Tuples and Attributes

My Grandpa had many run-ins with motor vehicles over his life. Here’s the first of them:

(I’ve updated this post to add a few paragraphs to the original.)

Now I think I should neglect more of the more joyous experiences and pass to the more mundane. It was in the middle of the hot summer of 1911 in Nebraska that my father agreed to buy a car of the local garage. Three brothers owned the garage, and the agreement was that they were to teach me to drive. Every one as well as the horses knew well the meaning of “Gee and Haw”, but which was “Gee and Haw” on the driving wheel of a car? I was to go with one of the brothers to Omaha to pick up the car. I got to Tekamah well before train time; so one of the brothers agreed to take me out for a lesson in the demonstration car. It was one of those heavy lumbering Maxwells. The top was down and I was getting along famously, and the brother was paying no attention to me. When I neared a bridge, I could not remember which way was “Gee”. I soon found out and was proceeding to cross the bridge when the brother grabbed the wheel from me and tried to drive the car up a side road beside the creek. He got so close to the bank that the bank caved off and we rolled down the embankment. When it lighted bottom side up, I for some reason, was lying in the back seat, so the car did not touch me. When it rolled over right side up, I discovered I was lying on my back with the hind wheel sitting lengthwise on my stomach. I called to the brother and said “How are you, Bart?”. He said he thought that he was all right if I would come and help him. I told him that I did not think I was in a position to help anybody. I discovered that the car was leaning heavily to the opposite side from where I lay, and that the ground was muddy and soft above me. I dug a trench beside me, and wiggled out into it from under the wheel. When I got around to the other side, Bart was lying on his back with his head sticking out from under the front fender. He had dammed up the creek and the water was coming up around his head. In another minute he would have drowned. He had jumped out and tried to beat the car, but it had caught him in the bottom of the creek. I dug and ditched around him and crawled up on the bank and called for help. We got some logs and pried the car up, and took him to the hospital. He said that I had hurt him so badly that he was never able to work after that. He only had two broken ribs and some bruises. It was a good excuse for him. The car was not damaged in the least.

I called father on the phone and told father what had happened. He said for me to not get a car if I could not drive it. I bought a pair of overalls and a shirt and cleaned the mud off my shoes, and was ready by train time to go to Omaha. Another of the brothers went with me to Omaha. By night I was driving the new car alone. The brothers had three similar accidents that week. Neither of the other cars were worth hauling away.

The next day after I got the car home, father wanted me to teach him to drive. He said, “Take it over in the oat stubble and teach me to drive”. I told him that the road was the place to learn to drive. He insisted. He wanted to be sure and not run off into a creek. The ground was soft and the car would barely go except in low gear. It was a hot day, and after many attempts, and me getting out many times to crank it after it had stalled, and he was wringing wet with sweat, he said, “Take this thing out of here and get it home if you can”.

That was the last of his driving till nearly fall when I would leave for school. I had to take him every place he went with it. Sabbath was an especially boring day to me, as he would nearly always want me to take him some place to visit some of his buddies. He finally consented to me teaching him to drive on the road. Three times he would have run off from a bridge if I had not been watching and grabbed the wheel. That sounds crazy as any boy now knows how to turn the wheel. But then it was a hard split-second decision as to which was to turn the wheel.

A selection of pics from the last few days:

A few more vignettes about life on the farm:

One incident occurred when I was about 16 that always stood out in my memory. We were allowed to have a 22 rifle (nothing larger) and could shoot crows, blue-jays, rats, ground squirrels and other pests, but not rabbits of other birds. I well remember my fright when I threw a stone and killed a rabbit. I hurriedly buried it, so father never knew of it. The spring in question, we were told we could have the rest of a given week to finish putting in the “small grain”. Irvin had it figured out that if we crowded a little on quitting time, we could get done by Friday noon. At quitting time (at noon) we had a little less than an hour yet to finish, so we decided to finish before we quit. We were almost an hour late when we arrived home with our four horse teams dragging the disc, cedar and harrow in tandem. As soon as we arrived home, father met us and we saw that he was angry because we were late. Nothing was said. While we were eating dinner, Irvin broached the subject that we wanted to go to a country store, five miles distant, and get some shells for our rifles. Father said, “No sir, you will be lucky if you both do not get a licking”. That ended our dinner. I do not know where Irvin went, but I had measured a place previously for a retreat under the corn crib. There was an opening between the floor joist and the sill that was 6 by 18-1/2 inches. I knew that no one else could get through it, so I crawled back under the crib to the far end where I was completely out of sight. I intended to stay there till I died or was promised that I would not get a licking. (Father says he never licked me, but my memory serves me differently.) After about an hour, I heard mother calling, but I did not answer. I finally heard her and Irvin walking past the crib. I did not stir. Finally she called my name and said we could go to the store and get the shells as we had wanted. I came out and we went and got the shells as promised.

