The Army Air Corp changed to the United States Air Force and my two older brothers changed with it. They completed basic and advanced training: Orlie in mechanics and Bud in supply. Afterward they were given a leave before reporting to a duty station.
Orlie came home riding a Greyhound bus to Battle Lake and rode home with Dad. He enjoyed being free to do as he pleased but Orlie was frustrated too. He disliked farm work and his friends, those people he knew, were far away in Parker's Prairie and Evansville. We had one car, our old 1936 Ford and Dad took that to work. Last year Dad worked two days a week in Jim Hammond's Barbershop in Battle Lake. That became three days a week when Jim Hammond developed heart trouble. When Jim had to stop barbering Dad rented the shop and hired Leo Kemihagen as his second barber. Now Dad worked full time, six days a week in his own shop.
Orlie took the car one Sunday morning and caused my parents great frustration by not coming back until after four Monday afternoon. He never got the car again. Orlie took to driving our tricycle-model tractor, an M Farmal with two small wheels up front, wide open in high gear around the farm. Mom fretted about wasting gas. Dad just shook his head. After an early morning rain Orlie turned the corner toward Russ Lake, the front wheels slid, hit a stump, and sheared off. Dad had to pay the money he had saved for new car tires to the Herfindahl International Harvester people in Battle Lake to come out and fix it. Orlie was happy to be back in the service when he left two days later and never wrote until after Christmas.
A week later Bud came home with Dad and seemed to enjoy puttering around on the farm. Once or twice a week he went in with Dad and spent the day playing cribbage in the Barbershop window seat. The other thing he did was hunt rabbits and squirrels. He shot more than we could eat and kept Mom busy on the phone calling neighbors to give away the excess. When Bud left even Sherlock Holmes would have had a hard time tracking down a single un-shot shell on our place.
Bud's most memorable leave day was the day he wanted to take us over to Vining to visit Grandma and Grandpa Lystrom. Car tires were hard to find and high priced still. Dad was trying to limp along a little longer with five bald tread-showing tires before parting with the cash for five new tires. His saving for tires went to replace the tractor front-end. Harry had changed and patched those tires until all had boots in them. That morning Bud drove Dad to work, stayed to play a few games of cribbage, drove back for us, and we headed out. Halfway down Rabbit Run Road the front right tire went flat after crossing Stillman's runoff. We stopped to put on the spare but it was flat too. There in the road we patched both tubes and hand pumped them up again worrying about a car, but none came. Just a mile north past School District 115 school house on highway 78 where Mom went to school and north of the crossroad turn off to Gurie Church where Mom went to church the left rear tired went flat.
We stopped along the side of gravel road Highway 78, patched the tube, and hand pumped it up. Bud wanted to listen to radio music but Mother was afraid it would weaken the battery. While we worked Mom entertained us with stories about her schooldays, church stories, and telling about Uncle Carl Lystrom, grandpa's brother, fur buyer and farmer and his family that lived just east of the crossroads. Moving again toward Battle Lake the left front went flat almost to the top of Eagle Lake hill. Bud drove slowly on that flat, going thump-thump, to the top of Eagle Lake hill. While we patched and pumped up the tire we could see round and deep Eagle Lake to the east side of 78 and Middle Lake on the other. Mom told of her dad, Grandpa Fred Lystrom, swimming across Eagle Lake behind a rowboat. We saw two boats anchored along the point in our favorite Middle Lake fishing spot on the west side of 78.
After the tire was back on the car Mom wanted to go back home but Bud convinced her that we should go on. On top of the slow westward curve north past Star Lake turn off to Mom's cousin John Lystrom's resort the fourth tire went flat a hundred yards before the asphalt started from the crossroad. Bud let it roll on down to stop on top on the paving. While we patched and pumped we could watch the cars and trucks moving along the concrete Fergus Falls to Wadena Highway 210. No matter how much Bud argued Mother demanded he drive the remaining mile into Battle Lake to tell Dad about the tires before she would give him back the keys.
Dad gave Bud a note to Benny Benjston at the Phillips 66 station across from the Herfindahl poultry plant behind the barber shop a signed check. While Benny mounted five new tires we walked down the alley to look in the Ice House. We watched a horse-drawn roofed white wagon being loaded with ice blocks for delivery to home ice boxes. A man in white coveralls washed sawdust off ice blocks, lifted them with iron tongs, and put them in boxes with tops. After the ice wagon drove away Benny told us that there were still eleven iceboxes in town and the rest had switched to new electric refrigerators. We walked around the International Harvester yard looking at new and used farm equipment. A big fat man Alfred Herfindahl, that later was Bud's father-in-law for he married his daughter Evonne, came out and tried to sell us a new mowing machine for our repaired tractor. Then, feeling like rich folks Bud wrote in the amount on the check, handed it to Benny and we drove the nine miles east to Vining on 210 on brand new tires, even had a new spare in the trunk. We had a great visit with Grandma Carrie, Grandpa Fred, cousin Hardy Lavern Hawkinson, and Mom's sister Aunt Gladys Hawkinson. Uncle Hardy Hawkinson, who played the accordion, was off on his milk hauling route.
