During one period, my father was unemployed for several months during the Great Depression. One of my less desirable jobs had always been to load up our toy wagon with empty containers and trash and pull the wagon up to the local garbage dump. I was embarrassed to be seen hauling trash past all the houses located along Spring Street as it merged into Valley Road near the edge of town. One day while my Dad was at home without any work, I complained to him about this order from my mother. Being a most sympathetic soul, he thought of a way I might avoid the task. The solution for him was simple. Since he needed a little exercise and had nothing else to do, he would dig a hole several feet deep in the front yard and bury the trash.
The next day he started digging a hole about four feet by four feet in size. After digging down several feet, however, he struck a few unusual stones that attracted his interest. Forgetting about the trash to be buried, he dug down further about six feet and covered the hole with boards. The next day, his project grew. He built a short ladder so that he could get down easier into the hole. But his curiosity still wasn't satisfied, so, week after week, he built a platform and then another platform as he went deeper and deeper into the hole. As he dug, he threw the dirt up from one platform to a higher platform and then made a pile in the yard. Finally, one day after digging down about 20 feet, he suddenly rushed up all his ladders and jumped quickly out of the hole. He had unexpectedly struck water. In a few days the water had risen within four feet of the top. He suddenly had a well, which in time proved to contain the best tasting water in town!
Monday, March 9, 2009
Summer Days
During the summer, when my brother John and I were still in grade school, we spent some time out on our grandparents’ farm. We often went out to the backwoods to pick and eat wild strawberries and wild blackberries. The wild berries always tasted better than the cultivated ones. Close to the house was an orchard containing around 50 fruit trees of different kinds. I remember that there were several varieties of apples, pears and cherries. We were especially fond of the cherries. One day we had been up in a cherry tree eating delicious dark red cherries. After a while, I climbed down. John was still up near the top, exuberantly eating the best cherries. John shouted down at me, “Gee whiz, these are good cherries.” I verbally agreed.
The cheerful chatter was broken by a sudden moment of silence. Next came the sound of tree limbs snapping and breaking as John leaped straight from the top of the tree to the ground and immediately started to run as if he had gone nuts. I ran too. When he finally calmed down, I discovered that my six-foot tall, 160-pound powerful younger brother had been challenged for cherries in the tree top by several tiny yellow jacket bees. In the presence of bees his courage – and mine – had wilted.
The cheerful chatter was broken by a sudden moment of silence. Next came the sound of tree limbs snapping and breaking as John leaped straight from the top of the tree to the ground and immediately started to run as if he had gone nuts. I ran too. When he finally calmed down, I discovered that my six-foot tall, 160-pound powerful younger brother had been challenged for cherries in the tree top by several tiny yellow jacket bees. In the presence of bees his courage – and mine – had wilted.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Fresh Green Grass
In the winter, cows were kept in the barn overnight and let out to forage in backwoods areas. Each spring, when green grass had grown a foot or so tall, the cows were let out of the barnyard into designated fields. Fed dry hay all winter long, the cows became ecstatic when suddenly offered fresh green grass – just like humans switching from stale dry bread to fresh bread.
I watched the scene with curiosity one spring morning as a field of green grass became available for grazing. The field was rectangular, with the longest side equivalent in length to about two city blocks. When the gate was thrown open, the huge, normally slow-moving cows suddenly became excited and, like a stampede, they ran into the field to feast on tasty green grass. One cow ran a few feet, and then barely stopping, reached out to the right side and hastily grabbed a mouthful of grass. Then off she ran another few paces and reached out to the left side and grabbed another mouthful. I couldn't understand where that grass was going since the cows didn't seem to have time to swallow it. In about half an hour, I would guess, the cows had reached the end of the field and the level of excitement had diminished.
However, one would hardly believe the odd and unexpected behavior that developed next: About half of the cows began reaching through the loosely wired fence next to Farms Road to eat the dusty and dryer grass and weeds on the other side. I then began to understand that cows – as well as many humans – often tend to think that the grass on the other side of the fence is “greener.”
I watched the scene with curiosity one spring morning as a field of green grass became available for grazing. The field was rectangular, with the longest side equivalent in length to about two city blocks. When the gate was thrown open, the huge, normally slow-moving cows suddenly became excited and, like a stampede, they ran into the field to feast on tasty green grass. One cow ran a few feet, and then barely stopping, reached out to the right side and hastily grabbed a mouthful of grass. Then off she ran another few paces and reached out to the left side and grabbed another mouthful. I couldn't understand where that grass was going since the cows didn't seem to have time to swallow it. In about half an hour, I would guess, the cows had reached the end of the field and the level of excitement had diminished.
