Foreword
By Sandor Slomovits
I met Ray Schairer in 1977, when I was learning to play the "bones" from his friend, Percy Danforth. (More on that later.) Our paths crossed occasionally for the next twenty-five years. Then in the fall of 2002 I called him and asked if he would help me with a woodworking project. I wanted to build a music stand for my young daughter, Emily, who was learning to play the violin. I had neither the tools, nor the experience to make one by myself. Ray immediately agreed to help me and out of the process of working together on that project grew one of the warmest, most special friendships of my life. Ray was 80 years old at the time, I was 53 and our friendship had elements of both a father-son and a mentor-student relationship. I began visiting him weekly and we'd work in his shop, making wooden "bones" and other woodworking projects.
Soon after I started working with Ray, I learned that he was in a writing group at the Chelsea Retirement Community where he was living. I asked him to show me the stories he was writing. The book you hold in your hands now are those stories. They are Ray's memories of one year of his childhood.
But first, a very brief biography of Ray and his wife Jane.
They met in the summer of 1946 on a blind date that lasted a week. Jane had been hearing about Ray for some time from her dad, Carl Schlosser, a retired farmer who worked at the Dexter Cooperative, a grain elevator and mill. "He would come home and tell me about this fellow that came in to have feed ground for his cattle, but I wasn't really interested. I'd grown up on a farm. I knew what farming was like and what an unreliable kind of occupation it can be as far as steady income is concerned."
Not that she was waiting for a husband to support her. She was teaching at a rural school near Chelsea, similar to the one she had attended as a child. In the evenings and summers she took classes at Michigan State Normal College, now Eastern Michigan University, to complete her college degree.
Ray and Jane finally met when Jane and her friend, Helen Sias, planned a vacation together to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Helen, a fellow teacher at the rural school had been, fifteen years earlier, Jane's "beginner" or kindergarten teacher, and was now also studying at the Normal College.
At the same time that the two women were making their plans, Ray and Helen's brother Harold, neighbors who sometimes helped each other with farming tasks, were planning a similar vacation.
Somehow, by now neither Ray nor Jane remember how, it was decided they would all go together.
A radical decision for the times, Jane recalls. "I was living on campus that summer and called home to explain to my mother that there had been a change in plans and the four of us would be going together. I still remember her saying, 'Well, you ought to be old enough to know what you're doing.'"
The week long vacation was uneventful and Ray and Jane didn't see each other for nearly a year after, when Ray suddenly showed up at Jane's parents' house one spring evening. She opened the door and greeted him with, "Ray Schairer, what are you doing here?"
Jane's dad was sitting nearby in a rocking chair that night and later told her many times, "I'd have never come back if I'd have been him." But come back he did and they dated for the next three and a half years. Early on in their courtship Ray informed Jane, "I just want you to know that I really don't ever plan on getting married, so if that is what you have in mind, we might as well call it quits right now."
Now, more than sixty years later, they both still laugh with delight at the memory. "Those were fighting words," Jane says. "And I took the challenge!" They married in September of 1950 and built a home around the corner from the house Ray grew up in, where his parents were still living.
Ray, the third generation of Schairers to farm land near the corner of Jackson and Parker roads west of Ann Arbor, continued running the 120-acre family farm along with his dad. They planted grains, milked cattle, raised sheep and chickens – doing what used to be called general farming.
Jane meanwhile, was still teaching in the Chelsea village school. "That was a new idea, for farmers' wives to continue working after they were married. I can remember how we practiced what we would say to our parents. We felt this would come as somewhat of a surprise to them. Our parents were extra-ordinary I think, as I look back on them and on our friends and some of the kinds of problems they had with their parents. Ours just kind of took in stride what we did. And if they had some doubts, they never let us know."
After teaching for ten years and completing her college degree, a new opportunity came up for Jane. Some of her friends in the United Methodist Church of Chelsea were forming a cooperative nursery school, the precursor of today's day care centers, and they asked Jane to help organize it. "The first year, we were on the third floor of the village government building in Chelsea. The fire station was in the same building. Every time the fire engines went out when school was in progress we would all run to the windows and
watch them leave."
In the mid Fifties many of the village schools were beginning to consolidate and to bus children from the rural areas. So the following year, the nursery school was able to buy—for one dollar—a small rural school from the Chelsea school system. During the ten years Jane taught there, the program went from two half days to two full days and an extra afternoon.
The actor Jeff Daniels is the most famous of her ex-students. "But even today, I'll read about people in the local newspaper and I'll say 'Oh, that's one of my kids'." Ray and Jane still run into Jeff Daniels occasionally and Ray laughs as he recalls telling Jeff one time, "The best thing I ever saw you do was when you played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof when you were a
senior in high school."