One spot that furnishes pleasant memories is the “Old swimming hole”. One branch of Silver Creek heads on our farm. At the origin of the spring, a hole had been gouged out, about 8 by 20 feet and three feet deep, by run-off water in the spring rains. We built a toboggan slide into it, and many were the welcome splashes when our toboggan dived into the water. The toboggan slide was a 12 inch board with cleats on the edges to keep the toboggan from jumping off. The toboggan was a board 8 by 24 inches, with spools securely fastened for wheels. The ride down the slide was almost breathtaking, and was great fun, if the toboggan did not jump the cleats and spill us off on the bank. After we had thus enjoyed our fun for a time, we had to hunt a clean pool of water to wash off before we could put our clothes on. But fun, Yes!

Some stories from when he was around 10:

When I was about 10 years old we had gone to campmeeting in the lumber wagon. It was a trip of about 40 miles. We started in the evening and went part way, and slept under the wagon over night. The horses were tied to the wagon and kept walking around so we could not sleep much. The next day we went on to the campsite. It was a new and novel experience to me, so I was well keyed up by the trip. After we arrived home from the campmeeting and I had gone to bed, I roused up dreaming that I had wandered away from our tent and had gone to sleep in some one else’s tent. I crawled out under what I thought was the edge of the tent, and was quite amazed that I could not reach the ground with my feet. I then gave a big jump, and on the way down I awoke. I had been asleep in the upstairs of our house. I had gotten up and opened the screen and sat on the windowsill of the open window, and jumped out, and landed on the ground below. I had cleared some boxes that were immediately under the window, so did not get hurt. Before I could fully realize what had happened, father was out beside me asking what in the world I thought I was doing.

I was about 10 years old when a rather amusing incident happened. I had gone after the cows in the early morning. The sun had not yet risen, and I was still a bit groggy with sleep. The cows were more than a half mile from the barns. When I got to where the cows were, my dog Mage, that I had taken along to help bring the cows home, ran up on a straw stack and began to bark viciously. I said to Mage, “sick em”. He came down and crawled under a fence and went down into an oat field of ripening grain. I followed him. He soon stopped and began barking more viciously at something in front of him that looked like a ball of fur. His barks became continuously weaker, and I finally recognized the smell, and realized what the ball of fur was. We both ran back to the pasture, and as soon as the cows got a whiff of us, they ran to the barns as fast as they could go. We could not come into the same yard with them, but had to crawl under the fence in back of the barn. When I got to the house, Mother would not let me in the house. I passed out the joke that I had met up with an old friend. Mother brought me out some clothes into which I changed in the barn. I had my breakfast served to me out in the yard, but it tasted terrible. Scrubbing with soap did not seem to help much. I buried my clothes in moist earth, and after three days they were odor free. Since that experience I have been wary of skunks. Bathing helped a little, but it was several days before I was odor free.

I was about nine or ten when an incident happened that caused me a great amount of grief. It was a rainy day, and I took a parasol with me to get the cows. The cows were somewhat undecided as to whether they wanted to stay and eat more grass or go to the barn. I found that by raising the parasol quickly and giving a loud whosh, the cows would run rapidly towards the barn. As we were nearing a narrow lane, I raised the umbrella with a loud whosh; and one of the cows that was behind could not get past the rest soon enough to suit her, and in her fright she jumped into the fence. She tore the wires loose from the posts, and the top wire hung to her just above the front legs. It was a new galvanized wire and did not break, and she ran with it sawing a gash into her breast. It cut clear through her brisket, so I could see through to the insides of the cow. She finally stopped and I pulled the wire loose from her body. I went to the house and called father. He went to look at the cow and went to the house and got a gun and killed her. She was a big cow, and fat. Father refused to butcher her. It was hot weather and 12 miles to town by team, a 5 hour trip, to get ice, and father was afraid the meat would spoil before it could be sufficiently cooled. I cried myself to sleep for several nights after the incident. The only consolation I could think of was that I would some day grow up and work and earn money to pay for the cow, that I had caused to die. I did not get a licking, but I think that I never, till now, told the reason why the cow jumped into the fence.

