Stories of a Small Town Farm Boy

By Eric Duling

Stories of a Small Town Farm Boy takes author Eric Duling’s 1960s childhood on a big-family farm and brings it to life starting with the story of an anxious child trying to acclimate into the first grade when all he’s ever known has been farm life.  His stories encompass grade school through graduate school as well as a teaching career and early retirement.

Duling wrote Stories of a Small Town Farm Boy because when he left the rural life weighing two very different career paths—engineering professor and singer/songwriter—he realized that not only could he communicate, and communicate well with others, but that they liked his stories. They heard in his stories their own. And so, with this book of humerous yet poignant stories, Duling hopes to continue to entertain you, make you laugh, and yes, connect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outskirts Press
• Release date: Jan 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9781977261373

Eric Duling

Eric Duling is a retired professor of engineering technologies.  He and Nancy split their time between Findlay, Ohio and Dunedin, Florida.  Between them, they have three great boys and two great grandsons.

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Stories of a Small Town Farm Boy

All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2023 Eric Duling

v2.0

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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Table of Contents

Foreword

CHAPTER 1: Aunt Cleopha and the Cursed Clark Bar

CHAPTER 2: St. John’s Elementary School

CHAPTER 3: The Wet Chickens and the Channel Lock

CHAPTER 4: Germans, Latin and Nine Dollars Worth of Beans

CHAPTER 5: The Farm, The Fields, and I Want to Show You Something

CHAPTER 6: Mike’s New Sears Guitar

CHAPTER 7: The New In-Law Prospects

CHAPTER 8: Morning Mass and the Bar Across the Street

CHAPTER 9: Aunt Ellen and My Room Mate’s Motorcycle

CHAPTER 10: The Datsun 240Z and the Clover Field

CHAPTER 11: My First Guitar and the High School Talent Show

CHAPTER 12: A Chevy, A Combine, and A Family Renunion

CHAPTER 13: The Sun, The Earth and The Moon

CHAPTER 14: The Path Taken

CHAPTER 15: Retirement 101

Foreword

AS THE YEARS go by, it has become eminently clear to me that growing up on a farm is a more and more rare occurrence for children today. As I’ve become acclimated to everything from grade school to retirement, certain thought patterns and tendencies steer me on a somewhat different course than many of my friends and neighbors. The writings in these chapters are meant to explain, at least in part, why that is. For example, why it astonishes me when I see young people buy a house but pay to have a lawn service mow the lawn. This would never have happened where I come from. Or sometimes I hear of a friend who hired a painter to paint their living room. You see, where I grew up, if you wanted something, or wanted something done, your choices were simple. You either do it yourself, make it yourself, find an old discarded one and fix it yourself. Or as a last resort, hoe weeds long enough to earn enough money to buy a used one and fix it up.

The farm mindset had a few predominant strictures to abide by. First, there is no money to buy anything, so regardless of what it is, you can’t afford it. So today, when I see young people buying an eight-dollar coffee at some boutique coffee shop, I shake my head. Secondly, get to work and continue working until further notice. And finally, if you need help, find someone who will help you get it done for free. Usually, relatives will work for free. Dad had a cousin Norbert who was incredibly gifted with his hands, especially with mechanical repairs. Consequently, his was the one phone number that Dad had memorized. Even today, my brothers and I still spout off Call Nubby whenever someone is either indecisive about something or angling for some free help.

In many ways, Dad’s old school farming mindset combined with other strong cultural influences of our small farming community have shaped the way my siblings and I still think today. For example, we still don’t watch any sporting events because Dad saw it as a waste of time. I think he would have rounded up any given NFL football team and put them all to work in the fields where he thought they would be more productive. We still paint our own houses, install our own faucets, hang our own doors and pretty much do everything else that we can possibly do ourselves because that way, it doesn’t cost anything. We still like nice cars because that was one of the only attainable things that we could actually focus on back then. We still like good guitars and talented musicians because music was always a welcome escape from the continual work and isolation of the farm. Most of us still like a good cold beer because that was the way the Germans would celebrate the completion of a job well-done. I still don’t care for steak or potatoes because that was about all we had on the farm. Finally, I still don’t drink coffee because I remember Dad’s clear dependence on having it three times a day. You really didn’t want to be around if he’d missed a cup.

I’ve been fortunate enough to make dozens of great new friends both in Ohio and Florida and all of them have had excellent and interesting careers. But very few have grown up putting in long hours toiling in the fields and barns running dangerous machinery and working with herbicides, fertilizers and other hazardous substances. Also, it is safe to say that none of them had my Dad for a boss. My idea was for this book was to put a humorous spin on a series of events that might help to explain why I’ve ended up as I have. I hope you laugh at, and maybe even relate to the somewhat unusual childhood outlined in these pages. Normal is a relative term, and most of us have only our own perspective of what normal is. So welcome to my normal, my friend! Enjoy.

CHAPTER 1

Aunt Cleopha and the Cursed Clark Bar

A COLD FEAR passed through me as we drove down the base line road toward Aunt Cleopha and Doc’s farmstead. Mom always liked visiting her only sister who coincidentally lived just a few miles down the road. She had married a friendly WWII veteran named Bernard who still lived on the original dairy farm with his brother Frank. Together they fed, milked and tended to a small herd of cattle that were actually owned by a gentleman investor by the name of Joe Belch. Bernard Doc Mershman had no formal education in any medical field. He certainly was not a veterinarian, but he had developed some degree of expertise in dealing with sick or injured cattle. Hence the name Doc.

The smell of a dairy farm back in the early 1960’s was not something you wanted to be subjected to for very long. It was a combination of the stench from the cattle added to the strong odor of the disinfectant used on the underside of the cows before milking them. To add to the mix, there was an odor given off by the stainless steel two hundred gallon tank of raw milk which was constantly being stirred by an electric motor. The barn was heavily populated by farm cats constantly waiting to get at some spilled milk. Flies and used up fly strips hung from the ceiling of the milk house. Even in the fourth quarter of my life, these vivid sights and smells live on in my mind’s eye. I never knew where to begin when someone asked why I didn’t like milk.

It was the night before my first day of school. Even though I had six older siblings who had successfully made it through the first grade, I was more than apprehensive. The fear of the unknown is a formidable emotion to express, especially as a very sheltered six year old growing up in the isolation of a farm out in the country. Kindergarten didn’t exist at the time, so there was no getting acclimated to the kids and the classroom situation beforehand. In my mind, there were just too many things that could potentially go wrong. What if I couldn’t do the work assigned by the teachers? Adding to the worry, many of the teachers in my small public school were nuns. What if they didn’t like me? What if I simply didn’t