The project down on the farm…

 Note: the following I present as a short story. It is an excerpt out of a novel I am writing.

 

(Copyright)

By Tony Walther

Not long after little Jack Labrew returned with his mother from the funeral at San Jose, he was surprised one Saturday morning to discover that he would be taking another trip, only this time the whole family was going along.

Pierre had received a call from his brother Andr`e near Modesto, nearly a three-hour drive to the north of Tuleville. Andr`e Labrew eked out a living for his family, a wife and three boys, on a small dairy farm. He needed some help on a project. Pierre had managed to swing a few days off.

Everyone piled into the Studebaker, and they set out through what was a thick blanket of tule fog, not at all unusual in the fall in the San Joaquin Valley. They drove down the road and turned onto Highway 99. This was in the time before the freeway had been put in. The highway was three lanes, one for each direction of travel and the middle lane for passing. Visibility was poor with the fog. Not more than a mile up the highway, Pierre was lucky to see the flashlight of the highway patrolman warning him to slow down. There had been a wreck in the center lane. Two cars had hit head on. As the patrolman waved them by, the Labrew family slowly passed the scene of the mangled cars and little Jack saw a blanket with several lumps under it on the side of the road, with feet sticking out of one end. One foot was missing a shoe.

“What’s that?,” he asked.

“It’s dead people,” his sister Marie answered dryly.

Little Jack was wide-eyed.

“That’s why they call it bloody 99,” Pierre commented, exhaling a low whistle.

“Goodness,” said Marjorie. “It looks like a whole family died.”

Remy just shook his head.

As they proceeded north, the fog began to lift. The scenery was flat farm fields with a solitary oak tree here and there. Many of the fields had brown cotton plants, the harvest having now been finished. There were some fields of browned corn stalks, and one field had green vines with orange pumpkins scattered throughout.

“There’s some punkins for Jack-o’-lanterns,” Pierre commented.

“Why do you say ‘punkin’ when you know it’s supposed to be ‘pumpkin’ with a p,” Marjorie asked in scornful reproval.

“Because that’s what everyone called them on the farm,” Pierre answered. The same conversation had taken place before and probably would occur again. Saying punkin instead of pumpkin and using the phrase “he don’t” instead of “he doesn’t” were Pierre’s only two concessions to an otherwise dependable habit of using correct English, as a college-educated man would be expected to do. He did it on purpose, a kind of personal quirk or idiosyncrasy.

Marjorie pulled out the built-in ashtray on the dash and lit a Lucky Strike cigarette. Jack noticed that his mother smoked on car trips, during little rest breaks at home, and sometimes late at night. The smell of the smoke wafting through the car was not unpleasant to him – through the years, it would become the smell of travel. His father did not smoke. Actually, Pierre had attempted to take up the practice at a younger age when he was trying to be the worldly reporter, but that was part of his young adventurous life long past.

Eventually, the open farm fields gave way to grape vineyards and then commercial yards with farm machinery and the signs of industry on both sides of the highway with metal buildings and smokestacks belching black smoke.

“We’re getting into the outskirts of Raisin City,” Pierre said.

“What are outskirts?” Jack asked, his mind conjuring pictures of women dressed in skirts.

“It’s the edge of town,” his father answered.

And then there were tall buildings on both sides of the road as they entered downtown. Back in those days highway traffic proceeded block by block through town, stopping at signal lights at each intersection. As young as Jack was, he could remember that his family had lived in San Francisco, and he recognized that Raisin City, although not really like that city, was more like it than their new home town of Tuleville.

And so did his mother, looking around somewhat approvingly. “The Raisin City Gazette would certainly pay more than the Tuleville Times,” Marjorie said.

“I imagine they would,” is all Pierre said in return.

“This place is kind of interesting,” remarked Marie.

“I didn’t realize Raisin City was so big,” Remy offered.

Eventually the buildings started to thin out and they were back out into the country passing groves of fig trees on either side of the highway. They crossed the dry Merced River bed on a long bridge.

“With the dams they’ve put in, these rivers have dried up,” Pierre remarked.

“This is such dry, dull country,” Marie noted, shaking her head.

And it was a strange land, with an abundance of crops and yet that parched look to it.

They passed through several small bergs, one like the other, always the farm implement dealers on the edge of town.

Some time later, they passed old trailer camps and decrepit houses and some old junked cars.

And finally they came to a long bridge with sculptures of lion heads at its approaches and old lamps along its railings.

“The old Lions Bridge,” remarked Pierre. “We’re coming into Modesto.”

Marjorie raised her eyebrows and her mind thought back so many decades when she was a little girl walking to school alone from the poor side of town over the bridge. And then she thought back to when she was a teenager in the 1920s and had eloped to Reno, Nevada with the fun-loving and adventurous Pierre, a couple young and in love and a whole life ahead of them, a life that would surely lead way beyond the confines of their rural hometown.

As they drove through town, Pierre remarked: “Modesto is getting bigger all the time.”

“But it’s still Modesto,” Marjorie noted.

