In 1993 Jim Dann sat down in front of a tape recorder and let his stories run for six hours over a few week's time. Presented here is Donna Tilden's transcription of them. Rather than waiting for the entire set of tapes to be completed, new pages will be posted as the transcription proceeds. I anticipate that the tapes will yield 50 pages of text.

Jim is somewhat a master of story- telling, and Donna has chosen to keep the transcription fairly true to his spoken word, rather than correct it to a more proper form of the language. If you haven't talked to Jim, you have missed a treat, and you will likely spend the first page or so settling into his dialogue.

There seems to be a wealth of information in these tapes. I anticipate that as the file grows, I will break it onto sub- headings so that it will be easier for people to return to any particular spot.

I hope that you enjoy these tapes as much as I have!

January 1993... been thinking for possibly a year or two that maybe my mother had the right idea of putting a few stories and things down on tape then I'd kind of lose the idea then this time I guess it's a good thing. There are many good stories and much to be learned from other people's experiences through life and usually nobody thinks to ask until a person gets so darn old they forget, and I'm gettin darn near to that shape and I think before I get to far maybe I oughta pass on a few stories and some of my experiences of growin up and how things use to be and how things looked through my eyes, so we're gonna try it any way. I hope that any names I mention - any of the family, relatives, friends, old neighbors, past acquaintances that nothing is ever said to make them feel bad or downgrade or anything - I'm tellin it the way I remembered it and what may have been funny or a little bit peculiar to me might not been so darn funny to them.

I was born back in August of '27 down on the Middle Road in the old Westlake Farm. (click here for picture) My folks lived there about a year before they moved up to the Ridge Road. That farm they purchased; the Westlake Farm they rented. Naturally, at one year, I don't remember anything abut the old Westlake Farm at that time. Course we lived there years later after I was in my late teens. My basic growing up was on the Ridge Road five miles north of Horseheads, New York State, down in the foothills of the Appalachians and south of the Finger Lake area. Things were much different back then. Mode of traffic, communication, everything - everybody you knew about was farm or farm-related, and naturally us being farmers, that was for sure. Seems about everybody in town was a farmer. They'd have a few chickens out back and stuff tried to be self-sufficient. Back up on the farm, being in the foothills of the Appalachians there'd be ridges and rivers. We used to have some quite real winters. Being as it's winter time maybe there'd be a good place to start.

One of the first things I can remember about winters back then I was a kid bout three years old. You could kind of hear a commotion and stuff out front and you see some of the neighbors from up the road coming down through. They'd started out several hours earlier, maybe up the road 3-4 miles with horses, usually three or four teams and an old v-planked plow. If there were three teams on it, usually the lead team, the driver of them had to get out and wade in the snow along side or ahead and beside it same as the horses did and the drivers of the next two teams could kind of walk in the vee of the plow behind it or maybe right on the nose to hold it down a little, but that used to be kind of an all day project getting the milk and produce to town, just getting through the snow drifts. On your way through as I understand it (never had to experience it), whoever had the lead team only went to one farm - one farm to the next - and then they switch out and go on back, and maybe the second team and the fresh team of the farm where they were would lead up front and help break tract, and they'd keep switchin out farm to farm along. Behind them would come a sleigh or two with the milk on. As I say, it was an all day project time you could get some milk down town. It sure was never too hot - it was cool enough time it got there. That's seem to be winter's job - cuttin wood and haulin milk to town.

The years I was growin up in the area I came from there was the McDougall Brothers that hauled the milk from our area. North of that Hoffman's hauled it from the Odessa/Catharine area to Horseheads. There was a big Dairylea Plant there. Good ole Harry and Charlie McDougall hauled it our way. The first truck they had that I remember was an old Chevy, probably bout a ton and a half. In the winter, lots of times when they could go with the trucks yet they'd pull the duals off the back and just run singles with chains on, then when it got too tough for that then came the sleighs. Winters seemed real long. Up there winter would start seems like around the first of November and would last right on through until just about the end of April, and as you know that was darn near half a year. It don't' leave much time left grow grass and apples and potatoes and what have ya. But that's kinda how it was.

Later on I can remember as a kid as I was older getta a pair of old wood skis, and golly by Christmas time we had enough snow solid on the ground to ski right over the top of the fences, one farm to another just like they tell about folks out in the Colorado skiing down them big mountains. That was nothin new to us - we could do that years ago right there on the farm. You could always tell when you was gonna get a real good storm comin in out of the northwest. In the area where we lived, we could look out over at what was called Johnson Hollow. That was kind of northwest of us, and when it begin to get kind of gray and black over in there, darn you knew you were gonna get one and you'd better start gettin wood and stuff around because you were gonna get a foot or two of it right over night or pretty quick.

Where we lived the old farmhouses were old cross-plank houses with a little tar paper on the outside and ship- lap wood siding, lath and plaster inside and some paper. Wind could kind of whistle through them pretty good. Old stone foundations with not too much mud in it. Everybody banked their houses - they'd pile straw and old hay around the bottom of their houses. That kind of helped cut the wind out. The old home I was brought up in was just like this - and old stone floor basement - down in the cellar, down in the bottom, mud and stones only went under part of the house - just enough cellar to keep potatoes and apples, and some canned goods in. You had to kinda keep things from freezin up down in there. Even then, you 'd get water pipes that would freeze even with the banking and being inside the foundation.

You'd cut wood by the darn wagon loads. Used to have big old wood sheds; there was a lot of heat in that wood. You'd get warmed up a couple times - cuttin it down, cuttin it up and gettin in the wood shed, and gettin it back in the house. I can remember the men doin that a lot. As I got old enough, I got my chance at it. My father he always had a couple of orchards and had quite large woods over back. The orchards were kept pruned out and older trees trimmed out. Cut out his hardwoods and saw them over in the woods, worked em out.

I can remember as a kid once, always wantin to be helpful. They were workin in the orchards trimmin out the trees, they'd burn the brush, course they'd use a little gasoline to throw on the brush pile to get em started. They'd needed some - I don't know I must have been 7 or 8, maybe 9, anyway I volunteered to grab a ten quart bucket to go back to the barn and get some gas for em. They all agreed that was fine to have a kid do the chasin. I got back there - we kept our gas in old milk cans - didn't have tanks like they have today. We didn't use that much gas; wasn't anything to use it in except an old steel-wheeled farm tractor that we run in the summer. But anyway, I got back there and there wasn't any part can of gas. I had to get into a full milk can. I had presence of mind enough to know that I couldn't handle that thing without spilling it cause then I really get in trouble cause times weren't that great. So I grabbed a siphon hose same as I'd seen everybody else do, stuck it down the can, give a big suck on 'er. The gas came out on out just great. I got the end of it in the pail - knew enough to get my finger over it to cut it off but in the meantime I had a swallow or two of it. Kind of made me a little oosy-headed and stuff, but I got the gas back. Then I begin to get kind of an upset stomach. I remember goin to the house - course you could smell gas on me for ten foot around me. My mother fussed and worried about it. Bout then ole Doc Bauman just happened by. He was the ole boy that brought me into the world. I remember him smellin of me and tappin and thumpin around, and finally come up with the idea that all I had was gas on my stomach. (I could have told him that!) He gave me one of his famous pink pills. No matter when he come by, as long as you were a kid, and whatever kid you were, before he left he always gave you a pink pill. Come to find out it was a mild laxative, but he figured that would always keep everybody going and every kid straight.

Have to stop for a minute see how this is going - well it seems to be going along - course you hear me coughin every now and then cause I get nervous doin this business so I have to smoke cigarette - course I've been puffin on them now for fifty years; oughta quit - keep thinkin about that too but that's somethin I ain't got at yet - I guess I haven't got scared enough, or somebody scared me enough. My old weezer seems to be doin me pretty good yet so I guess I'll probably keep up.

Gettin back to the winters again - that old plank plow never got down to the road like the plows do today. You got down just the hard stuff; you might plow through a two, three or five foot drift and if you got down within two or three inches or half a foot of the road - as long as you could get through that was all that was necessary. They never tried for any fancy job like they do today. Lord, folks today they wouldn't get two foot of what used to be winter then. Along with that, you think back in the late '20s, early '30s (course that's when the depression hit) there was more people and more time, and nobody workin, so I guess you had to fight for every nickel you could hang on to and every (?) You could scrape up and make an existence.

My father at that time had that farm, and he ran a couple other farms (the Gizinski Farm they called it at that time down on the Middle Road, corner of Smith and Middle Road, kitty corner from the old Mann Farm). There used to be Billie Mann's and his son, Johnny run it years after that and still does. Then there was the old Ford Row Farm down on what we called the flats, what little flat there was, south of the Archie (?) Farm on toward the village. We always had couple, three hired men around then there was a road crew.

Father was town supervisor. There'd be fifteen, twenty on the road crew. At that time, there was President Roosevelt's WPA gang. Tallkin' bout Roosevelt - as a I grew up - Lord I thought he was king; I never knew anyone was elected president he'd been at it so long. This WPA gang would amount to maybe 40-45 men. The town at that time had as I first remembered two old Model B Ford trucks, and then one more nice really pretty red thing. That was the best thing about that truck was the color of it. That was the best part of it; sure couldn't do much else! Them old Ford B's; they were just old in-line engines, not very big, but they always seem to fire up and go. We had a town mechanic called Hick Acker. He was the father of George Acker who was later Highway Superintendent, and Carl Acker younger son yet was bout my age. That old Reo would just give fits. It was a little short fused; every day that thing would have a bad starter or shot solenoid or bad switch or a water pump go out. He just crawled in that thing every day, under the hood and around in the cab. In the winter they never depended on that old Reo. They'd run those old Fords. Run half a vee -plow on the front of one. You 'd raise that up with a hydraulic wobble pump mounted on the floor in the cab. They'd take and put a railroad tie and make a push bar out of it. They put that behind them and run it in pairs, together down the road, put a load of cinders in each one, two men in the cab of each one, a man on the tail of each one. If they ever got down toward the road those fellows on the back could throw some cinders out on there so somebody could get a good toe-hold and then start into the next drift cause the wind up in there would blow. (click here for picture) You could plow out a road and within three hours it'd be drifted right back in again.

The big old back up was a Monarch Crawler. That darn thing was a forerunner of what was later the Allis Chalmers Crawlers. Those old Monarchs they were like all track at that time. They never failed to go, and it always got there - kind of slow. It was all iron, and the motor in that thing was like a Mack Truck, heavy sprockets; course it had a tin roof on it up on posts and frame, and that would rattle and clatter along. I don't know how our forerunners' parents weren't deafer than posts, all the noise - the way old tractors and trucks were made.

Good old Monarch, I always remember once my father got his hand hurt, starter on them was by hand. There was no such thing as an electric starter on them old things, or batteries or lights. The way you started that one - it had an open fly wheel stuck up between the frame and was about eight inches wide and probably thirty inches in diameter, had holes in it that a one inch pipe would fit in. You stand up on the frame of that old fly wheel and stick a piece of pipe in it and give it a kind of quick whip-over and get the pipe out before it came to the frame again. Usually five or six throws on that thing and then it would take off. There was no such thing as a distributor on it. Once she kind of backfired or something and the pipe was in there, and she kicked back round and smashed dad's hand against the frame. He went around the rest of that year with a steel strap fastened to his wrist up over around his fingers and his thumb and back to his wrist again. I guess it had broke his thumb or smashed a bone. Anyway, he had that thumb out hooked to that darn thing- I called it a banjo as a kid. He had it hooked to that thing until it finally straightened out and he got it off.

That Monarch - they'd plow out where it really got bad. We had a picture of it that we lost in the '72 flood of one road up there "Dann Blvd" that ran east and west; three tiers of men up in that road, one above the other shoveling snow off by hand and then the old Monarch in the bottom kind of clearing the path on up above that. Them poor old trucks they'd get up in the hills wheezin and snortin along, and they'd hit a drift and the front one would bog down and the rear one would usually go swingin off of that old railroad tie and be darn near in the ditch fore he could get stopped. They'd get em all straightened up, backed up and get a good start and nail 'er again, and after may a couple three tries they'd get on through. If they didn't the men would try to get 'em back out. If they got 'em mired down then they went on foot and head back down through cross cuts through the woods and fields, the shortest way to get back down to the old farm or wherever that old Monarch was working and get themselves dug out.

