Ramblings of a Lucky Old Man!

By Jerome Johnson

This book is about my dads life from 1927 till he sold his business. He is now eighty-eight years old and, with the encouragement of others, decided that his stories and antics from his younger days should be down on paper. This blossomed into his putting it into book form. So here it is! I am responsible for the title because I have had to help him get this accomplished. There are funny stories from his life, and there are lesson-learning stories. Judge for yourself how this book may affect your life. When you read this, think about all the stories your own dad or granddad would tell. Enjoy, and I hope it brings up your own great memories.

Jackie

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514436905

Jerome Johnson

Jerome Johnson has accomplished many things that cannot be revealed here. Yet he is allowed to tell you that he has been sent-up by governors and bishops and then knocked down by bar-flies. And he can also tell you he has been accused of singing the right song in the wrong place. And he has been published.

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Copyright © 2016 by Jerome Johnson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/30/2015

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1   Yuba

Chapter 2   LaFarge

Chapter 3   Cambridge

Chapter 4   Albion

Chapter 5   Faithful Dogs

THANK YOU TO DAUGHTER:

I would like to give my warmest thank you to my daughter Jackie. If not for all the time and work that she put into helping me with this it would not have gotten done. She had to put up with a lot during this project. I love and thank you very much.

CHAPTER 1

Yuba

D AD WAS WITH Oscar in Mason, WI farming after the relatives beat him out of his farm. This farm of 640 acres was the farm that grandpa homesteaded and where I was born. When I was born I was not breathing and the Doctor tried everything he knew to do back in 1927. But my Aunt Martha would not give up on me and told the Doctor she was going to try one more time. She did and I started breathing. So, even my start in this world was lucky that My Aunt would not give up on me. We could not make a go to support two families in sand and tree’s to remove. So Dad loaded the Model T and we went to stay at Grandma Larson’s in Deerfield, WI. We rented the Ness farm for one year. There must have been problems because Davidson more or less gave us his farm in Yuba to live on. March of 1930 is when we got stuck in the red clay as we turned off of Highway 80 at Yuba, WI onto the small side road. We unloaded everything and herded the cows up to the barn. Then we got the wagon and hauled the house stuff up to the house about 7 miles. Dad would teach me addition, subtraction, the alphabet and how to milk cows. I started school when I was 4 years old in 1931.

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This was the house where during a bad snow storm I would have my blanket covered in snow, up to 5 inches, that would come in from the cracks in the walls. Dad would keep the fire in the stove because the eggs and milk would freeze sitting on the table by the stove. We had mostly hand me down clothes. Dad used to hunt for meat. He was a good hunter. Before we left Mason, WI, Dad did a lot of hunting and Ma canned up the meat for the trip.

My sisters, Ardrew and Marcella, who were 7 and 8 years older than me, would walk to school together. It was a ways over the hills and sometimes we would leave before daylight and not get home till dark. I went to Pine River School for 3 years. One of the first things that happened to me was a tough boy, Williams, pushed me down on the steel grate and cut my head open. Mrs. Blackburn was my first teacher and she was great. Then we got Norma Nelson for a teacher. She was fresh out of teaching school. She would give me nothing but bad grades. Dad went in to see why when all my test papers came home with 90’s and 100. But when my report card came out I only got a 75 on it. She did make some changes because Dad told her that if she didn’t then he would go to the school board. Another day we were walking over the hills and it was snowing, Ardrew fell and lost her tongue sandwich. So Marcella and I shared ours with her. The tongue was from an old sow, but it was delicious. It was over 7 miles to school via the road, but only 2 ½ miles over the hills. While putting in a fence in the pasture in the spring, my shoes hurt to break them in, so I dropped them down one of the fence post holes and I had to go bare foot till the weather turned cold. The shoes never sprouted so I had to have new ones. Ha! Ha!

Mike used to come over and help us. He would walk over the hills to our place and go into town with Dad. He would help us put up wood. There was no buss saw then so we would use a two handle cross-cut saw, one man saw and a double bit axe. We and the neighbors would work together to cut the wood for everyone. One day Mike was supposed to be at our house by 9:30 am, but when he did not show up by 10am Dad went looking for him. Dad found him hollering up the hillside. When Dad got to him he found him up a thorn apple tree with hardly any clothes on. Our Jersey bull had attacked him and he made it up the tree before he could get horned by the bull. Dad brought him home and gave him some clothes to wear. Jersey bulls are the most temperamental.

