replied Amos, a sneer spreading across his tanned face. “You gotta be tough when you live in the country.”

  I said that I’m tough, too, but that’s not the same thing as being mean. I told him, “You chose to be mean, and I kept up with you, too, until the machine plugged up and stopped.” Amos went into the house for dinner ahead of me without saying another word.

  After the noon break we were back hauling bundles and unloading them at the threshing machine. Amos and I didn’t find ourselves paired at the machine again that day, which must have been good luck on my part.

  I was tired at day’s end and started the team home along the road. I sat on the edge of the wagon, not thinking about much of anything, when I heard a voice say, “How about a race?” Amos had pulled up behind me, his team at the trot. I told him I didn’t want to race and that he should pull out and pass me. I drove Maud and Tony to the side of the gravel road so Amos would have enough room to go by.

  When Amos got alongside my team, he took the end of his leather lines and brought them down across the rumps of Maud and Tony. They took off at a gallop, almost tossing me from the wagon.

  “Hay ya!” Amos yelled at his team. They are a pair of western-type horses, smaller than Maud and Tony but no doubt faster.

  For the first quarter mile or so, the two teams galloped side by side, thundering down the narrow, twisting road. I hauled on the lines, keeping Maud and Tony from running off the narrow road, or worse, crashing into Amos’s wagon. A big cloud of dust poured up from behind us as the two teams and steel-wheeled wagons bounced down the road.

  “Hay ya!” Amos yelled again. He swung the ends of the leather lines across the backsides of his team as they pounded down the road ever faster.

  The road made a sharp turn at the bottom of a hill. I don’t know if Amos’s wagon couldn’t make the turn or if one of the wheels broke, but his wagon rolled over, and Amos flew off into some raspberry bushes. When the wagon tipped, Amos’s team stopped, their sides heaving and sweat pouring from them.

  “Whoa, whoa!” I yelled to Maud and Tony, pulling on the lines to stop them. I had no more than stopped the team when I felt something yanking on my leg. It was Amos, blood streaking down his face from the raspberry thorns. He pulled me off the wagon and took a mighty swing at me. His thick fist caught me just below the eye, and I fell in the dusty road. Before I could stand up, Amos was on top of me, pounding with both of his hands. I swung at him and got in a couple of good licks.

  Just then Pa came by in the car on his way home from Rachel’s place. He saw us rolling in the dirt in the middle of the road. He stopped the car, ran out, and pulled us apart. “What has gotten into you two?” he said. “Can’t you get along for one minute?”

  I didn’t say anything. Neither did Amos. Pa looked at Amos’s wagon and at his team. “Busted up your wagon pretty good,” he said to Amos as he helped him unhitch the horses. “George, you drive Maud and Tony home—and you better walk them.” I could see that Pa was mad, and you never want to make Pa mad. I hoped he would cool off by the time I got home with the team.

  As I started off down the road, Amos headed in the other direction, walking along behind his team without the wagon. I wondered what his Pa was going to say to him.

  When I got home, Pa helped me unhitch the team, unharness them, brush them down, and turn them out to pasture.

  “Got yourself quite a shiner there,” he said. He was looking at my black eye, which I hadn’t yet seen but sure could feel. “Don’t you ever run that team again,” he said. “Ever.”

  “I won’t,” I said. I wanted to tell him what Amos had done, but I thought better of it. I don’t think Pa was in the mood to hear any excuses. I’m surprised he didn’t say anything about the fight. I expected a tongue-lashing about that, too.

  I guess I’ve got a lifelong enemy, Grandma. My eye hurts like everything, but not as much as I hurt inside. I don’t like having people mad at me.

  Your grandson,

  George

  August 14, 1938

  Sunday

  Dear Grandma,

  An awful thing happened yesterday. Depot and I were on our way to fetch the cows from the pasture when I caught a whiff of smoke. At first I thought maybe Ma had put a fresh stick of wood in the stove. But then I realized the wind was blowing in the wrong direction for me to smell smoke coming from our chimney.

  I walked on toward the far side of the pa
sture where I thought I’d find the cows. When I got to the top of the ridge, I smelled smoke again, stronger this time. I think Depot smelled it too, as he held his head high and sniffed the air. It smelled different from burning oak or pine kindling, which is what Ma uses in our cook stove.

  From up on the ridge I could see our house, and I could also see Grandma Woodward’s little house in the distance. Then something stopped me cold. Smoke was pouring out of Grandma Woodward’s kitchen door and out the kitchen windows, too. Grandma Woodward’s house was on fire.

  Her house was about a half mile from where I was standing. I didn’t see any other people. I was the only one who knew her house was on fire. I started moving toward her house as fast as I could, Depot bounding along beside me. The faster I moved, the faster I discovered I could move. Soon I was running, forgetting that my gimpy leg was supposed to slow me down. I raced across the road and up her driveway, calling, “Grandma Woodward! Grandma Woodward!” No response. I ran up to the screen door and began pounding on it and yelling, “Grandma Woodward!”

  The smoke pouring through the screen door was so thick I could see inside only a few feet. “Are you in there, Grandma Woodward?” I yelled again. I could see flames licking at the curtains and running up the kitchen wall. I jerked on the screen door, but it was hooked from inside and wouldn’t open. Then I remembered my new jackknife. I took it out of my pocket and opened the big blade. Smoke was stinging my eyes and I began coughing.

  I cut a hole in the thin wire screen large enough so I could push my hand through and unhook the door. All the while I kept calling, “Grandma Woodward!” Grandma Woodward!”

  The smoke was less thick near the floor, so I got on my knees and began crawling across the kitchen floor. Depot stayed outside, barking like crazy. I had crawled only a few feet when I bumped into something soft. It was Grandma Woodward, lying on her stomach with her hands over her head. I shook her and called her name, but she didn’t respond. She didn’t even open her eyes.