I remember as a kid once in a while weaslin a ride on those trucks. I remember one weekend I spent up on Terry Hill at one of the neighbors where the trucks got stuck and the wind was real wild and windy out, blowin and dark. I stayed over night there and the men they walked back. They come a 'clatterin' up there the next day bout noon with the Monarch.

Along with that these WPA people and the town people, a lot of those men walked to work, and some of them would walk up hill, down hill, which ever way they happen to live from the farm where we lived cause that's where they kept the trucks. They might have to come a couple three miles or four. They put in a real day's work; they had to be in there at eight in the morning, and they usually worked till four, four-thirty in the afternoon. They carried their lunch. They get all dispersed out in various directions, various jobs around the town - course the Town of Veteran had 48 miles of dirt roads besides black top. That took a lot of manpower to keep all that going.

In the summer, it seems as if they hauled gravel all summer fixin pot holes and roads. They hauled out of a big ole gravel pit on the old Hickwood Farm, couple farms south of us. There was millions of tons, hundreds of thousands of truckloads hauled out of that pit. It was a gravel pit when I first remember, and the last I knew it was still a gravel pit. Just a big ole mountain that they dug out of, good quality stuff. Everything went pretty much by hand out of there up onto those trucks. That took quite a bit of manpower, a lot of spittin' on your gloves to keep those trucks loaded, keep em haulin' out. They were graded in with a big ole York Grader and that ole Monarch Crawler. If they want to do a real good job, the town had an ole steam roller.

I remember they kept it over in an old wood shed at the other end of Dann Blvd. That was supposed to be one of the main cross-town roads, east to west just off Route 13. I can remember as a kid one of the greatest things was firing that thing up and gettin 'er going, chuggin' and rumblin' along. Usually they fired it with wood, not coal. They'd load those ole wood bins up on that thing and I'd get to rattle and pound along on that. It was a great life for me as a kid. Man, I just had more things to goin than a little boy with three whistles.

Gettin back on to winter now - (course I liked being around the barn and chicken coops and around the men and all the excitement) I remember one time been a real bad day snowin and blowin I wanted to ride with one of the hired men on the team and spreader way down back with a load. Folks kind of allowed I better not. The hired man understood that I better not, but I pleaded and begged and it done no good, he finally took off without me, and after he got down there, the farm being about half a mile from the building, time he got about half way down there, I decided I was gonna go anyway so I took off kind of talkin' to myself and grumblin' - had a pair of knee boots on - course as a kid those darn knee boots was only about eight inches high, ole black devils with red toes. They were pretty great, they kept me out of a lot of stuff. I remember gettin' part way down there with it snowin and blowin, and mud and farm water holes. I ended up losin' a boot. That disgusted me and I couldn't get it picked up out of the mud. It was kind of stuck right in, so I just went right on with one boot and one sock. The time the hired man had got his job done and got rid of the load and had started back, I met him. He couldn't hardly believe that he seen me in the damn snow and mud, disgusted and squalin' probably. He got me up and tried to ring out my socks and get me tucked in under his coat, tried to snap the lines on the old team to walk them pretty fast, got me back to the house and was probably thinkin' all the time bout the kinds of trouble he was in. I don't remember as he ever had any retaliation - course folks knew that I had kind of went on my own. Knowin' me and knowing that the people that worked for him done as they were suppose to - I remember I ended up being real sick. I had gotten pneumonia out of that darn bull-headed deal which as time goes on I know I had gotten in quite a few predicaments which I shouldn't have but I managed to live through em.

My father raised at that time what we thought was a lot of chickens, nothing like your big chicken farms today. He had about six coops of em. The coops were about 50 to 60 feet long, and 30 feet wide, end to end. He'd build one about every four or five years on to the end of another one. Always had good foundations. We had to pick up all the rocks in the fields every year and he'd pile em up at the end of the last coop and start making the footers and foundation for the next one to pour concrete. Be a good project in the winter along with cuttin' wood and shoveling snow. We'd have a couple of thousand chicks to start out and raise. Start with them just hatched or little peepers. Old coal stoves with hoods on them, broody stoves we called em. The hoods would hold the heat down. We'd kind of put little fence around just outside the hood to keep the chicks in under the hood while they were real little. As they kept growin' a little bigger you'd keep lettin' the fence out. In eight, ten weeks they could get out ten foot around the hood.

Along with that, you'd have to keep those darn stoves going 24 hours, and keep the dampers adjusted on em. It was kind of a project, but it wasn't a bad weather job cause you could get down in those little chick coops and it was nice and warm in there. You'd feed em and check their water, and put those darn pills in(don't know what they were good for but I know they turned the water purple). They were suppose to keep the chicks from getting something. And if you was kind of tired, you could kind of set back on an old bag of mash and take a little snooze for 15-20 minutes. Those chicks would put you right to sleep with all their peepin' and have a good time talkin' to themselves until somebody come along and woke you up to remind you you had something else to do.

I never did tell you bout keepin' that ole house warm. (click here for picture) We had three stoves in there. In the parlor and front room we had kind of a sheet metal chunk stove. Out in the big dining room there'd be one of them big cast iron stoves with all kinds of fancy Eisen glass and stuff in it, chrome bumpers around it and on top. Out in the kitchen, there'd be the old wood cook stove with the hot water tank on one side to keep warm and wash yourself with, and a warming oven up over the top.

I remember that old sheet metal stove that was in the living room, or parlor, as a kid I liked to hang around that thing. There was room enough between that thing and the wall cause they get pretty hot so you couldn't get them too close to anything. They'd be on a metal base. I remember layin' around back there and keepin warm and playin'. I remember when I was about three, four years old foolin' around back there - I had an old house key, and I don't know why or how but I was messin' around and had it in my mouth and next thing I knew I had swallowed that sucker. Well that kind of upset the folks too but after a day or two that all passed on and everything was great. That was just another one of the little things that I done as a kid. I guess I kind of gave em gray hair - one of many things.

Winter - was great to be down around the cow barns too. It was good and warm and lots of cows. That darn old barn - I think it must have been made for midgets; I think the head room in the basement was only about five foot eight at the most under the beams for up in the hay barn floor. Nobody could get down there without having to stoop and go along like they were hunchbacked; course it was tall enough for the cows to go in and out. Up in the hills them old winters, I suppose you'd want to keep all the animal heat you could. As a I remember back that was kind of a problem cause once in a while my dad would get the (particularly the back end of the barn) young stock, once in a while it would get so darn damp that they'd get pneumonia and my dad would have to get them straightened out. Had quite a time - use to use some kind of sulphur salve and hot water put in feed bags and tied over their noses for a little bit and make em breathe it to kind of, I guess, clear out their lungs. I don't remember if we ever lost any but I do remember that part. I'd be rammin' up and down in the barn, come milking time the hired men would cuss a little bit, and they'd get a foot stepped on, and spill a little milk but I guess that was part of raisin a kid.

That road crew. They'd be out working in the winter and they'd have to walk back home at night in the dark, and as I say the depression, dad would - some of the fellas with three/four kids to home - give em a little milk every night. They'd bring a little tin quart or two-quart pail with em in the morning and dad would send it back at night to kind of help them. They might have a few chickens or something around the yard but not many of them had a cow and milk wasn't worth a hoot anyway. After all the fightin' and working to get it to Dairylea Plant, if they could find anything wrong with it they send it back. If they kept it, you were only getting 85 cents a hundred for it, so you weren't out much if you gave a can or two away. They were forty quart cans that we sent to Dairylea and any that they sent back. at this point, Jim was interrupted by a phone call... I can remember, all them hams and bacon hangin' in there, you had to go daub them down with some kind of solution couple times a day and keep that little stove goin with corn cobs and bark and keep it good and smoky and warm in there.

One thing I forgot to mention bout that milk that they sent back is that to get rid of the stuff other than pour it down the drain, we'd mix a bunch of it with chicken mash, wet mash we called it, chickens seemed to like it a lot better that way. They'd eat more and that way we'd get a few more eggs out of them. Then what we couldn't use with the chicken mash we'd mix with the hog mash and make swill. We'd get rid of it one way or another. Didn't throw too much away. Nobody in them days threw anything away if they could help it.

My dad used to raise chickens, pure bred white leghorns, quite a friend Eli Bodine who was a farmer in Chemung who raised pure bred Holsteins same as my father did and pure bred white leghorn chickens. Eli was the father of Milt Bodine who worked with me later at Hansen's and with some of the older Bodine boys that run the racing business today and grandfather of some of em. Eli was kind of short and stocky, front teeth he always had gold plated. Man when he smiled it was just like the sun comin' up! Eli was out to make a nickel. He always had two/three good leghorn roosters to run with about thirty thousand hens. All those fertile eggs he sold came out of those two/three roosters. I think he had a crate or two of some other kind of rooster that kind of helped for that number of hens. But anyway, he got away with it - everybody was happy.

My dad kept two or three roosters in each coop, and I remember when I was old enough so that I had to gather eggs, do chores - I had gotten for my birthday a double-barrel cork pop gun. I used to take a shot at the cats - it didn't hurt em but kind of put them in a hussle for a while. Once in a while I get that thing in the chicken coop. The old hens would squawk, feathers fly and I'd get questioned once in a while about what was going on in the chicken coop when I was gathering eggs. The chickens would take off - but anyway, dad had one ole rooster and that son of a gun I guess didn't like me and my pop gun cause he' kind of give me a rough time. I'd start with my back turned gathering eggs out them old nests and he'd jump on my back and claw and peck the daylights out of me. I'd holler and threaten all kinds of things just to shoo him away. Finally one day he hit me wrong and I had my pop gun. Man I whipped around and took him right around the neck with it and killed him deader than four o'clock. He kicked around a couple times and that was it. I didn't realize I'd killed him and thought that would cool him down for a while. I don't know whether it was my mother or the hired people went in the coops later in the day or toward evening but there lay that old rooster just deader than a mackerel. I got questioned pretty good about that and a good conversation bout ceasin' that kind of tricks.

Another fella that my dad pal'd around with kept cross-breeding chickens and so forth was Bill Tuma. People lived up on north on the Ridge Road probably four/five miles on to the north. Very nice Bohemian family - they loved to eat and have people in and had chickens that they raised also. He had a facility for hatching them and usually dad had his eggs hatched there. I remember they'd come down and we'd spend nights in the darn chicken coop with the young ones. They'd give them some kind of shots, catch em and punch holes in between their toes for the different shots they gotten. Seems like those chickens you spent half your evening down their in the lice in the coops to keep those chickens going.

Mrs. Tuma - she always, when I was there, brought out some big ole cookies to eat, and a little milk, to kind of keep me quiet I guess and satisfied. Probably her husband, Bill, suggested it. She'd keep me busy and keep me away from those guys - probably kind of a hidden reason for her keepin me busy. I couldn't think of a more better one at that time. Being my age now, having been around the younger fellas - boys - I know they can get in trouble, give ya some trouble.

There come a time when dad would keep chickens just a couple years then he'd get rid of them, when they start in their molt the second time. He'd keep sorting them out pen to pen, back and forth up those darn coops then we'd try to get together with another neighbor, Tuma's or somebody, and get a truckload of chickens to go to New York City. The amount he raised, he could never get a full truckload himself but somebody else would chip in a few chickens, and he would, maybe a third neighbor. Ben Turner, right next to us down the road, he raised a bunch of chickens too. You'd spend half the night in that old chicken coop after dark down there with a flashlight with a stick with a wire hook around it to catch them around the legs. They'd squawk and the feathers would fly with the dust and you'd put em in the crates - put in 35 chickens to a crate I remember - get a bunch of them out. Course that was kind of the last nickel you'd get out of em - chickens were only worth 15 cents a piece in New York City. You'd get 35 to a crate, and you'd try to get you a truckload, maybe 80 crates of them. To get a couple thousand chickens to go down there and get 15 cents a piece it took a couple/three farmers enough to make up a load to make it. Today a 15 cent chicken - they'd laid a couple years and they were tough old girls - I probably wouldn't want to give over 15 cents for em.

Going back - I forgot about the weather and how we could tell it was going to be. Where we lived there on the ridge, you could look down slopes and across the flats to the Middle Road. That dropped off again into the valley - course the valley was a road with farm land, creeks and railroad tracks. You could tell by that railroad, the engines going up and down those tracks, what the weather was gonna be. It was fun to be on the farm, and even though you might not be able to see, you could hear those ole trains goin up and down the valley, whistles blowin at the crossings. When they sounded shrill and sharp, it was good clear air and there'd be good clear days. When it began to sound kind of hollow and so forth, you knew that there was a change in the weather. If it was summer, you were going to be getting some rain in about 12 hours or less. In the winter, there's was gonna be some snow in the same amount of time. As a kid I really enjoyed listening to those ole trains. If you had time you could stand and watch em down there couple miles away pullin' up through the valley. In that area, they'd usually run a double header - be long trains.

