OCR Text |
Show t COUKt KM rToMER, Jk ru v&cv CROY mm V W I VVi- w-n.u. service; 2y But that wasn't alL At noon that day when I opened up my dinner bucket at school there would be a package with grease spots showing through the brown paper a delicious deli-cious cold sausage cake. It wouldn't be as brown, and it wouldn't have the lovely smell it had at breakfast, but it was still good. It always would be good; nothing could keep it from being good. I wish I had some now right this moment! Newt Kennedy was our neighborhood neighbor-hood correspondent for the weekly, and, for the items he sent in, he received re-ceived the paper free of charge. Newt was a trifle weak on grammar, gram-mar, but he was strong on what people peo-ple liked to read, and always, in everything he wrote, was this undercurrent under-current of humor which I loved and which influenced me so much. He signed himself "The One-Horse Farmer," which, of course, made everybody laugh, for no one could run a farm with one horse. This was another way of saying "The Bottom of the Heap." Of course Newt wasn't, but it was good fun to pretend he was. Newt didn't merely send in who was sick and who was visiting and that tramps had broken in the schoolhouse again, but sent in comments and humorous philosophy. Each week, when we got the paper, the first thing I turned to was the One-Horse Farmer. He was the biggest and strongest man in our section, and about the best natured. A great brawny giant with a mop of hair like an unfinished un-finished haystack. He wore an overcoat over-coat fastened around his middle with a belt; he had felt boots and over- As for the weasel, it must have been an alblne. I took it down to Mr. Jenkins, who bought for a fur house in St. Louis, and sold it. My father was a "cattle" farmer, Mr. Knabb was a "hog" farmer. Newt Kennedy was a "mule man," for even in our neighborhood we specialized. There were many other mule men, but none like Newt Kennedy, Ken-nedy, who got fun even out of mules. Most farmers, when they wanted to "break" a mule, gingerly hitched him up with an old mare who could be got into a trot only by determined deter-mined effort, and let the mule lunge and kick and prance beside the faithful old mare. But not Newt! Newt got his fun out of the very thing that others dreaded. He liked to break mules; more than that, he looked forward to mule-breaking time, as children do to circus time. Fall was mule-breaking time; during dur-ing the hiatus between harvest and corn picking. The mule colts had been on grass all summer, kicking up their heels and watching the horses and other mules plodding off to work. They'd run along beside, as near as the fence would allow, and whinny and taunt the dull plodders; plod-ders; at least, it seemed that way. But these gay mules didn't know that Newt Kennedy would soon be on their trail. Newt would go bouncing bounc-ing along in a wagon, or on a hay-frame, hay-frame, looking them over with a joyous eye. It wouldn't be long till he would have a nose-twitch on them. Usually, when a farmer wanted to break a mule, he would take him to the back pasture so he could THE STORY THUS FAR: Amo Crojr ettied on a farm at Maryiville, Missouri, Mis-souri, where he married and a son, Homer, Ho-mer, was born. Homer's earliest recollection recol-lection was of a cyclone which blew down the sod barn and wrecked the orchard. Sunday meant church, company for dinner din-ner and steer weight guessing. Dehorning of the calves and the curing of hams were two of the Jobs that Homer had to help wit-. It became his Job to wean the calves, ,ie originated the idea of placing a rubber tube in the milk pail and had them suck on that Instead of bis finger. By this means they were weaned considerably con-siderably quicker than by finger. He sent the idea to the local farm paper which printed it m full. CHAPTER VII When the water was boiling, the scalding barrel set at the proper angle in the bobsled and everything was ready, Pa would go to the house and come out with his rifle and brass powder flask with the measuring device. de-vice. "I expect you'd better go in the bouse for a while, Homer." I was glad to, for I couldn't bear to see what was going to happen. . . . Inside the house there was a tenseness, tense-ness, a lowering of voices. One of the women, who had come to help my mother, would look out the window win-dow and say, "They're in the hog lot now." They would try to talk neighborhood neighbor-hood news, but it would be in subdued sub-dued voices and there'd be silences. Then