In a Pickle: A Family Farm Story

by Jerry Apps

  He thought about how few people were going to movies these days, mostly only young people who were dating. Everyone else was watching television, staying up nights watching the flickering screen and talking about I Love Lucy, The $64,000 Question, and The Ed Sullivan Show the next day.

  Andy put down the paper and headed out to the pickup. He thought about Amy and wondered how, after knowing her for so many years, growing up with her and attending elementary and high school with her, they could have developed such different perspectives about farming, about the future, and about life in general. Then he thought about his father and Amy's father: they saw the future of farming so differently it was unbelievable. It was obvious that Amy's ideas were her father's and her employer's. How wrong they were, Andy thought. If everyone believed as they did, there would be no more small family farms, no more cucumber patches, and no more people with close ties to the land. Farming would turn from growing food to producing a product. The land would no longer be something special but just another kind of factory. Inputs and outputs. Seed, fertilizer, and water in. Corn, cucumbers, potatoes, wheat, and oats out. The factory way. Measure the inputs. Measure the outputs. Farmer as factory worker, machine operator, and technician rather than steward, custodian, and caretaker. Andy thought, And there's my girlfriend—she was my girlfriend—working at one of those damn factories.

  And now his father and Jake Stewart were rapidly becoming enemies over these same issues. Andy knew he wanted to be a farmer, but would there be a place for him? Could he farm as he wanted to farm, not as some university agriculturist or some pickle factory boss thought he should?

  As he traveled the four miles to town, he passed by fields of ripening oats, and fields of corn, now taller than he was and tasseling. He saw pastures of cattle grazing, let out after the morning milking: Holsteins, Guernseys, and Jerseys, depending upon the farmer's preference. He drove by Otto Grableski's farm, where there were a few cows of each breed, even a couple cows of mixed heritage. Otto was not devoted to one kind of dairy cow, just as he cared not a whit about the tractor he drove. Some of his neighbors would argue to the point of fistfights over the virtues of John Deere or Farmall. Otto considered all this nonsense, but he said nothing. Farmers were entitled to their own opinions, no matter how diverse and unusual they might be.

  Andy's morning drive was usually a pleasant one. He saw little traffic other than the milk hauler making his rounds with his big enclosed truck, stopping at each farm to lift the five or six and sometimes ten milk cans from the cooling tanks and hoist them on his truck, talking to the farmer if he happened to be nearby—a word about the weather, about the crops, about the price of milk these days.

  But today Andy was weary. The summer cucumber season had been exceedingly good so far, but this meant long hours of sorting and salting, and short tempers and unruly help. Mostly it meant keeping his eye on Quarter Mile Sweet and Blackie Antonelli, who just didn't get along. Andy had thought that as the summer wore on they would learn to put up with each other. It hadn't happened. In fact, their bickering had gotten worse. Quarter Mile, who had been mild-mannered and quiet at the beginning of the season, had become as belligerent and mean as Blackie. The relationship between Helen Swanson and Preacher had gone in the other direction. They ate all their meals together, off by themselves, sometimes in the pickle factory office but often outside under a tree.

  “What's going on between those two?” Blackie had asked Andy one day.

  “It's because of her divorce,” Andy answered. “She said she needs counseling and Preacher said he's had lots of counseling experience.”

  “Looks like more than counseling to me,” Blackie said with a sneer in his voice. “Lots more going on than counseling.”

  “Blackie, they're both doing their jobs. If it gets to be a problem I'll take care of it.”

  Both were doing their jobs, better than ever, in fact. Helen was keeping track of all the records, writing all the checks, and figuring the salt for each day's intake of cucumbers. Preacher, who had been so frail and weak at the beginning of the season, tossed around bushel crates filled with cucumbers as well as the next worker. And he had learned to keep his mouth shut about religion. The crew had grown to like the guy, especially since the day he had stood between Blackie Antonelli and Jesús Moreno and had prevented what could have been a bloody, even deadly fight. But Preacher was still a mystery to his fellow workers. He worked hard, was polite, and never shirked his duties—in fact, he was usually one of the first to offer to help someone. One day Blackie had piled too many boxes of cucumbers on the cart and started pulling it over the rough plank floor to the cucumber vat in the far corner of the factory. It was Preacher who had run to prevent cucumbers from spilling all over the pickle factory floor and maybe falling on Blackie and injuring him. Andy had seen it from the office.

