Stories, Poems, and Songs from the Heart of an Old Farmer: Dedicated to the glory of Jesus Christ and GodÆs true Word, the Holy Bible

By Don Cooper

"Dedicated to glory of Jesus Christ and God’s True Word, the Holy Bible" is Don's mission statement, and throughout all of his writings he tells how the Lord has been at his side throughout his whole life. Without His presence Don could have never done the seemingly impossible things he's done.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Nov 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781400327997

Don Cooper

Don Cooper is a retired dairy farmer who lives with his wife Ruth in Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin.  They have six children, sixteen grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.  His first book, Dairy Farming: A Way of Life, tells about their struggles as dairy farmers and their faith in God that got them through.  His writings are dedicated to the glory of Jesus Christ and God’s true Word, the Holy Bible.  He has recorded two gospel CDs that are available on his website, www.fcgmusic.com.

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My Life Story

Iwas born on October 22, 1935 at St Joseph’s Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My dad was John Donald Cooper and my mom was Catherine Margaret Jonas Cooper. My very first memories are of my young life at 35th and Burleigh in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where we lived with my grandparents in their home. Grandpa Jonas was a streetcar driver in Milwaukee for his entire working life, and Grandma taught piano until her health started failing. I was Grandpa’s pride and joy; he called me Hans or Hanswurst. I remember him pushing me in a swing that hung from the ceiling when I must have been quite small. Another early memory I have is of him luring a squirrel into our front foyer to feed it. He could be very jovial, but he could also be very mean when he had been drinking. Grandpa Jonas loved his beer and drank a lot of it. He would say nasty things when he had been drinking and was especially nasty to Grandma. I know life had to be hard then, just after the great depression, but Grandpa, at least, had a dependable job and his own house. My folks, on the other hand, depended on him to put a roof over our heads.

Grandma was a very sweet, quiet lady. Jesus was an important part of her life and she tried to impress me with how important He should be in my life too. She tried to interest me in memorizing Bible verses, but I did not have the patience. Her very favorite verse was John 3:16, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life. I did memorize that verse and it has also become my favorite. She had many other verses pencil-shaded in her Bible. I’ve always wished that I could have found that old Bible, but only God knows where it ended up. She also wanted me to learn to speak German and tried her best to teach me. I’ve always regretted not listening to her attempts to educate me.

I never realized how ill Grandma Jonas was. I remember hearing about her heart problems and a number of strokes that she had while I was quite young. They must have been rather small strokes, however, because she managed to live with her problems for some time.

She was the one who always took me to church and to Sunday School. I well remember sitting with her in church and hearing her singing hymns and trying to encourage me to sing along. She was trained in music but I don’t remember her having a particularly strong or memorable singing voice. The first minister I remember was Reverend Knaatz. I think he was a rather small but fiery speaker. I remember people talking about him preaching like a fire engine. Maybe he talked fast, but I think they were referring to his fire-and-brimstone style of preaching. Grandma was intent on my attending Mission House College some day and becoming a preacher like Reverend Knaatz.

Christmas was Grandma’s special time. The tree was a work of art. Under the tree she would arrange her menagerie: animals, little houses, all kinds of little people, even ice skaters on mirrors carefully tucked in sheets and cotton. There was always a mountain made of clinkers under and around the base of the tree and a herd of mountain goats and sheep carefully placed on Clinker Mountain. I loved to let my imagination take me right inside those villages and mountains. The horses were my favorites to play with.

I have nice memories of Grandma taking me to Sherman Park, only 1½ blocks from home, playing on the swings, slides, and teeter-totters with my next-door girlfriend Marlene Leonard. I remember the street vendors coming around with horse-drawn carts, selling pots and pans, sharpening knives; the rag pickers shouting, Rrrrraggs! Rrraaggs!; and the photographer who came around with his pony and cowboy gear that kids could wear to have their picture taken. Most of the home deliveries were made with horse-drawn carts or wagons–the milkman, the iceman (we had an ice box before refrigerators became affordable), and the garbage men came with big side-dumping wagons pulled by two or four horses.

The horses awed me and I remember going to the horse barns where the garbage collecting horses were kept. Whenever Grandma’s youngest bachelor brother Uncle Eddie came from Allenton to visit us he would take me to the horse barns and admire the horses with me. Uncle Eddie was very hard of hearing and didn’t talk much, but when he did talk, he always shouted. And he ate his morning Wheaties with no milk or sugar on them—yuck!!

