Hook 'em and Pull 'em - Video

Related Link: Hay is for Horses

A story about haying in Pleasant Valley in the late 1960's.

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Treasure Chest - Video

Related Link: Treasure Chest - Written Word

This is a YouTube Video version of the Treasure Chest story

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Treasure Chest - Written Word

Related Link: Treasure Chest - Video

When I was a preschooler, my mother kept a box in her closet. It looked like a miniature pirate's chest. She let me reach in there and pull things out — old photos, Grandma's scrapbook, a very old game of pick up sticks. Mom called this her treasure chest. I asked her why.

"Because, sweetheart, my mother died when I was 14. These were her things, and they helped me feel close to her when I was sad.” 

I thought that chest was almost magical, and I wished I could meet Grandma Grace. It didn't seem fair that some of my friends had grandmothers nearby to rock them and kiss them and make them yummy cookies.

As I got older I forgot all about the treasure chest. We adopted a baby boy, and I was busy helping him learn to play baseball and important things like that. Then in 1971 we lost my little brother to an accident. I was 12, just two years younger than Mom was when Grandma Grace died. I remember being really lonely. I tried to stay busy with school, but then came Christmas vacation - long days in that quiet house. 

One day I found that old box on my bed with a note in Mom's handwriting: "Nancy's Treasure Chest." I reached in and pulled out Grandma's scrapbook. The front cover was missing. The whole thing was faded and hard to read. A blurry photo fell out of the back of the book. It's hard to make out, but this is my Grandma, Grace Sophia McGuffin, with her twin brother Edgar and their mother, there in the snow with the horses. 

Mary, Edgar, and Grace McGuffin around 1910-15, Line, SD

Back behind them you can see the faint outline of a sod house. I looked through the box for more photos. Here's a better photo of that sod house. Doesn't Uncle Edgar look dapper? 

Mary and Edgar McGuffin, early 1900s.

And here’s a better photo of the twins. They were born in Michigan in 1891. Grace attended Battle Creek college and taught school in South Dakota until she married my grandfather, Elmer Olson, in 1915. They started a family and moved to Portland, Oregon, where Gramps worked as a carpenter. They attended the Sunnyside Seventh-day Adventist Church. Two of their children died in infancy -- one a few days after birth, and the other from pneumonia at 14 months. My aunt told me that Grace first found out she had breast cancer in 1931. After surgery, it seemed to be gone, but then in 1934 it came back, taking her life in January of 1935. She left behind six children ages three through sixteen.

I started reading the scrapbook. The first page is filled with poetry. Here's the first stanza of a poem by Robert Whitaker. He was a Baptist minister in the Pacific Northwest. I remember being enchanted with her handwriting.

After that there were several pages of grammar rules. I wonder if she wrote these as a student, or if she used them when she was teaching school. Based on all the things my mother and aunt told me, Grace didn't stop teaching when her employment ended. She just changed from a classroom of pupils to a house full of children, so I wouldn't be surprised if Mom got an ear full of these grammar lessons.

The book has page after page of newspaper clippings. Here's a handy tip. "Did you know that gum may be removed from cloth if the spot is saturated with gasoline?" 

After the tips were recipes. I took the book to the kitchen. "Hey Mom, can we make this apple pie recipe from Grandma's book?" We ended up making the pie and some peanut butter cookies. And it felt like Grandma was in the kitchen with us as we sliced and stirred. I hadn’t had that much fun in weeks!

We did not try to make this recipe. This is for fake meat. It calls for a pound of peanuts and five pounds of flour. 

Then I found a list of books. "Hey Dad, will you take me to the library to check out these books that Grandma recommends?" 

We got Little Women and Little Men, and as I was reading them, it felt like Grandma was sitting next to me, like I could lean right up against her while I read. Way up at the top of this list it says "1918." That's when the Spanish Flu was killing people all over the world. It's my family's pandemic reading list for the 20th century.

Here are some riddles. Why is it illegal for a man to possess a short walking stick? Because it can never be long to him. Har Har. I tried that one on Gramps, and I thought I could hear Grandma Grace whisper in my ear, "See there? He almost smiled!"  

Thanks to my mother, I’ve been using this scrapbook to get acquainted and re-acquainted with Grandma ever since. And I've learned a lot too, as I looked up the authors of her poems, read the books on her list, rolled my eyes at her riddles, played some of the sheet music, and scanned through her household tips.

