The Little Red Haired Boy

The farm where he grew up had no electricity or running water and the farm operated with horses, kerosene lamps or gasoline lamps.  One of the chores he had as the Saturday work was to polish the reflectors on the back of the lamp holders in each room.  The house was small, in fact two very small houses put together in a “T” formation.  The boys (six of them) slept in two beds in one room and the girls in another.

His house was heated by only a couple of stoves, one in the small living room and the cooking stove in the kitchen.  The chimney for each stove ran through the ceiling of the bedrooms and at night the fire would go out except for a banking (covering the hot coals with ashes) of coals that were used to start the fire in the morning.

He still remembers his mother stoking the fires early before anyone else was up to get some heat into the house before school and breakfast. His mother was always was up early, as was his dad. The cold in the winter would seep into the house and the water pail in the kitchen would freeze solid. During the blizzards that came, snow would blow in and the stairs would be covered in snow, this tells you the temperatures in the house in winter.

All chores had to be done before going to school like picking the eggs and feeding the chickens, getting the cows in and feeding and milking them.  These chores were done in the dark and at only five or six years of age, there were many opportunities to conjure up things that only appear in the dark. 

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Learning to Drive

By the time war was declared in 1941, he had grown to be quite a young man of seven and once when the parents went off to the big city with a neighbor, he felt it was an opportune time to try out the old 35 Ford.

The first thing was to find out was how the cigarette lighter worked. He found that by placing a piece of metal wire against the middle of the socket and touching it to the outside, the wire became extremely hot and it did not take long to learn the effect of electricity and what wire conductivity was.  This project was quickly dropped in favor of driving the car.

You must understand, at this juncture, the little boy, could not even see over the dash, but what he didn’t know, when he started the car, it probably wasn’t going to go that way anyway.  He placed the key in the ignition, turned the pretty chromium switch on the steering column to on, and while pressing the accelerator, he pushed the starter button.

The excitement of seeing him shoot full speed backward across the yard for about 150 feet just astounded those who had the opportunity to witness this monumental event.   Then having gained his senses got his foot off the accelerator and onto the brake.  His first driving experience caused a huge problem. 

How to get the car back where it was and how to cover the deep tracks the spinning wheels had made during the adventure.  Well, the others being impressed at his prowess with the car, helped him push the it back to the starting point and then the task of covering the tracks was another problem. They did their best to fill in the dirt but the grass just could not be replaced.

The real mystery of the story is that, the adventure never was discovered by the shopping parents.  It was a true boys adventure that stood him in high esteem by the siblings for many a week.  It did, however, teach him that he should wait a while before trying to drive and should not fool around with electricity until he knew more about it.