Bad Hombres We Could Have Done Without

Memories of growing up on the farm include mostly good ones of riding horses, getting to ride in wagons and on tractors, swimming in the creek while the field hands took their “baths”, going to town in the car, party-line phones, rural mailmen, farm hands talking with me, relatives coming to visit, cattle, horses, mules, pigs, chickens, and dogs. They also include memories of snakes, and the occasional “con-man” huckster.

I remember one con-man who came to the house in 1946 or 47 while my mother and I were home alone. He insisted that we needed the out-house pit pumped out or (he said) I would surely get Polio. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, and my mother decided to get rid of him by letting him back up his pumper truck and pump out the sewage. She gave him a check on a Cedar Vale bank for the large amount of money that he demanded. When he arrived at the bank in Cedar Vale, as quickly as his old truck would go, not only was the check written on the wrong bank (clever wasn’t she), the County Sheriff was waiting. We never heard from him again.

Another incident at the farm was perpetrated by an unknown low-life. I recall that when I was somewhere between 4 and 6 years old, I was riding with my dad nearly a half-mile down the road and on the other side of Otter Creek from the house. I spotted one of our cows in the pasture limping and told dad. He investigated and found that someone had deliberately tied a piece of smooth wire just above the cows hoof and twisted it tight. If we had not noticed it, she would have lost her hoof and died. I don’t think we ever found out who did that cruel act.

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