Dad could not get work unless he joined the W.P.A. He would not so he took a job hauling whatever the county needed to build a road. W.P.A. workers got around $1.50 per week, but Dad only made about $3.50 a month. He did his work with a team of horses and a wagon.

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While in Yuba, he also made Maple Syrup. Back then the cost to make Maple Syrup was just your manual labor.

On our way down to Cambridge, WI, in 1932, to bury our new born sister, between Spring Green and Mazomanie we had a rod go out in the engine. Dad pulled the model T off to the side of the road and fixed it. Even back in the 1930’s farmers were trying to strike milk prices. They would check over every vehicle and wagon for milk. They were very nice about it. When I think of it now I wonder how or who started it. We stayed at Grandpa Johnson’s house upstairs. That’s all I remember then.

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When we would go to West Lima, WI, we would have to back the Model T up the hills. The reason for this is because the Model T did not have a fuel pump and the gas tank was up higher than the carburetor. So when you went up a steep hill or knoll you would have to back up it to keep the gas tank above the carburetor.

One day Adolph’s son could not get money from his Dad, he hauled our milk to the creamery in Yuba, so he asked my Dad if he would borrow him $.50 for the two day dances. That was the Big Bohemian two day Dance they hold every year. At midnight they blacken everybody’s faces with burnt cork. My Dad gave him his whole milk check which was around $2.00 for the month. After that all the neighbors treated us like one of them. They would help us and we would help them. Once when we went to the McQuirth’s to thresh oats, all their wives were there also, we all sat down to eat and the wives stood behind their husbands to serve them their food. They asked Dad what kind of corn he raised. His was the tallest and had the most ears on the stalks. Dad told them it was Yellow Murdock and all the men started to laugh. The women were blushing and left the room. When Dad asked why they laughed and the women left the room, the men explained that in these parts Yellow Murdock meant something like Yellow F****r. We would cut each stock of corn one at a time while keeping the cut ones in your arms until you had about 10 to 15 stocks. Then I and a partner would stack them in a teepee in the fields. After the field was cut and allowed to dry for about a month, I would gather them up with a team of horses and a wagon. They would be taken up to the barn and piled to be husked out. The husked out stocks would be thrown over my head into a pile that would be used as a wind breaker, feed roughage and bedding for the animals.

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One day in around 1933, three men and one woman all dressed up, came to the house. They never came in the house, but Dad and they went round and round. When they left my Dad was mad as hell. I have never seen him that mad before or ever again after.

In 1934 the neighbors were looking after my new little brother because my mother was sick. They wanted to adopt him before we moved to Buckeye Ridge by LaFarge. But, Ma said no to that. Someone gave me a good pair of wool pants. I was wearing them at the 4TH of July celebration where people were throwing fire crackers. One fire cracker hit my pants and they started on fire. Everyone started to beat the fire out and someone came up with another pair of pants for me to wear.

Dad started to look for a farm but not in West Lima because most of them were 3 story plus farms. A one story farm is where all the land is fairly level. A two story farm is where there is a valley and you have low land and hillside land. A three story farm is where you have the low valley land, the hillside land and the hill top land. We looked in Valley, Rockton, Ontario, Dell, twice at one in Bloomingdale and Brush Hollow. The one on Buckeye Ridge was all on top and sides of the hill. Everything could be just about cleared and farmed and it had a tobacco shed. So Dad bought that one with the help of others.

How we came to be friends with Antom, was because we lent some money to his son. They were a large tight knit group so it was hard to be accepted into it. Because we showed trust in Antom’s son we were accepted into their group. I can exactly say that they were very nice people. Pork on an old sow was $2.00 for a 500lb and a 200lb pig was also $2.00. I don’t remember the price of milk at that time.

I know that Ma’s brother Clarence has lived with us, and with my wife Rose and my kids most of his life. I have only known him to work a full time job at Highway Trailer in Stoughton, WI for about a year.

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Here is a picture of my Great Great Grandpa and Great Great Grandma who lived in Steuben, WI. This story has been told through the years. There was a creek that ran through their pig