RipleyRoots Home

Ripley Genealogy
Ripley Stories
Ripleys Now

Sullivan Genealogy
Sullivan Stories

Phillips Genealogy
Phillips Stories

Munro Genealogy
Munro Stories

Klein Genealogy

Moschel Genealogy
Moschel Stories

ThinkPint.com home

I never met a person raised in the country who did not proclaim a great childhood. What was it: 4-H, chores, isolation and dependence on family, idolization of the tough life, or respect for the land and raising crops? It is a bit of all of this, but mainly the latter. Many rural kids are now city slickers who have no crops in their lives. A part of them will always miss that.

It was my dad, more than any other, who taught me to respect the land. Dad, the man who worked from before sunrise to after sunset in the already long days of spring, summer, and fall in Illinois. It is in the summer days I remember him most. His costume was the same: a gray long-sleeved shirt rolled up to his elbows where the suntan stopped, gray work pants, Sears work boots, canvas work gloves, and always the work cap emblazoned with the insignia of his current favorite tractor (Massey-Harris, International Harvester, but never John Deere) or seed corn (usually Pioneer).

One image of Dad during the summer is especially vivid. Mom and I would wait at the end of the bean or corn rows to bring "the boys" (my dad and brother, Ray) a drink, which was usually Kool-Aid, and something to eat. Dad gets off the tractor, takes the water jug in both hands and puts it to his lips and at the same time uses the upper part of both arms to wipe the sweat off his brow. This motion, all done without a stop, never got the sweat on the tip of his nose. It dripped to the ground as the water jug came back parallel to his stomach. My brother, years later, perfected this action, but the sweat never dripped off his nose the same way.

Dad loved the land. Even "the mudhole." That was a small piece near the house which always flooded at least once a year and had to be replanted again, and sometimes again and again. As the season progressed and the crops were growing, we saw the stunted plants in the mudhole lag behind. Because money earned from the mudhole was minimal, it became a standing joke for my brother to try to garner the profits for a current fancy. The mudhole served as a comparison for the rest of the land. "How does the mudhole look?" was shorthand for, "How do you think we are going to do this year?"

Dad farmed the same land for over 60 years. His parents farmed this land and Dad became a helper at an early age. He and Mom took over when my grandparents moved to town. Most of our neighbors thought my folks owned the land. It was a natural mistake because Dad treated the land as if it were his. Some people knew better. The manager of Ocoya Co-op Grain Elevator sent half the annual profits to the landlords and knew Dad and Mom were sharecroppers. Others probably learned years before that neither Dad nor his dad owned the land; but as their own farms were passed to the next generation, that was forgotten. Most just assumed that Dad and my brother Ray were the owners of the 200 acres, instead of tenants. That's as it should have been as far as the land was concerned because it was in good hands.

Dad responded to the ebb and flow of the seasons. Spring meant the beginning. Summer was caring for what was there. Fall was harvesting. And winter was the catch-up season, time to patch things and take naps. For a man who worked 16-hour days during three seasons, it always amazed me how good he was at doing nothing in the winter. He was a master at naptaking; he trained my dog, Rags, to lead this alternately frenzied and snoozeful lifestyle. The two of them would be within three feet of the oil-burning furnace sawing away hour after hour. At times they would wake to watch wrestling or football on TV or drive to the grain elevator to exchange stories with other farmers and the elevator crew. Then back they would come in the gray pickup with Rag's head and long, dangling ears hanging out the window ready for lunch, which in rural Illinois you call supper.

Dad dropped out of school after the ninth grade to help his father farm. All in all, Dad had been chief steward of our 200 acres for 46 years. I learned early that to be able to say, "the crops are in" was to report the greatest accomplishment possible. After each field was harvested, the family tradition held that Dad would stand at the end rows and give his "vast acres" speech. This amounted to a wide, opening gesture of both arms at shoulder height and saying something about the grandness of this particular field. For all of us it was the exclamation mark that acknowledged the work was done, and we had done it together.

Dad brought in his last set of crops in the fall of 1976. His health had not been good for years. A heart attack 25 years before started the decline that was exacerbated by having Parkinson's disease for 15 years. It was the shaking tremors of Parkinson's, more than aging, that forced him to change his farming style. A man with a shuffling gait and shaky hands has great difficulty operating farm machinery and doing the many necessary tasks required of farmers. Simple chores like changing implements behind the tractor had become difficult. My mother and brother took up some slack, but it was always very clear who was in charge. Dad.

By my assessment 1977 is a year better forgotten. By year's end both my father and mother were dead, neither one of them seeing the crops in. Now, more than two decades later, the events of 1977 are beginning to be history and a bit blurred as far as sequence, but not in overall impact.

Dad's more rapid decline began in January 1977. By the end of June I made the 2000-mile trip home twice during Dad's 3 or 4 hospital stays, 2 short-term nursing stays, one surgery, and several minor strokes. Family hopes ran up and down like a roller coaster. A hopeful time was at the end of May when Dad left the hospital and the outlook was brighter. He rode out of the hospital in a wheelchair sporting his farm cap and told the nurse he was going home to supervise the rest of the spring planting, and he planned to be ready for the fall harvest.

June followed with more minor strokes, surgery, and another nursing home stay. The next time I saw my dad he was thin, unable to move by himself. His speech was slurred. It was during that visit that Dad looked at me and said, "No more corn or beans." He died within the week.

That was July. In August my mother died in a house fire. That left my brother in charge of getting in the crops, a seemingly overwhelming task now. As often happens in rural communities, the neighbors came through. In a surprise two-day blitz, dozens of neighbors came with their own equipment and helped. As I heard the news 2000 miles away, all I could do was cry. It was over, my dad's vast acres could rest for another year.

I have lived my life as a teacher and career counselor and though I enjoyed my work a great deal, I never felt the passion for it that Dad felt for farming. As a career counselor I talked to hundreds of people about their careers. None have equaled Dad's feeling for a life calling.