Grandpa’s adventures with some goats:

At this point I feel the urge to reminds of some of the lighter happy side of a boy’s life. This incident began in the spring of 1899, I think. After the crops had been planted, father took a trip to northern Indiana to his boyhood stomping ground. He planned to stay until it was time to start to cultivate the corn. He judged the length of his stay by how fast the corn was growing in northern Indiana. He finally decided it was time for him to start home. The nearer home he got, he realized the corn developed faster than where he was making his judgment. The nearer he got to home the more worried he got, as it was past time to begin cultivating the corn. I had never cultivated, but Irvin had. We got the cultivators out of storage and put them together, and started to cultivating. By the time he got home, all of the corn was cultivated except a 20 acre field. Father was so happy about it that he said we could take a vacation, and he would finish the cultivating the first time over. (He was so slow getting his 20 acres cultivated that we could never get it clean enough to get a full crop.) We went on the train to Calhoun, a town 40 miles to the south. While there, we became enamored by some young goats that were for sale. We bought a Billy and Nanny and took them home. The baggage car of the train accepted them as passengers for a fee of 25 cents each. When we got to our home town of Tekamah, Billy had eaten the tag off of Nanny’s neck band, so we had a bit of trouble to claim her, but the baggage man was finally persuaded to let us have Nanny also.

We had great fun training and playing with Billy and Nanny. We made harnesses for them, and one of our prize pictures is of us driving them hitched to our play wagon pulling a cousin of ours. All went well for a time, but Billy finally disagreed with that kind of fun, and would turn around and start to fight. We discovered that Billy was mortally afraid of getting his beautiful wool caught in barb wire, so we controlled him for a time longer with a piece of barb wire for a whip, but that soon failed to control him, and driving our team of goats became a lost art. We had a board fence enclosing the yard around the house. There was a flat board on top of the fence. The goats had great fun in walking on top of that fence. All went well unless Billy and Nanny happened to be walking in opposite directions on the fence and happened to meet. Billy always solved the problem by giving Nanny a bump and knocking her off on the ground. He would look proudly down at her and give his accustomed snicker of triumph, that only a goat possesses. One stunt of fun was to take Billy by the horns and let him push us backwards. All went well until he got us going so fast backwards that we would fall on our back. That was always an occasion for his accustomed snicker. That fun finally gave out as Billy got too rough in pushing us. One of his happy moments was to catch us stooping over. When we were not watching, he would run from behind and knock us sprawling. That was always a signal for his snicker as he watched us get up. If we happened to leave a flat board standing up to the roof of the buildings, they were sure to spy it and go up on the roof and walk around. They would walk to the lower row of shingles and look down unconcerned. We were always afraid that Billy would catch Nanny on the lower row of shingles and give her a bunt. The roof of the buildings are too steep for a person to walk on in Nebraska.

Billy finally became such a nuisance, that we had to shut him in the yard with the other farm animals. The only way to keep him in the yard was to put a string of barb wire on top of the fence. He never got over being afraid of barb wire. He was an Angora goat with long fleecy wool, he was always careful to not get it caught in any entangling material.

For some reason Billy always had a great sense of revenge for anyone or anything that would disturb his beautiful wool. If he brushed a fence or any object, he would violently retaliate. Sometimes we would come home and find a gate smashed to splinters, and the livestock scattered all over the place. Once I saw him when a fence post had evidently shattered his serenity. A nail in the post had evidently pulled his wool. He began butting the post, gently at first, but more violently as he proceeded, until blood was dripping off the end of his nose. I would drive him away, but he would return to get revenge on the post for disturbing his beautiful fleece.

One fall we had more corn that enough to fill the cribs, and we made a temporary crib beside the yard where Billy was confined. He had evidently caught his fleece on a nail or something on the crib of corn. He began battering it, and when he hit it, a few kernels of corn would drop out. Evidently the corn dropping out enraged him all the more. He would stop and eat every kernel of it. He had access to all the corn he could eat, so he was not hungry, but it evidently avenged him to eat it. I do not know how long he battered and ate. The next morning he did not come out to the feeding of the stock. I found him lying down on his side (unnatural position) in one of the sheds. I went up to him and said “Hello Billy”. He raised his head and gave out a moan, and put his head back down. In about two hours he was dead. He had evidently eaten so much corn for revenge that it had killed him. There was no mourning at his passing, but he received an honorable burial.