Pierre turned off the highway and headed out west on a country lane called Blue Gum Avenue. As they passed each farmstead, he would remark about the family who lived there or used to live there. Marjorie would nod in a half smile.

Finally they passed a large modern dairy farm, an operation more like a factory than a farm. There was what was called a “milking parlor”, a modern single-story elongated concrete block structure with windows and with a long line of cows bunched up in a chute to enter. The farm house was an actually quite modest single-story affair, with stucco walls with ivy growing up the sides. After it were several smaller cabins.

“The Giovonies have done quite well for themselves,” remarked Pierre, in reference to his boyhood neighbors, an Italian-Swiss family who had settled there after his family had already arrived.

“Yes, I see they provide housing for their hired help. I feel sorry for the milkers, though. What a dreary life it must be,” Marjorie responded.

The Giovoni dairy had a workman-like clean appearance, even if the milked cows returned to a corral where they would lie down on a pile of manure with its internal heat sending up steam, seeking the heat on a cold and damp day. It was the custom in this area of California to feed the milking string hay and keep them in corrals, using the rest of the land to grow alfalfa for hay and to grow corn for harvest and fermentation into a feed called ensilage.

And then the fences began to sag a little and up ahead was an old hay barn with a hole in the roof. And there was a two-story farm house almost lost in overgrown trees and vines. A long lane led down to it. It was the Andr`e Labrew farm. The place where Pierre had grown up, inherited half of, but then left, after selling his half to his brother.

The Pierre Labrew family Studebaker pulled into the long lane between two old palm trees and two wooden and weathered fence posts.

And in a scene like the television show The Waltons, which had not been thought of yet, the Andr`e Labrew family came out onto the screened porch and onto the steps at the side of the house. Andr`e Labrew was dressed in a chambray blue work shirt and work pants and sucking on a pipe and grinning at the same time, exposing stained and rotted teeth. His wife, Amanda, stood there tall and erect and wearing an apron, and the eldest boy, Jeremiah, was even taller and dressed in bib overalls, while the middle brother, Tom, was much shorter and bespectacled and dressed in a grey sweater and baggy pants and work shoes, and the youngest, Bartholomew, smiled widely and was dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and jeans and tennis shoes.

“Oh, why does that poor boy have to wear those God-awful bib overalls?” said Marjorie, shaking her head.

“That’s what we always wore on the farm,” answered Pierre.

“Yes, and I didn’t like them then either,” his wife said in quick retort.

The family dog, Sadie Lou, a dachshund, came running out of the house between Amanda’s feet, excited and barking all the way.

“Sadie Lou thinks she’s people,” Amanda said with a loving twinkle in her eye.

And that evening they all sat around an oak dining table in high-backed country-type chairs, eating a pot roast and mashed potatoes and gravy, and little Jack labrew volunteered: “you sure have good food here Aunt Amanda!”

“We don’t eat like this every night – I’m glad we have company,” chirped in Bartholomew.

Jack always thought that his Uncle Andr`e’s house was funny built. Everyone entered through the side. A large open front porch and entrance was never used as a main entry. It led out into a yard that was not immediately accessible to the lane that led up to the home. One entered into the house through the side porch and came into a kitchen that had a window at the sink that overlooked a pasture. The kitchen had a small, old fashioned refrigerator and a Formica-topped kitchen table used for breakfast and even the other meals on days when there was no company. The house was divided in the middle by a staircase at the main entrance, with a long and narrow room on one side that served as the dining and living rooms and a bathroom and bedroom on the other side, plus two bedrooms upstairs. The house had a musty smell that was not displeasing but instead intriguing to Jack. Often there was the smell of coffee and cigarette smoke too. Andr`e smoked his pipe and sometimes cigars and Amanda nearly chain smoked cigarettes, and the oldest boy smoked as well, and so did the middle boy, although not officially yet.

There was talk at the dinner table of Andr`e’s project. He wanted to spruce things up for the coming Halloween, to include fixing up the old hay wagon for hay rides, maybe converting an old cabin on the farm into a haunted house and making it so little kids could wander out through a field and pick their own pumpkins.

“I read in Farmers Magazine about how some farmers are doing things like this to make extra money,” Andr`e said in his quiet voice, giving off a grin that exposed those rotting teeth.

“You have a hard enough time keeping up with the work as it is,” remarked Amanda.

Jack looked around, fascinated by the long and narrow living room. He liked the old tall and slender china hutch in the corner with its curved glass doors. And then he noticed that there was a drawer just under the top of the dinner table at which he sat.

“What is this drawer for Aunt Amanda?,” he asked.

“Why that’s where we keep our good silverware,” she answered.

Everything was so different and so intriguing to him in this old farm house. There was the faded wallpaper, the aroma of dinner on the table mixed in with the mustiness in the old house and tobacco smoke. He even enjoyed sitting on the high-backed chair at the dinner table.

That night he slept upstairs in a bedroom with a ceiling slanted with the contour of the roof. It was pitch black once the lights were turned off. There were no street lights.

Morning came and the sun shone in the bedroom window and young Jack found himself alone, but he heard voices downstairs.