Somewhere along the way Ray and Jane decided not to have children. "We were so busy and I think we thought we'd have them later, and then that didn't quite work out. We considered adoption but Ray didn't think that was the best route to go. Finally we just decided we wouldn't do it."
But they continued to be very involved with children and education. Jane, in addition to her work at the nursery school also did volunteer work with church youth groups.
"I had an office in the local Methodist Women's Society of Christian Service and we filled out reports on what we were doing. And I could fill out those reports, make them quite lengthy, and make it look like we were doing a horrible amount of work in the Chelsea church. And we were doing some really good things with the youth at that point—and have to this day." Eventually, in 1973 she became President of the United Methodist Women's Organization, which coordinated the activities of local groups throughout the eastern half of Michigan's Lower Peninsula and the entire Upper Peninsula. She also became the first lay woman elected to lead the Church's General Conference delegation and the first to serve as Conference Secretary.
When her four-year term expired she accepted the position of Christian Education Director at the Chelsea Church. She held that position for more than seventeen years and worked with all age groups – infants to adults; coordinating classes, the library, a summer camp program and the work of more than a hundred volunteers every year. "The church has been good to me," she says gratefully. "I have been able to travel and go to so many places I never would have gone to if it weren't for my work."
Although Ray's primary occupation for most of his life has been farming, he has also taught children. For over fifty years he spent many Saturday afternoons in his workshop, teaching woodworking skills to boys and girls in the local 4-H program.
Like Jane, he keeps track of his former students. "They come up to me on the street sometimes and say, 'You got me off to the right start. I just built my own house.' Over the years I've had a number of these fellows tell me that what they're doing now, is related to what they learned in my workshop. And they sent their kids back to me. I've taught two generations. "
Ray's workshop was a converted chicken coop he built using mostly recycled materials. When, in the mid Fifties, the Whitney Theater on North Main Street in Ann Arbor was being torn down, Ray and a friend of his hitched wagons to their tractors and drove to the site. "I had seen movies at that theater when it was up and running. We loaded up two by fours, plywood and all sorts of stuff and hauled it back to the farm. You can't do that any more. You have to build using all new materials. The old stuff goes to the dump." One of the interior walls of his workshop was paneled with a big plywood sign that was used to advertise "King Kong" when it had first shown at the theater.
It was Ray's woodworking skills that got him involved in one of the longest friendships and business relationships of his life. In 1976 Percy Danforth, Ann Arbor's internationally recognized "bones" virtuoso, came to Ray and asked him to make instruments for his students.
The "bones" are two pieces of wood, each about seven inches long, an inch wide and slightly curved, in the shape of rib bones. They are percussion instruments that sound similar to castanets and get their name from the curved animal bones that people played originally. They are considered among the oldest musical instruments played by human beings. There are drawings on the pyramids of Egypt depicting people playing the bones; they are mentioned in Shakespeare's plays, and in the U.S. they were widely used in the vaudeville and minstrel shows popular in the late 19th century.
Percy learned to play the bones as a child in the early 1900s, and played them as a hobby all his life. In the 1970s he began playing the bones in a few public performances, and word of the unusual instruments spread. Soon Percy found himself teaching many students and needed instruments for them. He turned to Ray, who began crafting bones for him. Ray estimates that since 1976 he has made well over fifty thousand pairs of bones. He still uses as his template the original piece of wood that Percy brought him, to show how he wanted the bones shaped.
Making music has also been a lifelong passion for Ray. He has played piano since his teen years. "My grandmother bought the piano that I still play for my dad when he was six years old. We had a trio, my dad, sister and I. He played the violin and my sister played the saxophone. As long as I was accompanying them I could get away with it. But I didn't want to be up there as a soloist. We played all sorts of places. In Chelsea the Kiwanis club used to put on shows, and between acts they'd get us to come up and play a little. Things like that."
Being a farmer didn't leave him very much time for playing, but since he's been retired he's been playing more. For a number of years, before he and Jane moved from their home, he played for people living in the Chelsea Retirement Center. "I played a little for them during the dinner hour once in a while. Just background music. I play some of the old time hymns and that's what these elderly folks like. I tell them, 'I'm not the best piano player' and they say, 'Oh but you play what we like to hear.' And it's great therapy for my fingers." Today, he and Jane live in the CRC and Ray still plays regularly during church services and other occasions.