You people who run out to the store and pay money for Sudoko, here's how Grandma did it.

And finally, I came across a page of my mother's handwriting. How old do you suppose she was here?

If you inherit a scrapbook, I have a few suggestions. If it's fragile, make a good copy. Then go through it slowly, so you don't hit information overload. Ask some questions. Do you see trends? What subjects did the creator find the most fascinating? When was the book made? What was going on in history then?

What is Grace Sophia McGuffin's legacy? From her book, I would say she was fond of pickles, and potatoes, and really bad puns. She liked to collect ideas, write things down, read great books, and use good grammar. Her children and extended family tell me that she was kind and had a gentle sense of humor. She sewed all their clothes. They liked the potatoes she made for dinner after church. They liked her to butter their toast all the way to the edges. They liked it when she set up a little salon in the dining room and cut their hair.   

If I were to choose one thing about her, one thing that really stands out, it's the fact that her teaching career was over in 1915, but her lessons still live on. Years after her death, she had a tremendous impact on my life, thanks in part to the contents of that Treasure Chest.

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Hay is for Horses

Related Link: Hook 'em and Pull em - video

¬July, 1967

Nancy, David, Daddy, Gramps July 1967

"See there, girl. Jets!" Gramps points upward. Three fighter jets fly over the back field, really close together, like geese heading south for winter. But it's not winter. It's the middle of July. The sun is shining. The sky is blue. There are no clouds.

"That there is Air National Guard, hundred forty-second fighter group." He takes a handkerchief from his pocket and blows his nose. "Oscar would like a jet like that."

He is talking about my Uncle Ozzie, his older boy, who died under mysterious circumstances a long time ago, before I was born. I don't know what mysterious circumstances are, but I heard my cousin say it, and now I like to say it again, because it has big words that sound important.

Gramps had two boys, and both of them were pilots. Uncle Ozzie joined the Air force, and Uncle Jimmy is in the Navy. Several of Gramps' girls don’t even know how to drive a car, but both his boys can fly planes.

Uncle Jimmy comes to visit when he is on leave, and I don't like that, because he tickles me. Sometimes Uncle Ozzie used to visit by buzzing the house. That’s what my aunt told me. Buzzing means flying your plane really low to the ground and near to the house so that all of your family looks up and says, “Oh, my goodness.” Everybody misses Uncle Ozzie, but I don’t know if I miss him, because I don’t know if he would tickle me.

Uncle Ozzie in his plane.

We are harvesting bales of hay. Last winter Gramps announced that this year we would plant oats out in the back field. We all live with Gramps at his house. After my step Grandma died, Gramps asked us to move in and cook for him and do his laundry and pay the taxes, because taxes cost a lot of money. He has a barn and a tractor and lots of things you can hook up to the back of the tractor, like a plow and a disc, and also this thing that looks like a giant rake called a cultivator.

Last spring, way before first grade let out for the summer, he got out a special piece of equipment for the tractor. It was called a seeder, and this made sense because you put oat seeds in a trough on the back. Then as the tractor drove along, these little arm things went round and round and pushed the seeds out the bottom, where they fell to the ground. I know because I got to ride on the standing board that was mounted across the back of the seeder. My job was to make sure the seeds didn't get clogged up and that the arms kept pushing the seeds out, just so. Mommy wasn't sure I should ride back there, but Gramps said, "Nonsense. The girl is safe. I'll drive slow."

Now the hay is all grown up, and the baler came this week to cut and bale it all, and that was really good. I watched from the yard. There is one man who drives around from house to house, and on the first day he will cut and rake your hay, and then after that, probably the next day I think, he will come back to bale it. He comes with his baler machine, and it sucks up the hay, and it squishes it into a rectangle, and it automatically ties it up with string that’s hidden inside the baler somewhere. Then it spits the hay bale out the other end.

You have to hope it does not rain after the man cuts it and before he bales it. I heard Daddy say so. He said, “I sure hope it does not rain and ruin that hay.”

And then Mommy said, “Oh, Bill, don’t worry. The forecast is for sun.” And she was right.

Today Daddy helped Gramps pull the sled out and hook it up to the tractor. The sled is a special kind of trailer that doesn’t have any wheels. It is flat and made of boards. We grab hold of the bales of hay with this special hook attached to a wooden handle and pull them over to the sled and stack them on it. Gramps, Daddy, and I are doing the grabbing.

