BLOGS

Hi Dan, I knew it. What. That I would end up being sorry I didn’t go to the Buzz Martin Concert and dance Sat.

Hi I hear it was good and well attended. Had we known you were going to be there we would have gone over though we were tired out from digging tansy. That little field below the trailer next to the line fence sure had a heck of a lot, otherwise the rest of the farm doesn’t have near what we used to pull for years.

One day last week when we got home from Tillamook we discovered we had a fresh cow just a little ways below the road. Three other cows were hovering around trying to play MOTHER also. We found out it was a good thing they were all there.

When Ernie went down to get the calf with a pickup, he saw a coyote nearby and one of the extra cows was chasing it away. Had he know that when he left the yard he would have taken a gun along. He could have shot right from the pickup seat.

Another man that used to rent his farm where Ernie and I lived was a young Swiss fellow by the name of Frank Aufdermauer. He had a young hired man and a young hired girl, those two later married.

One day Frank went completely nuts. I don’t know what all he did but one thing I remember was that went up the road to where the Shrieber’s lived (Walt Caspell lives there now) and threw a milk bucket through a widow.

Anyway the law took him to the jail. In the room he was in there was a wood heater and some wood. He stoked the heater full until it was red hot and stacked the rest of the wood around it. He wasn’t a citizen so the Swiss Consul in Portland was notified. He took things in hand.

By then Frank was over his spell and was willing to go back to Switzerland to live. The law wanted to handcuff him on the train but the Swiss consul said no, that he would be personally responsible for him.

He let him go alone. Grandpa visited him in Switzerland. By then he was married and had a couple boys. Frank said he had never had another spell like that.

All he could figure out was that the hired man and his girl friend put something in his soup. For supper the day he went “nuts” he had a big bowl of soup. The two didn’t eat any of it. Just why they did this I don’t know but evidently they hoped to marry and rent the farm. They didn’t get it. Mr. Compton liked Frank and he rented it to someone else.

I kinda goofed last week and wrote you only one letter. (maybe you are sick of them). I’ve got to do some deep hard thinking as I am almost out of things to write about.

To get back to the Frank Aufdermauer, before he had hired help Grandma used to invite him down for Sunday dinner. Boy did us kids love to see him come. He always brought a huge Hershey bar.

Back in those days which was the 20s, there weren’t many milking machines. If you didn’t have the kids help with hand milking you had to have a hired man.

On Jimmy Trents place a man by the name of Joe Rust used to live. He had around 80 cows and 3-4 hired men. Lorenz Suter worked there awhile. Even had their own chickens then for meat and eggs. Thee hired men would have loved eggs for breakfast but Mrs. Rust didn’t cook any. One day they went to the store and bought some and put them in the hens nests in the chicken house. She got the hint and cooked them after that.

The old barn on that place was on the same side of the highway about across the Jenck road from the present one. The hay stacks got on fire in the center. They were able to milk in there for nearly a week. They’d turn cows out as fast as they were milked.

Then one time just after the last cow was out, it exploded into flames. They put up some outdoor stanchions until another barn was built. It ran parallel to the highway and just below the one Jimmy has now. This Joe Rust was a first cousin of Grandpa.

Barn fires are scary. I saw the one burn on the Hushbeck place just past Walt Caspells. Another one burned on the Silva place.

About 17 cows burned up. They had to lock the owner in a shed (Archie Long) to keep him from going into and save the cows. It was burning all over and would have lost his life.

The one on Lee Goods place collapsed in the wind and 10-11 cows were killed. This was before Goods lived there.

It wasn’t until those two Swiss ladies last week said some numbers in Swiss that I remembered that you said the numbers backwards, as John always insisted. It’s like one and twenty, two and twenty instead of twenty one twenty, etc

God bless you Dan You’ll be hearing from me again.

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