There are a number of things about this set of stories that I particularly like: the off-hand reference to his father’s powder horn, his efforts to avoid stepping in cow piles, and especially his casual remark about nearly getting killed: “The next incident was relatively unimportant, but just falls into the regular pattern of a boy’s life.”

About two years after the cow incident, we had had a Fourth of July celebration at our house. It was customary for the neighbors to gather at some home for the celebration. After the celebration, there were many burned out Roman candles lying around. My brother conceived the idea that we could continue the celebration by cutting the Roman candle shells in half, plugging one end, fill it with powder from father’s powder horn, and put a fire-cracker fuse in the other end. And then he said, “Come on Elmer and light them”.

The first one went off with a big bang and left quite a hole in the ground. The second one was balky, and would not light properly. I was huddled down over it blowing on it, when it went off in my face. I went rolling backwards down the hill. My whole face was torn and bleeding. For some unaccountable reason my eyes were closed when it exploded, otherwise it would have surely blinded me. I had grains of powder embedded in my eyelashes for years before they were finally absorbed. I had one big powder grain embedded in the tip of my nose. It persisted for many years. For some reason people ask me of late, “What is the matter with the tip of your nose”. It is only the remains of the powder grain. I do not know why it has not been noticed till recently.

In the fall of the year, we naturally had to rise long before daylight to do the chores. I judge that I was about 14 when my next mishap occurred. Our barn was composed of two parts. The front side of the barn had a row of stalls for the horses and the back side a row for the cows. Father cared for the horses and we boys milked the cows. Father had a lantern for his side of the barn, but was afraid to trust us with a lantern, so we had to do the best we could in milking the cows in the dark. I always had an exact place for my milk-stool, so I could find it in the dark. I always put my stool on top of the first cow to get the exact location of the cows, so to better judge where the cow piles were likely to be, so I could step around them.

On this particular morning, when I put my stool on top of the first cow, I went with a bang back against the back of the barn. My father called, “What’s the matter in there?”. I told him that the cow had kicked me. He said, “There are no cows in there. I turned the cows out last night and put horses in there”. I was laid up for a few days with the same hip that went bad after I had diphtheria. Needless to say that mother insisted that we have a lantern for our side of the barn.

The next incident was relatively unimportant, but just falls into the regular pattern of a boy’s life. I judge that I was about 17 when this incident occurred. We boys had largely taken over the responsibility of the work on the farm. Father seldom went to the field. Father promised we boys that if we would stay home and work until we were 21 and help him pay for the farms, that no one else would ever share in them. When we would get the farm work caught up and there was work available that would bring in cash, we could have whatever was earned that day.

It was on a hot afternoon that we were to drive teams for the road grader. We were getting our teams all hitched together tandem, and I was down behind my team getting them hitched up, when one horse gave a kick at another horse that was nosing her, and hit me in the head instead of the other horse. It knocked me senseless. I suppose father felt of my head to see if it was bashed in, and then carried me over and laid me in a wagon box that was beside the road. It was with a horror that I later awakened and saw the teams and grader far down the road. My $1.50 that I was to get for the work of the afternoon had vanished with the kick from Fanny. Later I was able to stand up, and a load of hay came along, I climbed up on the load and went home, and went to bed. The next morning, I was none the worse for the incident.

Two more episodes as related by my grandfather:

During the winter of 1891-92 a scourge of diphtheria came to our rural community. Most of the cases were light. My little brother, Willie, came down with it. Within four days he was dead. In a few days I came down with it. After three days the doctor said there was no hope for me and that I would soon be gone. Mother had watched my brother, Willie, die; so she got a long hat-pin, sterilized it in the fire, and dug at my throat by the hour, and kept it open so I could breathe. Finally the crusting in my throat began to subside, and I was out of danger. For about three months after I was able to be out of bed, I could not walk, because, as they said “It had settled in my legs”. I think, instead, it was because of the horrible medicine that the doctor had prescribed that my legs could not be used. To this day, I sometimes feel that same pain in my hip. Very few boys are indebted to their mother two times for their life.

During the winter of 1896, my grandmother Blue had had an accident. She had fallen through a board while riding in a hayrack, and fell through onto the hard road. Soon she was on her death bed, evidently from a kinked intestine. Mother was staying with her, caring for her, and on the day of my next accident, father had gone to town on business.

