CHAPTER 1

The Early Years

It was late afternoon in 1934, and I was three. I had been watching Mother'shelper, Mrs. Derry, darning socks by the kitchen window. This was beforethe invention of more durable synthetic fibers. A widow whose only moneysource was her monthly thirty dollars of county old-age assistance, Mrs. Derryneeded the work.

It suddenly turned dark, and Mrs. Derry turned on the lights to see herwork. We heard distant rolling thunder and saw flashes of lightning. Motherrushed from window to window, visibly worried.

I do not recall if there was a damaging windstorm with pelting rain ormore Kansas dust caught in the downpour (this was Dust Bowl time). Perhapsit was only a light spring shower, but it was the apprehension that fixed theevent in my mind.

Another early memory: From that kitchen window or our fenceddooryard, I would watch Dad or his "hired man" on the tractor, a gray FarmallRegular, pulling a wagon to or from the feedlot. If only I were big enough todrive it! The Regular's rear steel wheels seemed huge and had wide, pointedlugs for traction. What caught my attention was a contraption on each rearwheel that scraped off the feedlot mud as the wheel turned, essential after thespring thaw.

A more exciting memory: Dad wheeling up the drive on a new, bright-redFarmall F-20, successor to that gray Regular. It was 1936. McCormick Deeringhad introduced this new line of rubber-tired tractors in 1932 but had notchanged the color. When Dad was ready to trade, McCormick Deering hadannounced the F-20's color would shift to red, but the tractor on the dealer'sfloor was gray. He bought the tractor on the condition it be repainted red.Red was and still is my favorite color.

It was that same year that Dad rented cropland on the other side of thecreek from a retired neighbor, Andy Thiel. From that I carry two visions,exciting because this was a new family venture more than a mile away. Thefirst is Thiel sitting in a small shed, shelling the end kernels off selected ears ofcorn. Dad told me Thiel had chosen the larger ears, thinking the larger seedsfrom larger ears would yield a larger crop.

Thiel was either not aware or had not yet accepted college research thatcorn yield was not related to size of the seed or size of the ear from which itcame. Yields could be increased, though, by using hybrids, seeds from a crossbetween two parent lines, each selected and self-mated several generationsto fix desirable traits. Though Dad did not explain all that to me, I knew heplanned to purchase some hybrid seed and that he would need to convinceThiel of its merits; in a crop-share lease, the landlord provided half the seed.

My second vision is following Dad and a "CCC field man" (the newCommodity Credit Corporation) as they measured the width of a field to beplanted with corn near the Thiel farmstead. The field man carried a ring ofwire stakes and a chain. He planted a stake just inside the gate and, while Dadheld the chain's end at that stake, the man extended the chain and plantedanother stake, and that process continued across the field.

As we returned from the far end, he pulled and counted the stakes andthen calculated the distance. From that and the field's length, he calculatedthe acreage. It was all part of the Depression's New Deal farm program ofFranklin Roosevelt and Henry Wallace, with some crop price protection orsubsidy from the CCC.

The 1930s

The first half of the 1930s was not an easy time in rural America. There hadbeen a farm depression in the early twenties, and then good times, explodingland values, and optimism. But the 1929 stock market crash and other eventstook the wind out of the sails for most families. The Dow Jones IndustrialAverage, above 300 in early 1929, had dropped to 80 or below by 1932.Mortgage holders foreclosed on farms, and small-town businesses and banksfailed. A loaf of bread cost eight cents, a gallon of gas ten cents, and a new carabout five hundred dollars.

My father once told about needing to sell some corn in early 1929 so hecould pay off a bank note. His father-in-law offered to loan him the moneyto pay the note and suggested Dad hold the corn for a higher price. Withindays, the corn price had dropped by half.

My dad's younger brother was married in Omaha on December 10, 1932.His wife once told me that when they returned later that day to buy groceriesat Atlantic's Nord's store, their check was no good. Two of Atlantic's threebanks had closed; her savings were in one, his in the other. Though one of thebanks would eventually reopen and the newlyweds retrieved enough moneyto buy a bedroom set, that day they had only the little cash in their pockets.

Then it would turn dry across the corn belt and the plains. My parents,as Dad described, "dried out in '34, hailed out in '35, and dried out again in'36." That they would maintain their optimism and good spirits and see toit that my sister and I would have a reasonably comfortable and secure earlylife deserves our respect. We were oblivious to the economic severity of thetime.

In later years I would spend an evening among farm retirees in theBrookings, South Dakota, area, listening to their reminiscences of the early1930s, when they were raising families and trying to make ends meet. Theyprimarily recalled the happy times: "Sure we were poor, and our mortgagepayments were overdue, but we were all in the same boat. We could gatherwith our neighbors, play cards, and still enjoy life. We got along."

Friday the Thirteenth

It was Friday, March 13, 1931, in our modest farm home overlookingTroublesome Creek, seven miles northeast of Atlantic. My mother, attendedby Dr. Agnes Wilder, had been lifted onto the dining room table and wasexperiencing a very difficult birth.

It was likely cold; March in Iowa is that. Odds are there were severalinches of snow on the ground, but that was not recorded. At least the roadwas not blocked with drifts, or Dr. Wilder and her driver/houseman wouldnot have made it.

Dr. Wilder had practiced with her physician father and continued afterhis death in a solo...