Show la atea pw I 1 con nt r a A HOMER C toy cure ta r qc SERVICE CHAPTER I 1 I 1 was born on a farm near the U ater finter of the united states so when making notes for this chron ame I 1 decided I 1 would find just how near the center our farm really was I 1 wrote the united states department of the interior geological survey washington D C and this is the answer the geographic center of the continental united states exclusive of alaska lies in smith county kansas about two miles northwest of the town of lebanon the distance from this locality to mary ville missouri is miles I 1 suppose our farm was typical of a great many farms in this heart center of the united states and that our way of life was typical too and I 1 suspect that my own personal story is typical of a great many life stories of this section d mf a you want to find where mary cje 0 3 eis have to do quite a bit O of looking for its still a pretty small place 1 I dont know what our chamber of commerce is going to say about that maryville markville Mar is 44 miles north of st joseph missouri and the farm where I 1 was born is 14 miles south of the iowa line and the back of the farm is on highway 71 the story of our farm is the story of me for in a way I 1 am ther the farm and the farm is me our two stories are wrapped so closely together that I 1 cannot tell one without setting down the other and that is what I 1 hope to do to tell the story of the farm and of myself A sort of dou ble biography the river pokes along just east of us friends are always asking me how a river got that name I 1 suppose I 1 had just as well tell it now as any time it was the hun dred and second river the mormons cormons crossed on their way to what is now salt lake city st joseph is where the ox teams were outfitted to cross the great plains and where the pony express started also where jesse james was killed all this was prairie country in the early days we used to have an old buffalo wallow but my father put a on it and leveled it off till now its just a plain unromantic patch of cornfield my father and mother were covered wagon pioneers they left ohio by ox team for california but the land at maryville markville Mar looked so good sey stayed but they know aey h other as they came lumbering out oat from athens county ohio they were on different wagon trains and never heard of each other until they the Y met in missouri many ohio people came into this prairie section and got to marrying each other later many came from tennessee and kentucky and settled down among the ohio and indiana people and that is one reason ours became a border warfare state my father knew nothing about the cloys except they were ohio folks my parents were two of the thousands upon thousands during this period in american history who were looking tor for land for land represented opportunity they were typical of the time and the way eks atey i ey went about opening up a farm was I 1 suspect typical too the ohio people camped together toge that first winter and shared work and shelter while they scouted for foi land and most of them wanted timber because they had come from timber and had always worked in timber but my father wanted what he called callec open land which he had seen during the civil war so he went a bit north of the rest of the ohio people and singled out a prairie quarter section then he rode in to town horseback to enter it up but one of the land speculators of the period had got there ahead of him and had filed pa always said it was a blow because an ex soldier was supposed to have first go at homestead land the land speculator had paid the government an acre and my father had to pay him twenty five cents an acre profit I 1 am sorry that my father did not get to enter up the land for that would be something to talk about but the land grabber was there first so there is one other name between the united states government and croy I 1 wish that 4 T 1 11 sometimes would come to the door and make food signs was otherwise too but its something to have had a farm under one name since 1870 through drouth and depression and easy money seemingly and hard times and theres always plenty of the latter ask any farmer who pulls a living out of the soil sometime during that first winter my father and mother met she was the belle of her wagon train and he had risen to sergeant in the civil war and was considered one of the promising young men it long till they were looking each other over susan sewell and sergeant amos croy everybody was poor and money just but there was land and there was youth and strength and will and determination mother told me about the courting he gave her only two presents a lead pencil and a twist of cinnamon bark my father was always sensitive about this as if in some way it reflected on his ardor or his generosity but im sure it was as much as any of the ohio men gave their girls in some mysterious way he managed to find a pair of white calfskin gloves for the wedding I 1 still have them and I 1 would not take a great deal for them I 1 sometimes wonder what his farmer hands must have looked like in those dainty articles they were married in her brother wills parlor and pa took off the wagon brake and they angled across the prairie to their new home I 1 would like to say it was a sod hut for there were many sod huts but it the cloys and sewells had cut the lumber themselves and sheared it to the proper thickness and put up a one room house quite a landmark on the prairies they moved in and started to farm and the cloys and sewells have been farming ever since I 1 still have that farm and I 1 hope I 1 always will its really a wonderful farm I 1 want you to believe that in fact any farm is wonderful it if you or your folks have gone through hell bell tor for it on the farm there was not incredible as it may seem a stick or a stone not even a stone as big as a marble the soil was black prairie loam left during the ice age all there was on it was prairie grass bunch grass