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Show 1 ccSM 50CJ VVrB Vl KA W.N.U. service flVP THE STORY" THUS FAR: Amos Croy and his wife, when first married, settled set-tled on a farm in Missouri, where Homer Ho-mer was born. Sunday meant church, company for dinner, and steer weighing. The Croyj attended the Omaha Exposition Exposi-tion where Homer saw his first horseless horse-less carriage, motion pictures, and "ha-la" "ha-la" dancer. Renzo purchased a farm nearby and became a welcome addition to the community. Homer was the first Croy to attend high school and college, j Answering a wire he arrived home after ' his mother passed away. Finishing college col-lege he worked for Post-Dispatch, then left for New York to continue his writing work. He had bad some success free lancing. CHAPTER XVin It was nice to get back to the itraight roads, roads which run mile after mile with never a jerk or a bog. Except at the section lines where they're corrected to fit in with the narrowing for the North Pole. First on one side, then on the other, like squares on a checkerboard, checker-board, were the white houses and red barns. They looked nice. It was certainly a thousand times better bet-ter than the hodgepodge, helter-skelter way they had things in New York Etate. Even in so short a time, the countryside coun-tryside seemed to be changing. At least, I could see things more clearly. Farmers had once been paid to have advertisements painted on their barns; the rate was pitiful, sometimes some-times as low as Ave dollars; and there for years would be the hideous hide-ous sign. Sometimes, due to changes, the farmer would put a new door In his barn, or cut a win-i win-i dow, and there'd be a gap in the let-! let-! ters, like a missing tooth. J These signs on barns were disappearing; dis-appearing; some were reappearing !on billboards. But the effect was Cot so horrific as I had known in ' my youth. Some are still there, not j bo bold or blatant as they were but lingering like December flies. And there, when we got to the farm, was Phebe standing in the ; door, beaming through her gold-j gold-j rimmed glasses. The first thing was for Pa and me to "walk across the farm." We came to a sunken place. "That's Dave," said Pa. We stood in silence for a few moments. Then Pa said, "I always liked Dave." I realized I always had, too. As we walked along, he gave little lit-tle clearing signs in his throat, as he always did when he was getting ready to say something Important. i "Well, Homer, I've got a piece of news you'll be interested in. Phebe and I are planning on getting married!" mar-ried!" There was a moment of anxious anx-ious silence. "I thought maybe you'd approve of it. She's always been a second mother to you." Of course I approved of it and I jtold him so. "I'm glad to hear you speak that way," he said. ! When we got back to the house. , Phebe was in the kitchen. "I guess 'your father told you?" she said anxiously. anx-iously. "Yes, and I'm pleased." '1 hoped you would be." she said, as she went on with her work. The people, I found, were more 'prosperous. Our hack was replaced re-placed by a surrey with a fringe around its canopy top. People who bad once ridden in two-wheeled carts (like the one mother and I had been in when Dave had not kept to the straight and narrow) were now dashing around in buggies. In no time at all, bugi:ies had rubber tires. If a boy with plain Iron tires on his buggy asked a girl to "go" with him. his goose was cooked. The day when my father had courted my mother with a lead pencil and a roll of cinnamon cin-namon bark was gone. "And the day when I had walked over to a girl's house and we had popped corn together to-gether was gone, too. A boy now had to have a spanking team of horses and a buggy top that would fold back, or he couldn't get to first base. Boys no longer visited with girls In the backs of grocery stores. They had to take the girls Into drugstores drug-stores which had ice cream fountains. foun-tains. The expense was staggering. I was more of a visitor than I had ever been before. I helped a little, but it was more a gesture than real work. Pa still clung to the Idea that maybe I would come back where I belonged. How much was I making? mak-ing? (It was $20 a week.) Well, didn't I think there was a good opportunity op-portunity on a farm? He never quite said "the." Then he told about a neighbor boy who had gone to Sedn-lla Sedn-lla to study telegraphy and had got to gambling and running around with fast set. Finally his father had to go down and get him. Pa asked about New York and when I told him about the great crowds and the high buildings, he shook his head, puzzled. Why