Show vt CP huntr HOMER 16 C ure acroy CROY w SERVICE tor THE STORY THUS FAR FAK amos croy aad his wife 3 settled wed on an a farm in missouri art where nomer was born romer homer was 11 the first croy to go to high school tas and college in new york he be worked on a womans comans magazine wrote a novel and play pa ws ms father and mother both died and homer mortgaged the tann farm to gelp out a relative who was in serious ero uble ile he then wrote a dealer training win film which bich brought in enough to pay off hie be mortgages homer published and sold for a profit a magazine for authors je ike served with the YMCA in world war I 1 wrote radio version of show rost boat and worked with chic sale and was secretary of authors league he continued with his novel writing CHAPTER men lien were posted in the wagons to daive lor for the women a starting gun was MS fired and slowly interminably jt it teemed seemed to me the wagons inched across the field those women knew how to strip ribbons pick up down torn corn and keep on the throw board they were the farm women I 1 had known all my life tanned shapeless amazingly capable equal to any emergency overworked and underpaid der paid at first glance however they look like women for most were in overalls with mens men S hats bats pulled down over their hair they were there to work and that was exactly what they were doing regularly in a sort of rhythm the ears of corn beat on the throw boards but Ws the woman women were feminine after all no matter what their coveralls cover alls said for a quarter of them were wearing high heeled shoes if my mother had come out to the field in a pair of high heeled shoes im sure pad ve sent her back to the house times change and conditions change but people dont for these women were as my mother was except for the item of the shoes sometimes it seems to me people are the one constant factor in the whole scheme of things when the gun went off the second time the women climbed into the wagons and the wagons started for the scales where the corn would have to be weighed and the gleanings too and the overlooked corn one woman before she would allow herself to be driven through the cheering lines brought out her lipstick I 1 am glad pa never saw a national corn husking contest he had stood up under many things but a lipstick in a cornfield might have proved too much I 1 asked one of the winners what she was going to do with the money it was going into a college fund she said then glanced proudly at her son ran she had by the hand the contest was held near a farm owned by former president herbert C hoover I 1 had never been on his farm so now we drove to it and I 1 walked across it thrilled to have such a distinguished fellow farmer when I 1 saw the condition the farm was in I 1 knew it was just as well jae he had stuck to politics once at the behest of his political guides he had come back to make a speech just as farmer willkie had gone to elwood indiana to show what a callus handed son of the soil he was mr hoovers fellow farmers came to see one of their kind the crowd became so great that mr hoover adjourned to his front porch and started to talk to his friends his friends were more friendly than he knew and crowded on the porch suddenly there was a noise and a shock too and hoover and his friends and the porch went down there was a scramble but after a few moments mr hoover was able to right himself and went on with the alarming condition of the country the porch is still there in about the fix the speech left it in when I 1 got back to new york I 1 went to the dutch treat club and there was my neighbor I 1 went to him after he had finished lunch but was still sitting at the table and said mr hoover im going to say something to you that no one else in this club has ever said lie he glanced at me evidently wondering what to make of this approach I 1 said 1 I walked across your farm in a missouri a few days ago now he did look with interest well lvell how is it I 1 told him just what I 1 had seen that it was in poor condition the out buildings were falling to pieces toe the house needed painting the fences bere iere we down the gullies were wash ing g and the soil itself was even I 1 said agne one side of his cave had fallen in he asked questions and I 1 told him just how the farm impressed me then he wanted to know if I 1 would be tie interested in buying it I 1 told him m that I 1 did not think I 1 would after I 1 left he went on smoking but more thoughtfully it seemed to me ie maybe it had dawned on him that mat he been cut out to be a farmer all visits are not so glamorous there mere are plenty of hard bard practical problems to solve and so and I 1 and lloyd stand on the south side of the barn and try to work them out how much land should go in in wheat how much in corn how much in rye this is campli bated ted by the fact that the government ment must always bo be reckoned with we e will be rais paid so much for ing this and so much for not raising that it takes a bit of figuring As we walk across the farm I 1 see a corn picker at work it is not on our land but in a few days one will be snatching off the ears cars on our land I 1 think back to the days when my father shucked chucked corn and my mother came out and helped him and that night poured tallow in the cracks in his hands and I 1 think back to the days when I 1 husked too surely the hardest work in the world the land yield as it did then fertilizer is a going on it something my father never dreamed of and there are a million bugs and insects busy at the corn and at the land pests he never heard of the vast fertility of the prairie soil has been depleted but its still black loam still the finest cornland in the world we have dinner nellie sits in the chair nearest the kitchen where my mother used to hop up only bows his head for the logans are catholics I 1 think of my father sitting in chair and a choky feeling pushes into my ay iy collar A little disappointment about dinner for the cooking as glod and the food as good as I 1 remember it after all theres nothing to season food like a couple of plow handles after dinner house problems every room must be inspected A new 0 1 we go into renzo davis 11 room ceiling will have to go into this one but nellies son in law who lives in in omaha is a plasterer when his vacation comes well invite him to see us says nellie so taken care of why this is the very room where my father used to fall asleep ov over er his livestock