He wandered down the stairway, turned the corner and found the living room and dining room empty. Everyone was in the kitchen sitting at a table. The tobacco smoke was now more pungent than ever and in fact it wafted visibly through the house like low clouds.

“Well sleepy head, you finally got up – we’ve already milked the cows and done our chores and are finishing breakfast,” Aunt Amanda said, but with a smile and good natured tone.

“Hey city slicker,” chimed in the youngest boy Bartholomew.

City slicker. Jack had never heard that term before. But he didn’t care for it.

“Hush Bartholomew,” Amanda said. “Jack, you go ahead and sit down and I’ll make you some fresh pancakes.”

At that, Pierre Labrew rose from the table and said: “well Andr`e, we might as well get to work.”

Jack found himself nearly alone at the kitchen table. The other children of Andr`e and Amanda Labrew, except Jeremiah, had left to get dressed for school. Jack’s brother and sister were leaving with Jeremiah, who would be taking them with him to tour the junior college he was attending in town. Amanda and Marjorie lingered at the table, both smoking cigarettes.

Amanda looked over at the now ancient small box of an appliance that served as her refrigerator and remarked: “I wished I could get Andr`e to buy us a new and bigger refrigerator, but he’s so tight with the money and the milk checks aren’t getting any bigger.”

“Don’t feel bad Amanda, Pierre is the same way with money, and believe me, we’re not getting rich from his work at the newspaper.”

Amanda blew out some smoke and looked into space and then said: “All those years ago when you and Pierre left the farm I thought his idea was to go to college and make a better living.”

“So did I. He did go to college,” Marjorie said, in a wistful tone.

“Oh, we could do better here if we upgraded our dairy from grade B to grade A like the  Giovonies did, but you have to borrow a lot of money to do that and neither Andr`e nor I want to do that,” Amanda said, adding, “oh, I wouldn’t necessarily be against it, but frankly I’m not sure Andr`e would be up to it. We’re not getting any younger. And the boys don’t seem to be interested in farming.”

Jack did not pay attention to the talk. He gulped down his pancakes and rushed outside to find out what his dad and Uncle were doing.

He found his dad out by the barn painting the wheels of an old hay wagon with blue paint.

His uncle Andr`e was nailing down a new board on the wagon bed, a pipe stuck in his mouth.

“Whaddaya guys doin?” asked Jack.

“Oh we’re fixing up this old wagon so kids can go for hay rides on Halloween,” his uncle said in a quiet drawl.

His father and his uncle had to explain to him what a hay ride was.

“Remember old man Reevers out by Mendota?” drawled Andr`e.

“Oh yes. We both worked for him getting his hay in back in 1925,” as I recall, Pierre answered

“Yeah, well he wanted to use this wagon. He still kept a couple of mules to work his place. But he died last week.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Pierre said. “What happened to his hay wagon?”

“Oh, I guess one of the wheels broke and he couldn’t find a replacement – not very many wagon wheels for sale these days,” Andr`e said, with that grin that exposed his browned and decaying teeth.

“Looks like the Giovonies are doing pretty well,” Pierre remarked.

‘Yeah, they sure don’t mind spending money. They just bought another brand new tractor. I’ve lost count of how many they have now,” Andr`e drawled.

“How may cows are they milking?” asked Pierre.

“Oh, I think about 600 now,” Andr`e answered, adding, “they keep adding cows and I’m starting to drop them.” Andr`e was now milking 30 cows, down from his high several years before of 60.

Pierre looked surprised. “So, you’re getting out of the dairy business?”

“There’s no money in selling milk for butter and cheese anymore, Pierre. The only way to stay in business is to go grade A for fresh milk like the Giovonies. But I don’t have the money for that.”

Pierre nodded his head and went back to work painting the wagon wheels.

Jack watched the two work and it seemed as if they were moving at a snail’s pace.

He eventually went off to explore the barn.

On one side there was the long and narrow section where the cows had been milked, but now empty, with the concrete floor and gutter down the middle, where the manure was raked and washed to the outside, and the wooden slats called stanchions where the cows put their necks through to eat at the loose hay while they were being milked. The wooden slats were locked around their necks to keep them still.

In the middle there was a tall stack of baled hay that was supposed to be pure alfalfa, but which had much foxtail, a danger to cows, in it, and on the other side another long and narrow section with some pens where small calves were kept. And hanging on beams above were some old and decaying horse collars and saddles.

The odor of the Alfalfa hay was sweet.

Jack was always an imaginative child. The old saddles and the hay and the cows outside made him think of cowboy movies. He pretended he was a cowboy. The horse he had to imagine.

Later, he heard his Aunt Amanda, and he went back to the wagon where his dad and uncle had been working.

“Andr`e, it was on the radio, the price of pumpkins has dropped to nothing. No one is going to pay to come out here to get a jack-o’-lanterns, and it would probably cost more to advertise for the thing than it would get us.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” Andr`e drawled.

“Well, I’d still like to finish painting this wagon,” Pierre said at last.

“You’re always willing to put a lot of effort into anything that goes nowhere,” Marjorie remarked and turned around and walked to the house.

Amanda followed.