What Spirits Lurk In the Darkness?

Across the Fence #467

Here in the country, the night envelops us in a darkness that people who live in cities can’t imagine. From where I sit and write, there are only four lights visible out there in the night landscape that I can see. This is the perfect setting for Halloween ghosts and goblins because they like to hide in that darkness and wait for unsuspecting trick or treaters to come by. These cloudy, overcast evenings just add to the darkness they love.

Halloween, also known as All Hallows Eve, began as a Pagan holiday. It celebrates the night, when legend has it, the veil between the living and the dead is lifted. This allows the spirit world of ghosts, fairies, and goblins to return and walk freely among us that evening. Now that’s a scary thought. Makes you want to stay inside, turn out the lights, and pretend you aren’t home. Maybe then, those spirits of the living dead will bypass your home and go in search of one where they find welcoming lights and pumpkins with lit-up smiling faces, inviting them to come knock on our door, we have treats for you.

This year the Hunter’s Moon is already full as I write this. By Halloween it will provide very little light to guide the way for those who dare to venture out into the dark. What is Halloween without some menacing Halloween shadows for those ghosts and goblins to hide in? But times have changed. Now, for safety reasons, many places have trick or treat during daylight hours. That just isn’t the same. A big part of Halloween has always been the scariness that can only be experienced in the darkness of the night. Now granted, I don’t know much about trick or treating, because we only went one time when I was young. David reminded me of the time our neighbor, Morris Midtlien, took his daughter Sharon, David, and me in his pickup to two or three of the neighboring farms. David and I rode in the open back of the pickup and it was cold. I doubt if we got enough candy treats to get a sugar high. People didn’t stock up on candy for trick or treaters out in the country. 

I think our Halloween was mostly the party we had at grade school. Hobo Day was a part of the celebration and everyone dressed up in old or funny combinations of clothes. No one had real, store-bought costumes. I remember two Halloween party activities involving apples. One was dunking for apples in a tub filled with water. That was interesting but not much fun. The other was standing in a circle and passing an apple, held under our chin, to the person next to us. I found that to be a lot more fun, especially as I got older, if I was next to a girl I liked! Of course it was a bit embarrassing too. I wonder what happened to that apple after passing under everyone’s chin? Maybe the teacher threw it in the tub and used it for dunking. I can’t imagine us wasting a good apple back in those days. 

That was all pretty tame stuff, compared to a couple of other staples of Halloween–the tipping of outhouses and corn shocks. I have no idea what the attraction of those activities was, except it seemed to be tradition.

Back to this daylight trick or treating and Halloween celebration. Tipping over an outhouse during daylight hours just wouldn’t have been the same. What adventuresome Prairie Ghost would have ventured forth on a raid except under the cover of darkness? Although, maybe a couple of “ghosts” wouldn’t have slipped while in the process of tipping an outhouse and ended up in the exposed hole if they could have seen what they were doing. It can get pretty dark out in the country, and a bit stinky after such an experience. Outhouses and corn shocks are as scarce as hen’s teeth these days, except in Amish country, so there shouldn’t be a lot of temptation for people. Today it’s all about who can get the most candy. The day after Halloween should be an interesting one for the teachers, when all those sugar highs kick into gear.

Just in case some of you that live in cities should decide to venture into the country for some nighttime trick or treating, I must warn you, it’s not the same. Here in the country we don’t live in a “nightlight” world, where lights illuminate and chase the darkness from every nook and corner of our world. Those city lights even chase the stars from the skies. I call it light pollution. How can the ghosts and goblins that come back among the living on Halloween, find a place to hide? They need darkness and we have it here in the country. You may even find an old Prairie Ghost wandering around, still searching for the ghost of Gamle Magretta. If you aren’t familiar with her, you’ll have to ask me some time.

Now I must leave you. My sugar high has cranked into full gear after munching on all the left over Halloween candy because no trick or treaters showed up at our door. Maybe I should have left a light on! 