paper the very one where I 1 used to read the farm papers what does the farm boy of today read well he reads the farm weeklies and semimonthlies semi monthlies wallaces farmer is still going strong and he listens to the national radio hour and to the market prices as they come in over the midwest stations the mail order monthlies are all gone but there has come to take their place a plague of cheap movie magazines and radio guides and comic supplement magazines detailing the adventures of superman and his kind and the hired man today instead of having pictures of race horses pinned on his wall has poses of beautiful art models sometimes I 1 wish the mail order magazines gone their way we look at the bathroom the wallpaper has about decayed so that goes down on the list it is a single duty bathroom merely a bathroom and nothing else I 1 am asked by my curious city friends what a woman on a farm does when she wants to be alone the answer is simple she does as the women have done for three quarters of a century goes to an arrangement in the back yard or in the edge of the orchard designed for that very purpose naturally in winter time there are certain problems to solve but she solves them and never once thinks of herself as underprivileged that croy bathroom means something to me tor for it was the first in all the neighborhood people came as if to a shrine I 1 turn to nellie and say how many bathrooms are there in this neighborhood she and count it up on the ten farms nearest ours there are two bathrooms they still go out back and today in the black loam section we go upstairs to the northwest bedroom and my heart goes nutter flutter this is the room where I 1 had my panel of six famous american authors theres where the old barlock used to repose on the wall was a picture of victor hugo and right under it t I 1 read les iio homer mer the root roof leaks says nellie this is the room where I 1 packed my telescope with the mousehole how long ago that wasl was yet how re cent I 1 remember my mother said homer I 1 wish you have to t go off to the city with a hole in your telescope my mind races away to st joseph where I 1 saw my second streetcar street car cr and I 1 think of something that happened later when I 1 came to have as a friend the man who invented the electric streetcar frank J sprague and he told me this streetcar line was the second in the united states we go into renzo davis room two sacks of shelled corn are on the floor we dont dare leave our hybrid at the barn says mice this room should be papered says nellie from room to room we go and from place to place then outside the kitchen foundation is getting weak in the knees well have to have the cement man out we go into the basement under the parlor and I 1 think of the time my father got the acetylene gas craze and had a machine installed in this cellar room the machine was supposed to dump pockets of carbide into the water and make gas for our lights one night the ins machine work and pa told me to take the lantern and go down and see what was the matter I 1 came into this room opened the machine and peered into its depth aided by the lantern suddenly there was an explosion and I 1 was knocked as flat as a doily in the back yard behind the new house is the house where I 1 was born if there are any chickens in it ill wring their necks thank god there arent in the floor is the augerhole augur hole where I 1 used to see the water drain off and wonder where it went and under the clock shelf is the very nail where our Ho almanac hung and a little to the left is the wall where pa kept the international harvester calendar with circles around the dates when the cows would freshen then to the henhouse the root roof leaks I 1 dont know why it is but henhouse roofs always leak put that down too we have supper and that evening the neighbors come in the boys and girls ive grown up with and with them their children and here and there a grandchild it just seem possible but there they are staring popeyed as if I 1 was w as rip van winkle we talk about the weather and crops just as we used to and how the schoolteacher is panning out then about what the government says well have to do next all new and puzzling but on the good side our farmers like what the government is doing they know about the tall buildings for seen them in the tha movies but the subway is different when I 1 tell them that the train I 1 go to washington heights on runs three miles under the ground without stopping they glance at each other again well let him talk his father and mother tried hard haid enough after my lies are over the conversation again swings back to neighborhood matters mysteriously nellie and opal get up and tiptoe out and there is a clinking in the kitchen refreshment time pretty soon we are eating ice cream and homemade cake not ice cream made on the back porch in a saltwater freezer but fetched out from town and not as good either the children are getting restless its half past nine why we been up that late since grandpa died after a while gone and the house seems lonely and emp empty ty just as it did when I 1 was a boy A train whistles in the distance and an exquisite agony lays hold of me and now as I 1 lie in my old room I 1 think some day ill be no more and when that day comes id like to have my ashes sprinkled on the farm the next day we go in to trade I 1 but now it takes only a few minutes to clip off the six miles what I 1 have given if old dave had had six cylinders it its sa a farming town the guidebooks say then add industry none a little off tor for theres the lightning rod factory A dozen people employed there counting of course the office workers youre nobody if youre not proud of your home town we have some names that we were re proud of men who were born bom in the county and who have distinguished themselves theres george georg robb ellison judge of the missouri supreme court remember I 1 mentioned a boy who went to harvard and came back with a feather edge haircut well that was george and theres merrill E otis federal judge kansas city iles hes the one who sentenced dale carnegie the writer and lecturer ed H moore was born in our county and lived there all his early days then went t to 0 oklahoma and beat josh lee and became united states senator should never have left missouri forrest C donnell became governor of missouri yep one ot of our boys have you heard of dawson city british columbia near alaska named for one of Z our boys TO BE CONTINUED |