In a Pickle: A Family Farm Story

by Jerry Apps

  “Remember, George, no drinking, and no smoking in the building. You got to smoke outside.”

  “I got it, Andy,” he said as he touched his long, thin finger to the side of his head. “Got it right here. Remember from last time I worked here. Remember about the smoking. Yup, I remember that. Remember that good. Old mind is still there, Andy. Brain still works.”

  “Want you to work on the sorter with Agnes. You remember Agnes, don't you?” Agnes Swarsinski was scraping dirt off the wooden sorter bars.

  “Hey there, George,” she said. “How the hell are ya?”

  “I'm good Agnes. Feelin’ good. Took the cure, you know. Over at Oshkosh.”

  “Hope it works out for you, George.”

  “Workin’ out fine, Agnes. Workin’ out fine so far. Things are comin’ back together. Comin’ back together for me.”

  “Meet Quarter Mile Sweet, George. He's new this year,” Andy said.

  “Jeez, what the hell happened to your eye?”

  “Got into a little misunderstanding,” Quarter Mile said.

  “How'd the other fellow look?” George asked, grinning. He didn't put two and two together and figure out the reason he had a job might be because of a fight that Quarter Mile had been in.

  “This is Preacher,” Andy said. “He's also new here this year. Preacher's the pastor over at the Church of the Holy Redeemed.”

  “Well, I'm sure pleased to meet a man of the cloth. Sure pleased.” George shook the preacher's hand. “’Spect you're keepin’ down the swearin’ around this place. Sure as hell been a problem durin’ past summers. Sure has.”

  “So pleased the Lord has saved you from the devil's drink,” Preacher said.

  “Yup, he sure as hell did,” George replied, smiling.

  “Let's go see Helen,” Andy said. “Get your payroll stuff straight. Got your Social Security card with you?”

  “Nope, but I know the number. Got it right up here, Andy.” Once more he tapped on the side of his head.

  “How are you, George?” Helen asked by way of a greeting.

  “Doin’ fine, Helen. Doin’ fine. Things gettin’ better. Gettin’ better everyday. How about you, Helen? How you doin’? Heard you've had some tough sleddin’. Tough sleddin’ without a man around. Woman needs a man.” Helen rolled her eyes.

  “Here, fill this out,” she said, handing a piece of paper and a pencil to George.

  “Yup, I'll fill ’er out, fill ’er out right now.” George sat down at the side of the desk and scratched some basic information about himself on the standard H. H. Harlow employment form.

  “What do I write on this line, Helen? Asks about my last permanent job and why I left. What do I say here? Reason was I was drunk and they fired me. Do I write that down? Don't sound right to put that down. I ain't drunk now. Ain't drunk now, am I, Helen?”

  “No, you don't appear to be.” Helen smiled when she said it.

  “Well, I ain't. I took the cure over at Oshkosh. Place where they help guys like me give up drinkin’. You know about the cure over at Oshkosh, Helen?”

  “I've heard of it.”

  “You don't ever want to go there. Helluva place for a human being. One helluva place. But it works, Helen. You quit drinkin’.”

  Looking at George's employment file, Helen suggested, “Why don't you just write, ‘Left employment at Link Lake Sawmill after twenty-five years.’”

  “I'll do that, Helen. That's what I'll write. Won't be lying, will I, Helen?”

  “No, you won't be lying, George.”

  George slowly wrote the words on the employment form.

  “Well, here she is, Helen. All filled out like you wanted. Even remembered to sign my John Henry on the bottom. Signed it right there, place where it says to sign.”

  “Hope things get better for you, George,” Helen said. She knew George's reputation around Link Lake.

  “Things gettin’ better, Helen. Better every day. Just you watch now, I'm a changed person, Helen. No more heavy drinkin’.”

  George said.

  “Well, welcome back to the pickle factory.”

  “Thank you, Helen. Needed this job. Sure as hell needed this job. Bitch just sittin’ around doin’ nothin’. Nobody wantin’ to hire you, nobody even givin’ you the time of day. Not even givin’ you the time of day. Like you weren't there or something. Know how that is, Helen? When people look right past you? People you knew all your life. Look right past you, Helen. Like you was the scum of the earth. It's a bitch when people do that.”

  “Happens to divorced women, too,” Helen said. “Some of your old friends will cross the street just so they don't have to say hello.”

  “Bitch when that happens, Helen. A bitch. Don't know why people do that. Why do they get so high and mighty? Like they ain't never did anything wrong. Everbody's done somethin’ wrong. You bet they have. You just don't know about it ’cause they know how to hide their bad ways. People know how to hide their faults, Helen.”

  “You better get to work, George.”

  “Yeah, I'd better. Good talkin’ with you. You just keep your chin up, Helen. Keep your chin up.”

  “I'll do that, George.” In the background the radio was quietly playing “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing,” the Four Aces’ popular tune.

  As he left the office, George mumbled, “Yup, that love is a splendid thing.”

  The first load of cucumbers, a pickup truck with a half-dozen sacks, had pulled up to the unloading dock.