Those headin' north were pulling coal from Pennsylvania up on towards the Great Lakes. They'd go on up through the Finger Lakes to the Great Lakes to Sodus Point, then it would be dumped on barges and hauled on through the Great Lakes to our industrial cities like Chicago, Detroit and so on, or loaded up for overseas shipment. Those coming back south were double-headed till they got to about Elmira. They'd being bringing produce and a lot of empties. But headin' out they'd be doubled-headed with those old engines puffin and snortin'. There'd be echos against the mountains. It would sure be good to hear those again goin' up the valley.

I told you about how many men there were in the road crew and that gravel pit on the old Wood Farm and that old Reo Truck. Ford finally came out with a V-8 truck back in about 1934. I know the town and everybody was kinda encouraged to get rid of that old Reo and get one of them real big power trucks with them V-8 engines. So the town did - they got rid of that Reo that give Hicks such loss of religion with all its fits - got a V-8. Man that thing was a real getter! You could hear that old V-8 whinin' and pullin' up through. Wasn't long after that they decided to modernize a little bit more and quit that shovel business, so somehow the town bought some kind of a self-propelled bucket loader down in Passaic, New Jersey. One of the drivers on the town said he had some relation down around New York or New Jersey. He and dad took that new Ford truck and went on down to Passaic and picked up this loader at the factory. Being ole farm boys, and so on, they got in a little trouble down there. I guess they run two or three streets one way and got a ticket on it. They finally got the loader. Course I don't know who with any presence of mind would run around New York or New Jersey with an old town dump truck. Back in those days police didn't worry about so much and didn't have so many rules bout over width and overweight and over height and all that stuff. I guess dad and Art wiped out a few wires on the way back cause it was over height, but they got back.

That thing really modernized the gravel-handling business. It had gathering augers on the back. You'd back into the loose gravel then bring to middle up on the buckets and go up over the chains and up into the trucks. That sure modernized the process but it wouldn't dig in to the hard gravel. They'd have to blast that pit every once in a while. I remember once a man didn't get far enough away. They touched off the dynamite, it caved in under him, buried him, and we lost him. I think that was the only fatality that they ever had there.

Bout this time in my memory come the flood of '35. That was basically on up toward the Finger Lakes area in the center part of the state. Right in that area there was three rivers (the Canisteo River that came up out of central New York, and the Tioga River that came out of northwestern Pennsylvania, and the Cohocton River that came out of central New York); they all meet in Corning, New York and form the Chemung River and that in turn runs down through several counties onto Binghamton, New York and that forms the Susquehanna. There was real heavy rains up in the central part of the state; it flooded the area of Montour Falls, Corning, Watkins Glen, Beaver Dams so there was an awful lot of roads to be fixed, a lot of bridges to be rebuilt. It was a real emergency at that time and come to find out my father was the only one around with an engineering degree and supposedly the know-how to build all these plank bridges, so he got the job of oversee'in this in several townships. In turn, their men would truck and re-gravel roads in the townships wherever he was. Bout then he got a Chevy Coupe for the town; it had a rumble seat, don't know what year it was, had solid disc wheels - that was his pickup truck. I can remember ridin the roads a lot with him with that with all kinds of picks and shovels in the back end of it and bouncing along. Everybody would kid dad about going over the rough roads fast with it. He said the faster you got over them the smoother they were. I remember one road up out of Millport, up around the mountain there toward Moreland.

The whole WPA gang was in there shoveling and wheeling with wheelbarrows. Ole Charlie Dove, you'd always catch him asleep on the wheelbarrow; it didn't scare him a bit, he could snooze right by it all day. Those men worked hard, most of em, day after day shoveling gravel or breaking it - it was a pretty hard life but then again to live anybody was willing to do it. That dollar a day business didn't look too great. Course at the end of the week I remember drivers taking two/three dump trucks down to the village where there used to be a Grand Union Store and getting a shipment of flour and sugar and salt and pepper, whatever the government would give out - butter and cheese, and so forth for the WPA men and have it there to give it to them on Friday when they got their paychecks and headed home for the weekend. That was always a real good time for em and I don't blame em; they'd worked hard for what they could pack on their back gettin home. Course, as I said, I was always busier than a little boy blowin three whistles - those road crew men got a kick out of kids - their own kids with me being the boss of some. They set me up to doing things that maybe an ordinary kid wouldn't think of. One time they had me believing you could take an young crow, catch him, split his tongue and you could make him talk just as good as a parrot. I got convinced. I don't know how many times down in the backwoods I tried - I was seven or eight then. I climb up them old pine or hemlock trees, locate me a crow's nest. Some I couldn't quite climb up to; the crows would come back, squawk and pick the daylights out of me, but I finally got me a young crow and took him home. Man he loved milk and bread; he could go through milk and bread like anything. I never did get to split his tongue but we got to be real good friends. He'd hang around the house all the while with us kids, and no matter where we went he fly along squawking and landing on the fence posts. He lasted about a year and a half. One day in the summer my kid sisters were going up to the neighbors (Faith Preston at that time; she later was Faith Miles - she married Dick) and that crow was followin' along, but he made a mistake and lit in the road at the wrong time and got run over and the feathers flew and that was the end of my crow.

Another time they had me chasin wild field rabbits. I remember I'd go way down back at the other end of the farm, down in the corn fields in the fall. There was lots of young field rabbits around - man, I'd run my dog-gone legs off chasin them rabbits. I was finally lucky, I got me a young buck, the size of a small kitten, and so the men thought I'd done great and one of them offered me a ride on the corn wagon back to the barns. I was pretty well winded but going along I was afraid the darn rabbit would get away from me and get in the corn and I'd have to start chasin rabbits again, so I walked all the way back better than half a mile. I got up to the ole chicken coops and I stubbed my toe, and down I went, bout skinned that darn rabbit, and that was the end of the rabbit. One of the hired men had to finish that thing off.

Then again, another time some of the road crew brought me a couple of guinea pigs, one was white and one was white with some brown on him. I had to fix them up a place, a coop, typical kid old potato crate with some wire over it. Wasn't long, in the summer, bout a month - one of those darn guinea pigs got out on me and got in the garden. We had a pretty good size garden, same as everybody else. Like a typical kid, I hated like the deuce to ever get out and weed in it but I did my share. That darn guinea pig... Ma would go out in the garden to do some weedin or hoeing, along with getting meals, and that darn guinea pig would be in her lettuce or cabbage. She'd chase him up and down that darn garden with a broom. I can understand at that time why she was skinny - lord, it kept her skinny chase'n that darn guinea pig if nothing else. She never did catch him, and I never did either. He went on through the winter, and I guess the weather kind of finished him. The other one - I kept good track of him - come winter I took him down to the cow barn. He got right familiar, and got so he'd get out of the crate and run up and down through the cow barn. He just loved to get in that cow silage. One night I guess it was pretty cool, bout the middle of winter, and he cuddled up too close to a cow during the night . She kind of stretched out and rolled over a little. Next morning that had finished my second guinea pig. Kind of ended the guinea pig business - never had any more of them.

Come the time during this flood they had to have a lot of timber for the bridges, there was the Moore Farm up on Terry Hill. A lot of good timber and Mr. Moore want to sell it. I remember the town brought in a saw mill. They used my father's old C. Case Tractor to run it. That old thing was on spade lugs, steel front and back. Like every other tractor, there was more iron than power. It had quite a bit of power for a tractor of its size compared to any others. I remember he had to take twice, in the morning before he started it, and at noon, he'd have to unlatch the hood on it, pull the valve covers. There was cups in there with some kind of felt. You'd have to squirt in a bunch of oil, that kept the rockers oiled till half the day was over. Took quite a bit of gas, but it got the job done. That was the second tractor my father had.

I remember the first one was an old Fordson. That thing was a wild horse - any time you'd try to tie it down a little bit, it'd rear in the air if was hooked on to anything other than a hay wagon. He'd never let me ride on that thing as a kid. Once - I remember we were plowing and it had a little ole setup - P&H International Plows - a Belgian horse could pull as much as that old Fordson did. They hooked on a tree root and the front of that thing started rearing a little bit and he got her stopped. I got off, and he never let me ride it again when he was plowing. But then he modernized and got that C. Case, that was supposed to be a real getter. That'd pull two fourteens right along good in second gear. I don't ever remember it rearin'.

None of em turned too good down at the end of the field that they were pullin cause they didn't have independent wheel brakes or anything. You just kept that ole motor bellerin' and knew to start turning 20/30 foot before you got there. Front end would kind of scuff along and get swung around and get headed back. I must have been about ten when I first started driving it. I know they had to let the clutch off on it a little so I could handle it. Had a hand clutch so I had strength enough to yank her back. They turned me loose with the hired man and a grain binder and a 18 acre field of oats. New seedin' - I got cautioned to never do any tight turning and tear up new seeding. I was pretty good; I didn't make too many slips as far as cutting too wide a path and leavin' any grain.

One of the reasons I brought that on is that at that time my father got injured n down in the little town of Pine Valley where the tracks, creek and so forth were.(click here for picture) There was a little bridge - they were black-topping the gravel road turn it into hard top. They'd asked my father to ride on the running board of the oil truck to watch the pipes going through the bridge. Right as you enter the bridge there was a telephone pole that hung over the road. Nobody normally paid any attention to it. That thing hung out enough that it kind of crushed by father's head between the cab of the truck and the pole. He ended up unconscious several days in bad shape. We had him to the hospital in Sayre, Pennsylvania (Robert Packer) and Strong Memorial in Rochester, New York - boiled down to a blot clot on his brain. It was only the second time in the history of the hospital in Rochester that they had such a thing and they couldn't remove it. They ended up removing part of the crushed skull and putting in a metal plate to protect the back of his head. It never seemed to affect him mentally but it got to him physically. He started to go blind, then he started staggering and had to use a cane and then a wheelchair then bed. It was seven years from the time he got hurt till the time he passed on. They experimented some but this kind of brain surgery then they had no kind of anesthetic for, just put a heavy rubber pad in your mouth for ya to chew on, hog-tied you down; they went to work and you suffered it all.

I remember Dad telling he never had a bad tooth in his head till then. At that time, he cracked several teeth during those operations. They found out that by putting some air pressure in his skull, they could raise that clot, and relieve some pressure. He could get right up and walk around and read but within a couple of weeks it would seep out his system and he would revert right back to where he had been previous. I will say that all during the seven years from the time of that injury till he died I never remember him being moody or upset over it. Always seemed to put on a good front and good humor.

As I said, it didn't affect him mentally; he could tell you every cow he had, what their records were, and their offsprings, tell you about every field on the farm and what was planted on em for the last five or six years. We were fortunate that way. That kind of led to me growing up in a hurry. My father, mother, family, aunts and uncles finally came to the decision that dad wouldn't be better so they had a big auction. That got rid of the tractor and tractor equipment, most of the dairy - I remember we kept about ten cows and the horses and horse equipment but all the rest went. From then on we were just gonna start over again. We had a mortgage on the farm yet. My father was in his thirties when he got hurt - nobody plans on getting married, starting a family, buying a farm and house and having it all paid for by the time they're in their thirties. I had got my chance at running that ole Case quite a few miles plowing and harrowing for a year or two before the auction.

Dad had raised, as I said before, pure bred Holstein cattle. I'll never forget a bull he had got down Petsole Farms down in Newark Valley. He was an old white devil; we called him Billy. He wasn't old, he was a young bull. I'd get the job once in a while of taking him out of the bull pen, course they were taken out every day into the barn yard and watered. Down in the south barn yard we kept tractor, harrow, float, plow - it was kind of an equipment storage along with an area for the horses, and the bull to exercise. Ole Billy - he'd get kind of frisky once in a while and start to dancin' around. He was never mean, but I remember once he run around through that barn yard with me as a kid and my heels just a clickin'. I knew better than not to let go of that darn rope cause I'd never be getting him again. He come back up through and ducked and took me through one side of those tractor harrows. I think I was two weeks growin' hide back on my elbows, knees, shins and stuff. I hung on - he stopped up to the barn to get his water; he'd had his fun and went back in the shed. I ached like a toothache for about two weeks. It turned out all okay though. I didn't let go and he'd had his fun.