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My Early Encounter With the Law

Across the Fence #466

There’s a time that every parent hates to see arrive. Your child reaches the magic age of 16, when they can get their driver’s license, and of course, they also want their own car. Things seem to have changed a lot since I turned 16.

I was 23 years old, and just back from Vietnam, when I got my first car. In those days we managed to survive without our own car until we could pay for it by ourselves. It’s not just the car you have to pay for, there’s also insurance, titles, gas to make it run, and oil and other expenses to keep the whole thing working. Not to mention those unexpected expenses when something goes wrong. There’s a lot of expense involved with owning a car. My first car was an early sixty-something, dark green Chevy Impala oil-burner, with a leaky transmission. I’ve never gotten too excited about cars. To me a car is simply a mode of transportation to get from point A to point B. 

I still remember the stressful times riding around with our kids when they were learning to drive in Madison. Uff da! I thought back to when I was 16 and living on the farm. Dad never let me practice with his car. I had been driving the old pickup in the fields for several years, and had many years practice driving tractors, backing wagons, and maneuvering them into tight places. How tough could driving a car be? The only reason Dad let me try for my license was because he was sure I’d never pass the first time. I insisted I wanted to get my license. He couldn’t believe it when we came back from the driving test and the examiner told him I’d passed the test. Like I said, how tough could driving a car be?

Just because I had my license was no guarantee that I’d get to drive his car. He let me take the old pickup to town to get things for him, but not the car. Finally after a couple months he let me use the car one evening. I felt like “King of the Road” as I went up and down the main street of Westby hoping some girls in town would see me cruising in my hot wheels. Maybe I could even pick someone up and give her a ride. No such luck, but I did find a couple of my friends and gave them a ride. We headed to the neighboring town of Viroqua. I was pretty hot stuff. To show off, I squealed the tires a few times. I’d wheel around a corner with enough speed so the back end would slide a bit and the tires let out a howl. As I came around one corner squealing my tires, there was Sheriff Morris Moon waiting for me! The red light started flashing and he signaled for me to pull over. ‘Oh crap,’ I thought. ‘First time behind the wheel and I get nailed by the Sheriff. I’ll never be allowed to use the car again as long as I live.’ I pulled over to the curb and the Sheriff pulled over to the curb across from me, got out of his car, and came striding slowly across the road to where I was sitting. 

“You sure were making a lot of noise,” Sheriff Moon said, looking down sternly at me.

“I didn’t mean to squeal the tires,” I lied. “I must have turned too sharp.”

He just looked at me with that same stern look on his face. “I heard you turn too sharp several times. Let’s see your license.” 

I pulled out my new license and handed it too him. We all sat as quiet as church mice and I was beginning to sweat as he examined it.

He looked back down at me and said, “Are you Huncie Sherpe’s boy?”

“Yes sir,” I said meekly, knowing my life was ending.

“I thought you’d be a better boy than this,” he said, shaking his head, still with that stern, fatherly look on his face. He handed the license back and pulled out a pad of paper and started writing. There I sat, the first time Dad let me drive his car and I’m going to get a ticket. He’s going to kill me!

The Sheriff finished writing, closed the notebook, and put it back in his pocket. “I’m not going to give you a ticket this time,” he said. “But I better not see you doing anything wrong again. Next time I won’t be as lenient. I know you’ll be telling your Dad we had this little talk when you get home. Next time I see him, I’m going to ask if you told him about this little meeting we had.” He smiled, turned, and headed back across the street to his car. He knew my Dad’s punishment would be far worse than any ticket he could give me.

I drove slowly and quietly out of town. I didn’t dare to tell Dad and lived in fear the rest of the summer, hoping that Sheriff Moon wouldn’t run into him and tell what I’d done. 

I did keep my promise to Sheriff Moon. I finally told Dad about the incident… 40 years later. It was good to get it off my conscience… and my life didn’t come to an end!

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Country Boys and Their Farm Toys

Across the Fence #465

There are two John Deere tractors in my office. I have a 1/16” scale model John Deere B made by Country Classic Models in Dyersville, Iowa. I also have a John Deere 50. Those are two tractors that are near and “Deere” to my heart! 

