Now & Then : ‘Back then’ was not necessarily a serene, trouble free life
Posted on Wednesday, May 7, 2008
At times certain people have entertained a picture of rural life in by-gone days as a slowpaced, sunny serene way of life, with each day predictably pleasant, each scene picturesque and peaceful, and where Old Mr. McDonald sang E-I-EI-O as he enjoyed his quaint, stress-free lifestyle in the company of his happy, well-adjusted, trouble-free cows, horses, pigs, ducks and sheep.
But then there is real life on the farm, where things often get out of whack, where in an instant a routine situation can turn into a crisis. My Dad tells the story of such a situation from the early 1940 s, when he was building a new barn on our farm north of Pea Ridge. In those years, people on the farms commonly lived self-reliant, self-sufficient lives, using mostly home-grown resources to survive. For example, on our farm we had several acres of woods, with many big oak trees. So, to obtain the lumber to build the new barn, shall we go buy lumber in town ? No, we'll cut the logs here on the farm, haul them over the hill to the sawmill, and bring back planks and beams for a barn, chicken houses and other farm buildings.
At that time, Lewis Patterson, our neighbor to the east, operated a sawmill on his farm, with help from his son, Ray Patterson, and another partner. Today, we might recognize that farm's location on Patterson Road northeast of Pea Ridge, where the road turns sharply to the east. Lewis Patterson's barn still stands on that corner today. Quite often, back then, the neighbors would join in for a major project like building a barn, swapping labor and possibly taking on such specialized tasks as sawing lumber. The Pattersons helped Dad fell the large oak trees, using a twoman cross-cut saw. With a man at each end of the long, thin saw blade, the saw's sharp teeth were drawn back and forth against the tree trunk until it was sliced through. It was real work, but the cutting went faster than might be supposed, and watching skilled workers on the saw was to see fluid, flowing motion combined with flying white wood chips, accompanied by the ebb and flow of the saw's rhythmic slicing sounds, and the fresh scent of new-sawn oak wood. In a way, it was a right pleasant thing compared to the raucous, earsplitting whine of today's chain saws !
From the felled trees, logs were then cut to measured lengths, and Dad would use a grappling hook and chains to roll the logs up an incline onto the wagon. Then the horses would pull the loaded wagon across our field in the Otter Creek bottoms, through a dry creek bed that lies in the back part of the farm, and then would make the steep pull out of the creek bed and up and over the east hill. At the sawmill site, the logs were rolled off the wagon and stacked near the track that would carry each log into the mill's huge motor-driven saw. This was a trip that Dad repeated over and over as the many logs were worked.
On the wagon path where the horses and wagon moved down into the dry creek bed was a steep incline. The horses had to step sure-footedly, holding back the heavy wagon, while the driver did his best to help a little by leaning on the wagon's brake lever. Dad had negotiated this incline routinely many times, but not this time. This time, as the horses eased the wagon down the steep slope, the heavy logs shifted loose, sliding forward and pressing hard against the horses' backsides, stretching the harness traces taut almost to the breaking point. The horses were trapped in the squeeze, and the traces were too tight to unhitch. In a moment, a routine move had turned into a doozy of a predicament. The heavy logs were trying to shorten and compress two valuable horses. People talk about getting into tight spots. This was a tight spot !
I've never been a quick thinker in tight spots, and I'm not sure I could have handled this predicament well. Of course I was just a baby then. Would I try to saw the tongue off the wagon ? No saw at hand. Drive the pin out of the double tree ? No hammer ! Cut the heavy leather traces ? Drastically destructive ! But the horses are in a bad way, and time's awasting !!
Well, Dad was finally able to unbuckle the collars from around the horses' necks, allowing them to ease forward free of the harness. So, the predicament was resolved - except for time lost, and except for reloading and securing the logs, harnessing and hitching the horses, and laboring up and over the hill to the sawmill, again. So went the rustic serenity of rural life in the good old days ! As country philosopher Mae Kennedy McCord used to say back then on her radio show," Life gets hectic sometimes, don't it ?"
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