It takes a lot of Pepsi and Coke and a little smoke to keep all these stories coming. It'll all be out of sequence though but I'm not writing a book.

Before my father got hurt, during the time that he was well, the road crew and men and stuff around, and the hired people, I don't ever remember but once or twice him losin' his temper. I heard tell that he was kind of short-fused but he never was with us kids. I don't remember him being too much so with the hired people. If he was, they sure deserved it. I remember a couple/three incidents that if it had been me I'd have grabbed em by the scuff of the collar and cleaned the barn with em.

I know one time I was old enough in the fall so that I could help with the thrashing. All the neighbors would get together and thrash the grain at each farm along. We had our barn - upstairs one end was the straw mow. You had to get up there and that ole thrasher stack would stick up through. That was about the only opening there. With all that straw and chafe you'd have to have an handkerchief tied around your face, one around your neck, make sure your sleeves were tight and everything. You'd work all that stuff back, poke everything down you could, stomp and poke in the corners cause anything you couldn't put in the barn you had to stack, and of course the weather would get to it and you wouldn't get as much use out of it. I remember once dad came up in the ? shed. I forget who the men were, couple of em and myself as a kid (as a kid I probably wasn't much help as I was in the way), but about the time my dad came up, one of the men down at the thrash machine threw a skunk in. Needless to say the remains of that kid came rearing up into the ole straw shed. Things shut down. The straw quit being moved, the stacker plugged, and everybody come a coughing and gagging out of that ole straw shed just about frothing, couldn't hardly see or breathe. I remember that time, my dad got pretty hot. As I say I wouldn't have blamed him a bit. Nobody'd admit to who put the skunk in but everybody on the ground enjoyed and everybody up in the straw shed left in a hurry. That was one of the times I do remember my dad getting kind of hot.

Down in Pine Valley there was a fella named of Nuttenburg, raised ponies, kept a little haystack (for a dairy farmer, it was small for ponies it was big). The town kept missing picks and crow bars, shovels and stuff. Dad kept inquiring and buying more, trying to keep his men goin - come to find out, just for the fun of it I guess or something to do, some of these guys would keep carrying these darn things back home and stash em in this ole haystack. Finally dad inquired around and kept checking, he went to that haystack with a couple/three men and started tearing it apart. It had more darn iron in it than it had hay. Had a real good dump truck load of picks and shovels, crow bars, stone forks and stuff that they hauled back. Town didn't have to buy anymore for quite a while.

Talking about this thrashing business - I was a young fella, and by young fella I mean I started maybe when I was three or four years old getting the hunting fever. Of course a lot of farmers hunted. My father did a little, and I had one uncle that did, the rest of the family and my grandfather didn't. Along bout this time, I had an ole dog - course every boy has an ole dog, Ted. I remember he was kind of white with brown spots on him, collie/shepherd cross of some kind. He took me like a duck to water. No matter where I went, he went. We'd make a lot of trips getting cattle and so forth. Anyway, I decided me and Ted was going hunting one afternoon while they was thrashing there to home. Rode down back with the men on the wagons to get the grain and bring it back to the barns, I took off from there. Anyway, I kind of wandered - ole Ted and I followed the old crick kind of north. I remember one of the things that really stuck in my mind was getting into the ground bumblebees. Man - you'd get into them in an old clump of grass, they'd sting the ole daylights out of ya, and course the poor old dog, he got it worse than I did cause he was trying to protect me. Anyway, we didn't have too great a hunting excursion. Family begin to miss me bout 2:30/3:00 o'clock. They ended up shutting down the thrashing so everybody could start looking. They hollered and looked (men and women), I guess, through the woods and the fields. Finally, come chore time one of the fellas on one of my granddad's farms, three miles north, was sent back home to start getting the cows down for chores. He found me way up there, in and around their cow pastures. Ole Ted and I were still hunting. I guess we had more lumps than anything else. I know it got sort of dark, and you couldn't hardly see. They dragged me home, and I got a real good talking to about that, and I got my britches warmed a little. Ted and I didn't make any big ventures away from home for several years after that.

The road crew - some of them would trap a little. They got me the idea that I ought be catching skunks. Make a big pile of money that way. Right down at the corner of our farm was a little cemetery; (click here for picture) it was old then, must have been people back in Civil War time or something. Little old picket steel fence around it, gates that didn't work. Ted and I would go down there after chores and supper at night; we'd set and wait and wait. I think all summer we spent there, and we caught one skunk. I say "we", ole Ted did, I didn't. I give him a lot of encouragement. I walked around with a stick and sicced him on. He got the skunk. Course, we come back; we were proud, and plastered, and ma wouldn't let us in the house. The dog got so shot up with the skunk, he was just a frothing like he was getting ready for a shave, but that didn't discourage us. From then we went on many more skunk hunting expeditions. We learned how to catch em a lot better than that.

As I said we had a lot of chickens, chicken yards. I soon learned with the ole town there was a bunch of old oil drums. Got the men to cut the heads off a couple of those drums. I'd get me a couple wide, short boards, lay those drums down, put those boards on either side leaving just a small opening in the middle, throw an old dead chicken back in the barrel, and set a trap in there. We'd catch us a skunk now and then but it kind of contained it and we didn't get so plastered. I always ended up with a set or two of clothes hanging off the wood shed.

Another time I got one under the side porch of the house. That didn't make mom too happy. Darn house stunk! There were no excuses. Just Jim and the old dog got a skunk.

Then there was a year or two later when I was in upper grade school. I ran a trap line for a winter or two - get up three in the morning, go out in the snow and cold and wind. Then I had another dog. His name was Buster. Ole Ted - I'd kind of out hunted him; he'd lived his life out. I never did get rich at it, but I sure got a lot of exercise and a good education; I learned how to catch skunks instead of mice. Darn mice lived in the dens with the skunks. They'd come hopping out first and trip the traps. Skunk would go on his way and get our chickens. Chickens and eggs were what those skunks liked the best.

I remember another time, now that we're talking skunks, my mother had remarried my father's oldest brother, uncle Lawrence. He'd lost Aunt Julia 'long middle of the 30s, so then I was in high school by this story. He had quite a few chicken coops and old box nests. One summer an ole skunk got in the habit of getting in the nests, breaking the eggs and sucking em. My uncle didn't know one end of a shot gun from the other and was scared of both ends, and all of his sons were. He had three sons, Delos, Paul and Ralph. One day I decided I'd fix that dog-gone skunk when he was up gathering eggs. I dropped an old board down on the nest, and there that skunk was. I kind of ease right back out of there and went down to the house and got a 16 gauge shot gun, snuck back up. He was still in the nest, and I let him have it. Chickens flew, chicken litter and dust, skunk hair. I got him! Blew a big hole in the nest too. That kind of ended the skunk that year. Course I got the job for the next two weeks of watering and feeding the chickens cause the coop smelled so bad. You just step in the door and it would take your breath from ya. I guess I even had to clean the coop. It got aired out, and I got rid of that job.

Another time there was a fellow named of Ed Shriner. He was a bachelor. He lived with his sister and brother-in-law and their daughter, Jean Emery down on Water Street in Elmira. He was the manager of the old Shee and Dean Stores down in Elmira which was a large department store, something like Berry? would be here. He was just highly enthused about the farming business. I forget exactly - I guess he'd met the folks through the Emery's. I guess Guy and dad might have hunted together, or fished together. But any time something happened peculiar Shine would want to know about it, and darn, he'd jump in an old brown Persaro he had, and up he'd come up - he'd get in the darndest messes.

One time he come up there was another skunk under the house. He'd come up for something else. Old Ted and I collared the skunk and run him in under the house where it was kind of low cause there was no basement under it. Shine volunteered to get right in on it with a flashlight and so forth. We went at it. After about fifteen minutes we got him, after we'd got pretty well shot up again. Shine was real tickled and pleased, excited about it. He got his education on skunk catching, course he wasn't invited in to the house. Ma handed me the usual other set of clothes and Shine some old overalls, something the hired men had that would fit him. He was kind of tall and slender, probably mid-fifties at that time. Dad was kind of short, not as tall as I am, probably about 5 foot 9, and stocky built so his wouldn't fit. Shine got on his borrowed clothes and jumped in his big ole brown car and went down town to his brother-in-law's to get cleaned up. I forget what he came up for, but it sure wasn't skunk hunting.

During my time of trapping skunks, there was a time after my father died in the early 40s, (Course times were tough and we had a mortgage on the farm yet to pay. I drew a quarter a week for allowance for school but that bought me a big bottle of Fawn pop every day. I'd buy a bottle and carry a sandwich. We'd beat it over to Brown's Drug Store with our sandwich and a nickel for a bottle of pop. That was all I needed at that time. I hadn't gotten to chasing around and finding other uses for money.

As I said, times were tough and ( at this point Jim had to change the tape ) Along with this time, we had a neighbor that bought the Ben Turner Farm, just south of us. He was a retired telephone company man, Bud Ogden. He decided to go into the dairy business. He'd rebuilt Ben's old dairy barn down below his chicken coops. Ben raised more chickens than did cattle. Bud had bought him a whole lot of two year old heifers from Uncle Gerald, first time in and first time to milk. He never did get em milked the first time. He put up a new milk house and got in Dela- valve milkers. They just kicked and tromped the living daylights out of him.

He soon come up to us and wanted to know if I'd help him finish that first night. Fore we got done, we'd struck off a deal where I'd do his milking night and morning for half the milk. Course that was nothing new to me, and a way to make some money to help pay off the mortgages, doctor and hospital bills, etc. It had occurred because at the time my dad had got hurt the town had let the insurance lapse so there was no insurance on him or any of the men on the town. Everybody was on his own. Money counted then.

This was the beginning of the second world war and things were startin to get tighter. I don't know as rationing had started yet but things were beginning to bind down. I get up in the morning about three and run this darn trap line, then get back into our chores to home. Mom and Joyce (She was getting to an age where she was helping a little bit.) would get em fed. I'd beat it down to Bud's and start milking there, get those done, get cleaned up in time for the school bus. If I was gonna do any trapping, it had to be out in the moonlight. That's how I got into running the trap line that time of day. During this time the only thing that counted on those skunks was the pelts - never got top dollar, maybe buck and a half was the most I ever got out of one. There was lot of things left over from the skunk that wasn't worth much.

Went to high school down in Horseheads - an old brick building. Up north we didn't have any air conditioning, don't know if they do yet, didn't really need it. Always a breeze blew every day. They had a big air circulator fan down in the basement of the school. It was three stories high. Had boilers down there, was hot water heat. In the summer they'd run this big ole fan. It was about foot wide, eight/ten foot diameter, electric motor driven - just like a big ole water wheel. We didn't worry about safety and all that in those day. They did have some 2x4s stuck up around it here and there, and wire so that a person wouldn't just walk into the darn thing. Had a door with wire on it; it wasn't never kept closed much. (Back then farm boys was kind of looked down on. Those city fellers were the basketball players, baseball players, and the ones everybody looked up to - farm boys were just the tail that came along with the hide. I figured a way I'd kind of even that up a little bit. Took the remains of one or two of those skunks, wrapped them all up tight, half a dozen paper bags - didn't have plastic then -burlap bag, wrangled on to the school bus. Told old John Harris, the bus driver, that it was something I had to have for an Ag Course. Kept it back away from him where he couldn't smell him. Got to school. First period I made some excuse (had 'em hid down in the Ag Department). One or two of the other guys knew I had 'em. Course they couldn't keep it to themselves - just too darn good for that, too good a deal. First period I beat it down, got those things across the hall into the boiler room where the fan was, unwrapped him and whipped him over into that fan. The fan didn't turn that fast, just a couple/three hundred rpms. Boy I tell you that splattered that stuff around,, and I got out of there. Wasn't long, about thirty minutes, the darn school was shut down. Nobody could stand it. I took em about three days to air that place out. Everybody got kind of a vacation. Course the word got around a little bit amongst the kids what had happened but never did get to the principal or teachers. I don't know, even to their dying day, if the teachers and principal really knew what happened. I guess it was probably a good thing cause back then they didn't mind giving a guy a peelin' if he deserved it, and I sure would have got it on that one.