Ray and Jane have lived full, rich lives and have left their mark on their community. They have earned the respect and gratitude of three generations of people they have taught, guided and served.
Chapter One
It was 1932, the middle of the Great Depression and also the Dust Bowl days in the West that affected farmers even here in Michigan. We didn't irrigate then. We just accepted the weather that nature gave us. The yields were much less in those years. The wheat grew hardly high enough to cut with a grain binder. The corn got no taller than five feet, and some years only knee high, and then it didn't have any grain on it at all. The farmers would cut that and save the stalks for feed for the sheep and cattle in the winter. The drought hurt us, but not like it did farmers out west.
I was ten that year. It was early June and school was over for the summer. Country School ended right after Memorial Day in those days. It used to end even earlier, at the beginning of May, so kids could help with the planting, but that was before my time. I looked forward to the freedom before me—especially to going barefoot again. I never wore shoes during the summer then, except when we went to church. We just didn't go much of any place else in those days. Neighboring farms were far away, half mile or mile was the closest. The men got together to help each other with farm chores, but we kids rarely saw our school friends during the summer.
On a farm there were chores even a ten year old boy was asked to do. One of my tasks was to get the cows from the pasture for the evening milking. The pasture field was as far away from the barn as could be, almost half a mile. Every late afternoon I would head across the barn yard to the lane that led to our wood lot, next to the pasture field.
I can see it now, as though it was yesterday.
I open the gate leading into the lane and start on my way. The path I follow has been used by the cows every day for a long time. The weather has been hot and dry, and the cows' hooves have churned the good earth into deep layers of dust. The feeling, as my bare feet sink in and the dust oozes up between my toes, is almost ecstasy. It's like walking on a soft, warm, sandy beach, or burying my hands in soft flour when I help make bread. On rainy days it was a different feeling, still wonderful, the mud squeezing up between my toes. But this was the drought years. We didn't have a lot of rain those summers.
Sometimes, I step into fresh cow manure in my bare feet. It's not a big deal, though. I just go to the well house, run water on my feet and dry them off in the grass. But there is no stepping into cow manure today. Just the fabulous feeling of my feet sinking into the dust.
A little further down the path my ecstasy is broken by the shrill cry of a killdeer protecting her nest. To the left of the lane is a cornfield planted a few weeks ago and the corn stalks are just forming their leaves. It's a perfect place for the killdeer to make her nest on a little pile of pebbles, hidden under the sheltering leaves. I stop for a moment, assure her I will do her no harm, and continue on my way.
To the right of the lane is a hay field with clover and timothy waving in the summer breeze. The clover is beautiful with bright red blossoms, and the fragrance is unbelievable. I can almost smell the honey the bees will make from it. I keep walking and hear the sound of a bobolink. I find her perched at the edge of her nest, clinging to a tall weed amongst the clover. I start whistling, imitating her call. She's evidently not impressed with my attempt to answer her and flies across the field. I continue on my way, soothing my feet in the wonderful dusty path.
There is a meadow lark flying up ahead of me. He has yellow, white and black markings. Continuing to whistle, I catch the sound of a big old robin. He is perched on top of a fence post near the end of the lane, and it seems as if he's answering my call.
I have now reached the highest point along the way. From here I can see almost our whole farm. To the south is our big, hip roof barn, chicken coop, windmill and well house. Past them the trolley tracks run along Old U.S. 12, a two lane highway that was then the main road between Detroit and Chicago. Looking west I see my favorite big elm tree, our orchard and our new farm house. I can look across the corn field, and the hay field next to it, all the way to the big oak trees lining Parker Road. Their fresh new green leaves wave in the breeze. To the east is the timothy and clover field and to the north is the wood lot and past it, the pasture lot, where the cows are.
The lane leads to the wood lot and I skip along the path, stirring up the dust. I look up into the sky and spot two big turkey buzzards cavorting under the late afternoon clouds. I stick my arms straight out at my sides, and skip along, flapping my hands, I feel as if I am about to lift off to join them. Just then a crow lets out a raucous warning call from the top of a tree at the edge of the woods. That brings me back to reality and reminds me why I am here. I look over to the pasture field and see the cows grazing peacefully. I call to them, across the corn field, with my high pitched voice. "Com-boss, com-boss." One of them hears me, raises her head, and looks my way. She answers back, the rest of the herd look at her, and all fifteen of them start for the wood lot on their journey to the barn.
While I wait at the end of the lane for the cows to come out of the woods I lean against the wire farm fence next to the hay field. I hear the dainty song of a bluebird. Her nest is in the old hollow post at the end of the lane. A woodpecker has made a hole in that post, big enough for the bluebird to make a home.