  And, of course, not enough could be said about Agnes Swarsinski. Agnes with the eagle eye, Blackie said of her, Agnes who could spot a spoiled cucumber almost from the moment it was dumped from its gunnysack. Agnes always had a one-liner (“Never argue with an idiot. People watching can't tell the difference”), a little poem (“Roses are red, violets are blue, cucumbers are neither”), or a story (“the one about the . . .”) that kept spirits high around the cucumber sorter on long afternoons that dragged into even longer evenings. Just the other day, Jake Stewart's migrants had brought in three truckloads of cucumbers and everyone had to sort well past midnight. Tempers were getting short that night as sack after sack was dumped on the sorter. Right in the middle of all of that, Agnes had said, “Pull the sorter switch.” Andy thought that something had gotten caught in the sorter, maybe a stone or a stick—these sometimes showed up in the cucumber sacks. But there was no problem. Agnes had stopped the pickle sorting to tell a story. She began:

  “There was this beech tree and a birch tree in the woods with a much smaller tree growin’ between them. One day the two older trees were talkin’ and wonderin’ which of them was the father of the little tree. They decided to hire a pileated woodpecker to do some checkin’. The big woodpecker tapped on the beech tree, the red tuft on his head movin’ up and down like a jackhammer. Then he tapped on the birch tree. Finally he tapped long and hard on the little tree. The two big trees were anxious for the results. The pileated woodpecker, red tuft shinin’ in the bright sunlight and black wings tucked against its side, declared: ‘The little tree is not a son of a beech. It is also not a son of a birch. But I must say, after tappin’ on the little tree, that it was the best piece of ash I've had in a long time.’”

  At first Andy was a little put out with what Agnes had done, because he knew there were lots of cucumbers to sort. The migrants had gone back to Jake Stewart's, leaving a huge pile of sacked cucumbers on the receiving floor. But Andy quickly saw what Agnes was doing. Not only did she have an eye for bad cucumbers, she had an eye for tempers that were about to flare and for workers who might start swinging at each other with the slightest provocation. Now everyone was laughing, something they had not done all day. Laughing out loud, surprised that a woman would tell such a tale. Even Preacher managed a smile.

  Later, Agnes shared with Andy that she had seen Helen and Preacher kissing in back of the salt bin one noon. She thought Andy should know. “Sort of glad to see that the Preacher is human,” Agnes offered.

  “Guess he's a sinner like the rest of us,” Andy replied, smiling.

  J. W. Johnson stopped by about once a week to check on things. At first he had insisted they wash the factory floor at least once a day, until Andy convinced him that all the water pouring through the cracks in the floor to the area underneath created mold. Johnson finally agreed that a good sweeping would be sufficient.

  Johnson reminded Andy several times to tell Blackie to cut his hair. Andy said, “He does his work. Long hair doesn't bother me. If you want his hair cut, you tell him.” Blackie kept his long hair.

  Johnson could find no fault with Helen's records. Compared to the other H
arlow pickle factories, the Link Lake factory had the most error-free record of all. As the days passed, Johnson showed up less often.

  From Andy's perspective everything was holding together, some days less well than others. They did manage, no matter the squabbles among the crew, to process each day's cucumber delivery. Ultimately that's what counted, especially from J. W. John-son's perspective.

  Things were going less well in Andy's personal life. Several days after Link Lake Pickle Days, Andy found a letter on the kitchen table when he returned home from the pickle factory. It was from Amy Stewart.

  Dear Andy,

  This will be short. I thought it only fair to tell you that I am going out with a fellow here at Case. He works in the tractor division.

  I hope we can still be friends as we have been all these years. The best to you as you follow your dreams.

  Your friend,

  Amy

  13

  School Closing

  The notice in the Link Lake Gazette stated simply,“All members of the Rose Hill School District are invited to a special meeting, August 11, 8 p.m. at the schoolhouse to discuss consolidation.”

  The meeting time allowed farmers to finish milking their cows, tote the cans of fresh milk to their milk houses and immerse them in cooling tanks, and turn their cows out to night pasture. Those who had a few sacks of cucumbers to deliver to the pickle factory did so in the late afternoon in anticipation of the evening meeting.

  Most people in the Rose Hill School District were first- and second-generation immigrants, having come mostly from Germany and other northern European countries such as Norway, Poland, England, Ireland, and Wales. These people felt strongly about certain things, and the education of their children was one of them. They all agreed that schooling would help their children get ahead, no matter what they did with their lives.

  Many dreaded school consolidation. It meant closing country schools and busing children to a village or city school. For these people, consolidation also meant rural communities lost considerable control of their children's education. And, most profoundly, consolidation meant that rural communities lost their identities, because these communities then took on the names of their school districts: Pleasant Valley, Willow Grove, Smith, Twin Oaks, High Bridge, Rose Hill.

  Cars filled the schoolyard and were lined up on both sides of the road that ran past the building by the time Andy and his folks arrived. They found seats in the fast-filling schoolhouse. The big windows on the north and south sides of the building were open, but the room was hot and humid, like the weather outside. Not a whisper of a breeze on this mid-August night. A cicada was calling from one of the big oak trees next to the woodshed—its distinctive, raspy sound could be heard through the open schoolhouse windows. People also heard the distant rumble of thunder coming from the bank of dark clouds building in the west, behind the big woods that crowded up to the schoolyard fence on two sides.

  “’Spect it'll rain tonight,” a farmer said to the fellow next to him.

  “Sure could use it. Cucumbers are startin’ to wilt. Corn's startin’ to fire on the bottom. Pasture's gettin’ slim. Sure could use a good rain.”