Got to tell ya how I got in this hunting business. Course farm boys always hunted a little - had reason to - to get rid of varmints, rats, woodchucks, skunks, rabbits, weasel, etc. You just didn't get a gun and start out, everybody was pretty careful. Stanley Benjamin, son of our next door neighbor kind of taught me how to hunt, how to be careful. He started me out with a 22 when I was probably twelve years old plinkin off rats up in the garbage pile. He'd take me huntin' along and make sure I was careful and how to handle a gun. The year I got sixteen was the year I was able to start deer hunting. Just before that I'd saved up enough money all summer to buy me a new shot gun, my first gun. Guns I'd used before had been either Bud Ogden's or Stanley's... rifles, little 22s. I remember Stanley, Marshall Conklin, a friend of mine through school (and still a good friend). Had gotten these Sears and Roebuck Rangers, old bolt action shot guns. I remember we all got them within a week of each other through mail delivery. We'd had to order them. I got a 16 gauge, and I forget what those fellas got but it would have been about the same gauge. We took and tried em all out. We all lived in the same neighborhood. Marshall lived on north of Stanley and I, probably another mile and half .

But I was fortunate, I was the only one of the three that could throw a good pattern of bird shot. Back then you kind of got used to a gun; it was like anything you had to work with - you knew they were predictable and you knew what to look out for, but I'll never forget the first year deer hunting. I was, of course, excited, going out with Stanley and Ernie Benjamin, that was father and son, Georgie Turner above em, my uncle Don, who lived in between Turners and Benjamins, myself. Course by then, my father was bad in health and couldn't get out of the house. He was probably about as excited about my hunting as I was, the idea of living to see his son start. My dad had enjoyed general hunting. He was no great big safari hunter, but he enjoyed deer hunting when I was a kid. We went over in the ravine. We'd met at Benjamin's and were planning our attack on the way. We'd seen several deer in the fields below our barns and just west below one of my dad's orchards. We were figurin' how to get north and south of em. We knew where they were gonna run - down in the ravine to the west. In the meantime, George Turner's wife, Florence, called to say there were more coming down the ridge from their way. We began to refigure so that we could get ten or eleven of them coming south, kind of get em altogether at once. Not so we'd start shooting at one bunch and have the other get spooked and run away. We got our plan of attack all set. My uncle went down south of our farm into our orchards to bring those deer north and west into the ravine. Stanley went back north to bring those others on south and in to the ravine. Ernie and I went down through their old lane and pastures down to this place where we was gonna get em. We'd planned on one on the west, one of the east and one in the bottom of the ravine - that way we'd have them covered. But somehow in all the excitement, we all ended up on the west side of the ravine with the deer about to come down. They decided I was the youngest so I beat down one side of the ravine and back up the other side. George got in the bottom, and Ernie stayed put.

I just got in the bottom, and man we begin to have deer - they were coming. They were like in a shooting gallery jumping over a fence. I had this sixteen gauge gun with bolt action. It was normally meant to hold five shells but I figured out how to get seven in 'er. Every time a deer jumped the darn fence, I'd take a pot shot at it. They had just finished jumping the fence when they had met the gang comin' the other way, and darn I had finished emptying the gun. The other fellas had taken a shot or two but they had missed where the deer were running. I didn't really see any go down nor nobody else did. After it was all quieted down, the drivers got there, we all went up to where the deer had been running across. I had downed a seven point buck. He laid there flopped down next to a log. I was pretty elated over that; I hollered and so on.

Got out my hunting knife that I had acquired ready to bleed him out, and son of a gun, he wasn't quite as dead as I thought he was. He bout bled me out. He didn't hurt me bad but I soon learned to keep away from them darn horns. I had to give him another shot. Bout then Ernie started on across the ravine and give a yell that there was a doe down there, leg shot out from under her. I evidently got her too. We finished her off.

I had kind of a predicament - back then you could buy a buck license or a combination license that would give you a buck or a doe, whichever you got. I had a combination license so that covered me on the doe, but kind of left me hanging with the buck. I didn't believe, or was I ever brought up to do any illegal hunting or any over hunting, unfair, etc. - you had to give em a chance. They had real good eyes and ears, and it was a real trick to get em. So anyway, the fellas helped me - we had em cleaned out and hung in the barn. To get out of my predicament - course mom was all excited - we decided she had to go down to the town seat in Millport and buy her a buck license. That way we was covered. I didn't want to do anything wrong, and I was scared of game wardens starting out my first year hunting where you had to have a big game license.

Somehow the word got around, small country, few people, mom had bought a buck license and got a buck. It was put in the little ole town paper. She had quite a time outliving that for a year or two. Bout everybody never knew she hunted, and how she happen to get into hunting and get a buck the first day and first thing.

Times were tough back then but not that great yet. Each fall we'd have us a big venison dinner in the grange hall. That was just a farm or two away, between my uncle's and Benjamin's, our next door north neighbor. Everybody that got deer would donate a piece of venison, have it all cooked whether it be ribs or swiss steak, etc. Everybody that lived in the neighborhood that went to grange or lived in the neighborhood was welcomed. Everyone would bring a dish and have a real get-together - good eats, pie, coffee and milk, and everything that went with it. Everybody enjoyed it.

I don't know of anybody that ever shot more than they were supposed to, or shot something that they shouldn't have. Later on they didn't have doe licenses and just shot buck. Of course, today, they have special licenses that you have to buy in a group to hunt doe. Everybody tried to be pretty kosher when it came to hunting up there. It was a good thing. If you're fair with something like that, you're also fair and honest with other things in your life.

The war had started. Mother had gone to work at the Holding Point in Horseheads. She was a secretary. Us kids were going to school. Course, we'd get home before she did (what they call latch-key kids today), but we weren't alone; we had the ole dog, bout 25 cows, bunch of young stock, couple thousand chickens and a hog to keep us company. Anyway, hunting season got over. Up there hunting season starts right at Thanksgiving time, and winter would set in, didn't have to worry about them spoiling hanging down in that old barn. They got good and stiff alright.

I decided one night before mom got home that I oughta get those deer taken care of. I proceeded to get one down off the hooks up in the barn, get him on a hand sled and get him up to the house. I knew enough to want to keep him clean. I didn't want to get any dirt in the meat. I didn't try to wrestle him around in the barn. I didn't try to skin him hooked up, so I ended up on the dining room floor in the hall with that carcass. Was congoleum floor, what they call vinyl today. I'd made sure it was clean. The old deer and I started wrestling around. As I said, he was stiffer than a plank I got him skinned out, head off and everything the way I should. Got the skin off and to the side, and then got the same job done on the other one. Didn't take me too long once I got at it and organized. I was no butcher, but I was shore butcherin him. We didn't have no freezers in them days. All we had was a electric refrigerator in the house. I decided that as cold as it was, being winters the way they were up there, ma was going to donate the freezer.

She had a big double wash tub stand she used to use with the old hand washers. I cleaned them out good, set them out on the side porch, got covers for em. That would be the best freezers I could get. I pretty well had those deer cut up when mom got home. Course, they got warmed up a little bit there in the house. I'd got the floor a mess, with my skinning and stuff, and got a little deer hair around. I tried to be careful and keep most of it off the cuts. Anyway, I cut up those darn deer. Those wash tubs just held them. It worked good. I wrapped em in some newspaper, put em in there and they froze right up, and stayed good and frozen all the winter long. If you wanted a piece of venison, you'd just step right out there. That was our first freezer! - an old double galvanized wash tub.

Mom wasn't too elated about that dining room floor, having to clean up deer hair and the mess, mop the floor. She had sent me to the barn to feed cows and start milking. It was kind of late. She kept the girls there to help her and then sent them towards the chicken coops in a little bit. We were supposed to feed cows and chickens at about a certain time, milk em, and it was past time. Mom, I think, would like to have hung three kids about then. The girls didn't help me any but they knew what was going on. I think they caught as much devil for letting me get in such a mess as I did. We all got through it, had lots of venison, and got the dining room cleared up, and chores done.

Along the same year (If you hunted in a group, you stuck with that group - during the week I went to school so I didn't get much hunting in, but on Saturdays I figured I oughta be out helping the group hunt.) We had lucked out pretty good that first day. Georgie Turner got a deer before the day was over. That following Saturday Stanley Benjamin, we got one for him. Stanley loved to hunt but he got excited, no disrespect, but it happens to a lot of people. Kind of got what we call buck fever. He'd either start shootin too quick or he'd start cutting down the woods all around that deer. We were up in what used to be old granddad's upper farm where Uncle Gerald lived, bout noon that Saturday. A few fellas would drive, and a few would be on watch, various sides of the woods. You'd travel up one side of the road and down the other, one woods to another, or pastures wherever we noticed deer running. Stanley was down in kind of a little run, and I was on down below him. They drove some deer on through, and a nice buck was one of em, and Stanley he started shooting. Course it scared the whole gang - he did nick him and knocked him on down, but before he could get to him, the buck was up and going again, so as he come along by me, I dropped him. That got one for Stanley. I think all of us ended up with a deer before the season was over.

I hunted deer for quite a few years after that, and I toted that 16 gauge a lot of miles and years. Finally after I was married several years, that old bolt action to me wasn't too great. You lost your sight and had to wiggle and wobble around with that thing. I never did like a bolt action after that first gun on cause you never could get the next shot out too great. I made a deal with a used gun dealer in Horseheads and got me what I though was gonna be a real deer getter, a real cannon, a 12 gauge semi-automatic. My daughter, Darlene, and John have it. It was an old prison riot gun. Not too long a barrel on it. It would throw a good slug. All I bough it for was deer hunting. She'd spit em out just as fast as you'd pull. That sucker would kill on either end. It didn't have nothing but an old metal plate on the back of it. Course in prisons they didn't plan on shootin too many men with them so they never got kicked too much. That thing would work me over - I'd let it do it for several years before I'd measured and cut the stock back and put rubber pad on it and that kind of helped. That was like carrying a young cannon around, course I was a lot younger then and real excited about deer hunting. I'd hunt pheasants a little, but deer mostly. With a farm you didn't have a lot of time to go out bird hunting - grouse, pheasants. We'd hunt a few rabbits once in a while.

The first year I got that 12 gauge, I picked it up the night before the day of deer hunting. It was guaranteed to be A-1. First thing in the morning I was up to my father-in-law's. I'd missed the gang; they had started up the hill, so I went down below the barns where the deer ran a little. Shore enough a bunch came up through with a couple of bucks in the bunch. I was all set for em with the ole gun all cocked and waitin for em. They got up right where I wanted em. I pulled the trigger and she just clicked. I worked her again and she just clicked. By then the deer were off and running. Come to find out that son of a gun had a broken fire pin in it. I was pretty hot! I jumped in the car and beat back down to that gun dealer's, got my old 16 gauge back while they were supposed to fix the 12 gauge. I never did get a deer that year. Didn't have a lot of time to hunt cause I was working then. Other than that I usually got a deer every year.

Got the 12 gauge back - Darlene was about twelve then just to give you an idea of time. I decided I had toted that thing enough, had a few bucks in my pocket ( I had started the equipment business.), so I bought me an Ithaca Deer Slayer, single shot 20 gauge. I was getting to the age where I with the time I had, I wasn't gonna be toting that iron pile around with me. I had just as much luck with that deer slayer, in fact when I went hunting for deer after that, it only took me a shot or two. Everybody would laugh, going out with a single shot shotgun. Unless a deer was right within range and you had a good shot - I had one that did a bunch a running and got excited, and I just wouldn't shoot. I got pretty good at deer hunting, even if I do say so. It only took me one or two shells a year and I'd have me a deer.

As time went on, deer hunting kind of got to be old stuff and I didn't enjoy it like I used to. I was getting busier in the business and couldn't really plan time to go out and hunt like I like to. For a year or two I carried a gun along in the truck. If I got time out on the road, I might stop, pop for an hour and then go on about my business. Just kind of wore off in the last several years. With running a business, I just kind of quit hunting altogether.

There was another guy used to go hunting with us name of Mallory. He was a guard at the Reformitory. He had a bunch of ole fox hounds. He'd like to fox hunt, and Stanley liked to, and they kind of got me itchy at it. It was good huntin. You didn't have to tromp around too much. The darn dogs did the running. You'd get out on a side hill somewhere were you could watch em run good, find you an old stump, shake the snow off it and sit, you and a buddy and listen to the dogs bark and run up and through the woods. After a while they'd circle a fox and bring it back. You'd get a pot shot or two at him, with luck you'd get him, or you speeded him up a little bit. The ole dogs would keep circling around. In about another hour, they'd be back again. As I got a little older, that was a good huntin to do. You'd sit and visit, smoke a cigarette or two, listen to the old dogs and told a few stories, and when the fox came by it was like a shootin gallery. If he was close, you'd take a shot or two, if not you'd wait till the next one. There was nothing very great about my hunting business as I remember, not at this time anyway.

