by Jerry Apps
In a Pickle
Books by Jerry Apps
Fiction:
The Travels of Increase Joseph
In a Pickle
Nonfiction:
The Land Still Lives
Cabin in the Country
Barns of Wisconsin
Mills of Wisconsin and the Midwest
Breweries of Wisconsin
One-Room Country Schools
Wisconsin Traveler’s Companion
Country Wisdom
Cheese: The Making of a Wisconsin Tradition
When Chores Were Done
Country Ways and Country Days
Humor from the Country
The People Came First: A History of Cooperative Extension
Ringlingville USA
Every Farm Tells a Story
Living a Country Year
Audio Books:
The Back Porch and Other Stories
Children's Books:
Eat Rutabagas
Stormy
Tents, Tigers, and the Ringling Brothers
In a Pickle
A Family Farm Story
Jerry Apps
Terrace Books
A trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press
Terrace Books, a trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press, takes its name from the Memorial Union Terrace, located at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Since its inception in 1907, the Wisconsin Union has provided a venue for students, faculty, staff, and alumni to debate art, music, politics, and the issues of the day. It is a place where theater, music, drama, literature, dance, outdoor activities, and major speakers are made available to the campus and the community. To learn more about the Union, visit www.union.wisc.edu.
Terrace Books
A trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press
1930 Monroe Street, 3rd Floor
Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059
www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/
3 Henrietta Street
London WC2E 8LU, England
Copyright © 2007 by Jerry Apps
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Apps, Jerold W., 1934–
In a pickle: a family farm story / Jerry Apps.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-299-22300-0 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-299-22303-8 (electronic)
1. Family farms—Wisconsin—Waushara County—Fiction.
2. Farm life—Wisconsin—Waushara County—Fiction.
3. Pickle Industry—Wisconsin—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3601.P67I5 2007
813′.6—dc22 2007011563
Contents
Acknowledgments
1 Pickle Patch
2 Birthday Party
3 Pickle Factory
4 First Cukes
5 Grist Mill
6 Pickle Factory Crew
7 Isaac and Jake
8 Migrant Pickers
9 Unloading
10 Long Days
11 Pickle Days
12 Cucumbers Keep Coming
13 School Closing
14 Salt Bin
15 George Roberts
16 Ames County Fair
17 Disaster
18 Love among the Pickle Vats
19 Missing Workers
20 Breaking News
21 Auction
22 Jake Stewart
23 Closing Down
24 What Next?
25 The Family Farm
26 Decision Time
27 Another Mystery
28 Remembering Jake
29 Funeral
30 H. H. Harlow
31 Mystery Solved
32 Barn Dance
Author's Note
Acknowledgments
Several years ago I was having dinner with my daughter, Sue. She suggested the idea for this book, having heard my “pickle factory” stories since she was a little girl. Sue, who is now a sixth grade teacher in Madison, helped me frame the story and read several chapters as it took shape. My son Steve, who is a staff photographer for the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, read several drafts. Steve and I worked out a number of the scenes while we were canoeing in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. My youngest son Jeff, a Colorado businessman, made excellent suggestions for improving one of the later versions of the book. And my wife, Ruth, read page after rewritten page as the novel slowly took shape over many months.
As I researched this book, my twin brothers, Donald and Darrel, and I reminisced about the many hours we spent picking cucumbers when we were farm kids in Waushara County, Wisconsin. I thank them for the memories they recalled in vivid detail. Donald also worked for the Chicago Cucumber Company, at their receiving station in Wild Rose, Wisconsin, and a good friend, Jim Kolka, worked for the Libby, McNeil and Libby cucumber receiving station in Wild Rose, during the time I worked for the H. J. Heinz Company. Don and Jim helped me remember those “pickle days” and the details of handling tons of cucumbers every day, seven days a week. I also gained some excellent information from Phillip Gohlke, a longtime cucumber grower from the Neshkoro area. Phil helped me recall some of the details of these old cucumber salting stations, the setting for this story.
I extend a special thanks to Kate Thompson, who spent several hours with the manuscript, straightened out the timeline, and helped me sharpen many of the scenes in the book. Mary Lou Santovec, formerly of Badger Books, read the manuscript and caught many errors. Marshall Cook, LaMoine MacLaughlin, and Maryo Gard Ewell offered excellent suggestions for improving the story.
My heartfelt thanks to those who continue to read my books and tell me they like them. These comments keep me writing.
And finally, I dedicate this book to my daughter, Sue.
1
Pickle Patch
Andy Meyer watched the pickup's progress from the cucumber patch just south of the farmstead where he was hoeing. He took off his straw hat and rubbed his sleeve across his forehead—sweat trickling into his eyes had become a constant annoyance. He hadn't seen the pickup before. He knew all the neighbors’ vehicles—their cars, trucks, and tractors—and this looked too new and too shiny for their rural community.