Here come the cows out of the woods, and just ahead of them a rabbit bounds into the lane. When he sees me he turns sharply and hops into the hay field. I am still leaning against the fence as the cows come by single file, kicking up the dry ground with their hooves. One young heifer pulls out of line to come over and nose at me, making sure I am who I am, and then continues on her way. I follow along, wriggling my toes in the deep, dusty, dry dirt all the way back.
The cows know where to go. They file into the barnyard and I drag the big, heavy, wooden gate across the lane behind them and secure it with a loop of rope hanging on the post. Then I head across the barn yard, past the barn, the chicken coop, well house and windmill and into our farmhouse. It's time for supper.
Father and Mother, my sister Marjorie and little brother Lloyd and I gather around the table and Mother serves us big helpings of ham from the pig we butchered last fall, and home grown mashed potatoes. And, of course, milk. We all dig in. Except for Lloyd who, as usual, is playing with his food, making castles out of the mashed potatoes instead of eating. Mother tells him, "You gotta clean your plate, or you won't get any desert." That gets him going and Mother serves us some strawberries, fresh from the garden. Delicious.
Then, while Mother does the dishes and gets Lloyd ready for bed, Marjorie and I play hide and seek out in the yard and around the house while Father milks the cows.
Then it's one final chore. I meet Father at the well house to help him cool the milk. We use water from our well to cool the milk from the cows before it's sent to the dairy plant for bottling. Our thirty foot well, near the trolley tracks and the driveway leading to the highway, provides all the water for our homestead. Above the well stands a tall windmill and the wheel is connected to the well pump handle. If there is wind, the windmill pumps the water for us. When there is no wind though, we disconnect the pump handle from the windmill and pump by hand. That's my job.
The water runs in a pipe from the well to the well house and then into a water tank where the milk cans, containing some ninety pounds of milk each, are placed for cooling. For the milk to cool properly, it has to be stirred frequently for about an hour to reach the required sixty degrees. It's not a bad job if the wind blows and the windmill pumps the water. But, on days when there is no wind, I need to do more than just stir. I have to hurry to the base of the windmill, pump cool water into the tank, then run back and stir. Then it's back to the windmill to pump some more water.
Tonight there is a breeze, so I don't have to pump, just stir. The stirrer is a two foot long metal rod with a curved handle on top and a saucer shaped bottom piece, with holes in it. I lift it up and down in the milk can to stir the milk.
When the milk is cool, my chores are done. I head back to the house for one of my favorite evening pastimes, listening to the radio. Marjorie and I pull our chairs up close to the big, tube set that sits on a small table in our downstairs hallway. My cousin Alfred (who we all call Boyce), Aunt Martha's son, built that radio for our family this year. It's the first radio we've ever had. It runs on a six volt car battery.
Some nights Father and Mother listen to Lowell Thomas reading the news, but almost every night at seven Marjorie and I tune in either Detroit's WWJ, or Chicago's WGN and follow the adventures of "Amos and Andy" and laugh. They're funny.
After the fifteen minute show, Mother reminds us it's time to wash up and head upstairs to bed. I watch the sunset from my west window and fall asleep to the sounds of the birds and the frogs down by the creek.
The Mischievous Cow
A True Story by Ray Schairer
One Sunday in the late spring of nineteen seventy five, my wife Jane and I were invited to an early evening party. Early evening affairs just weren’t meant for dairy farmers. There was always the milking and chores to do. But, this was a rather special get-together with friends in Chelsea. We decided we would go. I would just have to milk the cows an hour earlier than the usual six-thirty time.
I went to the barn around five o’clock. The cows were laying in the barnyard, enjoying the late afternoon sunshine. I noticed one cow, number 21, looking at me as I headed for the barn, and I thought I detected a little something unusual about her actions as I entered the barn to open the stable door facing the barnyard. When I opened that door, number 21 was on her feet facing the rest of the cows, some now getting up. It almost looked to me like she was planning some kind of a trick to play on me. I could almost hear her telling the rest of them that she bet I had something special planned and maybe they could have some fun with me!
I stood in the doorway and called out to them with my usual “Come Boss” invitation. But they didn’t pay any attention to me. They were following number 21, running around the barnyard with their tails flying in the air. They ran right past the stable door, completely ignoring my urgent request to enter the barn.
This went on for several minutes and I was becoming very frustrated. I went out in the barnyard and tried to head them off., to no avail. They simply turned and ran in the other direction. With no one to help me, I just had to stand and watch that number 21 have her fun. I was standing near the large water tank the cows got their water from, and after a time I sat down on the edge of the tank. I felt really defeated. Tears came to my eyes, and I put my head in my hands.
