In today’s stories my Grandpa has just graduated college and taken on adult responsibilities.
I finished college in the spring of 1914, at the age of 27. I well knew that the responsibility of a man that could support a wife was to get married. Since I was 21 before I had a chance to get much schooling, I knew that I had to occupy every minute diligently, if I were to get through college before I became an old man. Naturally I felt that I had to be too busy with my education to waste time courting a girl. I suppose there were many wonderful girls in college with me, but I was too busy.
Two weeks after I graduated from college, I married Mabel J. McConnell. She says that she knew me much better than I knew her. I can hardly imagine why. I found that married life was more relaxing than the strenuous life that I had felt I was forced to follow. Life began to take on a semblance of happiness, and I finally consented that life was not meant to be all drudgery. It was a bit difficult to adjust to a new way of thinking, but I finally decided it was not necessary to take life so seriously as I had in the past. I was elected to be principal of the Nebraska Academy. All seemed to go well with my new found freedom.
If you, like me when I first read this, wonder how on earth he managed to marry someone two weeks after graduation when he didn’t date in college, it’s because he didn’t meet her at college. My grandma taught school in Nebraska and she boarded with my grandpa’s parents. So he saw her on the occasions he was home from school.
After this I seemed to be freed from any serious threats of accidents. Possibly this was decreed by fate, as my family and responsibility increased greatly. I began to arise with “might and main” to my responsibility.
In the summer of 1920 an incident happened that might have been serious. I was heavily engaged in farming. I had bought a boar to head my herd of profitable hogs. I have never known of a hog being so intelligent as he was. He seemed to thoroughly understand the orders that I gave him. He would come from far away at his given call. If I wanted to move him from one pen to another, he seemed to know exactly what I wished him to do. If I wanted to lend him to a neighbor, I would call him, open the gate, and he would follow me wherever I led the way. When I got to the desired place, I would remove the staples in the fence, raise the fence and call to him and he would crawl under the wire. When the neighbor was through with him, I would call him in the pasture, raise the fence, and lead him home.
One rainy day, he took a notion to go to the neighbors on his own choosing. I do not know how he got out of the pen, but I spied him going up the hill to the west. I shouted at him to come home. He turned and shook his head and started on. I shouted at him again and gave orders for him to come home. Again he recognized me with a shake of his head. After that he paid no attention to my shouts, but went on his way. I grabbed a pitchfork and started after him. He stayed at the side of the road and went over the top of the hill outside of a deep cut. I went through the cut and came out ahead of him on the opposite side of the hill. He reluctantly turned and started home. To be sure, he was chonking violently and frothing at the mouth, but I took no warning from it. We crossed the top of the hill and well down the other side, when he slowed up a bit. I was tickeling [sic] his tail a bit with the pitchfork, but was not hurting him at all. Soon he turned on me and came after me with his mouth open. I well knew what that meant. I slammed the pitchfork into his head below the eyes, clear to the skull. I could hear the tines of the fork grate back and forth on his skull. I was unable to hold him back, but each time he gave a lunge I would jump backwards enough to keep erect. He finally gave up, and turned and started for home. He kept frothing and chonking more violently than ever, but did not attack me again. I got him in the yard, and called the hired men, and we roped him and cut off his tusks clear down the jaw bone. If I had fallen down, I do not think I would be here to tell the story on him. I have seen a boar hit a dog in the leg with his tusk, and see the dog’s leg hang loosely, so the dog would have to be killed. After that if I met him alone in the yard and did not have a club, I would beat him to the fence. Any club seemed to be the same to him as a pitchfork. Of course he was more or less harmless without his tusks, but I did not fancy having him knock me down and froth over me. We always kept his tusks well trimmed. He seemed to never pay and attention to the hired men, but I was marked as his enemy.
Tuples and Attributes 