During this time period I developed a little brother-big sister relationship with Joan Sherman, the daughter of Mother’s dearest friend Aunt Marge Sherman. Joan was a little older than me and I really thought of her as if she were my sister. Joan shared my love for horses and she had lots of little horse figurines that I enjoyed playing pretend with along with her. She took me to Sherman Park, to the movies, and did all kinds of things big sisters might do with little brothers. I remember one night we were supposed to be sleeping together and Joan decided that we should explore our physical differences (I think it was her idea). I couldn’t wait to share my new-found knowledge with Mom, Dad, and Grandma at the breakfast table the next morning. I remember their reaction at my revelation—Joan was horrified. I didn’t understand her embarrassment, and things were never quite the same between us after that fateful morning.

Going Out Home to the Mertz and Menger farms at Wayne was always something I looked forward to. The Mertz farm was the home of Grandma’s sister Tante Alma who was married to Uncle Armand Mertz. Their children where Arlene, Wimpy, and Anita. Anita had polio when she was a child and had to wear a brace in order to walk. Wimpy’s real name was also Armand. He received the nickname Wimpy, I was told, because of a voracious appetite for hamburgers, like the popular cartoon character in Popeye cartoons. The Menger farm was Grandma’s childhood home and was just up the road from the Mertz farm. The ride there seemed to be endless but whenever we got there, I was in heaven. The cows, pigs, chickens, and my real love, the horses–oh how I looked forward to seeing them all. I never had the nerve to tell Grandma, but her preacher boy was undoubtedly cut out to be a farmer. That decision was made at about the age of five and grew stronger each day of my young life. I was really in my glory when my hero, Wimpy, would let me take the reins after the harnesses were placed on the horses, Nellie and Fannie, and he would let me think I was driving them to whatever implement they would be hitched to that day. Then he would let me sit on his lap and drive them to the field (or at least I thought I was in command). I couldn’t wait until I would be old enough to drive and work those horses myself. Little did I know then that by the time I would be old enough, the horses would be history and I would be driving tractors instead of horses. I’ve always regretted missing out on the horse age, but at least I did get to see it.

My life between the ages of six and ten was one sickness after another: it seemed to me I was either in a hospital or confined to bed. Just name the childhood disease, I would get it. The worst that I recall is Rheumatic Fever and Spinal Meningitis. I was informed, to my horror, that my sickness left me with an enlarged, unhealthy heart, which would make it impossible for me to do any physical activity, much less to become a farmer. My mother, on the other hand, seemed to delight in making a kind of spectacle of me. She seemed to thrive on taking me to doctors, nurses, and hospitals and finding people to sympathize with my symptoms. I absolutely hated what I felt she was putting me through. One good thing that happened during that time was I had to wait to get into a special-needs school, and I was sent temporarily to a Lutheran grade school. I really loved learning about Jesus and reading the Bible each and every day in school.

Around this time we moved to a house Grandpa purchased at 92nd and Slinger. It was a house that required a lot of repairs. Dad was a real handyman and fixed it pretty thoroughly. It was sold and we moved to another handyman special at 92nd and Wilbur where I spent most of my adolescent years. While living there I was transferred to the school with all the sick kids. I really hated it. I especially felt sorry for the ones who had Polio and wondered how long it would be before my heart condition would make a cripple out of me. But I never felt like I really belonged in that type of school and longed to be treated like a normal kid.

I can’t quite remember when my life returned to normal, but I think all the doctor and hospital bills became too much of a financial burden to Mom and Dad and I quit going to the heart specialist, Dr. J. Goodman.

I was determined that I would not allow my heart problems to keep me from my love of farming. I started spending every spare day I could out on the farm helping Wimpy in whatever way I could. I also had a large Journal paper route. I think I delivered over 120 papers a day on my bike, which made it somewhat difficult to juggle my time with it and the farm. But as brother Butch grew, he was able to do the paper route. I think Mom drove him around with the car because balancing all those papers on my bike was a formidable task for me; I don’t think he was capable of handling it. When my time on the farm increased, the paper route was discontinued.