did I want to subject myself to them? "Did you visit the stockyards. Homer?" Ho-mer?" When I told him they didn't have stockyards, as wo knew tlicm I In St. Joseph and Kansas City and I Omaha, he was flabbergasted. How ' did tliey get their livestock dressed? j I told hltn vaguely It was "shipped In." but his mind about New York was already mado up. fie asked exactly what 1 did and when I told him thai, for the most part, I sat around and read pieces that other people had written, he tlioiignt It Hazardous way to earn a living. The old gentleman was right. The farms were steadily growing larger; the small man was being squeezed out. More and more machinery; ma-chinery; a tedder was no longer a curiosity. Newt Kennedy had long ago quit corresponding for the county coun-ty weekly; nearly everybody took a paper; many of them took a daily paper not a newspaper but a stockyard stock-yard daily. The other news could wait till the end of the week. The neighbor women, who had once come to our horse pond in their Mother Hubbards, were now buying bathing suits and going to the 102, or to Big Foot Lake. Even the conversation had changed. Instead of talking about setting hens, people talked about "brooders" and about the news they'd heard on the party line. It was getting harder and harder to have a secret, There'd been half a dozen hands since 'Renzo Davis. About all they thought of was getting to town and spending their money. Pa said. Every Ev-ery hand, who pretended to be anybody, any-body, had a buggy. Automobiles had about stopped scaring the daylights day-lights out of horses. Sometimes Pa could pass a man driving a car without with-out saying the man ought to be jailed. Several summers went by, and each time I hurried home, and each time I saw changes. Changes I probably would not have noticed if I had been on the farm all the time. For one thing, Pa was getting old; and Phebe, too. Phebe who believed For one thing, Pa was getting old. in me almost as much as my mother moth-er did. Phebe with her little turned-up turned-up nose and small square face and her slender Indian-straight figure. That is. it had always been straight, but now was beginning to stoop. When she sat down she let her hands rest quietly in her lap. Instead of keeping them busy. When she saw a team coming, she couldn't tell whose it was. It was not long until I was off the Delineator and the Buttcrick publications, publi-cations, and a free lance again with all the hazards of a non-salary job. But it was the way my people had always lived; it came natural to me. It seemed logical to Pa. too. Better work for yourself than hire out. My success as a writer was small, but some w-ay or other I kept going. And this allowed me time on the farm and among the people I knew so well. Finally I wrote a novel. "Boone Stop." which was laid on the old home farm and among our neighbors. It got what I was learning learn-ing to call a good "press." William Dean Howells wrote that It "struck a new note in American literature." It certainly didn't strike a new note In royalties. It hardly struck a note at all. Just a faint ping. I sent a copy to Ta and in due time got a letter. "Your book received and will read it at my earliest leisure." He never mentioned it again. But Phebe Phe-be said that when company came he worked it Into the conversation. In fact, so far ns I know, ho never read a book in his life except the Agricultural Year Book. But he was plenty smart. And I've written so many. Sometimes I think he had it on me. The old poverty days were gone. Pa was rich In comparison to his early days on the farm. No penny-pinching penny-pinching now; no cracks that had to have tallow poured in them. He kept adding to the farm until he had 3!i() acres. He built a new house, closer to the road, and left the old house standing in the bark yard, the house where I was born; the one I mentioned men-tioned where the very room had been turned Into a henhouse. But llie hens arc out now. If anyone tore Unit house down It would certainly cer-tainly break my heart. I like to sit In It, alone, and look at the old thing-', so far away yet so strangely close. I even know the nailheads. The old clock shelf Is still on the wall; the clock shelf under which bung our Hosteller's nlni'w on Its I blue string Profound changes are hard to see at the time, and so it was now. Profound Pro-found changes, indeed, had happened hap-pened to the first wave of pioneers; some, when our section had become settled, had swept on west to new land. New land. Virgin soil. New opportunities. They had gone to western Kansas and western Nebraska Ne-braska and to Wyoming and Montana, Mon-tana, responding