A dust cloud swirled up from the country road as the truck sped past Stewart's place and continued north. A fine dusting of talcum-like dirt accumulated on the hazel brush and the lower leaves of the oak trees that grew on both sides of the road. It covered the dry grass that crowded the road, spread out into the ditches, and floated over a cow pasture where a dozen or so Holsteins paused in their grazing. The day was hot and humid so the dust hung suspended for a time before settling—a dirty brown cloud that country people were accustomed to seeing during the dry days of summer.
The shiny green 1955 Chevrolet turned into the Meyer farmstead, almost missing the driveway because the driver was going too fast. The cloud of dust rolled on down the road before it thinned and disappeared.
Andy wondered who the visitor was—few vehicles traveled this remote stretch of country road. Jens Swanson, the mail carrier, had appeared at ten-thirty this morning, as he did every morning except Sunday. The milkman, Wilbur Witt, came shortly after eight each day to pick up the Meyers’ five cans of milk, the product from the morning and previous evening's milkings. The milk had been cooling in a water tank in the pump house, where well water flowed around the cans on its way to the stock tank in the barnyard. By now, mid-afternoon, the Meyer milk, along with milk from the other farmers in the community, was already being made into cheese at the Link Lake Cheese Factory.
The pickup truck was unexpected, a st
ranger in the community. An unknown vehicle stopped work momentarily, turned heads, and raised questions.
Andy kept his deep blue eyes on the truck as it traveled up the Meyers’ driveway. Tall and slim, Andy wore faded blue overalls, a blue chambray shirt, and a straw hat. He had brown hair, and his face and arms were deeply tanned from hours spent working outside. His big, calloused hands held the hickory hoe handle, which he now leaned on as he watched the pickup's progress.
Andy limped slightly, a reminder of the wound he had received in the Korean War, four years earlier. He had been drafted only a few months after graduating from Link Lake High School in 1950 and had ended up a platoon sergeant. He was shot during the battle of Bloody Ridge in September of 1951. Afterward, he had spent four months in a hospital recovering from his wounds, with but two thoughts filling his mind—his girlfriend, Amy Stewart, and the home farm, which he planned to take over from his dad. While he was in the service, Andy's buddies told him how they looked forward to jobs in the big cities, working in factories, working eight-to-five jobs. Andy shared his dreams of living on a small farm where he was close to nature and the land, where the work was hard and the days long. His army friends didn't know what to make of this young man from Wisconsin, whose dreams seemed so small compared to those contemplating the bright lights of the city. But Andy always had a smile and was a friend to nearly everyone he met, no matter if their dreams were different from his.
If Andy worked hard, in one day he could hoe all the rows of his family's half-acre cucumber patch, located on a little rise next to the white pine windbreak and just south of the red barn. Just about every farmer in this part of Ames County, Wisconsin, had a cucumber patch, called a pickle patch. They planted cucumbers as a cash crop—a way to make money faster than milking cows or raising pigs. Most of the cucumber patches were only a half acre or so, because their cultivation, from planting the seeds to hoeing and picking, required hand labor. Picking cucumbers, the worst of the tasks, required bending over and snapping the spiny cucumbers from their scratchy vines and tossing them into a five-gallon pail, one cucumber at a time. Now and again a family with several kids would plant an acre or more. In fact, you could tell how many kids a farmer had merely by looking at the size of his cucumber patch. Of course, most city people passing through couldn't tell the difference between cucumber, green bean, and potato plants, especially when they were little, at the cultivating and hoeing stage.
Andy's pa, Isaac Meyer, now in his sixties, worked at the other end of the patch. He drove a big Percheron draft horse, a roan gelding named Claude, between the rows of cucumber plants. Claude was hitched to a one-row cultivator that turned the brown sandy soil and buried a scattering of ragweed and pigweed that had managed to escape earlier cultivations. Isaac also saw the dust and the pickup speeding down their gravel road, but he kept going, kept the big roan walking between the rows while he held the handles of the cultivator.
Isaac, as tall and thin as a cedar fence post, was mostly bald with a fringe of gray hair circling his head above his ears. Daily outside work had deeply tanned the lower part of his face; his bald head remained chalky white because he always wore a hat. His penetrating gray eyes, peering through steel-rimmed glasses, now stayed focused on the row ahead.
The cultivator uprooted the weeds between the cucumber rows, but hoeing, a slow, tedious, but necessary job, was the only way to remove weeds within the rows. Andy didn't mind hoeing, because you could quickly see what you'd accomplished. No waiting for results.
The pickup stopped near the farmhouse. Buster, the Meyers’ big collie, announced the stranger's arrival with a few loud barks and then watered one of the truck's hind tires. A man in a gray felt hat and suspenders climbed down out of the truck, ignoring Buster, and walked up to Andy's ma, who was hanging clothes on the line, a series of wires strung between posts in back of the big white farmhouse and near the “two-holer” outdoor toilet that stood fifty or so yards away, tucked up against a twenty-acre woodlot to the north. Mary was a short woman of ample proportions, with gray hair and sparkling blue eyes. She wore a flowered apron she had made from a flour sack. The apron came up just below her chin and tied in the back. Andy could see his ma smiling as the stranger approached her.