I noticed then that it got quiet. The cows must have stopped running. When I looked up, I saw that number 21 was again facing the other cows. They were all paying attention to her. I was sure she was saying, “I think we have teased him enough. We had better go into our stalls right now.” And, as I sat there, my eyes once again closed, I could hear the sound of their hooves rapidly coming my way. I opened my eyes to see number 21 leading all of them into the cow stable as fast as they could go! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I just watched in amazement as they all went into their proper places and started eating the ground feed before them.
I followed the last one into the stable and proceeded to latch each one’s stanchion. Then I came to number 21. As I slipped in beside her and her neighboring cow, I noticed something. She was not eating her feed! She was the only one that wasn’t. She was also standing very stiff as she watched me come forward to latch the stanchion between her head and shoulders. I realized she was preparing herself for some kind of punishment for what she had done to me. She turned her head a bit more to the right and her big black sparkling eye met mine. I could see she was asking for my forgiveness for what she had instigated with the rest of the cows. With our eyes still meeting, I latched her stanchion. Suddenly I melted under her gaze and I put my left arm around her neck and muttered, “You got me that time.” I gave her a pat on her shoulder as I backed out from between the two cows and I felt her relax and she started to eat her feed.
I could then proceed with the milking and I finished all the other chores in time to make the party in town.
Just another day in the life of a dairy farmer.
The Old Red Fox
A True Story by Ray Schairer
Mother nature has always presented farmers with interesting experiences to put in their memory files. I was no exception. Here’s a memory I have of an old red fox.
This happened on a June evening, sometime in the early Seventies. I had just bought another tractor. It was a big brother to the one I bought in 1958. That was a brand new Massey Ferguson fifty horsepower three point hitch tractor with a mounted three bottom plow. It also had a cultivator that could be attached to the three point hitch. It was quite an improvement over our previous equipment.
The tractor I had just acquired was also a Massey Ferguson, but it had a sixty five horsepower engine and was considerably larger than the one I bought in the Fifties. Also, it had a diesel engine instead of a gas one, like our earlier tractors. It was slightly used. Our neighbor, Alton, had bought it new a couple of years earlier, but didn’t particularly like it, so he put it up for sale. I never did figure out why he didn’t like it, because I did. It had a cab with a roof over it, a windshield and side curtains with windows for protection from the weather, which was great.
I hadn’t used this new tractor much yet, but we had a small piece of land at the west end of our farm, along Mill Creek, that needed plowing for the planting of some late corn for cow feed in August or early September.
With daylight savings time in effect, the summer daylight hours were long. So, after the cows were milked that evening, I told my father I was going to plow this last little piece of ground down by the creek. I would have at least two hours of daylight and, besides, this tractor had lights if I needed to work after dark. My wife, Jane, was going to be away at a meeting, so I figured I’d work late.
I drove the tractor down the driveway, heading west across Parker Road, and then followed a path inside the fence from the main highway. The odor of the burned diesel fuel filled the warm summer evening air as I made my way toward the creek.
The sun was still shining through the tops of the trees lining the creek bank, the rays glancing off the hood of the tractor as I headed west. When I reached the creek bank I stopped for a few moments to map out in my mind just where I would start plowing this piece of ground. Once I reached a decision, I turned the tractor towards the east, dropped the plow to the ground, and started plowing. Even though the ground I was plowing had been very wet just a week ago, the weather we were having had dried the soil to a good plowing consistency.
In just a few minutes I reached the east end of the plot and turned around and headed back to the west bank of the creek. I took a look back at the plow to be sure it was working right and then looked ahead once more towards the creek bank. There, sitting beside some brush along the bank, I spotted an animal sitting on its haunches, watching me come toward it. I thought at first that it was a young dog. But, as I drew closer it rose to its feet and disappeared into the brush. I realized then that I was wrong. It was a fox. Its reddish color and long bushy tail identified it without a doubt in my mind.
I figured that would be the last I would see of the fox. But, I was wrong again. I made three more rounds of plowing and, as I was coming back towards the creek bank the third time around, there he was, once again in plain sight. A ray of sunshine came through a break in the trees along the creek bank and shone right on him. The bright red color of his fur and long brown bushy tail told me it had to be a male.
He didn’t retreat this time as I turned back to the east and again lowered the plow to the ground. I looked out the open back of the cab and could see he was coming out onto the ground I had just plowed. Suddenly he pounced on something, straightened up and sat back on his haunches. I noticed something dangling from his mouth. It was a large field mouse. With a couple of quick gulps he swallowed it. I had plowed up the mouse’s nest and the fox had no trouble capturing the uprooted rodent.