Less than a month later on a foggy and drizzling evening at the north side of Robinson corner on Rabbit Run Road Dad dodged a pickup truck in the middle of the road and hit a telephone pole. The radiator in the '36 Ford was crushed. Dad walked home. The pole broke off at the bottom and Dad said it would cost him more than thirty dollars for a new one. A ring for the operator and he told her he wanted, reported the broken pole, and talked to Shorty King at the Sinclair Garage in Battle Lake. He sipped coffee and finished his supper while waiting to find out when the wrecker left. Our ring, two shorts and a long came finally, a short yes-okay conversation, and Harry was wondering what it would cost for a new grill and front bumper while he walked back to his car. Harriet and I walked along with Dad to carry back the kerosene lantern. Dad carried our big black umbrella and we crowded around him trying to stay dry but on the way back I handled both. I enjoyed the patter of rain drops on the umbrella, small yellow ring of light over the grassy center of the road, and guiding though wet grass and weeds to dodge mud holes. A Sinclair garage man from Battle Lake with a wrecker hauled it and Dad into town. Two hours later Dad returned driving a green 1947 Ford with a little more than three thousand miles on it. "I got it on trial," Harry told us proudly and gave us a ride up to the mailbox and back, and the next day he bought it. He drove it everyday to work and it was the car I took my driving test in.
Addspeak: The 1936 Ford that I had known all my life was gone. My world was changing and Dad was talking about selling the farm and moving into town. Jim Hammond had suffered a stroke and Dad rented his barbershop and moved up to number one chair. He hired Leo Kemihagen for the second chair. Now Dad needed to barber everyday and no one can do two jobs full time.
During all of my ten years that car had been ours. I even survived a wreck in it and did drive it up to the Mail Box several times. My two older brothers both wanted to be pilots and failed. They said they could not stand enough G's, talked about going round-and-round in a machine and blacking out too early. Regardless, they were both off on twenty year Air Force careers happy to be away from farming.
R.E.A
Something new happened in the spring of 1947. Tall poles marched down the main road past district 114 school and all fourteen students were a buzz about them. Miss Christiansen, our teacher, told us it was an REA electric line and gave a short talk on the federal government's rural electric program. We watched a crew digging holes, setting poles, and stringing wire. It was the first time we had seen the U.S. federal government do anything except put our relatives in soldier uniforms and saw their name on some road signs. But, do this they did. The poles marched past the school lea
ving a pole in the yard 37 steps from the southwest corner of the building and right in the middle of our play area, the sand pit. We gained a pole with a metal canister on it that Miss Christiansen called a transformer that she claimed changed line electricity to what the school could use.
For two weeks nothing happened except the poles moved down the road and turned south to run toward the Runningen's place. On a misty and fogy morning two men in a blue pickup drove into the schoolyard with "Doak Wallens Electrician" on the doors. Their pickup truck had ladders on top, boxes in front of the bed, and rolls of wire in the back. Miss Christiansen called us together and sent us home for the day. We were happy to have the holiday and did not have to be told twice.
The next day, a cloudy overcast day, a wire stretched over to the school building and ran down to a round glass bubble with a turning wheel. Inside a gray box with a handle was on the west wall and a pair of twisted black wires ran up the wall and down the middle of the ceiling. Above us in two places a white ceramic square and from each one hung a black twisted wire. At the end of that wire was a yellow metal thing with a round piece of glass. Miss Christian turned on a switch on the wire and suddenly we had light. This government wire and light was a miracle, until teacher explained that the meter outside told how much electricity we used and how much the school board had to pay every month. When I got permission to go outside to the outhouse it surprised me that the cloakroom had a light too.
Two weeks later poles started moving down Rabbit Run Road and past out driveway. Wednesday the next week when I got home from school they had placed poles up beside our driveway to a transformer beside the house. Inside the same gray box with a handle and black twisted wires up the wall and across the ceiling hanging down a light. Also, each room had a place to plug things into the electric line. At night the light was bright and glaring. My father put on his hat while he read last week's newspaper and Mom her cookbook. We spread out on the floor with the battery radio blaring and finished assignments. The next day Dad brought home a radio, plugged it in, and we had radio anytime we wanted it. Gone were the battery radio days of one hour a day for Mom and Dad, one hour for us kids, and no radio while the battery was in town being recharged. The first night Mom left the radio and the light in the living room on all night. In fact Mom let the radio run for three days before she shut it off.
Exploring later I discovered a light and plug in the well house; three lights and a plug in the barn. The next weekend Dad and I went to an auction on the west edge of Ashby. Dad bought a box of junk with an old dusty radio lying on top. At home we tried it and it worked, Dad took it down in the barn, plugged it in, and we listened to it while we milked. A Farmal Cub tractor driving a belt had pumped our water and Dad purchased an electric motor to do it. It was the first time I ever saw electricity make anything other than light or sound.
Our world had changed quickly and would never be the same. Gas lanterns and kerosene lamps moved to the closet to gather dust. A year later at an auction a man next to Dad bid two-bits and bought four good-looking gas lanterns. Times had changed for everyone because of electricity and the oats in 1947 we sold brought the highest priced they had. I heard an old men tell Dad that the Depression was finally over for the farmer.