Late Grammar Sch & Early HS

One very rainy day Charlie Thrall and I were coming home on my bicycle (he was riding "side saddle"). We were heading south on the state road, and in a hurry to get out of the rain. So I got the bright idea to take a short cut through Skinner's lane that connects direct to Skinner Road. We followed the wheel tracks down hill going quite fast in blinding rain, going around a corner, and too late spotted a barbed wire right across the lane! We hit it broadside, and it gave way. We never stopped, but we both got gashes on our hands and arms that left scars to this day.

Almost all farm families around belonged to the Grange. But Dad wouldn't join because it had the element of a secret society, and he was against that. There was a secret password used.
He did however belong to the Ellington-Vernon Farmer's Exchange Co-op. This is how we got all our grain. At one point some time later he was President of the Co-op.

He would clean chickens at the kitchen table. Not a job he liked. He used to make a very disagreeable face especially when pulling the guts out of a chicken. But as a little boy, it was a facinating thing for me to watch. Much later during the war, he and I were in the manure pit loading the manure spreader. Neither of us liked the job but it had to be done. I asked him what he thought our time was worth, doing this job. He said "About two cents an hour". I asked him how long he thought the war would last. He thought about 10 years. That did it for me. I could not face shovelling manure for 10 years. So I started to think along other lines, such as the U.S. Navy.

When I was still quite young I was attracted to two things, fire and electricity. I started a little fire in the entryway to the wood shed. It attracted my parents attention. They were, one could say, "dumbfounded". So much so that I didn't get a spanking. But a serious talking to. This corrected my thinking that "it was just a little fire". So after that it was always my turn to burn garbage in the big steel drum.

I used to collect all the old flashlight batteries. I made a rig to put them all in series, and used it to light a flashlight bulb. It was fun that the more batteries, the brighter the light. Then I learned another lesson the hard way. I once got just too many batteries, and the light lit exceedingly bright, then went out.

While I was in High School, or maybe 8th grade, Dad built a big addition to the barn, doubling the capacity for milk cows. He worked on the building, so did the hired man, and he also hired others, including Emil Lee. He got the building material by tearing down a portion of the tobacco shed. By then we also had electricity, so we also got an electric pump and had running water. Not much later he also built a silo, so we had ensilage for the cows through the winter.

As I have mentioned, I had an antenna running from near the top of the tall Norway spruce tree down to the outside of my window. Well, one summer night during a thunder storm, lightening hit just under my window with a terrible crash, breaking a lot of vacuum tubes in a basket on the floor, and blasting bits of clapboard halfway to the barn. So I revised the set up, had the antenna terminate much lower, put in a lightening arrestor, etc.

I must go now.