As I continued to the east end, turned around and headed back again, there sat the fox, watching for me to come by and maybe turn up another mouse. The tractor and I went right by him again. He sat on his haunches, watching the plow turn up the good earth. I kept watching him as I went by and, sure enough, the plow turned up another mouse nest, and another mouse ran out. He again pounced and ate it quickly. This clever old fox probably decided right then and there that, despite the noise and the diesel fumes, maybe the tractor and I weren’t such a bad intrusion on his territory after all. This went on for a number of rounds, with the plow turning up several more mice and he eating them all.
The sun had set behind the trees and it was starting to get dark. During the last couple of rounds, when I turned up another mouse, I watched, astonished, as I saw him kill it and then bury it, like a dog does a bone, saving it for another day.
When I turned back to the east the final time to plow the last strip of ground, I went right by him sitting there, not ten feet away, with his fat tummy protruding from all those mice he had eaten. I slowed the tractor and waved to him. And I swear to this day, he had a big smile on his face and lifted a grateful paw to wave goodbye.
I’ve never forgotten that old red fox.
Chasing A Rainbow
I remember a day in the early 1960s, shortly after the ribbon cutting ceremony for the opening of the new I-94 expressway. The ceremony took place on the Parker Road bridge built over the expressway, with then Michigan Governor, G. Mennen Williams, cutting the ribbon. I-94 ran right along our farm’s north boundary, and Parker Road divided our farm in half and continued to the town of Dexter. When I was a boy, I’d often ridden my bike on that road, on my way to Dexter High School.
It was the last of the corn planting season. I had one field left to plow, the one bordered by Parker Road on the west and the new I-94 on the north. Years before, it used to be a pasture field for our cows and sheep, but by then we were farming it as a crop field.
It was after dinner, about one o’clock in the afternoon, when I went to get my tractor and plow ready and headed for the field. It was a nice day, with some cumulous clouds gathering overhead, but a warm June sun shining through the breaks in the clouds.
I turned into the field at the gateway from Parker Road, near the north line fence by the expressway. The field needed plowing. Last year’s hay and grass and weeds were taking over. I decided where to start the first “land,” lowered the plow and started east across the field towards the woodlot at the other end.
We had rain a few days ago, so the soil turned easily for the plow. But, I was not completely content. The noise of the semi trucks roaring up the slight grade of the expressway on my left managed to even drown out the exhaust noise of my own tractor, and I couldn’t help notice the large area that had been cut through our neighbor’s side of the woodlot to allow the expressway to be built. It had destroyed my favorite squirrel hunting area.
When I reached the east end of the field, near the wood lot, I pulled the lever to raise the plow and turned the tractor to head back west. I noticed that the clouds overhead were taking on an ominous appearance. They were no longer beautiful, billowing white clouds, but were turning black. By the time I reached the west end of the field, lightning was arcing back and forth between them. I began debating whether to head for home or stay in the field.
I had a beach size umbrella mounted to the tractor frame, directly behind the seat, mostly to keep the hot sun off me when I was working. I sat there for a few minutes and decided that the clouds would drift by me without too much rain, and the umbrella would provide some protection. So, I turned the tractor back to the east, lowered the plow, and once again started back to the east end of the field.
The cloud directly overhead began letting down a steady light rain as I worked my way across the field, but the umbrella did a good job keeping the rain from drenching me.
Suddenly, the sun burst forth as the cloud moved eastward, with me and the tractor following under it. Then an incredible sight met my eyes. The gentle rain, falling ahead of me suddenly burst into all the colors of a gorgeous rainbow, one end of it traveling just ahead of the tractor as we continued eastward, toward the woodlot.
It took several minutes for the tractor to reach the east end of the field and the woodlot. During those minutes, I soaked up the colors of that rainbow as it danced along ahead of the tractor. When the rainbow reached the woods, the tall trees, laden with fresh new green leaves, seemed to absorb the colors and it suddenly disappeared.
I stopped the tractor, got off, and walked a little way into the woods. A delightful smell of fresh raindrops seemed to come down all around me from the trees overhead. I inhaled it happily for a few minutes. It was hard to leave, but finally, reluctantly, I turned and started back to my tractor, patiently waiting for me, engine idling, emitting the smell of burned diesel that soon all but erased the wonderful aroma I had just enjoyed in the woods.