I spent a lot of time on those tractors when I was growing up. Not the ones in my office, but the real ones. They bring back a lot of memories. The only thing missing with the toy tractors is the sound. Just as a Harley Davidson motorcycle has that distinctive “potato, potato, potato” sound, the old John Deere tractors have the distinctive “putt, putt, putt” sound. You knew someone was hard at work when you heard that sound echoing across the countryside. I can still hear it now in my mind. I love that sound.

I guess I have a fondness and preference for John Deere tractors because that’s the only kind we had on our farm. 

I love Jerry App’s book, “Every Farm Tells A Story.” Jerry likes the old Farmall H they had on their farm. He claims the H was able to power their threshing machine when the neighbor’s John Deere B couldn’t handle it. Just like their neighbor and Jerry’s Pa, who had a friendly rivalry when it came to tractor preferences, Jerry and I have had our own ongoing debate as to which is better. 

Since I played with John Deere toy tractors as a kid, drove real ones, and now have model ones in my office, I guess you know where my loyalties lie. When you see Jerry, tell him that Howard says the John Deere B is still the best!! He’ll tell you the Farmall H is better. Everyone that grew up with a tractor still has a favorite make and model. You can’t change those loyalties any more than you can change a Jersey cow into a Holstein by painting it black and white. 

I have a picture of my brother, David, and I with some of our farm toys when we were young. A John Deere tractor with the man attached in the seat is shown. I’ve seen two of those tractors in antique stores with $750.00 price tags on them! I think ours probably ended up in the dump, or to fill in the cistern when it was no longer used, along with other discarded old “junk.”

Howard and David with their farm toys, around 1950.

Also in that photo is a tractor with Mickey Mouse on it. I imagine that also found its way into some trash dump or the old sink hole on the “Hauge” farm. I wish I had those toys now to put alongside my other tractors.

The reason there are only John Deere tractors in the photo is because my father dealt with the John Deere dealership in Westby. They always had toy tractors and machinery for display and sale. I was fascinated with the toy machinery with moving parts. We even had a manure spreader where the beaters even went around. 

What is it about toy farm machinery that delights “pretend farmers” of all ages? It’s the same with people who love toy trains. Is it because we can create our own miniature world and have a little control over it? That’s something we don’t always have in the larger world around us? I don’t pretend to have the answers. I just know I liked and still like farm toys. 

The National Farm Toy Museum is located in Dyersville, Iowa. It has 30,000 farm toys and displays! Lots of John Deere tractors and farm implements too! I’d have thought I’d died and gone to Heaven if I had walked into such a place when I was young. I can’t even imagine what the National Farm Toy Show that’s held in Dyersville each fall must be like. Can you imagine attending a show with hundreds of exhibitors and venders and all those farm toys? Now you know how a mouse would feel if he found his way into a cheese factory!

I suspect some of the toy tractors you may find at the toy show, especially the antique ones, could set you back more than my father paid for the full size, working model of our old John Deere B.

My scale model of that tractor is detailed right down to the flywheel. I remember cranking and turning that thing to start the engine. It usually took several turns before it fired. Then some puffs of smoke erupted from the muffler on top of the tractor, and that familiar “putt, putt, putt” sound brought the tractor to life. At least with my toy model, I don’t have to worry about my hands getting caught as the flywheel takes off. Toy tractors and machinery are much safer than the real ones.

Maybe the reason we like toy tractors and farm machinery is that they’re ageless. We can have fun playing with them when we are young and displaying them when we get older. As children we play with them and dream of the day we can operate the real tractors and machines. As older adults, we display them on shelves in our offices and remember the days when we operated them.

Farm toys were, and still are, an important part of life for so many of us. We’re all a bunch of old country boys at heart.