my mother would begin to whet a knife on a crock. Suddenly, sharp and clear on the winter air, would come a shot . . . then the sound of a man running, and I would know he had a knife in his hand and K would seem to me I just couldn't live through the next few moments. There would be another an-other shot, and another . . . three hogs now. Then there would be a feeling of relief, for we all knew this was the last. The women would begin to talk again, but a little too fast. I would open the door; the smell of powder would still be on the air. , The men would come dragging one of the hogs by the forelegs to the sled, and in a few moments the animal would be in the scalding water wa-ter and the men would go "Huehl" all together so as to get the right timing for the animal to slosh up and down in the barrel. Pa would take some of the hair between his thumb and finger and give it a pull. . "One more time, boys." At last the animals would be dressed and hanging on the gam-brels. gam-brels. The worst part of butchering would be over, for it didn't seem so bad now as it had when the hogs were alive and the men were advancing ad-vancing in the lot. The faintness I had felt would be gone and I'd be thinking about the good eating that was coming. And so'd everybody else. Lots of talk, now, about eating. eat-ing. As the meat was being cut, the women would strip the casings, turn them inside out, scrape them, and put them to soak in salt water. Sausage making was best of all. Mostly lean meat trimmed from the hams and shoulders and some from the tenderloin. When it was ready, the grinder would be brought and everybody would gather around, as If it was the opening of a circus. My mother was the one who fed the meat into the grinder and I was the one who had to turn the damned thing. On a chair, beside her, would be the salt and pepper in bowls, but the sage was in the bag it was cured in. My mother was proud of her ability to mix the seasonings just right. She knew the amount of sage to put in; if too much went in, it gave the sausage an old taste. At last the day would be over, and the neighbors, each with a piece of fresh meat, .would be starting home. The house, which had been so full of excitement, would seem lonely. Everywhere would be the peculiar, unpleasant smell of fresh meat. The casings would be stacked in the pantry, so they wouldn't freeze, and I would forget about them. Then some morning, about two weeks later, lat-er, as I would be coming back from helping with the chores there would be a perfectly captivating smell hanging on the air the smell of frying fry-ing sausagel There would be Ma, when I opened the door, bending over the stove. She would take the lid off the skillet, turn the cakes over with a fork, then put the lid back on again. The smell would get more and more enthralling en-thralling and I'd get hungrier and hungrier. At last breakfast would be ready. There in the center of the table would be the redolent, brown cakes. We'd all take one me pretty fast and Ma would look at Pa and say, "How do you h'ke it, Amos?" Pa would eat a moment, then say, "Fine! You got just about the right amount of seasoning." Then he'd look at me in that sly way of his and say, "Homer, do you think you'll be able to masticate a bit of it?" After this first inspection. Ma would pass the buckwheat cakes and I would cut a slice of honey, spread it over the cakes and let it run down the sides. On top of this smoking mound I would put my sausape. then haul my knife across and mix snitsase and buckwheat and honey all up together. I tell you U was cood! swing on a line and make jiim run in a circle. But nothing so common es this would do for Newt Kennedy. When it began to chill up in the autumn, he would say to me, "Homer, "Ho-mer, are you going to be doin' anything any-thing Thursday morning?" I never was, if Newt wanted me. It was understood I was to .say nothing to anyone, for Newt's mule methods were frowned on. They might like him fifty-one weeks a year, but mule-breaking week they had no use at all for him. I would go out the back way, so as to appear to be about my work (a suspicious item) and cut across the fields to Newt's. I could see the mules even before I got there, for they would be running around In the barn lot, the wildest things on four legs, and the trickiest. And the smartest, too, for a mule is miles ahead of a horse in horse sense. It really ought to be called "mule sense." "I thought maybe you'd like ta help me break," he would say and we would go to the horse lot where the