I mounted the tractor, lowered the plow, and headed back to the west end of the field. Suddenly, I remembered. What about the pot of gold that people say is at the end of the rainbow? I was there, at the end of the rainbow, but I’d found no pot of gold! Where could it be?
As the tractor continued across the field I came up with my answer. The pot of gold must have been at the other end of the rainbow!
Or maybe, the pot of gold was my few moments of special beauty, seeing that rainbow and walking in the sweet-scented woods.
The Old Swimming Hole
For much of my life, the Schairer farm was one of five farms in the square mile formed by four roads between Ann Arbor and Dexter. Marshall Road runs in an east west direction from Parker Road to Baker road. Baker goes north all the way to Dexter and, south of Marshall Road, comes to a dead end at Jackson Road (called Old US 12 in the early days of my life), while Parker Road runs parallel to Baker Road, a mile to the east. Today, in 2009, there is only one large dairy farm, the Breininger’s, left in that area.
There was, and still is, a small creek, Mill Creek, that meanders diagonally in a northeasterly direction across that area and ends up in the Huron River near the town of Dexter, three miles to the north. It’s the creek where I often fished with my grandfather when I was growing up. It was also a great creek for swimming.
There is a bridge over Mill Creek on Marshall Road. This was the place where, in my childhood, us country boys would gather on hot summer nights and follow the foot path trail north from the road, about the length of a football field, to our favorite swimming spot.
I remember one time in particular, when I went swimming there on a summer evening with my farm friend, Harold Sias. We had been putting hay in the barn all that afternoon and, after milking the cows in the evening, decided to go swimming to refresh ourselves.
Harold drove us to the side of Marshall Road. We climbed over the road fence and started down the well worn path to the swimming hole. As we walked along, we could hear an occasional bull frog croaking as he perched on a partly sunken tree limb. A little further along the trail we could hear a loud buzzing coming from a nearby large wheat field ready for cutting. It was time for the summer crickets to let us know they were enjoying the evening too.
As we got closer, we could hear the sound of water rushing over and around some large stones lying on the creek bed. The stones created some resistance to the water flowing around them, and increased the speed of the water so that it made a deep impression in the sandy bottom of the creek on the far side of the stones. This created our wonderful swimming hole. It was at least twenty feet wide and thirty feet long and, at its deepest point nearly six feet deep. Great for swimming!
Harold and I pulled off our blue chambray shirts, bib overalls and underwear, and made running jumps into the water. We never wore bathing suits at the swimming hole—we always skinny dipped. Girls, it was known, didn’t use this swimming hole.
But, as we were enjoying the nice, cool water cleaning our hot, and rather dirty bodies, I told Harold a tale I’d heard from some younger boys, about girls visiting the swimming hole.
Apparently, some girls, mostly sisters of those boys, did come along one evening, and surprised the boys while they were in the swimming hole. The girls, the storytellers said, began teasing them while they were submerged in the water. One of the girls even announced that they would all stay until the boys came out of the water!
After a few minutes of this, one of the boys began to walk out of the water, calling out that he was coming and that the rest of the boys would follow. As he continued to wade out of the water, toward the girls standing on the bank of the creek, they started screaming and ran up the path back toward Marshall Road. It was, the boys said, the last time the girls were seen at the old swimming hole.
Harold and I had a good chuckle at the story. The summer night began to draw closer and the mosquitoes were getting pretty nasty. We made our way to the creek bank, got dressed and started back to his car and home. Tomorrow would be another busy day, making hay.
The Reddeman Farm
Jane and I, along with a couple of friends of ours, ate at the Reddeman Farm Golf Course restaurant recently. I suggested we go there, partly because I knew from experience that their food is very good. But I chose that restaurant for other reasons too, one of them being that the Reddeman Farm was located only two miles from where our own family farm used to be. It was southwest of us, along a country gravel road called Jerusalem Road.
(An interesting side note—at least to me: Jerusalem road ends in the very small town of Jerusalem, four miles west of the Reddeman Farm. Michigan’s Jerusalem is about fifteen miles south of Michigan’s Hell—another small town. Chelsea is about halfway between them.)
When it was a working farm years ago, the Reddeman Farm was similar to ours and many others in the area. They raised grain and hay crops and used them to feed their animals; pigs, sheep, cattle and chickens. Like most farms, they had a silo, a tall tube-shaped structure sometimes made of wood, sometimes of concrete, ten to sixteen feet in diameter and as much as thirty feet high, nearly as tall as the peaks of barns. Farmers stored their chopped field corn in silos, for cattle feed.