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End of Summer Was Bittersweet

Across the Fence #464

Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong. It was a bittersweet sound. The ringing of the school bell signaled the end of summer. The days were becoming shorter and cooler, and you could feel fall in the air. Colorful wildflowers were disappearing. Another summer was heading south for the winter and leaving us behind. 

As we walked to school that first day, the wind rushing through the cornfields sounded like the drum rattle as a prisoner was being marched to his execution. It was nice to see our classmates again, but it was like heading back to prison after spending three months, running free, in the great outdoors. 

  Howard – First Day of School

Such a sad, forlorn look? Uff da!

As farm kids, we’d been working all summer long on the farm. It wasn’t really a vacation, but we were outside in the sun and fresh air. It wasn’t like being “imprisoned” in a school for most of the day. We still had to help with chores before and after school, but that was different. During the summer, we had been hauling hay, stacking bales in the haymow, planting tobacco, replanting, hoeing, and topping tobacco, helping with the grain harvest, doing chores every morning and night, which included feeding the hogs and chickens, and gathering the eggs each day. Of course, we got to help with the milking too. There wasn’t a lot of free time and yet we still had time to do kid stuff. I don’t remember ever saying I was bored because there was nothing to do. Today, many kids say they are bored and yet they have more toys and gadgets to play with than we ever dreamed of. Maybe they need some work to do and responsibilities, and less time playing video games, watching TV, and talking or texting on their cell phones.  

We didn’t have much of a social life either. Our social outing was the 4-H club meeting each month, where we saw most of our school classmates. 4-H got us involved in outside activities, away from the farm. We found time to teach a new heifer or cow to lead so we could show her at the Vernon County Fair. There were also 4-H softball games on Sunday afternoons, where our Seas Branch Smithies played other 4-H clubs. There were occasional social activities among the 4-H clubs of Vernon County. I remember dances where most of us guys were too shy to ask a girl to dance. Thank goodness for square dances where the caller would pair girls and boys up. That forced us to dance and we even found out it was fun to square dance, as long as we didn’t have to ask a girl to dance and have her reject our invitation. That was embarrassing and did nothing for a person’s self-esteem when you had very little of it to begin with. 

Some evenings we even found time for the Prairie Ghosts to go adventuring on our bikes around the countryside. That was our secret club that I organized with the help of my brother David. It included some of our neighbor friends. I was the Commanding 4-Star General, of course, since I came up with the idea for the club. Most of those growing up years included my cousin, Sandy, who stayed with us during summer vacations and got to share in all the work and adventures. Going back to school also signaled the end of her stay with us, and that added to the feeling of loss at the end of summer when she left. 

You’d think with having to work all summer, we’d have been happy to go back to school and get a little rest. I’ll say again, it was bittersweet. I liked school, especially the last couple years at Smith. Miss Fredrickson made school and learning fun. I think the majority of students had a great experience at our little one-room school, especially while she was our teacher, but there was something special about spending the summers outdoor on a farm when you’re young. I know it gave me an appreciation for the outdoors and for nature.

Back to school for us farm kids was a mixed blessing, because it was also tobacco harvesting time. We never got out of helping with tobacco. All of us at Smith School were farm kids and everyone helped with chores at home and had to help harvest tobacco. There was always lots of tobacco to pile as soon as we got home from school. I think Dad timed the cutting of the tobacco so it would be wilted and ready to pile when we arrived. Suckering and piling were the jobs us kids got to do. I hated both jobs, but we didn’t have a choice. Things got better when we graduated to cutting tobacco down and spearing it onto laths. Those seemed like more grown-up jobs. When we got to help haul and hang tobacco in the shed, we knew we’d been promoted to the major leagues.

Kids raised on a farm didn’t really have a summer vacation, but it was the life we knew. We may have complained about all the work at the time, but we still found some time for fun, and we were never bored. Truth be told, I think it instilled a work ethic in all of us that we still carry with us today.

