Minnesota is corn country (right after it is soy bean and hog country).  When I was growing up in Minnesota I learned at a young age that the corn crop was critical to a lot of farmers and that the judge of its success was where it stood on the 4th of July.   

 

I can remember my dad saying repeatedly at different times in different years, "The corn is already knee high.  Going to be a good year for the farmers."  Or, "The corn didn't make it this year.  It is going to be a tough year for farmers."

We were "farmers" in the sense that we raised animals...mink and foxes.  They were raised to be pelted and made into fur coats and stoles and jackets and so on.  I always knew us as "ranchers" not "farmers".  So... that meant that I only knew one family well when I was growing up that was a true farm family; The Doe family.

The oldest Doe daughter was in my grade in our Catholic school.   Her name was Bonnie (and she has no idea that I am writing this about her so that tells you she has not given me permission to do so!  In fact the last time I saw Bonnie was lots and lots of years' ago at a high school reunion.  I can't even remember if she is still in Minnesota anymore but I am pretty sure that the family sold the farm years before this particular reunion.  To protect her privacy I am only using the name Doe as their last name in this story.)  To this day I love the name Bonnie.  Bonnie is a cheerful name that makes me smile.  

I loved being invited to sleep over at the Doe's farm.  Chickens and a rooster wandered here and there and everywhere in the yard of the house. 

There was an unattached garage relatively close to the house and there were lots of other small outbuildings all serving one intended purpose or another that we could conveniently turn into anything our imaginations desired. 

There were cows to milk and a semi with a shiny stainless steel cylinder would pull into the farm on a set schedule and pick up the milk that was stored in a stainless steel drum awaiting transport.  After picking up the milk from the Doe's farm the truck would bounce on down the bumpy gravel road to its next stop. Tractors were parked, as was the other farm equipment, close to the barn within easy access of the road leading into the fields.  By the time I started sleeping over at the Doe's house, Bonnie already knew how to drive a tractor and operate some of the equipment.  That made me so jealous.  

They had a pet dog, a German Shepherd,  that never left our sides.   The dog was allowed in the house but only through the back door and only as far as the kitchen where he had a bed in a corner.  There were lots of cats but if I remember correctly they were all feral and given room and board in the hay mounds only because they kept down the rodent population inherent in a farm.  A hog or two in a pen and maybe a goat.  I don't remember any sheep. Nary a single horse.  The Doe's farm was a crop farm not an animal farm.  

We slept upstairs where initially there were two bedrooms (they remodeled the upstairs adding a bedroom at a later point) one for Bonnie and her sister and the other for Bonnie's brother.  There was a third room that was used for storing clothing, most of it covered in plastic and mothballs.  Ugh.  The house must have been old because I don't remember any closets in the bedrooms which would explain the clothes' storage room with its odoriferous mothballs.

The bathroom in the house was on the first floor and had a bathtub but no shower.   Mr. and Mrs. Doe's bedroom was across the hall from the bathroom and I remember thinking how small it was.  

They installed a shower in the basement that was just right out in the open with no enclosure at all and a drain hole in the cement floor that was close to the coal burning furnace and the shelf upon shelf of canned vegetables from Mrs. Doe's garden.  Mr. Doe used that shower every night when he came in from the fields before dinner.   I remember being surprised at how much dirt a farmer can accumulate on his exposed skin while driving a tractor.  I also loved that there were two sets of hooks in the vestibule inside the back door.  One set was for "farm" jackets and the other set was for "going to town or school" jackets. 

Mrs. Doe cooked for a farm family who worked hard and used up a lot of calories.  I remember the unpasteurized milk in the glass bottles in the refrigerator.   Being either fastidious or prissy, you pick, I tried very hard to avoid the milk because it had "stuff" floating in it and the bottle in the refrigerator was always uncovered. 

Breakfast is my favorite meal and breakfast at the Doe's house was just the ticket.  Bacon and eggs and pancake breakfasts fixed after the morning chores were over.  Dinner was just lots and lots of very tasty food followed by a homemade chocolate layer cake that was baked in the afternoon for the evening's dessert.  
 
Mrs. Doe was a marvel to people like my mother who often commented on her stamina and good humor.  She would cook and bake and clean and sew and wash and iron clothes and take care of the chickens and the garden and the children and then, when she was finished with her work, she would hop on a tractor and go into the fields to help her husband.   I remember thinking when I was a guest there that I had never seen a husband and wife as devoted to each other as the Does were.  They were the quintessential "lovey dovey" couple.

I especially liked it when we would play in the hayloft in the barn.  There was a rope swing from the hay loft to the ground below attached at the height of the hay loft door.