Daddy and Gramps lifting the hay bales.

After we get all the nearby bales, Gramps drives the tractor to the next section of the field, and we grab some more. I am too small to stack the bales onto the sled, but I can grab and drag. When the sled is full, with bales stacked on top of bales, we drive to the barn and unload.

I am getting very hot, and it feels like we have been working forever. We are going to go back to get more bales, but Mommy says first go get a drink out of the hose and get your handkerchief wet to keep you cool. I go to find the hose. The water is cold and good and from our well, which tastes lots better than the water in the fountain at school.

I am wearing my farmer girl clothes. Some of our people used to be farmers. I know that because we studied about occupations in school. So I asked Daddy about our people and their occupations, because the teacher said to.

Daddy said, “Occupations? That’s a big word for a first grader.”

And I said, “That’s why I’m in school, to learn big words!” And he couldn’t argue with that.

I asked Daddy if any of my grandparents or great grandparents were firemen or anything exciting. He looked at Mommy and they both shook their heads. Mommy and Daddy are teachers, and Gramps is a carpenter. We are all kind of boring, except for Uncle Ozzie and Uncle Jim.

Daddy said, “My grandfather was a blacksmith. The rest of the family were farmers.” Then he looked at Mommy. “Your great-grandfather was a police officer, wasn’t he, dear?”

Mommy nodded. Then I heard her say, really soft like she was talking to herself, “A police officer, and a drinker.”

I looked in the library at school for books about farmers or blacksmiths or drunk policemen, and I found a book called, “Farmer Boy.” In chapter one they slaughter a pig. That means kill it and cut it up. We won’t do that, but I could still pretend to be a farmer girl today. I’m not sure exactly what a farmer girl would wear. I asked Mommy, but she said just play it by ear. That means, imagine what to wear and then find something like that in your dresser.

On the bottom I have blue jeans. It is my first pair of blue jeans, and I wear them almost every day. On the top I have a short sleeved shirt. This morning on my head I had a straw hat, but I took that off because my head got hot, plus the straw poked me. And also I have this handkerchief. It was  around my neck, but it keeps falling off. I get it wet with the hose and then wring it out so it isn’t all drippy.

Gramps driving tractor. Nancy riding sled full of hay bales.

We are going back out to the field. I am riding on the sled. I am singing to myself a new song that my friend Cheryl taught me. She lives across the street. I’m trying to remember all the words, but I can only remember part of the chorus. It goes kind of like, “La-la lah lah lah, now I’m a believer.”

The singers of this song are four boys on TV who are called Monkees, and they are very funny. I tried to watch them last week, but Daddy said, “Oh dear, is that Rock and Roll?” And I shrugged my shoulders because I didn’t know, and he said, “Rock and Roll is filthy. The origins of the phrase have to do with sexual ---“

And Mommy stopped him and said, “Oh, Bill, she doesn’t even know what that is!” And then I thought maybe I could still watch TV, but then she said to me, “Nancy, change channels. That’s junkie music.” So I had to switch to the Gomer Pyle show, because that’s all that was on, even though Daddy doesn’t really like that show either. Mr. Pyle says “Golly” a lot, and that is a substitute swear word. But Mommy lets me watch it, because Mr. Pyle also has a pretty singing voice.

Mommy and Daddy know a lot about the origins of words because of being teachers. I think if I’m going to learn the Monkees song, I’ll have to do it by listening to my clock radio at night before I go to sleep. I will turn it down very soft and keep it up close to my ear.

The tractor stops, and I climb off to drag in more bales. We fill up the sled and then Daddy says, “Look, this is the last bale!” I am excited, because I have been working and working and I am tired. I think I worked just as hard as Farmer Boy when his family cut up the pig.

We drive back to the barn and unload the hay. Gramps picks up the last bale and puts it on the stack in the barn. Then he reaches into his back pocket, pulls out his billfold, and takes out a dollar bill. “Come here, girl, and get your pay.”

I am flabbergasted. I don’t know the origins of that word, but I heard it on TV, and I really like it. Flabbergasted. The most money I ever got before was a quarter for washing the car. I look at Mommy, and she nods her head, and I take the dollar and say, “Thank you.”

I push the hair out of my face. I’m dirty and thirsty and so tired that my legs and arms might stop working, and also I feel really good, way down inside my bones. I am seven, going on eight, and I just earned a dollar.

David and Mommy.

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