However, one would hardly believe the odd and unexpected behavior that developed next: About half of the cows began reaching through the loosely wired fence next to Farms Road to eat the dusty and dryer grass and weeds on the other side. I then began to understand that cows – as well as many humans – often tend to think that the grass on the other side of the fence is “greener.”
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
On the Farm
On my grandparent’s dairy farm as an infant I (Andy) was introduced to the world of domestic animals. The farm is in the center of San Juan Island in the very northwest part of Washington state next to the Canadian border. We lived among domestic animals such as cows, work horses, a Jersey bull, pigs, chickens, geese, ducks, dogs, cats, and of course wild animals such as rabbits, deer, raccoon, pigeons, quail, crows, pheasants, eagles, hawks, and probably a few others. Nearly all of the domesticated animals spent most of their time foraging together in separate groups in the nearby woods and grassland. By the age of 4 or 5 I felt comfortable wandering around among most of the farm animals with the exception of the bold and aggressive white geese. Whenever I wished to go out into the barnyard I would first check to see if the geese were nearby or anywhere in sight. If I happened to step through the gate and into the yard and the geese spotted me even a city block away-watch out! To put it mildly, my goose was cooked! The geese, a flock of about a dozen strong, would immediately go into an attack mode. I could see them in the distance running towards me flapping their wings, lowering their heads to the attack position and squawking loudly as they gathered up speed and momentum. With big 15 pound geese, almost as tall as I was, running at me with wings flapping, heads and necks stuck out in front like big snakes, with red beady eyes, and big wide open orange beaks I would immediately turn tail and run for my life. I would quickly escape back through the gate to avoid their wrath. That was first encounter with what I would now label a "collective beast".
The only time I would venture out in the barnyard was when my grandmother was there to protect me from those dreadful geese. I had no fear of the other larger animals even though for a small boy they were potentially more hazardous. One day I was playing out there while my grandmother was busy nearby doing her daily chores. The big Jersey bull out of curiosity quietly sauntered over and shoved his big nose into my face as he sniffed me. and I eagerly was about to pet him when behind me I heard a loud scream.
My grandmother, granny at the last second rushed over to save me screaming and shouting.
"Andy, come away from that bull!!"
Needless to say I was puzzled that granny would become so upset when I tried to pet that nice bull.
It wasn’t too long afterwards that my grandfather, no doubt from granny’s insistence, decided that for safety’s sake, he needed to domesticate the bull. A 6 foot high fence of heavy logs was erected to form a sizable bull proof pen. When the pen was ready the bull was moved into the bull pen. At that time his horns were cut off and a large brass ring was put in his nose so that he could safely be led around with a pole attached to his nose ring. With these precautions our bull had been transformed from a potentially dangerous beast to a safe and controllable domestic beast. I saw for the first time a potentially dangerous beast being domesticated.
A few years later as a teenager I had by then developed a fear of bulls. In that time period there were still millions of small family farms around the country. It seemed that every few months the newspaper reported that some unwary dairy farmer in the United States had been killed by an enraged bull. Even though most of the time a bull can be a rather docile creature he still retains within his genes traces of his past role as defender of the herd. It is not difficult to imagine that some thousands of years ago the ancestors of today’s bull was defending his herd from vicious predators who were constantly out looking for a meal. With genetic behavior inherited from the distant past, the bull from time to time imagines himself defending his herd. The only truly safe bull is an adequately domesticated bull.
Our nearest neighbor, Chancy Brown, had an especially menacing bull. The bull was kept in a ten acre field right next to our farm. The field was surrounded by a wire fence that was flimsy and weak. It provided only a psychological barrier to the bull who, fortunately for me, was too stupid to know that he could easily crash through the fence any time he so desired. Consequently whenever I went down the narrow lane adjacent to the bull’s field I always tried to sneak by quietly so as not to alert him. Occasionally he would spot me anyway and then would come charging across the field towards me excitedly with head held high and eyes bulging. During those encounters I would hastily retreat or run like mad while that angry bull would rush along the fence snorting and threatening to attack. I was a complete coward whenever I was forced to encounter that semi-wild ferocious beast.