My elder brother, Irvin, had gone for the cows, to bring them home to be milked. When he got back, he said that one of the cows had a little calf and I would have to go help him bring them home. It was less than a mile from home. On the way I had picked up some ears of corn from the cornfield to entice the cow to follow along. I threw her an ear of corn but she did not seem to see it, so I stooped down to pick it up. The cow jumped at me and knocked me over on my back. She hooked me with her sharp horns. Her horns passed through my coat on one side of the row of buttons, and came out on the other side of the row of buttons. She threw me up on top of her head and ran bellering with me on top of her head to the top of the hill about 25 rods from her calf.

I fell off there on top of the hill and fell into a dead-furrow (the name for the place in a plowed field where the dirt has been thrown both ways and left a ditch). I straightened out in the dead-furrow and each time the cow tried to hook me, she would run her nose in the ground. After several attempts to hook me, and having stepped on my legs a couple of times, she left me and went back to her calf. I got up and was so scared that I, seemingly, could not make one leg move past the other. However, when I finally realized where I was, I had gotten clear to the valley, and my brother was trying hard to catch up with me from the creek bank where he had taken refuge.

First I noticed my cap was missing. (It was several days before I got courage to go look for it.) Then I noticed that my coat was torn nearly the full length of the front on each side of the buttons. I asked my brother if he thought mother would give me a licking for getting my coat torn. My coat was new, made from the back of an old coat father had worn out. How I wish that I had preserved that coat to this day. Mother had no more gray cloth like the coat, so she patched it by putting in pieces of strong cloth, brown on one side and red on the other.

Father later went after the cow and calf, and tied her in the barn, and cut off the ends of her horns. I can still feel the thrill of joy that we boys had in getting a long pole and jabbing the cow by the hour making her beller. I had no injuries except a bruised chest and some bruises on my legs. Needless to say, mother did not lick me.

My mom’s father, Elmer Cashes Blue, was born on December 28, 1886 in Tekamah, Nebraska. Sometime in the 1970s, he put down on paper many of the stories he had told us while we were young. His tales of growing up tell us just how different life was then:

“Just for the novelty of it, I am writing down some of the unusual experiences of my life. It seems that I have always been accident prone. For some reason I have always escaped without serious injury. I cannot account for the repeated times that I have been in danger of getting badly hurt, sometimes not so serious as others. I think that I am rather of the cautious calculating kind. But it seems to continue to happen. My mother always took comfort in her philosophy of my escapades. She would always say that the Lord had some important work that he wanted me to do.

“I, of course, have no recollection of my first accident, but can only repeat it as my mother told me. She had me tied in the highchair. She went into the pantry to get some flour for a neighbor. I evidently rocked the highchair and tipped it over onto the cook stove. Mother heard me scream, but thought that I was hollering because I was left alone. When she came, I was lying with my head on the stove. The knob of the stove was the place where I lighted. It burned a hole in my head clear to the skull, but did not break through. It was many, many years before it finally healed. As late as 20 years ago the scar has cracked open and bled. Of late years I have had no difficulty, except the hair has receded so I cannot keep the scar covered.

“My second episode, I think I can remember, but my parents say that I was too young to remember it. They say I was only about two years old. Father was putting straw on the strawberry plants to protect them for the winter. He had a wagon load of straw. I was pulling strings out of the straw from under the hayrack. He started the team and heard me squawk. He ran around the wagon, and I was lying on my back immediately behind the hind wheel. He knew the wheel had passed over me. He carried me to the house and told mother. She would not believe it could be possible until two years later.

“It was almost two years from that time that I was in the corn field, helping what I could in picking the corn. I had gotten tired and gotten up on the wagon on top of the full load of corn. Father was not so good at husking corn as mother, so we all went along to help husk the corn. I got up on the front of the load and lost my balance and fell off in front of the wagon wheel. It frightened the horses when I hit the doubletrees on the way down, and they started up fast. Father grabbed the lines to keep the hind wheel from passing over me, but he was too late and only backed the wagon back over me. Mother ran around the wagon and pulled me out. The wheels had passed over my stomach and pushed me down into the soft dirt so the wheel track was visible on each side of where I had lain. They took me to the house and put me to bed. It was 12 miles to town to a doctor, so they decided to wait till morning and see what developed. By morning I had forgotten all about it, and came out into the kitchen with my usual “whippee” as I jumped over the door sill. I have never felt any bad effects from either of these episodes.”

These stories about the hayrack must have been especially poignant as his own grandmother had died while riding on one when a board broke and she fell through and died.

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