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Norbert Blei – Find Me In My Books

Across the Fence #463

People often ask me, “How do you come up with ideas for a story every week?” I begin this story as I begin almost every column I write – a blank sheet of yellow notebook paper, no outline, notes – nothing – just a head full of ideas, images, and memories. I’ll let the story tell itself, be its own story, find its own way, until the words and ideas begin to fill up a page. Eventually the words will begin to weave a story together. But the art of writing is in the rewriting – that’s where the story begins to take shape and find its voice.

Picasso said, “Not every painting needs to be a masterpiece.” The same is true with writing. Sometimes you hit a home run and sometimes you strike out. But, whether you’re playing a game, working, doing artwork, or writing, the main thing is to give 100% and try and do your best every time you take the field, or sit down with pen in hand and a blank piece of paper before you. Those are some things I learned from writer Norbert Blei. 

We recently returned from three days spent in Door County, Wisconsin. I needed some quiet, down time after a very hectic couple of months. We’ve spent time there almost every year since our kids were young. This time it was different. There was no visit with Norbert Blei to talk about life and writing. Norb died on April 23, 2013, after a two-year fight against cancer. He was 77. He had become a friend and I considered him one of my writing mentors. Norb was not one to offer praise unless he meant it. That’s why it meant a lot to me that he liked my writing and even wrote reviews about my column and cover statements for my books.

Norbert Blei - 2012

Norbert Blei was certainly one of a kind. In 1969 he moved from urban Chicago to the country near Ellison Bay, near the tip of Door County. He lived beside a quiet, tree-lined road that led to a small lake, far from the hustle and bustle of Chicago, where he was born, raised, and was once an English teacher. He later worked as a reporter at the City News Bureau in Chicago with Pulitzer Prize winner Mike Royko and Studs Terkel, who became his close friends.

After moving to Door County, he worked for over 40 years out of a converted chicken coop on his property that was nestled in the woods near his house. It was the perfect location for a writer – secluded and quiet. Norb authored 17 books of non-fiction, fiction, poetry, and essays. He was also a painter, teacher, and journalist. For over 30 years he was writer-in-residence and taught a week-long writing course at The Clearing in Door County. He was a popular speaker and a frequent guest on Wisconsin Public Radio.

 The Coop – where Norb did his writing.

Norb painted images with words that captured the beauty and character of Door County and the people who lived there. He was once asked if his writing was prose or poetry. He answered, “Does it matter?” I like to call his writing “poetic prose.” He wasn’t afraid to take a stand and lash out in print against those who he felt were destroying the unspoiled natural beauty and serenity of the countryside. We were both on the same side of the fence on that topic.  

I’d like to share with you a sample of his writing from “Meditations On A Small Lake.” This is from Down To the Lake – Epilogue.

“He walks down the same road toward the same small lake as he has done for years…usually uncertain of the season, the mind busy shuffling images, thoughts, conversations, passages from books, poems… memories of other days walking the same road…the night before, yesterday morning, last week, years ago… his two small children pulling a wooden wagon filled with buckets of bright cherries picked from there across the road, where once an orchard grew … summers in a red rowboat drifting on the small lake, the bobber centered in ripples, the circles widening to infinity, to nothing but smooth water…fishing for bass and perch near the old boathouse, when the old boathouse and the dock were still there to lend a primitive spirit to all the lake touched along its shores …when the lake was mostly unknown, unmarked, hard to find, and quiet but for the wind singing over the water, inside the trees…when the lake took you by surprise in winter, snow-blinded you, held your footprints on ice, encompassed you in an immensity of white merging into the horizon … memories of small, ancient-like bonfires on a winter’s night, townspeople gathering to skate… times of pink prairie rose in bloom along the road in spring… autumns of wild apples and northern lights…

“It’s still early, still almost dark but growing lighter the closer he moves down to the lake… Nobody’s about. No one on the road. Nobody on the lake. No light in the few farmhouses he could see — remembering those early years he found himself alone among distant neighbors. He longs to get back to that. A time that occasionally visits him on days like this, early morning. Winter. The land the way it used to be.”

There it is… poetic prose, painting a picture with words. His writing still lives on… His tombstone says “Find me in my books.” 

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