Jim is stopping to feed the old dog and see what direction he ought to go next.

Back on the air again - got the dog fed, got me fed, listened to the local news and the world news, not much to excite me, nothin I could do about it anyway!

Kind of reminded me of Mallory. He always liked guns and had exotic things about em. One time we was fox hunting over on Dann Blvd. between Benjamin's and my granddad's property, which was my uncle's then, we were waiting for the dogs to come out and call it a day. Mallory had a fancy pistol he was showing us. He took a shot or two to a rock upon a fence post down the way a bit, Stanley Benjamin did, and he wanted to know if I wanted to try it out. Just as I drew a bead on it, one of those dogs ran out of the woods. (The ole thing had a hair trigger on it, and nobody had told me.) I come within an ace of shooting that dog. I didn't hit the rock, and I didn't hit the dog, but I sure got the men excited. I didn't take any second shots.

Then there was another time when mom and Uncle Lawrence (I always called him uncle cause he'd always been an uncle when I was up in my teens. It was no disrespect in any way. It was just always Uncle Lawrence, same as it had been by Uncle Gerald, or anybody. Just something you get in the habit of - no real good reason to change it.) Like I'd said he didn't know one end of a gun from another and didn't like em. He kind of put up with me and my guns. It was one of the tails that come with the hide when him and mom got married. It was kind of hard there on the farm to be out in the fields with the teams and around, you'd get all kinds of chances to shoot a woodchuck or a rabbit, or somethin'. There wasn't gonna be a big detriment if it was gone, and it would save a bunch of holes in the fields. It was kind of hard carrying a rifle cause they were kind of clumsy carrying around. I decided I modify one, and I did.

I took a single shot 22 and I modified it down to a pistol. I made a holster for it out of small leather there around the shop there at the farm. Got so I carried that. Course a single shot - I'd keep a few extra shells in my pocket. My uncle always kept an eye on me but he kind of trusted me but yet worried. I remember one spring/early summer we were going over back (near Pine Valley) to plant some potatoes. Lawrence's middle son, Delos, rode the potato planter on the business end of it. My Uncle Lawrence always drove the team, more experience and he could drive em straighter so you could cultivate, and so on, later. Us fellows would wander a little with the horses if we didn't keep em from wanderin. I think Delos had got his finger caught in the darn potato planter. Course you folks that aren't used to em, you had an liquid fertilizer tank up front if you wanted to fertilize, then there was a wood hopper -You'd dump in two or three bags of potatoes in that. On the back there was an old iron seat on a couple of angle irons. Your foot rest were down on a cover on either side, and up in the front you had a vee plow that kind of opened the furrow. Potatoes would drop down and these discs would cover em back up. There was a star wheel sort like a piece of pie in the middle. It run out of the edge of this potato hopper. The potatoes were cut up into pieces with what we called "one good eye in". That's where they'd sprout and start to grow from there. As you went this wheel was chain driven from the wheels on the ground, kind of cupped steel wheels. The star wheel would turn and pick up pieces of potato out of this hopper and go around, and as it came back down there was an opening where the potato would drop into the ground and would be covered. The fella's job in back was that if two pieces of potato came out in this pie shaped area, you'd grab it out and you threw it either left or right where you kept extra pieces of potato. If extras came out, you'd grab it, and if it came out blank you'd drop one in and you'd have uniform rows of potatoes bout every couple foot. I think that Delos had caught his finger or thumb in that darned star wheel of the potato planter. I don't know if I drew the short straw to go ride it with him. Beside the point! But anyway I rode and he drove and we went through the old pastures and woods and down the back fields there towards Catharine Creek and Pine Valley, got out in the field and got em planted alright - no problems. He had one horse on there, "Joe Horse"; that was a colt he'd raised, big ole long legged bay. Had more legs than he had brains. He wasn't exactly crazy, but he'd give you a rough time - probably tell you a story or two about that horse, if I keep at it. We got the potatoes planted and we was coming back up through the woods. I was riding on the back about that time, tired of walking. I'll be darned if a rabbit or two didn't dive out and run in front of the horses, spook ole Joe a little bit. I yanked that ole sawed off 22 out of its holster, turned around and planked the rabbit one, jumped up and the seat went out from under me, reached over and grabbed the rabbit. I know it sure wasn't markmanship - just good luck or the jiggle of the corn planter or the way the rabbit jumped. I'd got him right through the eyes. Pretty proud of that. Took it back to show Uncle Lawrence. Course in the mean time, he was gettin old Joe and the other horse calmed down. I'd kind of spooked them, they had reared in the air and started galloping. He was yelling Whoa and trying to keep a cud of tobacco in his mouth, stay up on the seat, get em stopped 'fore they took off and got out in the woods and tore the potato planter all to pieces. He wasn't too proud of that deal. He just kind of grunted and looked the other way, and the horses and potato planter went along. I come trotting behind with the rabbit by the ears, gun back in the holster. I never heard much discussion - I never got in trouble down there. Probably mom and he talked about it quite a bit, but I never heard too much about it. As long as I did my work, didn't lag much behind, there wasn't really anything much anybody could say.

Another time, while we're at it in my hunting mess, being a young fella and before I started driving a car, gettin interested in girls, I used to spend my afternoons ut in the woods crow hunting or something to get away. I wasn't a big fan of sitting and listening to baseball on the radio. Course back then, it was just baseball you heard. It wasn't sixteen months of sports and all of it back to back, and on top of each other like it is now days with TV.

Lawrence had an old hound and called him Bozo. He was kind of great for having a dog or two around. Stray dogs would come wandering in, and Bozo was one of em. He was just darn near toothless. Course he'd been there a few years and was bound to run around the fields. He liked to chase woodchucks and stuff. One time he got caught in the mowing machine and lost part of a hind foot, so he kind of had a hitch in his get-along, but he could still get around pretty good. Old Bozo went with me. We took the old milk truck and milk cans and went rattling over the back lanes into the back woods with my gun. I used to be pretty good at calling crows. I guess I couldn't much any more; I'd blow my teeth out. I'd call in some crows and I'd take a shot or two at em. I was watching up in the trees and all of a sudden I notice a pretty big bird up there. I got to lookin around, and darn, it was a big owl. Bigger than anything I'd ever seen before. I kind of figured in my mind that he was big enough, he could haul a chicken away. So I decided that maybe he hadn't ought to be hanging around in our country. I hauled off with the shot gun and give him a blast; he kind of flopped and kicked around, fell down part way in one of those ole pine trees. I give him another pepper, and he come on down, and just kicked and flopped a second on the ground and quit. I went over to look him over, and it sure was a big ole owl. Son of a gun, I was lookin him over, and he had lice on him big as kitchen match heads. I just kind of shook a couple of them off, got him by his feet, took him over to the truck, grabbed an old bailer twine - don't know why at that time, but I did - tied up one foot to the handle of a milk can, laid him on the truck. Old Bozo was sniffin of him, and so on, and I went about my business. Bozo stayed and watched the owl. I got down probably a tenth of my way down on into the woods working my way along; all of a once I heard Bozo start to bark, milk cans rattle and take on, so I went a leggin it back. That darn owl, I hadn't really killed him - I just kind of knocked him out. I didn't see where any pellets had hit him that bad. Bozo was up in the back of the truck trying to get the owl, and the owl was picking the hell out of him, flopping and kicking around. I finally got me a stick and settled that mess. That had finished our crow hunting for the day, went back up to the barns. I was pretty proud of that devil and I showed him to my cousins and hired boys.

Next day or two I got a chance to go to town with the milk truck. We hauled milk to Elmira every day. I found me a taxidermist. I took that owl in and I was gonna have him mounted. Taxidermist seen it, and man! He kind of swallowed and said "You know what you got?" I said an owl. He said no " a Great-Horned Owl" and it's against the law to shoot them, and there's a fine. I told him the story of what happened. He allowed as he could get fined and shut down too if he got caught, but he wouldn't try to work out something and mount it for me. That kind of pleased me, and I left it. It was gonna cost me twenty bucks, or something and for a young fellow, that was quite a bit of money but to me it was worth it. I picked him up about a month later; he'd done a real good job and I paid him off and I got home. Nobody seen me taking it to his place or taking it out. Course back on the farm getting caught with a Great-Horned Owl aren't that great, didn't worry me too much. I had that devil around, hanging upstairs in the hall and so on, all the time that I lived on the Middle Road, and after I got married to Marge. That owl went with me, and I had it till probably some time in the later 50's. Marge didn't think too much of that darned devil. I don't know whether Darlene remembers it or not but I still had it when she was a little girl up on the West Hill. Anyhow, there got to be a good reason Marge got rid of that devil - got moths or something. Anyway, he and I parted. Never got any more Great-Horned Owls after that.

Jim has stopped to think about things for a minute - he'll be back!

Bozo was Uncle Lawrence's dog. We hauled eggs and milk to Elmira seven days a week. That's where we got our best price, city delivery and delivered eggs to various grocery stores. Bozo always went to the house for breakfast and the barns with Uncle Lawrence. He went with the milk truck every day with Uncle Lawrence, and he cultivated corn with Uncle Lawrence, and chased cows with him. He went as kind of his shadow, unless somebody happen to have a truck then he might go with that truck. Come night, chores done, after supper, Uncle Lawrence liked to go to the parlor, sit down and read the paper a few minutes. He'd be in his bib overalls, read the paper about ten minutes, and like me, after about ten minutes of reading the paper he'd be snoozing. He'd start reading and then pretty soon his hands would be knockin his glasses sideways with the paper on his lap, and Bozo on the floor next to him, and he'd be snoring. Lots of nights I remember mom trying to get him awake around ten o'clock so he could get to bed to get his rest to start the next day. He'd say "yup, yup" never open his eyes and lay right there. I think he was semi-conscious but when he heard her voice he'd automatically say "yep". She'd get kind of disgusted. He might lay there till one or two o'clock in the morning, when Bozo would growl or something, then he'd go to bed.

Back then, it got to be where I was driving and going to dances and stuff. Course, I was blessed with hauling my kid sisters with me which will probably come out with some more stories later. This one time we'd come back. We all slept upstairs in the big ole farmhouse. We started to go around and up the front stairs and there laid Uncle Lawrence on the couch with the paper on him keeping him nice and warm, and his glasses cockeyed. I said something to him and he said "yep" and I went on upstairs. I told the girls I knew how to get him up and to bed, and I got me a firecracker. Snuck back out of the bedroom, down those front steps. Across from the stairway entrance to one side was the parlor and the other side was their bedroom. The other way around you could go from the parlor through a den through a big dining room and bathroom into their bedroom. He laid their with his hands under his bib overalls, his paper and stuff. It was a big ole house and a big hall and I let that firecracker go. I peeked down around the corner. It bellered like a cannon. I think he cleared that couch straight up about two foot before he ever begin to come out of prone position, glasses flying, paper rattling, and him trying to get his hands out of his bib overalls and his feet under him. Ole Bozo he'd reared in the air, and he didn't know whether to bark or run. He was all tangled up in Uncle Lawrence's feet. Uncle Lawrence started out through the parlor and into the den yelling "Phoebe, Phoebe - somebody's shot, somebody's shot - Phoebe!" You couldn't see into the bedroom, but ma probably came a'rearin out of the bedroom with covers flying. Hearing him coming and hearing the bang from another direction, she didn't know which way to go. Finally, by the sounds she must have met him out between the bedroom and the dining room. They all went a'rearin into the bedroom. Bout then she stuck her head out by the hall - course she knew who to collar - dressed me out a little - the girls were snickering and laughing. I was trying to keep a straight face and a calm voice and answer and apologize, this and that, and get my tail out of trouble fore it really got tore up. I ended up being ground for a week or having to clean every darn chicken coop in the place, or something. Things settled down. We quieted down and got to bed. Next day things were pretty quiet in the barn. Uncle Lawrence didn't have much to say. He never said a word about the firecracker or the ole dog. Got to the house for breakfast and he was about to leave with the milk. Ma let us know after he left that that was the proper thing to do. It sure got him up but she hadn't figured he ought to get up that way. But ya know, that kind of cured him for a long time. When she'd speak his ears would perk right up if it was bedtime, especially if us kids were out and might be coming back. Bozo -he laid in under the bed all that night. They didn't sleep much. He scratched fleas and crawled around and didn't dare leave the bedroom even if he wanted to. It was kind of a strong conversation about it, but it blew over after a while.