  

We would take turns grabbing onto the rope and jumping off the ledge of the hay loft and then swing on that rope back and forth until we were ready to let go and drop to the ground.  There we would catch our breath for a second or two and then get up, climb the ladder attached to the barn wall back to the hay loft to do it all over again.

One time when we were playing there, Bonnie lost her footing when she was preparing to jump and catapulted into the loose hay.  She was screaming. although her voice sounded foreign, for me to help her but I couldn't see her to try and find her to help her as she was completely engulfed in hay.  I could tell that the situation was dire although I didn't really understand why and I kept yelling back at her to hold up her arm or do something to show me where she was.  She stopped screaming and  just kept crying and coughing  and I knew she was in full blown panic.  I finally realized that there was nothing to do but to run and get Mrs. Doe for help.  I scrambled down the ladder and was just about to make a beeline for the house when Bonnie fell out of the hay onto the barn floor.  

For a while she just laid on the floor and sobbed.  She had hay sticking out from everywhere including her ears and nose and mouth which she was clearing.  I was crying too just because I couldn't stand to see her so distraught but I still didn't grasp what had just happened. 

After some time I asked her what happened?  She told me.  She was suffocating.  She couldn't breathe because she was too tangled in the hay.   She couldn't loosen the hold the hay had on her and every time she would breathe she would suck in hay and hay dust and it would get more tightly wrapped around her face.   From desperation she thought of something and exerted all of her might to first arch and then thrust her whole body and she thought that was how she broke loose of the hold.

Suffocating.  

What a sobering moment.  I grew up a lot of years in that minute.  The innocence of playing in the hay was gone forever.  I had never even thought about the fact that the hay could make you its victim and kill you.  I thought of all the times I had sat in the hay and had it around me up to my waist, maybe my chest.  But, the hay had always been loose and I had always been able to move freely and I had never had the hay anywhere close to enveloping  me.

Bonnie and I never played in the hay loft again after that.   It had lost its appeal.  

A few Sundays after that happened, we were pulling into the church parking lot getting ready to go to 9:00 o'clock Mass just as the Doe family was pulling out after attending the 8:00 Mass.  My dad and Mr. Doe stopped their cars and rolled down their windows and my dad asked, "Leo, how's the corn this year?"  Mr. Doe's response was, "I'd be better off throwing a lit match into the crop than harvesting it."  My dad responded by shaking his head sadly. A few more words were exchanged and then we parted company. 

That exchange left me feeling so bad.  How could the Does work so hard, harder than anyone else I knew, and end up with nothing?  That is when I first realized that being a farmer means you are willing to put the entire outcome of your hard work into the hands of the universe.  A farmer's control over the result of his hard toiling is miniscule.  The weather gods are the decision makers.

From the experiences of my youth I have an incredible respect for the family farmer.  I ate because they toiled against long odds.  Thank you.

                                                                      ***************

Bonnie and I drifted apart in high school although there was a catastophic event that brought us back together for a while.  Mr. Doe came down with an unknown illness and was hospitalized in excrutiating pain for weeks.  The doctors speculated about every disease under the sun including some so highly contagious that the linens and supplies used in his room were burned when they were removed and he was kept in total isolation.  

His children were barred from seeing him for fear of the unknown disease spreading to them even as they went through test after test to ensure they didn't have "something"... the "something" that their dad had that nobody knew what it was.

Mrs. Doe was an R.N. by training and profession and she was not going to be bossed around by anybody when it came to the love of her life.  She literally moved into his hospital room with him and enlisted the aid of her mother-in-law to take care of her children.  As is typical, the surrounding farmers and their families took care of the livestock and crops at the Doe's farm  without so much as a second thought during this nightmare event.

Mr. Doe died.  During the autoposy they discovered that he had some rare kind of parasitic worm that was literally eating his intestines.  Thus the horrific pain.  No one knows how he contracted it and no one else in the family ever had a single symptom. 

I will never forget the funeral because Mrs. Doe was hysterical and near collapse and had to be held up by strong men on each side of her.   I also remember that she was dressed in royal blue which I found interesting given the times and the hard and fast rule that widows wore black.  I later learned that the dress she wore was the one that Mr. Doe thought made her look the most beautiful.

Mrs. Doe went back to nursing to support herself and her children and the farm land was leased out to other farmers after Mr. Doe's death.    I didn't have any exchanges with the family at that time and could only judge the situation by seeing Bonnie in school.  I never saw her smile again during the rest of our high school years.

I was delighted to see her smiling and animated at our high school reunion.  We talked about a lot but not about that fateful day in the hay nor her father's untimely and horrible death.  Some memories need to be allowed to fade into obscurity. 

Here's hoping that the corn is knee high by the 4th of July!