  “Let me help you unload those,” George said, leaning over to grab one of the sacks Bill Steinke, a farmer from east of town, handed up to him. He pulled the full gunnysack of cucumbers in front of the sorter. “Cukes got a lot heavier since last I worked here,” George said. He leaned over and grabbed another sack as it was pushed up to him.

  “You got rocks in this sack?” George asked, smiling. “Seems like there's more than cukes in this one.”

  “Only cucumbers, George.” Steinke recognized George. In fact, nearly everyone around Link Lake knew George Roberts and his drinking problem. They also knew that he could never keep a job these days, even though he was a good worker. He'd work hard for a week or so and then go off on a drinking binge and get fired.

  “By the way, how you doin’ George? You feelin’ better?”

  “Feelin’ better. Feelin’ better everyday.” George had seen Steinke in town before but didn't remember his name. “Took the cure over in Oshkosh.”

  “Good for you, George.”

  “Yup, took the cure. Off the bottle. Old self is comin’ back.”

  Steinke walked up the steps and over to the scale, where Andy was waiting to weigh the cucumbers coming off the sorter. The two men talked quietly about the usual topics: the weather, the good harvest, the price of cukes. George untied the first sack, lifted the cucumbers up to the sorter, and dumped them in. He hadn't done any physical work for several months, and his knees wobbled under the weight. He repeated this with the second sack and then waited as the cucumbers shook their way across the sorting bars under Agnes's careful eye.

  “You know what was best about the cure over in Oshkosh?” George said to Agnes.

  “Can't imagine,” Agnes replied, not looking up from the sea of green cucumbers that moved in front of her.

  “When it was over. That was the best part of that whole damn experience. Best part, Agnes.”

  “Sometimes works that way.”

  “Know what I did to celebrate when it was over?”

  “What was that, George?”

  “We stopped in Omro on the way home.”

  “That's a nice town.”

  “You bet it is. I was lookin’ for a saloon.”

  “Thought you took the cure.”

  “Did take the cure. Took the cure.”

  “Why you stoppin’ at a saloon on the way home, then?”

  “Needed to celebrate a little. Needed a couple of stiff drinks. Only a couple. That's all I had. Only a couple stiff ones. No where'
s near enough to get drunk. Just a couple drinks.”

  “Sounds like you didn't quit drinkin’, George.”

  “Didn't quit all the way. Who'd wanna do that? Maybe some Baptist. Some Baptist might wanna do that. But guess they don't start drinkin’ in the first place. Heard that about some Baptists. Heard they never take a drink. Not one. Not ever. Can't imagine what that'd be like. Can you imagine that, Agnes?”

  “Hey, quit talkin’ and dump in another sack of cukes.”

  “Yeah, here they come. Here comes more cucumbers.” George dumped the next two sacks.

  “You know about Baptists, Agnes?”

  16

  Ames County Fair

  Everyone in Ames County attended the fair. Old timers remembered when the draft horse judging was the major event. Kids in 4-H exhibited calves and cooking and sewing and woodworking projects such as doorstops and chick feeders. Kids too young for 4-H mostly came to ride the Tilt-a-Whirl that jerked them around in a circle and the Loop-de-Loop that turned them upside down and dumped their loose change on the ground. Those with five dollars could take an airplane ride in a big double-wing, open-cockpit plane where the pilot sat in the back and the passenger in front.

  “Fly you over your farm,” the pilot said as he leaned on a wing, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “See what your place looks like from a crow's-eye view.”

  Many people attended the fair for the carnival, featuring games of chance (knock over the milk bottles!), rides like the Ferris Wheel and Merry-Go-Round, and food tents (offering everything from cotton candy to hamburgers with onions).

  Farmers came to see the lineup of machinery, the new tractors—Allis Chalmers orange, Oliver green, International red, John Deere green and yellow, Massey-Harris red. In those days huge arguments arose over which was better, red or green—with the focus on John Deere and International. The other tractor makes were minor players, present but not important in any major debate.

  Farmers climbed on tractor seats, kicked tires, inspected engines, asked the dealer to start them up as they stood watching, listening, and wishing they had the money to buy one of these shiny new machines.

  These men and their sons, sometimes with wives and daughters, too, walked by the new grain combines that would cut and thresh the grain as the machine rolled across the field. It would replace the threshing machine that made the rounds about this time every year, in mid-August. They peered into the machine, asked how it worked, looked at the price, and then shook their heads.

  “Don't think we'd want one of them. What'd happen to the threshing crews if everybody had a combine? Besides, who can afford one?” someone asked.

  “Threshing machines are a thing of the past,” the dealer standing nearby said. “Thing of the past. Most of the farmers in the southern part of the state, in Dane and Rock and Walworth Counties, have already switched to combines. These farmers swear by them. Say they'll never go back to threshing. Too much work. Combines make harvesting grain a lot easier.”

  “Well, this ain't the southern part of the state,” a grizzled old farmer said, sending a stream of tobacco juice to the ground just to the right of the salesman's shoes. The salesman jumped a little to the side.