Ed Bly was a good friend of mine. He and his younger brother, Frank Jr. (We called him Park.) I went down on Maple Avenue one time hunting. They were kind of on the river flats south of Elmira, had hills and woods up behind em. Kind of a miserable day. We started out hunting. Park was behind. Park always had to eat something, or tie his shoes - never with the gang - always shouting distance behind. We were trudging along, damp and cold, Ed and I talking a little. Frank, their father, had gone on up ahead. He liked to hunt. He was gonna get in his place, and us guys would kind of move around a little and see what we could. Got way up on top of the damn hill. Park, he come a huffing and yelling at us. Wanted to know why us guys didn't wait - said a big bear come out after him. He dragged along, and evidently the darn bear had seen us and cut back, but then he started out across the trail and Park come trudging along. The bear run, and Park thought the bear was chasing him. Ed and I allowed that Park was pretty stupid cause he didn't shoot the bear cause it was big game season and he could have, or at least let us know in time and we could have went after him. That was kind of the end of hunting with Park. Ed and I hunted some after that but we left Park to do something else.

Didn't realize it at the time growing up, but did after my uncle died. I can understand why he chewed tobacco. I bet sometimes he torqued right down on it pretty good. The time he'd raised three boys and then too on another boy and a couple of girls. He'd got the six of us up and grown. He probably should have had a tape on things cause of his boys and I - the girls didn't give him too much gray hair. We sure let him know that he was a father, guardian and uncle and what have you. I'd have hated to been in his shoes but he made it all right and had a pretty good sense of humor. As I say, he might have torqued down on that ole Red Man once in a while, kind of verbally lay the law down a little but within a day you could kind of bend that law a bit and he'd keep quiet. As long as you didn't stub your toe again he'd wouldn't remind you of it.

Ralph, his youngest, was about nine months older than I am. Delos the next older was about three years older than that. Paul the oldest was about three years older than Delos. My sisters - next younger was three years younger than I. Barbara was three years younger than Joyce yet. We were all at an age where my uncle spent a lot of time raising kids, all at an age where we could have been brothers and sisters as well as real close cousins. Aunt Julia and Uncle Lawrence and mom and dad were always real close when Aunt Julia was alive and dad was.

I remember as a kid; I think it was '35 or '36 when Gone with the Wind first came out. That was big news, big movie, and one of the greatest things that ever happened to the movie industry. The movie came to Elmira and mom and Aunt Julia and two or three of the women that belonged to the home bureau decided they ought to get together and go. It was all planned. It happened in the winter, don't remember what time in the winter, but it was the dead of winter. Uncle Lawrence had an old '35 Chevy Sedan at that time, an ole black devil. Aunt Julia volunteered to drive. She picked up mom and a couple of the other ladies, I forget the names, that was gonna go with them. They packed their lunches and stuff cause then there wasn't the popcorn and stuff. It was a four or five hour movie without a break in it. There was coming up a bad storm. They predicted that we was gonna get a real whistler. It was snowing some; we had quite a bit of snow on the ground. They went to the movies, and darn it snowed a foot or two while they was into the movies. When they come out, there was no getting eight or nine miles back home back out in the country. Elmira was on south of Horseheads three/four miles, so they ended up staying with my family's relation down in Elmira that night. Finally the plows got the roads cleared up to where the next day there got home. That movie turned into quite an excursion for them. They were not gonna be going to any more movies in the middle of winter, and having a time like that again. Course they hadn't taken any extra clothing or extra provisions. Back then you just didn't travel too far very often and you didn't plan on staying overnight anywhere. It really caught them short.

My aunt had died in the middle thirties. They had a big family. I remember once dinner down there. Our family was always close - Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas. For years, there'd be a big family get-together one place or another. I remember one time down there before she got sick a big family gathering when I was about eleven. She was always a happy, go lucky woman, which was a good thing with three boys. They had some hired help too on the farm. It was no easy job for a farm woman back in those days - had to carry wood in to keep the wood stoves going, raising kids, helping out with the chickens and the chores and washing the milk pails, doing washing. It was no easy task; it sure was a lot different than today. I often think that if a woman got paid for the time she spent in the house, she'd be earning more than the man of the family did, and worked just as hard and never was recognized for it. It was just a trend of those times.

I remember Olllie Benjamin, Stanley Benjamin's mother. They were next door to us on the Ridge Road. She baked a lot of bread and stuff. As a kid you could set your clock on it, cause I set mine on it. At 9:30 every Tuesday morning, she'd pull the first bread out of the oven, and at 9:30 every Tuesday morning before I had to go to school, you could plan on my butt settin on her back porch. Man, I loved her home-made bread with butter and peanut butter on it. She bring it out steamin hot and slice it about inch and a half thick, a glass of milk and lord, it would just melt in your mouth. Wasn't any better eatin going - there isn't any better eatin going today! You can have all kinds of exotic dishes, and foods, and seafoods, and what have ya, but to me, nothing beat good ole country eatin.

Same way with my grandmother on my father's side. I never in all the time I was growing up as a kid when they lived on the farm or after they retired and moved to Horseheads - never caught her with an empty cookie crock. She always made big ole thick sugar cookies and big ole thick molasses cookies. Crock for each one, and there'd always be some in em. She had her experience and bringing up in it too. She raised five boys and two girls. I'll tell you - you take five boys, a husband, and a hired man or two and they can sure go through a mess of cookies. Girls might nibble a little, but they rarely could hold a candle to the fellas.

They had a big ole house. It was the second farm north of where I was brought up. Used to be a half-way house, back in the horse and buggy days between Horseheads and Odessa, New York. That would be about as far a person would go on the first day's trip out of Elmira and Horseheads if they was going to Odessa and Montour and Watkins Glen. They'd put up there overnight. The old house must have had nine or ten bedrooms in it. It had a big separate parlor which a lot of homes had in those days. You only went in on special occasions, funeral or something. They also had a family parlor which was a big thing with a big ole fireplace., a medium-sized dining room, and a great big kitchen that went full width of the house. It was about forty foot long, side to side in the house, and maybe twenty foot where the deepest cupboards, stove, table and chairs and stuff were, then out in that other part was a big ole pantry where grandma kept her cookie jars. There was a table in there and shelves plus all the stuff she kept in the cellar. In that kitchen was a big ole wood kitchen stove, with a warming oven on the top, water heater on the side. Out behind the kitchen was a wood shed full length of the house, and a good twenty feet deep the other way. That got filled every year, same as every farmer's wood shed did.

Every farmer looked after his trees. Those that were big enough or were startin to go bad were cut for timber. All the limbs and stuff were cut for firewood. Trees that grew too thick to each other were thinned out and best ones left to mature on up. Then there were hedge rows to be trimmed on out with brush in them. You'd trim out a hedge every four or five years. Time you trimmed out a couple of miles of hedge rows, you had enough wood - just a matter of getting that darned stuff down. Course there wasn't any chainsaws back then. Everything was an axe and a cross-cut saw. Later on I'll probably tell you a few things about that. I grew up swinging my share on one of them ole cross-cuts. In fact, I've got a couple/three out in my shop yet and some ole cant hooks, a log scale that I grew up exercising and working with throughout the years. I kind of saved em. Course I'm a great one for antique tools and tractors and farm equipment. I look at them and I appreciate them, and know how they work cause I had to work on them. Just bring back good memories. There was a lot of work with it and a lot of sweatin but you kind of forget that - you just remember the good times.

That house had a big ole cupboard or two on the bottom and upper cupboards. With five sons, grandma and granddad and five boys kept all kinds of bats and balls, crates, and what have ya. We had a lot of family reunions up there, whether it was the Fourth of July, we played ball and pitched horseshoes, or whether it was in the winter, the boys would get up over that wood shed there was a big dance hall, had a pump organ in it and so on. Us kids would get up there - some of us would box and some would pump the ole daylights out of that organ; some would roller skate up there. It was a real great time - get twelve/fourteen couples together and kids of all ages. I remember my father going up and helping granddad several times before a get-together. He'd go up and all him beef off a veal calf or something, or butcherin time. There's always plenty of meat and potatoes, and the other hum-drum stuff to go with it. You never lacked for something to eat, and it was always cooked just right. There was always lots of snacking for supper for any that would stay that night. Course, most of us were farm folks and had to head back wherever they come from.

I can remember there'd be the Hayes', VanDusen's and various ones would all come in. That was quite a trip for Hayes who would come twelve/fifteen miles, might be by horse, or Model T. Those from downtown Elmira, and some later on as the mode of travel got better, great aunts and uncles from Canton, Pennsylvania would be up. It was just a great time. In the summer the men would go out and walk around the fields after dinner and smoke their ole cigars, look at the crops and down in the cow barns at the cows. Granddad had a separate barn for his horses, 150 feet or so away from the cow barn. They'd go over there and talk about horses; he usually raised two/three colts every year. They'd talk about which one would outpull the other.

As kids you weren't allowed in on such things. You might sneak upstairs and peak down a hole in the hay shoot but you didn't get down in the real action. I remember we spied on em this one time and they got talkin about this ole deck horse, colt, how he'd outpull the others but he was kind of an outlaw and they were having a hard time breaking him. They ended up taking him and a pretty-good-sized bay colt out of their stalls out onto the big floor of the barn and tying their tails together, kind of seeing which one would outpull the other. Course you're gonna pull a horse's ears off before you pull his tail off. They aren't like a lot of other animals. I forget which horse outpulled the other cause by the time they got them quieted down and their tails undone, us fellas had decided we were due for better things. We beat it back up the road and down to the cow barn. I was the younger one of the bunch, cousins and other ones were more in on it than I was. I ran with the crowd, and you know if you run with the crowd and they get in trouble, even though you didn't do it, you're just as guilty as they are. We went down into the basement of the cow barn, picked a couple cows we thought would work pretty good, stood side to side and we tied their tail together and turned them out of the stanchens. Darn! They scratched and dug around a little bit too, and all at once granddad had a bob-tail cow. Well it's a good thing a cow don't bleed much in the tail. She had about a four-inch stub left. Bout then the men came along wanderin back up towards the wagon shed, heard the racket and came on in. Nobody got their tail peeled but they sure got some talkin to, sent to the house and so forth. I guess one or two of the older ones might have gotten grabbed by the shoulders and shook up a little. We went to the house with our tails between our legs. Granddad and uncles got a hold of the cows and got em back in the stanchens, and the one's bob tail doctored up. Grandma, ma and the aunts wondered how come all of a sudden they got blessed with a house full of kids, kind of pokin and jabbin and hang dog with each other. We finally told em, so when the men came in, the women were all primed. They let them have both barrels. They wanted to know how come the men could go down the horse barns and tie tails together and let the horses scratch and dig around, us young folks see it and do it to cows, and pop one's tail off then we should get reprimanded for it. It wasn't a bad day, but it was kind of solemn there for a while. Things warmed up later and turned out to be a good day.

It's hard to imagine how big that half-way house was. (click here for picture) There was front and back stairs. Kids could run up one way and another. Women, ya know your mother, aunts, grandmother, just couldn't keep track of. Back then, if ya got in trouble an uncle or an aunt could warm your britches just as well as your mom or dad could. When you got home from wherever you were and got back to your folks, why they'd warm them up again for ya. Usually a person back then acquired a real good conscience of understanding right and wrong, and thinkin about things to make sure it was gonna be right before you done it. It didn't take long after gettin your tail tore up a couple times to put things right into perspective. That great big ole house, they had a great time keepin track of us there.

One thing that was taboo in the front hall off the formal parlor and the big sitting room was a separate kind of hall that led into another downstairs bedroom and had a big crank up Victrol in it. We weren't supposed to mess with that. Once in a while us kids would give that thing a few twists and let her play. I suppose we scratch the needle back and forth across a few records. That was probably why weren't supposed to do it.