I spent my early years immersed in the agriculture age where the machine was largely absent and most work was done by our own muscle power. The luxury moments came when we used horses to accomplish some task such as cultivating or move some heavy load by horse drawn wagon. I experienced the last moments of the more primitive form of subsistence farming, a culture that had existed almost unchanged in America , Canada and Europe for hundreds of years and other parts of the world much farther into the past. I was just barely crawling when the first radio was introduced to San Juan Island by a local farmer who strung an antenna wire between 2 poles 70 feet in the air. The second radio was purchased for the local tavern. The local farmers would walk or ride horses miles to town in the evenings just to have a beer at the tavern and of course hear those voices and music on the new radio. The radio could pick up the news from Vancouver Canada which was located some 60 miles away. It was hard to believe then but when conditions were right the radio could pick up music and news even from far off Seattle, Washington a good 100 miles away!
As time went on I saw the development of the industrial age with the appearance of airplanes, better cars, washing machines and even refrigerators for towns people but usually not for farmers who went to bed with the chickens since it was difficult to see by kerosene lanterns and lights.
Around 1930 a big event in my life occurred. In school I had learned about airplanes and Charles Lindberg who gained huge audiences world-wide by flying solo across the Atlantic trip from New York to Paris. At that time I had never seen an airplane. One day, while standing out in our front yard, I heard a loud noise coming from the direction of the harbor. All of a sudden this big bird looking contraption with wings appeared over the horizon and flew over Friday Harbor bay and the bug station(that was where the University of Washington had some laboratories). I knew instantly it must have been an airplane. I was convinced that I had seen Lindberg flying over Friday Harbor just to see the sights.
It was years later before I realized it was probably an airplane carrying U.S. mail north to Vancouver, Canada.
The only time I would venture out in the barnyard was when my grandmother was there to protect me from those dreadful geese. I had no fear of the other larger animals even though for a small boy they were potentially more hazardous. One day I was playing out there while my grandmother was busy nearby doing her daily chores. The big Jersey bull out of curiosity quietly sauntered over and shoved his big nose into my face as he sniffed me. and I eagerly was about to pet him when behind me I heard a loud scream.
My grandmother, granny at the last second rushed over to save me screaming and shouting.
"Andy, come away from that bull!!"
Needless to say I was puzzled that granny would become so upset when I tried to pet that nice bull.
It wasn’t too long afterwards that my grandfather, no doubt from granny’s insistence, decided that for safety’s sake, he needed to domesticate the bull. A 6 foot high fence of heavy logs was erected to form a sizable bull proof pen. When the pen was ready the bull was moved into the bull pen. At that time his horns were cut off and a large brass ring was put in his nose so that he could safely be led around with a pole attached to his nose ring. With these precautions our bull had been transformed from a potentially dangerous beast to a safe and controllable domestic beast. I saw for the first time a potentially dangerous beast being domesticated.
A few years later as a teenager I had by then developed a fear of bulls. In that time period there were still millions of small family farms around the country. It seemed that every few months the newspaper reported that some unwary dairy farmer in the United States had been killed by an enraged bull. Even though most of the time a bull can be a rather docile creature he still retains within his genes traces of his past role as defender of the herd. It is not difficult to imagine that some thousands of years ago the ancestors of today’s bull was defending his herd from vicious predators who were constantly out looking for a meal. With genetic behavior inherited from the distant past, the bull from time to time imagines himself defending his herd. The only truly safe bull is an adequately domesticated bull.
Our nearest neighbor, Chancy Brown, had an especially menacing bull. The bull was kept in a ten acre field right next to our farm. The field was surrounded by a wire fence that was flimsy and weak. It provided only a psychological barrier to the bull who, fortunately for me, was too stupid to know that he could easily crash through the fence any time he so desired. Consequently whenever I went down the narrow lane adjacent to the bull’s field I always tried to sneak by quietly so as not to alert him. Occasionally he would spot me anyway and then would come charging across the field towards me excitedly with head held high and eyes bulging. During those encounters I would hastily retreat or run like mad while that angry bull would rush along the fence snorting and threatening to attack. I was a complete coward whenever I was forced to encounter that semi-wild ferocious beast.
I spent my early years immersed in the agriculture age where the machine was largely absent and most work was done by our own muscle power. The luxury moments came when we used horses to accomplish some task such as cultivating or move some heavy load by horse drawn wagon. I experienced the last moments of the more primitive form of subsistence farming, a culture that had existed almost unchanged in America , Canada and Europe for hundreds of years and other parts of the world much farther into the past. I was just barely crawling when the first radio was introduced to San Juan Island by a local farmer who strung an antenna wire between 2 poles 70 feet in the air. The second radio was purchased for the local tavern. The local farmers would walk or ride horses miles to town in the evenings just to have a beer at the tavern and of course hear those voices and music on the new radio. The radio could pick up the news from Vancouver Canada which was located some 60 miles away. It was hard to believe then but when conditions were right the radio could pick up music and news even from far off Seattle, Washington a good 100 miles away!
