Fremont, Indiana. Barely a blip in any map. The Corner Pocket Bar is still here - though the door is no longer in the corner. The little Spartan grocery store downtown where this woman bought the thick sliced bologna not in a package but, sliced by the butcher and wrapped in white paper, on her weekly grocery trips when my sister took her to town and we sat in the hot car. The Bull Pen Cafe is still there, the high school where I got my first work permit, the old antique store, what was the ice cream parlor and before that, the hair salon where I got my summer hair cut.
These summers here, shaped much of my life. I was here every summer from age 8 to 16. My mom worked 7 on, 2 off swing shifts and it was hard to manage me when working so, I stayed with my sister, her husband worked a full time job, and he worked his parents farm when he wasn’t sleeping. We were up early, to bed early and slept hard.
Summers on the farm, my days were pretty carefree, chasing barn cats, picking mulberries, riding in the pickup with my long blonde hair whipping in the wind until I got a baseball cap to "get that shit under control". Not a tractor left the barnyard without my little butt perched on a fender. I rode along to bale hay, disc fields, take cattle to market and begged to go anywhere the guys went. My favorite job though was "gopher"! I did a lot of "gopher this", "gopher that". I hated the trips to town with the women, to the bank, the grocery - ugh, no thanks! But just to go to the mill with the guys - I couldn’t get in the truck fast enough!
Much like now, my favorite part of the day was lunch. Audrey fed us well on the farm. The red wrapped, think-sliced bologna, bread stacked on a plate and everything you could imagine for sandwiches, complete with Brook’s ketchup and Gulden’s spicy brown mustard. The guys would come in, stomp their boots through the back porch, pass the dogs, to wash their hands in the utility sink and cross her squeaky kitchen floor to the table. Then with their caps balanced on their knees, they’d talk about the morning. Which equipment needed fixing, which heifers were to be bred, what fields need prepped, and the plans for the afternoon. And then they were off again. We cleared the table, swept the dirt and then I was running out the door to catch up to my adventures again.
I learned about tagging cattle, market prices for beef and the difference between beef to sell and beef to eat. I learned about mamma cows bawling for their babies on the truck while they were taken into the barn from the woods for shots. I learned about mean bulls, hornet stings, falling off horses and newborn calves that won’t breathe. I made friends with steers and cried as they were hauled to the market for beef.
I learned about Laura Ingalls these summers on rainy days on the old green couch in the front entry - back when the living room was only for good - with my nose buried in Farmer Boy as it was my favorite. The guys would come in the big porch wearing their yellow slickers with muddy rubber boots, shaking off the rain and I’d pause my reading just waiting for someone to mention they were going anywhere. Even a boring ride back to the woods to track cattle would do.
How many times did we come home to a heifer eating grass on the front lawn or to the phone ringing that we had cattle loose in Hamman Road? We’d hop in trucks, with barbed wire and fence posts to go round them back where they belonged!
As I got older, I made a fair wage baling hay, and I worked hard. I’ll never forget the feeling of salt from sweat in the cuts from the hay. Or the day my sister ran her husband over with a haywagon.
Driving past the old farm as we took Audrey to her final resting place, I opened my window to smell the humid air - the old house gone now, though the stair where we scraped manure off our boots before coming in the house is still there. Memories flooded me. The big barn where I met the hornet nest and the box for the electric fence ticked with the current. Clothes snapping in the breeze on the clothesline behind the garage, John splitting his pants trying to fix the manure spreader for the 10th time that day. Bill’s gold car rolling up after a day of working the railroad. The hay field I drove circles for hours while 4H kids broke a steer to show in the county fair. The two track back to the gravel pit, where the black calf born sickly was buried and they made me take a nap so I wouldn’t know. I knew it was bad.
Working a farm is a hard life, and I only saw three months for 8 summers. The memories will be with me always through many of the people have passed on.
Thank you Audrey Barkley for putting up with an annoying little city kid, and sharing this little piece of your life with me, for letting me invade your farm. I’m always thankful you never had many chickens!
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