to the very westward-moving urge that had propelled pro-pelled them into this section. Those who had remained and prospered were moving to "the city." Their sons and daughters were shouldering the farms. The old settlers were retiring, but it was not put so crudely crude-ly as that. They were moving to the city to allow their children to see what they could do with the farm. Disease and breakdown was among them, as it always is among the old. You could see them on blustery days, bundled up and sitting sit-ting in the back seats of the spring-wagons, spring-wagons, these men who had sunk the first plows Into the buffalo grass, little lit-tle beads of rheum clinging to their noses. It stirred me and touched me, as it always has, this matter of the old moving into the back seat. Some day I'll be moving there, too. Maybe I can get used to it by that time. Maybe I'll even welcome it. For who knows how he will act, or respond, to anything till the time is upon him? Age had its heavy hand on my father. fa-ther. He walked more slowly, the hired man had to oil the windmill But Pa got up just as early of a morning, long before daylight, poked up the base-burner, and started start-ed the kitchen stove going. Pretty soon Phebe would be hopping around in the kitchen and the hired man would be pulling on his boots. The party line would ring and Phebe would move to it, straightening out her apron almost as if she expected company. After a while she would put the receiver back. "The Knabbs are butchering and they're calling the Frank Halls to see If they can bring a scalding barrel." "You better call them and tell 'em they can have ours. We've got a good tight barrel." Pa always had tight barrels; he was a good farmer. Phebe would call two shorts and a long and there would be a busy clicking in the receiver. "They say they'll call later if they need it." I would be the last one down, the city having just about ruined me. "Good morning." we would say to each other. The hand would come in with the lantern, and pretty soon Phebe would come to the sitting room door. "I've got the things on." Then we would go to the table and Pa would bend forward his whitening whiten-ing head. It would be light, soon after breakfast, break-fast, then Pa and the hand would start out to do the rest of the chores. At first I offered to help, but by this time Pa knew the worst. The city had got me; it'd been years since I'd had a callus. Pa began to talk about moving to the city where he would "take It easy" my father who had never taken tak-en jt easy. Yep, he was going to town and get on the jury! For that was what the other retired farmers were doing. We could see them sitting sit-ting on the benches In the courthouse court-house yard, with nothing to do. watching the teams go by. hoping to see someone from their neighborhood. neighbor-hood. At noon they would disappear goin' home to dinner then after a time they would- come back and again plant themselves on the wooden wood-en benches. And then he did. as most farmers chose to do. bought a house so he could sit on the porch and watch the old neighbors pass. It was south of the water tower the water tower I had seen so many times as Dave and I had rumbled in to school. There the tower stood, like a sentinel, senti-nel, the first thing I could see as I approached town; and. going home, when I turned and looked back, there it was watching me. Now came the problem of getting someone to run the farm. No one was good enough. One was a good hog farmer, but weak on cattle; another an-other was a good small grain farmer, farm-er, but weak on sheep. Another was a hard worker, but drove his team down hill In a gallop. Another Anoth-er didn't have any bovs in the family. fam-ily. . . . At last, he found a man. Appeared promising. "Homer, some day you'll have to look after this yourself. It's a good farm. Don't ever let loose of It." He delayed moving. The stable wasn't any good. Had to repair It. Cellar needed fixln'. Roof must have attention. Ta left the farm Pa who had never nev-er been farther VJian Omaha since he had arrived by ox team and he and Phebe started city life. But the habits of half a century could not be changed. They got up before daylight. Pa dozed In his chair until Phebe announced breakfast. Then under the newfangled electric light (which hurt people's eyes! Ihey Hie breakfast. He had brought In 0MP horse and now fed him mid worked with him, doing in a small way what be had done so long onhe farm. He bad brought In the buggy, too; the very one he bud courted In. IU ,mv It was n bit old and rallied j;ood deal on bridges. lie put on new washers, but it slill clucked, i ll) Hi1; roNTiNui'.ui |