slough grass and wild flowers and grasshoppers plenty of them fuel was a problem but my mother as did thi the prairie women of this section solved it to a certain extent by picking up buffalo chips surely you know what they are if you dont you simply have no pioneer tradition rut but they did have a sod stable poles across the roof thatched with slough grass and slab doors the cloys and sewells banded together again and sank a well its still there and has the finest water in the world not just my opinion but who has ever emptied a tin cup and so my father and mother with their well and their one room house and sod stable started to housekeep and considered themselves lucky almost envied now and then indians would skulk past the Noda ways and sometimes would come to the door and make food signs but never any real trouble my father put the first plow in that virgin soil as the fancy writers call it but it easy tor for prairie grass grows deep and slough grass deeper horses cant do the job it takes oxen and for the prairie grass they had to be double teamed again the sewells to the rescue I 1 wish I 1 had some kind of written record of those days when fathers and mothers window was the only light on the prairies but I 1 so I 1 will have to piece it out of what they told me when I 1 was a lad I 1 wish id paid better attention but everybody in that section had the same story to tell so it seem exciting the indian part seemed awfully weak sometimes I 1 almost wished one of thead taken a shot at pa sometimes my father used to talk about how nice it was in the early days no chinch bugs no cutworms cut worms no corn borers no black rust no russian thistles whistles es but it was different about the grasshoppers they almost got him once he would drop his voice when he spoke of that year and so vivid and personal did he make it that it always seemed worse than the battle of chickamauga he still had his batridge cat ridge belt as he called it and he talked about having had his army rifle but I 1 havo no memory of ever having seen it I 1 expect when I 1 came along he gave it away for he was always afraid his child was going to be hurt the next thing was to start an orchard going so they got apple seeds and currant cuttings and put them in the ground for not one edible thing was then growing on an th that atland land the next was to get a place tor for the work stock so they hauled in poles and made a jack oak barn lot fence there the horses could exercise and the oxen roam around the first living annual to go into the ground in addition to the orchard and low bushes was osage orange this was designed to be used as a fence hedge fences they were called for no one at that time knew they were called osage orange just hedge and damnable stuff too after a time when the farmers could obtain posts they wanted to get rid of the hedge tor for it sapped ten feet of corn and barbed wire was all the style the hedge must be cut in august and its roots fed salt theres no hotter work in the world than grubbing hedge roots along a cornfield in august dont try it once a month my father and mother would get into the wagon and go to maryville markville Mar the county seat it was six miles but shorter than now because there were so few fences have to hurry with their trading and get home because there was the stock grandfather croy came and built a house half a mile away then uncle jim came and uncle al and uncle dexter and uncle purl it long until the cloys were as thick as johnson grass the sewells stayed down on the other side of the county twelve miles away it was a tremendous distance the cloys hardly ever heard from them neighbors began to filter in some from indiana and some from illinois A few from kentucky and tennessee chesed bear watching rebels my mother used to tell me about corn shucking in those early days my father had no shucking gloves for cotton flannel was too expensive so he be had to pick bare handed the shucks cut and lashed his hands during the afternoon my mother would bring out some corn bread and an apple then she would work along with him until time to go in and begin on the housework again when the wagon bed was filled pa would come in and scoop out the corn do the chores and eat supper after supper my mother would pour melted candle tallow into the cracks and cuts in his hands she always spoke of this with a k kind ind of horror it made him moan in his sleep more people moved in and some fool suggested roads the old settlers such as they were already being called fought it tooth and toe but had to give in so it was not long until nobody went to town over a trail it took pa years to get used to the idea mother was more progressive and took it in her stride but when they sold a load of steers and had to take them to town to ship it was all right to drive driva them across the country straight tor for their target it was all right too to run ahead and pull down a barbed wire fence so the steers could cross like the children at the red sea after the steers were pasta past the fence had to be nailed up again A man who properly nail up a fence was considered pretty low one notch lower and hed poison dogs it was not long until somebody suggested there ought to be a school so the farmers met and talked it over mr knabb said he would give giva an acre of land if they would name the school for him the farmers hauled out the lumber and dug the corner holes and it was not long before there was an institution of learning on mr knabbs land the next year it was painted and there the schoolhouse still stands the exhausting labor father was sinking into the farm began to pay dividends the orchard was coming up hens were dusting themselves under the gooseberry bushes and mother was thinking of getting guineas to keep her company the sod barn had given way to an all pole stable and father was dreaming about a hog house but he had to go slow times being what they were and hog prices going up and down like a scale beam TO BE CONTINUED |