As Andy's ma and the stranger talked, Buster smelled his trousers, but the man continued to ignore the dog. He jumped back when Buster jammed his nose into his crotch, as the dog was prone to do, whether the visitor was man or woman.
Looks like another feed salesman, Andy thought. Seemed every week or so another one stopped at their farm, trying to sell some new mineral mixture for the cattle, or a feed supplement “guaranteed to put a few more pounds of milk in every milk pail,” or a new fertilizer that would “put more oats in the bin and more corn in the crib.” Andy and his dad tired of these interruptions. These salesmen, although their products differed, all used the same approach. They argued smoothly—too smoothly for Andy—that to succeed as a farmer, you must push your cows to milk more, fertilize your soil to produce more. More is better. Andy simply didn't agree with this approach. His grandfather and his father had done reasonably well without constantly expanding their operations, and he planned to farm the same way—without trying to do more all the time. Yet, Andy always was friendly toward these men, as was his nature.
Ma was pointing to the cucumber patch, and soon the fellow headed on foot up the hill in back of the barn. Andy continuing hoeing, not looking forward to the interruption. The man walked between two rows of cucumbers, raising little puffs of dust as he moved along. He had a pipe in his mouth.
A few yards away, he called out, “You Andy Meyer?” His voice sounded like he had gravel in his mouth. He talked out of the side of his face, like part of it didn't work.
“I am,” Andy replied. He pushed back his straw hat and once more leaned on his hoe handle.
“Well, you're the fellow I'm lookin’ for. Damn, it's hot out here. Sun's a scorcher.”
“That it is,” Andy said. “Good day for growing corn and cukes.” He was waiting for the sales spiel.
“You the manager of the Harlow pickle factory in town?”
“I am.”
“Well, I'm your boss. Name is J. W. Johnson.” Andy put out his hand for a handshake. Johnson did not extend his hand. “I'm district manager for the H. H. Harlow Pickle Company.”
There was a moment of silence. A slight breeze blew out of the west, rustling the needles in the white pine windbreak. The smell of pine drifted across the pickle patch, mixing with the smells of freshly disturbed soil.
“Glad to meet you,” Andy said. But he was not sure he meant it.
This Johnson fellow seemed mighty different from his previous boss, who had hired Andy to manage the Harlow pickle factory in Link Lake during the summer cucumber harvest season in 1952, right after Andy had come home from the army. He had been surprised at the offer because he had not worked at the pickle factory previously, but he gladly accepted. Andy and his previous boss, a fellow named Smitt, had hit it off the first time they met, and Smitt had said, “The job of running the pickle factory is yours.”
The H. H. Harlow Pickle Company, headquartered in Chicago, built the Link Lake Pickle Factory in the 1930s, during the depths of the Great Depression, when farmers in central Wisconsin and all across the nation were struggling to save their land from bankruptcy and attempting to earn enough money to keep their families fed and clothed. Cucumbers became a ready source of income, more dependable in some ways than potatoes, which had been a cash crop since wheat growing died out in central Wisconsin and farmers shifted to dairy cows. Farmers who grew potatoes worked hard and gambled they'd make a dollar or two. A farmer could not predict what the price would be when he sold the crop in late winter. From harvest time to selling time he had to store the potatoes and keep them from freezing, which usually meant keeping a woodstove burning night and day in a potato cellar for several months.
Cucumbers were different. You picked cucumbers, hauled th
em to the pickle factory—where they were weighed and sorted by size—and you got your money right there on the spot. No waiting. Most farm products required a wait before the money came in. Even selling milk required a two-week wait for a milk check. But not cucumbers. During those long, dreadful, and often fearful Depression years, thousands of farmers in central Wisconsin had turned to growing cucumbers.
The Link Lake Pickle Factory operated from about mid-July to mid-September and the rest of the year stood vacant. Work at the factory consisted of taking in, sorting, grading, and weighing cucumbers; writing out checks to the farmers; and then dumping the cucumbers into huge vats with water and salt and allowing them to cure through the fall and early winter. In February, Harlow sent a crew to the pickle factory, and they emptied the vats and shipped the fermented cucumbers to a big Harlow plant in Chicago, where they were processed into dill pickles, slicers, sweet pickles, pickle spears, chips, relish, and the like.
In the 1940s, the Harlow pickle factory in Link Lake not only bought cucumbers and salted them in storage vats, it also packed cucumbers in fifty-gallon wooden barrels along with dill, salt, and the other ingredients to make dill pickles. Dill pickle barrels were lined up in back of the factory by mid-August. The dill pickle maker—one man with that sole responsibility—packed fresh cucumbers into the barrels, added the dill weed and salt, set the wooden covers in place, filled the barrels with water, pounded the bunghole plugs home, and moved the barrels down a little wooden track constructed for that purpose. The dill pickle–making process also required that the pickle maker roll the barrels each day, to make sure the ingredients were mixing with the fresh cucumbers.