Another good thing that house being so big even though the cellar wasn't under all of it, it had a real big cellar in it. Old stone foundation walls, flagstone cellar. Granddad had his orchards, and they always raised a mess of potatoes, along with their apples, eggs and milk. You kind of lived on your potatoes, apples and eggs. Part of the egg and milk money paid for the mortgage, cow feed and hired help, bought you a new pair of shoes once in a while. We get down there in the cellar, folks would kind of lose track of us. Few of us would get down there - granddad had a great big potato grader. It would sort out may three/four different sizes of potatoes. Course you'd have great big bins of potatoes, go to the lower part the ceiling, maybe 12/15 square foot bins, three or four of them, then kind of an alley-way. They tried to sort out on bad days in the winter. You'd go down cellar and sort potatoes and apples. You tried to keep them sorted out a week or two ahead so that once a week they'd go to town with a wagon load of apples and potatoes, have orders at stores and individuals and sell em. Us kids would go down there and man, we'd mess up them potatoes. They might have some sorted that we'd scoop and skin em all to hell throw in that ole grader and course we cranked it faster than we were supposed to and that skinned up more. Time we'd get out of there we'd have good potatoes, bad potatoes and skinned potatoes all together, and maybe we'd dump a bushel or two of apples in along with them and they were all mixed in the potato bins. Nobody got tore up about it, but we sure got some shakin and talkin to about it, and threats - what was gonna happen if it ever happened again. It seems bout every time we got up there for a family get-together, it always happened. Always the same darn threats but we all lived through it. That was just another part of the memories of growin up up there.

That old house, it caught fire bout - golly I was in grade school yet, maybe twelve years old/thirteen, pretty up in grade school; went to a country grade school, one room school, had all the grades in one room. The only partition in it was a big water/coal furnace, kind of in the middle of the room toward the back a little bit. Other than that you heard everything that went on from the first grade to the fifth grade, which was good I think. You picked up on more things than you do today with separate grades and separate rooms. Yeah, there was always a little bit of horseplay but not too much. The ole country teachers, like I said, they could tear your tail up just as well as your mom or dad. The superintendent of schools, he only had a couple of country schools under him and he could visit around, and he could tear your trail up too. So, you kind of paid pretty much attention.

I remember the ole house burnin. It was right around recess, after lunch, and somebody come down the road and stopped and said the Dann house is on fire. I remember now how old I was. I was just past nine years old. It was late in the fall fore winter set in - I was nine years old that August. This happened in late October. It was a neighbor from up north that stopped at school. We'd seen the smoke. Course it was up over the hills and dales, mile and a half of where the school was. Everybody cut out of school - it was out for Chinese New Year's and everybody head for the fire. When they said it was the Dann house on fire, course we lived up the same direction just a couple houses/farms closer to the school. First thoughts I had, cause I was only nine years old cause that was the year I got to be in 4-H with a Holstein calf that I had showed at the fair ( I done good. I showed her in every class I could. I had an old pig too that showed, some vegetables. Just two/three days ahead of that I'd got the check from the County Fair Commission, 4-H Clubs - I had a whole sum of $37. I'll tell you that represented to me just about the same as a whole summer's paycheck. Back then when I worked for the farmers I'd get 75 cents a day and my dinner. It took an awful lot of days of saving up to make that kind of money. Needless to say, I was about the leader runnin up the road as a kid.

Got up over the first dip and you could see another kind of hill, smoke was heavier comin out of it, still looked in line with our home. We still had to go up a kind of flat and then another kind of hill then we begin to see the roof of my home. We saw it wasn't that so then we realized it was granddad's, so we kept right on a'goin. I stopped at home and my mother was out and my father was where he couldn't see too good yet. He could kind of stumble around with a cane and I helped mom get him into the old '34 Ford car. They drove on up as close as they could, back probably couple hundred foot away from the lanes that led into the house. I got on out, and as a typical kid I wasn't doin much damn good but was real pleased that it wasn't my money goin up in smoke. I helped with a few things.

Fire, big ole house, main dairy barns were only bout a hundred foot across the road from it. It was so hot that the fire departments came with their pumper trucks. They come wheezin in probably fifteen minutes or so out of the village after anybody notified the fire was goin, Regardless, it was so hot that they had to take the barn doors off the barn and set em up so the firemen could get behind them because the fire was so hot. Firemen couldn't even get around the pumpers to hook up the water and tankers, and pumping what water we could out of the farm wells. It even blew sparks way over to the horse barns that I talked about earlier, and landed in the upstairs of the hay mow and starting to catch them afire. Some of the neighbors would climb up with wet bags, others were throwing water up, and others were plugging window holes to keep the sparks out.

I remember one fella, Ed VanDuzer, one of the two brothers that lived on up the road. He was there, and he carried all of my aunt's china out of the house way out into the gardens out of the way. He carried two pieces to a time, one in each hand. By golly he got it all out and never cracked a piece. Here he'd come along with two cups, runnin along then he'd beat it back in the house and he'd come out with a plate and a saucer, or cup and a saucer. He got em all out.

My two uncles, Gerald and Donald, lived there at the time. Granddad and grandma had retired and moved to the village of Horseheads. My uncle, Don, was a pretty rugged fellow. He was taller than dad, just as rugged, but taller. I remember a couple of neighbors took a cedar chest, loaded with sheets and blankets and what have ya, yelled at him out of an upstairs window of the house. They were gonna throw it out, and by darn, he held his arms out and caught that thing right in his arms. Kind of teetered him but it never touched the ground. He got a good hold of it and carried that right on out. Lord, later somebody said something about it - I'll bet that cedar chest weighed 150/200 pounds. To catch that coming out of a window with your arms opened straight out and carry it on out - people when they get excited they do things that they normally couldn't.

The old house went to the ground. All that was left was the chimney, and a lot of good memories. Come to find out what had happened - one of the aunts had taken ashes out of the kitchen stove way out behind the wood shed and kind of dumped them along the edge of the building, and they weren't long dead. There was a few sparks in em that ignited some grass. The old wood shed and that ball room got bout burned off before anybody realized it was on fire. That kind of ended that old house. They ended up building a smaller, much smaller, double house for my two uncles to run the farms with.

Like I said kitchen went clean across the width of the house. You could enter it from either side. Granddad and the uncles always came in it off the porch on the north side. Just as you got in there was a great big old lead sink. That's where they always washed up and got ready for their meals, hung their clothes. Out just beyond that across the yard and driveway and up a little was a big ole wagon shed. As a kid I'd spend a lot of hours there. Course bein just two farms away, and being the kind of kid that I was (You could tell from previous conversation here that I was all boy. I think it took grandma, my mom and all my aunts just to keep me out of trouble.) I spent a lot of time out in that wagon shed. One of the biggest attractions was a old Reo truck that sat out there. It probably had two inches of dust and dirt all ground in it and on it cause it was where nobody touched it It made a great place for settin hens to get in and cluck and have nests and so forth. I got old enough so I could climb in that devil and chase the chickens squawking out of there, and move their eggs. I'd set in the seat of that old Reo and sputter and buzz and growl away for hours, yanking the steering wheel back and forth, kicking around on the pedals, moving the shifting lever. That kept me occupied a lot of hours. It had a wood cab on it, old hard rubber tires, chain drive.

I didn't know I'd done so much in my life as a kid, or was so long-winded. We got a few minutes to finish up with that old Reo truck. I probably drove that thing a million miles, hauled all kinds of potatoes and apples, calves and stuff in it. When I wasn't in that thing - it was about time I guess Uncle Don was out of high school and on the farm, Uncle Gerald was still in school - everything at that time yet was done with horses. That's why granddad had a big ole horse barn and he kept about three teams, couple/three spares, a mare with a foal around. He had enough to keep all his boys goin.

'Member ole Bess and Nell, they were his favorite, most dependable team, big ole, kind of dapple rones like. They weren't a bay and they weren't gray; they were in between with spots on. Granddad always kept his horses in good shape. If they were eatable, they were shaped to butcher. They were always good and fat, yet they were hard. You could work em all day and you weren't gonna tire em out or work up too big a lather on em. I can remember Uncle Don working with them and me going out and riding on old Bess. She was so darn broad that my feet stuck about straight out. I sit there on that sweaty horse's back with my legs under the straps so I wouldn't fall off and hang on top of the hames and rider her for hours out there plowing and dragging. They were a good, true team; they'd never balk or hedge at anything. Whenever you said 'get-up', things were gonna go; if you said 'whoa', they were stopping. I spent a lot of hours there riding horse with them, and kind of giving the women a breather from keeping an eye on me. Always got along great with Uncle Don. There'll be times and stories later of our working together. He was a big, rugged fella but yet he was gentle-natured and easy-going. I don't believe in all of my life time as long as Uncle Don lived, I never remember but once, possibly twice, that he ever got upset and raised his voice. I sure never seen him raise a hand to anybody, which I remember a couple/three times if it had been me I probably would have. I took after my dad a little bit. I was a little short-fused. In fact, I was quire short-fused. I would take about so much then I would top off quick and somebody better be out of arm's reach cause things were gonna be happening.

My father borrowed granddad's corn planter. They used to swap machines and stuff back and forth. Granddad wanted this 'Deck' horse/colt,; that was the spring they were breaking him, wanted him and Bess or Nellie on that corn planter to help break him in on that. I think it was Uncle Gerald, maybe it was one of the hired men, helped dad bring it down the road. Bess was plodding along like any good horse oughta. They got the planting done all that day; don't know how much they planted, it was a good day's work. Went to take the planter back. They were going up the road. Course everything was steel-wheeled so it rattled and clattered along. The old horse, she was just as normal and natural as can be. That 'Deck' horse, he was dancin and walkin sideways and stuff yet. I think I remember that corn field looked like a fella had been in the beer bottle when he planted it due to the darn fool horse. They got part-ways to granddad's. Between the two farms there was a culvert under the road with abutments up. Just as they were getting to one of them, a car went by, and this 'Deck' horse he took off. He started tearin around. They ended up straddling that gosh darn concrete sluice pipe abutment, slung their corn planter for about fifty foot. It took both men, one on the planter hangin on the lines and one runnin behind hangin on the tail end of the lines trying to hold em down. Course that's how they planted corn; that's why the field look so bad. It took about two men tryin to hold that one darn colt. They kind of dragged the pieces and the dancing horses on up to granddad's. I'll tell you - granddad no longer lent dad any corn planters. In fact, he wasn't going to lend him anything! That was a time granddad kind of torqued down on the old cigar and laid the law down to the boys. Consequently, when it came fall I remember granddad's ditch witch cutter didn't get to be used at our place.

I was kind of like my father. I was a little bit strong-willed and bull-headed. He was the same way. Bout that time he got rid of the old Fordson tractor and bought that C-Case, so we bought him a Dillinger Bear Cat ditch witch cutter. It was orange, bright orange as can be. Hooked that thing up - you could hear that thing for two miles, howlin and growlin away when you wound her up. That would eat corn just as fast as you could per her in. It was a big thing. Course granddad and the uncles swapped off labor but granddad's equipment wasn't used. His ditch witch cutter, nothing other than a couple teams of horses and the wagons. I can remember hearing that thing for several years. After dad got hurt, we sold the equipment. In the fall, you could tell way down to the ole school house every time they fired that thing up. Another load of corn would come in. You could hear that ole thing whinin, howlin and growlin away. It's funny cause since then I've never heard a ditch witch cutter that would stir up a whine like that on did.

Well, Jim has rinsed out his coffee cup and lit up another cigarette. The old dog is lookin at him like he's crazy since he's spent a couple of nights now at the counter talking to a machine.

Everybody in those days would get together (all the neighbors within a given area) and thrash their grains, helping out each other, same way with silo fillin. That was a time of year, that if you ever ate good, you were gonna eat good because every farmer's wife, every woman, tried to outdo the other on the cookin. Course they would help each other, or their daughters, and so on with what kids they had. Women would swap off, same as the men did on getting out meat, potatoes, and ham, gravy, homemade bread, pies and cakes. That was a working man's heaven come thrashin time and silo time. Each one had their own specialty. They would outdo the other. As a kid I always I'd even make a few trips home from the ole grade school just to have lunch with the men. Course back then the only bells you had was the old school bell the school marm rang. All during my years of grade school, we only had two teachers - Mabel Marsh and Delia Georgia. I'll tell you a little more later bout gettin away with murder with them. Man, that was sure good eatin. Everybody had hired men, usually a couple of teams on the wagons hauling. Most of the horses were kind of outlaw, one or the other in each team would be a balker, runaway, or something. The men would challenge each other as to how big a load they could haul into the barn and keep on the rigging or see how far up the silo they could bring a load, how many bushel of grain they could get off of one load. There's always a challenge there somewhere. Everything was done by hand

APRIL 2004: THIS IS ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH THE TAPES. DONNA WILL TRANSCRIBE THE REST NEXR WINTER!