My father was a short, stocky-ish man who worked hard all his life. He grew up on a farm and his goal in life was to have his own farm. The work in the dry-cleaning shop was hot, hard work and both he and my mother spent long hours every day cleaning the dirty clothes of Cedar Vale. After years of this, he also bought a small grocery store and ran the grocery while he leased out the cleaning establishment to Raymond Clark, a boy that had worked there for him for a few years. Finally, in about ??1947, they had saved ten thousand dollars, enough money to buy his farm, one hundred acres just outside of Cedar Vale. The house on the farm was old and old fashioned with gas lights instead of electric, but did have running "city water", which looking back on it, seems miraculous for that time. However, before we moved onto "the farm", Dad hired Earl Vore to totally remodel the house and so we moved into a modern house with toilets and electricity. Dad was a very smart person, and was able to do many things that seem surprising now. He built from scratch a gas-fired floor furnace that heated the entire house. I have had umpteen years of higher education and could not begin to know how to build a furnace.
He had a bad temper, but always worked very hard to never let it get the better of him, and seldom did it show. Perhaps that was one reason he seldom physically punished his children. However, one evening he was trying to get one of our milk cows into the barn for the milking. But old Helen that evening had decided that she was tired of all that milking sh-t so would not enter the barn. Dad coaxed and chased her around the barnyard until he was fed-up, red-faced and furious. He came into the house and got his shotgun and some shells, went back into the barn yard and again was chasing Helen around, firing the gun, I suppose in the air because the cow did not get hit, and yelling. Finally she gave up and went peacefully into the barn. I don't know whether she gave any milk that night, but it was a very funny scene to watch. My mother was angry with him for "shooting at the cow" and was afraid he would kill her. But that was one of the few times I saw him really lose it.
Farming was not remunerative for Dad. I especially remember one year he mentioned that the farm income was three thousand dollars, but we always had plenty to eat, clothes to wear and cars to drive. It helped to have our own chickens, eggs , hogs and calves to slaughter for meat and vegetables from mother's big garden. The garden was nice, but I hated the strawberry patch. One day she told me to go into the garden and pick enough strawberries for supper. I hated picking strawberries, so I managed to step on as many plants as I could, which mother found objectionable. She really should have been more tolerant and understanding.
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