  “You almost got me,” the salesman said jovially.

  “Guess I did at that. Aim's a little off these days,” the farmer said.

  “Here, take one of these folders along with you,” he said, not letting up on his sales pitch.

  The farmer took the colorful folder and walked away, brushing his big calloused hand across his chin and grinning from ear to ear. He tossed the folder in the nearest trash barrel.

  The fair opened at the Willow River fairgrounds the third week in August, and the Link Lake Gazette had begun reporting fair-related events weeks earlier. A big supporter of the fair, the paper also included highlights of the previous year's fair—who had won the cow calling contest, who exhibited the grand champion cucumber entry, and details about other important events that drew people to the fairgrounds each year.

  The fair started on Thursday, with exhibitors hauling in their entries: cattle, vegetables, field crops, artwork, carpentry projects, paintings, photography, canned fruits, baked bread, cakes, pies, chickens (laying hens, broilers, roasters, and of course roosters, which crowed regularly), geese that began honking with first light of the morning, ducks, hogs, sheep, and horses (both saddle and draft types, although the draft horse numbers were dwindling each year as tractors took over farm work).

  Except for this partial week in August, the fairgrounds nearly stood empty. County snowplows were stored in the buildings. The community celebrated the Fourth of July and Labor Day at the fairgrounds. But mostly the place was abandoned, except during the fair, when the place came to life. The sounds and smells of the country were concentrated on a few acres on the south side of Willow River, where the city gave way to farmland.

  The fairgrounds took up about thirty acres. A woven wire fence surrounded the grounds, to keep out those who wanted to bypass the fifty-cent admission. Visitors to the fair first saw the ticket booth. From there, depending on their interests, they could stroll past the hog, sheep, and horse pens and walk through the two-story cattle barn—some of the 4-H members slept in the second story—or the fowl shed just beyond the cattle barn.

  Members of 4-H clubs exhibited their woodworking, electricity, forestry, and other projects in a little building next to the cattle barn, and just beyond that was a large building that contained crop exhibits and vegetable exhibits—everything from corn and oats to cucumbers. Next came the “women's building”—where sewing, cooking, baking, canning, and knitting projects were displayed.

  Most exhibits were judged on Friday and Saturday, but cucumber judging took place on Sunday afternoon, when the fair crowd reached its peak. For years the Link Lake Pickle Factory had shut down on Sunday afternoon so the employees could attend the fair and so the farmers could plan their cucumber picking around the fair schedule.

  Andy Meyer rolled the factory doors shut precisely at noon on Sunday and set off for Willow River. The rest of the crew also headed to the fair. The competition for best cucumbers at the Ames County Fair was stiff—even tighter than at Link Lake Pickle Days. At the county fair, Ames County growers competed with cucumber growers from Portage, Waupaca, Adams, and Marquette counties. It was a high honor for a farmer to receive the grand champion ribbon (fondly known as the cucumber crown). The award winner received headlines in the Link Lake Gazette as well as in the Milwaukee Journal and the Milwaukee Sentinel. Last year Jake Stewart had won the coveted award, and he fully expected to win again. After all, he had thirty acres of cucumbers to select from.

  When Andy arrived at the fairgrounds, he walked directly to the horticulture building, where a table the entire length of the building was green with cucumber entries. The judging was scheduled to begin at 2:00 p.m., and already people were sitting in the folding metal chairs set out for those who wanted to watch the event.

  Andy found his pa's entry—it looked as good as any of the cucumbers, perhaps better than most. At one end of the table, Jake Stewart's entry had a prominent place, eight of the most beautiful cucumbers Andy had ever seen. The competition would once more be keen, and he was happy that he wasn't the judge.

  The annual cow-calling contest was scheduled for one o'clock. An area near the cattle barn had been roped off for the event. Each contestant, male or female, young or old, would step up to a line, and then use his or her best cow-calling voice to lure a Jersey cow standing in a temporary pen at the far end of the roped-off area. The closer the cow came to the caller, the more points he or she got. The winner took home a trophy—a replica of a Jersey cow's head with her ears forward. It sounded easy enough, and many of the contestants were seasoned cow callers who used their calls to fetch their cattle from the night pastures every morning.

  As he approached, Andy heard the judge explaining the rules. The first contestant stood at the line, a young woman who appeared not
to have spent one day on a farm. She didn't even have a tan, so she obviously spent no time in a farm field hoeing, picking cucumbers, or doing much of anything else outside. But she was a big girl, tall and husky, and likely had a voice for cow calling even if she didn't have the experience.

  “You ready?” the judge, a farmer from Marquette County, asked her.

  “Yeah, I'm ready,” she replied.

  “Remember, you get three tries. Call away when you're ready.”

  The young woman took a deep breath, stood up straight, and looked off toward the Jersey cow, which was eating hay, oblivious to the entire goings on.

  “Come cow,” she yelled in a voice that caused those standing near her to jump back. “Come cow,” she yelled again. The little Jersey lifted its head and looked in the direction of the noise.