  School board president Jake Stewart stood up. He was wearing a new pair of bib overalls. He walked from the back to the front of the room in his characteristic style, leaning forward. His big chin was jutting out, and he had his mouth set. The room was immediately quiet.

  “You all know why we're here,” he began in his high-pitched voice. Just hearing him talk made some people angry. “It's time we faced the future of the Rose Hill School,” he said and then paused and looked around the room. He knew who his supporters were, and he also knew who opposed his idea of closing the school and busing the children to Link Lake. The school district was about evenly split between those in favor of closing the Rose Hill School and those who wanted to keep it open. His old friend, Isaac, firmly believed the school should remain open. But Isaac had decided it would be best to keep his feelings to himself during the meeting.

  “We have a visitor from Madison who's been studying country schools and knows how to improve the education for our kids,” Jake began. Sweat began trickling down his cheeks. He yanked an enormous red handkerchief from his pocket and ran it over his face, shook it, and stuffed it back in his pocket.

  “This here is Dr. Julius Jensen. He's a professor and he's been studying country kids and how well they're learning,” Jake said. “Let's give him a big Rose Hill School welcome.” There was some polite clapping, like country folks will do when a politician they don't plan to vote for rolls into town and crawls up on a hay wagon and starts to talk.

  Professor Jensen was a tall, thin fellow with a shock of white hair that fell over his eyes, causing him to regularly brush it back. He wore a white shirt and a blue bow tie that sagged to the right, more so as the evening progressed.

  “It is my great pleasure to be here this evening,” Professor Jensen began. “You are fortunate to have such a forward-looking school board president as Jake Stewart. Let's give him a round of applause for his leadership and, yes, for his vision.” About half of the group clapped, immediately informing the good professor of what he was facing on this warm evening. The cicada had stopped, but the occasional rumble of thunder seemed louder to the room full of perspiring farmers and their families.

  “I am a product of a one-room country school. I attended one for eight years in Minnesota,” Jensen continued. “I know their good points, and, yes, I know about their shortcomings, too.”

  “You for closin’ this school or not?” piped up Allan Clayton, one of Isaac Meyer's neighbors. Clayton was a man of few words and expected the same of others. He was sweating profusely.

  “I'll be getting to that in just a few minutes,” Professor Jensen answered.

  “Well, you'd be savin’ us a bunch of time if you'd get at it right now. It's hotter than hell in here, in case you haven't noticed,” Clayton added, rubbing one arm distractedly.

  There was some chuckling around the room, as the women were fanning themselves with whatever was handy and the men were swabbing their faces with red or blue handkerchiefs.

  “Yes, you are certainly right about the heat. It's a warm evening.”

  Professor Jensen had a briefcase full of research findings, and come hell or high water, he was going to share the results. He leaned over and very deliberately pulled out a stack of papers and piled them on the teacher's desk that stood to his left.

  “I have been researching rural schools for more than ten years,” he continued. He once more pushed back a strand of hair. “And I've found some interesting things.” He turned to the blackboard behind him and wrote across the top “Rural Schools” and “Consolidated Schools.” Then to one side he listed, one on top of the other: “Reading,” “Math,” “Social Studies,” “Science,” “Language,” “Physical Education.”

  “Do you know what the test scores show?” he asked. His bow tie had dipped farther to the right and now was at a forty-five-degree angle. His white shirt showed huge wet areas under each arm.

  At this point in the meeting no one much cared about test scores; they wanted to debate closing or not closing the school. As the room got hotter, tempers grew shorter. The room was filled with human electricity; everyone could feel it. Thunder rumbled again in the west, and those sitting closest to the windows caught a glimpse of lightning cutting across the blackening sky.

  Jensen put a plus sign next to each of the subjects under the consolidated school heading and a negative sign next to each item under the rural school category.

  “We cannot argue with these data. They tell us clearly and without any question that our rural schools are failing.”

  “I don't know the meaning of your damn pluses and minuses. What about this school? You got numbers for this school?” Floyd Jenks piped up. “I wanna hear about this school, not about other schools.”

  “Let me explain how I did my research,” Jensen said.

&n
bsp; “Listen, Professor, I don't give a God damn about how you did your research. It all sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me,” Jenks said. His face was red. Several people in the audience clapped loudly, an encouragement for Floyd Jenks to continue.

  “You guys come out here from Madison and try to tell us how to run our school. You don't know diddly-squat about what goes on out here. We're a bunch of farmers trying to make a livin’, trying to keep things goin’. We milk a few cows, grow some cucumbers, pay our taxes, and stay out of jail. What the hell gives you the right tellin’ us our kids ain't learning what they're supposed to be learnin’? Tell me that. What the hell gives you the right?”

  More clapping, even a loud whistle. Jake Stewart slowly got to his feet. Perspiration dripped from his brow.

  “Let's be civil about this,” he said in a voice that was even higher than usual. “What kind of impression is Professor Jensen gonna have of us with such talk?”