We ain’t got it so bad, now do we? Part 15

Part 15.

In those days having cash in hand made for an easy purchase. So in no time at all, they bought the 9-acre property and Guy was hard at work building their future home, along with all the outbuildings needed on a working farm, along with milking and storage sheds, fencing all around and finally a large metal building he would soon utilize as a welding and fabrication shop along with a farm machinery repair establishment.

When all that was accomplished, it was a proud day. On that day, he climbed a tall wooden ladder he’d made to the front peak of the shop with Viola standing below shading her moist eyes; he hung a sign he’d hand painted that read “Guys Welding and Repair”.

Next in the natural order of things was having a family but in those still fairly crude and backward times even that was not to be so smooth.

The first time Viola became pregnant, it was truly a time of great joy for them. Viola was the picture of health and happiness throughout the pregnancy.
Everything went pretty trouble free until the actual birth. Then something went terribly wrong and the baby died at birth, as so often happened in those days of sketchy healthcare.

That put both of them in a slump for a while but like all things on a farm, there was little time to morn over deaths. Experiencing all the varied problems with births and deaths with the farm animals soon taught them to just pull themselves up by the bootstraps and move on, so move on they did.
The next pregnancy went well again, including this time birthing a healthy girl they named Yvonne.

Next came preparing the fields for whatever crops they might be able to make some coin with. With the irrigation canal bordering their piece of land, it was a relatively easy chore to breach it, using wooden gates to control the flow into smaller main ditches onto the property. From those ditches, Guy used special bent pipes he created to use a siphoning method to get water into the lower planting channels running the length of the property.

So after planting potatoes, all he had to do daily was pick up the pipes leading to the filled channels between the plantings to the next section until the whole field was well watered.

Before long, the farm had Chickens for eggs and meat, a couple of cows for milk and beef, a drove of pigs for pork and a small barn filled to the ceiling with alfalfa hay to feed the cows.
Having both been raised on farms back in Okalahoma, they had all the skills necessary to handle everything it took to raise, slaughter, medicate, skin out and handle every aspect of dealing with farm animals.

As with most real farms, the chickens roamed freely, doing their job of keeping the bugs, flies and grass seeds controlled, which also fed them nicely.  Each dusk they would all head back into the chicken coop, where Viola would arrive to shut the door to protect them from nightfall’s predators.

Farming then and now was actually a pretty hard life. The cows had to be milked twice daily, morning and night. That gave the family not only milk but also butter, Viola churned from the cream floating on top of the milk after it set for a bit. Often if Yvonne was there during the milking, they would play a game where Yvonne would kneel down close by and Viola would squirt the milk straight into her mouth, often time missing on purpose, causing the milking shed to light up with laughter and joy. Being so far out in the quiet country, those sounds drifting through the dusk air reached Guys ears, causing him to stop what he was doing for a moment and smile with joy also.

In the meantime, with the addition of a welding and repair shop out in the country surrounded by farms of every description, Guys business was growing almost daily. Being able to repair, fabricate and build most anything the farmers needed made his success inevitable. He not only had all the skills necessary to do most anything they wanted but also had the fair price attitude he’d brought with him from Okalahoma.

During the next 8 years, Yvonne grew up learning all the ways of farming, while roaming the acreage until she had every square inch of the place firmly in her heart and soul.

During those years, Guy and Viola tried to add to the family but fate laid it’s cruel hand on their plans with another stillbirth and one more who died soon after birth.

After three children not meant to be, they pretty much decided they would be a one child family but truth was, birth control was not something people thought much about in those days.

So they put the idea of adding to the family out of their minds with all the work and toil involved in the running of the farm and shop. Then that same fate decided to change their plans once again with the birth of a brand new child.

This time it was a boy, which pleased them both immensely, giving them someone to keep the family name marching into the future. They named this boy Paul and from day one he was almost the opposite of Yvonne. Where she was the typical girl, a little quiet and reserved, he started out on day one loud, awake all night and demanding the world revolve around his every whim. In other words a boy!

Since I started this little writing project to relate, along with embellish a few stories my Parents told me about their early days coming from the Okalahoma Dust Bowl, Great Depression days, I feel compelled to end it with my birth on the little farm they developed in Mid Valley California so long ego.

As I hope I conveyed, I’m nothing but proud of my heritage. These folks started with misery unimaginable. They learned to pull themselves up by their proverbial tattered bootstraps and with incredibly hard work, perseverance and toil, make a meaningful life in the Earths womb and soil of California.

I hope you enjoyed their adventures along the way, as much as I enjoyed relating them…..