mules were, racing around and around with their heads as high as giraffes. Newt would stand there, his arms on the fence, looking them over, as a fisherman might look over a trout he was going to have his way with. The thing was to get a rope around the neck of one of them. Newt would approach with a rope held behind him, and suddenly send it looping through the air, like a cowboy. cow-boy. If the rope landed, it was hell. Newt and I would have to sink our heels in the ground and hang on for dear life. Of course the mule couldn't go out of the lot, so we would stand in the middle, like a ringmaster at a circus, and let the mule run 'round and 'round. After a time we'd get him into a chute that Newt had for the purpose pur-pose and leave him, as Newt said, to "think it over," and then gc back for another mule. This one usually would be in harness and considered partly broken. Newl would not have dreamed of putting an old plug-ugly plow horse in t break a mule with. Newt wanted to get fun out of his work. After a time we'd have the partly broken second mule in, and snubbed; then we'd go back to the first mule and Newt would pretend he loved that mule. He'd stroke hi! nose and. talk to him in honeyed words, but Newt had something behind be-hind his back. The twitch. This was a stick as long as a person's arm, with a loop of rope at the end. Newt would get the loop over the mule's upper lip and twist it tight, and pass the stick to me. The mule's head would go down and his heels up. But usually I could hold him, m spite of all the ideas he had on the subject. Newt would creep up with a collar and slip it over his neck. Bit by bit he would get the harness on the mule and then the harness on the second mule. Ther would come the tremendous job oi getting the mules to a wagon tongue. Only Newt could do that, sometimes with soothing words; sometimes with threats" that, if he had understood under-stood them, would have made the mule's blood rum to ice water. In some superhuman way, Newl would get both those mules on a wagon and then I would be sent tc open the gate to the public road! No back pasture for Newt Some of the neighbors even broke mules on plowed ground hitched to a drag. But not Newt Kennedy. He wanted to extract every possible morsel ol fun from it Fun that made thi neighbors think he was crazy (TO BE CONTINUED) "The One-Horse Farmer' shoes and a cap with flaps that pulled down over his ears. He did something of value to the township, for he conceived the idea we ought to have plays, and set about getting them up in the same joyous, boyish way he went into anything any-thing that had fun in it. These were put on in the Wilcox School which was bigger than the Knabb School. There was no door in the end of the room which was to be the stage, but that was all right; a window was used. The women made a curtain, cur-tain, and the boys and girls began to study their lines. When the timfe came, that wonderful opening night. Newt, all dressed up in his good clothes, stepped out in front of the draw-curtain and said the opening number would be a tableau entitled "The Setting Sun." The curtain whizzed along the galvanized clothes line and there, sitting on a box, was one of the neighborhood boys. It took us some moments to see through it, but when we did we thought it was about the funniest thing we'd ever heard of. Well, those plays were a tremendous success, suc-cess, judged by our standards, and brought us immense satisfaction. Newt could be plenty serious. He would sit up with the sick and, in some strange way was amazingly tender with them, this rough giant of a man. When one of our neighbors neigh-bors died, Newt was the first person to put a shovel over his shoulder and start toward the cemetery. The second time my name was ever in print, Newt Kennedy put it there. I tried to earn money for myself by having a line of traps in the slough, and one day I found a long, strange, perfectly white creature, crea-ture, as big around as a buggy whip handle, In a steel trap. The neighbors neigh-bors came in to see tt When the One-Horse Farmer came out that week this Item was in it: "Homer Croy has captured a white weasel." I was delighted. I was thrilled! It had never occurred to me that I would be in the One-Horse Farmer, but thore I was for all the world to see! 1 thought over and over why he had used the word "captured" instead in-stead of "trapped." for I was coming com-ing more and more to love words; and to be a little awed by the thrilling thrill-ing things one ccmld do with them |