At the end of every August, or in early September, when the corn was ready for harvesting, farmers pulled their corn binders into the fields and cut the corn and tied it into bundles. Then they’d bring the bundles from the fields with horse-drawn wagons. One man would toss the bundles, usually weighing between thirty and fifty pounds, but sometimes as much as a hundred, from the ground onto the wagon, while another man stacked them in rows on the wagon rack. Then it was on to the silo, where a tractor-powered cutting machine and silo filler would be waiting. They tossed the bundles of corn, stalk end first, onto the conveyor belt of the chopper machine which shredded the corn—ears, stalks, leaves and all—into small pieces. The fan on the silo filler then blew the resulting silage through a ten-inch stovepipe-like tube up and into the silo from the top. Unlike today, most silos didn’t have caps in those days.
The chopped corn would gradually ferment in the silos. Cows liked the resulting silage. Silos came into common use in the Thirties, when tractor powered machines made it possible to fill them this way.
We did not have a silo on the Schairer farm. My father, and later I, decided that it was not the way we would store our feed corn. We shucked the corn in the field, tearing the ears off the stalks, and stored the corn, still on the cob, in the corn bin in our barn. Then we’d bring the corn stalk bundles from the field and build a big corn stack by the barnyard fence. We’d throw bundles over the fence for the animals to eat as needed. Some years we’d leave the bundles out in the field and bring them in a few shocks at a time. In the spring we would take the uneaten stalks from the barnyard back to the fields and plow them under.
Every week during the winter we took some of the corn from our crib over to the Dexter Cooperative Company. They’d grind up our corn, cob and all, and also our oats, in their mill. We’d bring back twenty bags of ground feed and that would last our eight or ten cows a week. Later, when we had more cows, the McCalla Feed Service would come to our farm with a portable mill on a truck, and grind the corn right there blow it into a bin in our barn.
But just because the Schairer farm did not have a silo, didn’t mean I didn’t help at silo-filling time at neighboring farms, including at the Reddeman’s.
When the silos were being filled, most farmers wanted to have the chopped corn packed down so the silo would hold more. Since I was not a big guy—I weighed 125 pounds in those days—and flinging fifty pound bundles of corn all day was not easy for me, packing down the silage became my task.
Silos have a steel ladder attached along their sides, all the way up to the top. Ever five or six feet along those ladders, there are also small removable doors, just big enough for a person. When the silo was full, it was through those doors, starting from the top, that the silage was taken out and thrown down to feed the animals. (Today’s silos are all automated, both the filling and the unloading.)
At the beginning of the silo-filling process, when the silo was still empty, I’d crawl in through the door closest to the ground and someone would lock the door back into place from the outside. Inside the silo a flexible tube was attached to the metal tube of the silo filler, and with the aid of a couple of ropes I could direct the silage as it was blown into the silo and came down from the top. Of course, despite that system, some silage still sometimes landed on my head!
I spread the silage with a pitchfork and walked around on it, packing it down. Sometimes there’d be two of us in there doing that, but a lot of the time I was the only one. It took pretty much all day to fill up a silo. We only stopped for lunch. If I needed to get out of the silo at any time, I’d holler and someone would come up the ladder and undo a door at whatever level I might be, and let me out.
When the silo was all filled with the chopped corn I could stand on the very top and see the entire countryside from my vantage point thirty feet up in the air. What a glorious sight!
On the other hand, I recall that there were no guard rails of any kind at the top of the silos. In fact, some farmers added a rickety four foot snow-fence around the top, so they could store more silage. It’s a wonder I never fell off as I tromped around on top of the silage. The good Lord looked out for me, I guess, while I looked out over His beautiful creation. Sometimes I felt I could reach up and touch the clouds as they sailed by overhead.
Which brings me back to the real reason I suggested we eat out at the Reddeman Farm Golf Course Restaurant. It meant that our friends, and Jane and I, could look out from the restaurant’s large windows facing out across the open land still harboring many of the trees I remember from my early farming days. As I looked toward the north end of the golf course I could still see the big red barn with the silo beside it, just like it looked fifty years ago. Oh, the memories it brings back!
Even though it’s no longer a working farm, I am very happy that the Lima Township Board let the golf course become a reality, thus preserving the land in a more or less natural state.
But, besides enjoying the view, we were also there to eat. The food brought to mind the wonderful home-cooked meals the farmers’ wives put before us when we helped with the silo filling. As good as the Reddeman Farms Restaurant menu is, it can never match those feasts.
We ate, visited, reminisced, and finally noticed that the sun was setting and the trees on the golf course were casting long shadows. It was time to go home, savoring the meal and the memories.