As time went on I saw the development of the industrial age with the appearance of airplanes, better cars, washing machines and even refrigerators for towns people but usually not for farmers who went to bed with the chickens since it was difficult to see by kerosene lanterns and lights.
Around 1930 a big event in my life occurred. In school I had learned about airplanes and Charles Lindberg who gained huge audiences world-wide by flying solo across the Atlantic trip from New York to Paris. At that time I had never seen an airplane. One day, while standing out in our front yard, I heard a loud noise coming from the direction of the harbor. All of a sudden this big bird looking contraption with wings appeared over the horizon and flew over Friday Harbor bay and the bug station(that was where the University of Washington had some laboratories). I knew instantly it must have been an airplane. I was convinced that I had seen Lindberg flying over Friday Harbor just to see the sights.
It was years later before I realized it was probably an airplane carrying U.S. mail north to Vancouver, Canada.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Friday Harbor School Daze
8-13-07
School started for me in September 1926 in the Friday Harbor school which included all grade and high school students on San Juan Island. The school grounds were located on Second Street on what I believe is now a parking lot adjacent to and NW of the county court house and other administrative buildings. Our house was located on the corner of Reed Street and Blair Avenue on what appears to be a parking lot on the western side of the Friday Harbor Post Office. Right across the street is Printonyx, 470 Reed St. From the front yard of our house we could see the school grounds only about 2 blocks away. Along our line of sight was the dark green house of Virgil W. Frits, the founder of the Friday Harbor Journal, located on the western side of Second street right across from the school grounds.
On the first day of school my mother led me the short distance from our house up to the edge of the school grounds. Rather than take me in and introduce me to the first grade teacher she just left me alone to find for myself. As a result of being left alone I was totally confused and scared and didn’t have the foggiest idea of what I was supposed to do. So I started to cry. Who should come along but a young boy named Wallace Mullis. Wallace , obviously knowing the ropes and kind of heart, took me by the hand and led me into the first grade class of Mrs. Ruby Langle where I was soon comfortably involved in class activities.
(My mother was probably afraid to go into the school since she herself had never gone to school. She had suffered a brain concussion as a baby while still living in Canada and for some years afterward experienced occasional epilepsy seizures. At that time there was little known about epilepsy. My grandparents were afraid to send my mother to school so she never went.)
In the first grade I was put on the north side of the room with the other class dummies. I sat behind Sam as I remember since at times when the teacher gave us a written assignment and I didn't know the answer I would look over Sam's shoulder and copy his answer. That worked for awhile until I discovered that sometimes Sam had the wrong answer.
After a month or two the teacher introduced us to the clock and tried to teach us how to tell time. I hadn't the foggiest idea what a clock was even though I once owned a watch. (Earlier, when I was about 5 years old, a man named Dick Welles, brother of Henry Wells who ran the Friday Harbor Drug store gave me a watch. Dick worked part time as a hired hand on my grandparents farm in the valley on ValleyFarms Road when he gave me the watch. ) In the classroom it finally dawned on me that those kids like Jack Paxson and Wallace Mullis seated on the South side of the room were a lot smarter than me and knew all about clocks and could tell time.
In the fifth grade we had Mrs. Hoffman for awhile and Mrs. Jensen later in the year. Around that time I was invited to a birthday party for Jack Paxson near the Jensen shipyards. I remember the event because at the party Mrs. Jensen gave each of us a big white bar of ivory soap and a knife with which to try our hand at sculturing. My glee quickly turned to frustration and disappointment as I botched up my first attempt at carving; I created a very sick looking soap horse.
Moving up to 1932 we were in the 7th grade and I think either Ted Vannover or Walter Nichols was our teacher. A group of 4 or 5 of us boys were standing outside on the shool grounds between the old school house built before 1900 and the newer school house built in 1912.