Wimpy always had full-time hired men on the farm at that time and there were times when I’m sure I was more in the way than I was a real help. The last hired man of Wimpy’s that I remember was a guy name Lester. He was 17 years old at the time, a real sex maniac (just what I needed at that time of my life, 12 years of age). He taught Brother Butch and me a few things about the birds and the bees. I think Butch was too young to appreciate that education as much as I did. He did, however, relay what he had learned to Grandma, who in turn relayed it to Mom and Dad. I would like to have been a mouse listening to that conversation.

This was a somewhat confusing time in my life–my second-last year in grade school–and to confuse things even more, Dad was told that his lung problems might be improved by moving to a more-friendly climate in North Carolina. I wish he had tried to correct his lung problem by quitting his incessant smoking habit. All of our family witnessed his horrible coughing fits and we thought he would surely choke to death, only to see him light up another Camel at the end of each coughing bout.

Before I get into the North Carolina episode of my life, I think is important to mention Grandma and Grandpa Cooper. They seemed like storybook people–very proper, almost uppity. Their house seemed like a mansion to me, with big crystal chandeliers and a grand open staircase going upstairs with stained glass windows on the landing halfway up. At the bottom and to the right side of the staircase was Grandpa’s always neat, always polished desk (I guess that’s where I get my compulsion for a neat, tidy desk top. Ha! ha!). His desk always had a jar filled with hard, blue wrapped candy on it. No matter how many pieces were removed it always, magically it seemed, stayed full. Grandpa was a businessman, ran a small men’s hotel—the Ideal Hotel—in downtown Milwaukee right across the street from City Hall. When I think of Grandma Cooper, I always picture a very strong-willed lady; she always seemed in command of everything she was doing. I can’t really point out any examples of why I have that feeling, but that is the way I remember her. I do have one memory of her taking me to her kitchen and going into her pantry and bringing out a huge fresh peach, sitting across from me and smiling at me as I enjoyed that wonderful peach (I can taste it today and every time I think about it). Grandpa Cooper had a very strong personality also, and whatever he said was taken seriously. I always heard stories of a saloon in the basement of his hotel, where during prohibition even the high and mighty folks in Milwaukee gathered there to imbibe. One story I’ll always remember is of the day his preacher (Grandpa was a strict Methodist in the days when Methodists were really strait-laced) chastised him for the evil money he was taking in from the saloon. Grandpa is said to have told him, Well I guess if my money is so evil, you won’t want any more of it for your church. The story goes on that his preacher never brought the subject up again. True or not, the story always caused some chuckling.

Dad always said that Grandpa was a steak-and-pork-chops man and I remember all our meals at his house were quite elegant. Their home was on the east side, not too far from Lake Michigan. I remember one day my cousins Nancy Cooper and Dick Cola, who were very close in age to me, went for a walk down to the lakefront, and on the way there and back we talked about what we would be when we grew up. I don’t remember what the others thought, but I clearly remember telling them that I was going to be a bull farmer and raise and sell bulls (talk about prophecy).

Uncle Bill and Aunt Dorothy were the unmarried adult children who lived in Grandma and Grandpa’s home. Uncle Bill was very quiet and always just sat around. He had an almost eerie presence about himself. I always stayed as far away from him as I could. Aunt Dorothy, on the other hand, was full of exuberance. She was lots of fun to be with. She was, beyond a doubt, my favorite aunt and spoiled me rotten. On top of everything, she worked in a Fannie Farmer candy store and always had special treats available from the store. To the dismay of everyone, she married a real loser, a man who owned an excavating business, totally the opposite of Aunt Dorothy. Their wedding reception was a drunken brawl. For entertainment they had a lady wrestler who was happy to take on all the drunken truck drivers and construction workers who really thought it would be great sport to wrestle with a buxom broad. They all got the surprise of their lives when she very quickly and easily threw each of them out of the makeshift ring. The one thing I admired about the guy was his shiny Model A Ford with a rumble seat. Needless to say, that marriage was short lived.

The rest of my siblings just seemed to have slipped into my life unnoticed because of all the other events. David Butch was my sidekick forever. We had many adventures at home as well as on the farm. One of the most memorable was the time we were coming back from driving the cows to pasture. There was an old set of crumbling foundations of ancient buildings about midpoint between the cow pasture and the farm buildings. Alongside the foundations were some old apple trees. One of