Bob Henry, whose father was a business man in charge of the Friday Harbor pea cannery, gave us the the rundown on what was happening in the outside world. I knew absolutely nothing about the politics of the outside world so I was all ears to hear the real scoop. It was a presidential election year and a relatively unknown named Franklin D. Roosevelt was running against the well known president Herbert Hoover. We were in the middle of the great depression and Bob explained to us that Hoover was by far the best choice to fix our eonomy and that Democrat Roosevelt would do terrible things to the country. To make matters worse, according to Bob, Roosevelt was crippled so badly from infantile paralysis that he couldn't walk and had to be pushed around in a wheelchair. Well I took that evaluation of the president with a grain of salt. I had been to movies a few times and I had seen Roosevelt riding in the back seat of cars and waving at people from the rear platform on a campaign train. I knew then for sure that Roosevelt wasn't crippled and that Bob was exaggerating because of his father being a Republican businessman. It was a good 30 or 40 years later while reading a history book that I discovered Roosevelt was indeed handicapped and that Bob had been right after all.
To be continued. Grandpa Andy
School started for me in September 1926 in the Friday Harbor school which included all grade and high school students on San Juan Island. The school grounds were located on Second Street on what I believe is now a parking lot adjacent to and NW of the county court house and other administrative buildings. Our house was located on the corner of Reed Street and Blair Avenue on what appears to be a parking lot on the western side of the Friday Harbor Post Office. Right across the street is Printonyx, 470 Reed St. From the front yard of our house we could see the school grounds only about 2 blocks away. Along our line of sight was the dark green house of Virgil W. Frits, the founder of the Friday Harbor Journal, located on the western side of Second street right across from the school grounds.
On the first day of school my mother led me the short distance from our house up to the edge of the school grounds. Rather than take me in and introduce me to the first grade teacher she just left me alone to find for myself. As a result of being left alone I was totally confused and scared and didn’t have the foggiest idea of what I was supposed to do. So I started to cry. Who should come along but a young boy named Wallace Mullis. Wallace , obviously knowing the ropes and kind of heart, took me by the hand and led me into the first grade class of Mrs. Ruby Langle where I was soon comfortably involved in class activities.
(My mother was probably afraid to go into the school since she herself had never gone to school. She had suffered a brain concussion as a baby while still living in Canada and for some years afterward experienced occasional epilepsy seizures. At that time there was little known about epilepsy. My grandparents were afraid to send my mother to school so she never went.)
In the first grade I was put on the north side of the room with the other class dummies. I sat behind Sam as I remember since at times when the teacher gave us a written assignment and I didn't know the answer I would look over Sam's shoulder and copy his answer. That worked for awhile until I discovered that sometimes Sam had the wrong answer.
After a month or two the teacher introduced us to the clock and tried to teach us how to tell time. I hadn't the foggiest idea what a clock was even though I once owned a watch. (Earlier, when I was about 5 years old, a man named Dick Welles, brother of Henry Wells who ran the Friday Harbor Drug store gave me a watch. Dick worked part time as a hired hand on my grandparents farm in the valley on ValleyFarms Road when he gave me the watch. ) In the classroom it finally dawned on me that those kids like Jack Paxson and Wallace Mullis seated on the South side of the room were a lot smarter than me and knew all about clocks and could tell time.
In the fifth grade we had Mrs. Hoffman for awhile and Mrs. Jensen later in the year. Around that time I was invited to a birthday party for Jack Paxson near the Jensen shipyards. I remember the event because at the party Mrs. Jensen gave each of us a big white bar of ivory soap and a knife with which to try our hand at sculturing. My glee quickly turned to frustration and disappointment as I botched up my first attempt at carving; I created a very sick looking soap horse.
Moving up to 1932 we were in the 7th grade and I think either Ted Vannover or Walter Nichols was our teacher. A group of 4 or 5 of us boys were standing outside on the shool grounds between the old school house built before 1900 and the newer school house built in 1912.
Bob Henry, whose father was a business man in charge of the Friday Harbor pea cannery, gave us the the rundown on what was happening in the outside world. I knew absolutely nothing about the politics of the outside world so I was all ears to hear the real scoop. It was a presidential election year and a relatively unknown named Franklin D. Roosevelt was running against the well known president Herbert Hoover. We were in the middle of the great depression and Bob explained to us that Hoover was by far the best choice to fix our eonomy and that Democrat Roosevelt would do terrible things to the country. To make matters worse, according to Bob, Roosevelt was crippled so badly from infantile paralysis that he couldn't walk and had to be pushed around in a wheelchair. Well I took that evaluation of the president with a grain of salt. I had been to movies a few times and I had seen Roosevelt riding in the back seat of cars and waving at people from the rear platform on a campaign train. I knew then for sure that Roosevelt wasn't crippled and that Bob was exaggerating because of his father being a Republican businessman. It was a good 30 or 40 years later while reading a history book that I discovered Roosevelt was indeed handicapped and that Bob had been right after all.
To be continued. Grandpa Andy
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