Letters from Hillside Farm

Text © 2013 Jerry Apps

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 an information storage and retrieval system—except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review—without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file

Printed in the United States of America

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Design by Jack Lenzo

Fulcrum Publishing

4690 Table Mountain Dr., Ste. 100

Golden, CO 80403

800-992-2908 • 303-277-1623

www.fulcrumbooks.com

Introduction

Life on the Farm during the Great Depression

The years 1929 to 1941 were known as the Great Depression in the United States. During that time millions of workers lost their jobs, and many families were uprooted as they moved from one part of the country to another. In the fictional Struckmeyer family, father Adolph Struckmeyer loses his factory job in Cleveland, Ohio, and moves with his wife and two children to a rundown rented farm in central Wisconsin. They borrow enough money from Grandma Struckmeyer to buy a few animals and necessary farm equipment. Adolph grew up on a farm, but his wife, Emily, twelve-year-old son George, and three-year-old daughter Annie know nothing about farm life until their move to Wisconsin.

When families moved, they often left behind grandparents and other relatives, as the Struckmeyer family does in this story. In the days before email and the Internet, letter-writing was the best way to keep in touch with family members left behind. This book is made up of the letters that young George Struckmeyer writes to his grandmother, whom he loves dearly and misses deeply, and the letters that Grandmother Struckmeyer writes back to George.

In his letters George describes life on the farm and at a one-room country school just as they were in the 1930s in many Midwestern farm communities. Few homes or schools had electricity or central heating. Most farm work was done with horse and people power. People had little money, yet farms provided a ready source of food, and neighbors were always there to support one another.

March 15, 1938

Tuesday

Rural Route 1

Link Lake, Wisconsin

Dear Grandma,

We got here yesterday, and not an hour too soon. Since we were pulling the trailer behind our car, Pa couldn't drive very fast. As we crossed into Wisconsin and headed north, I saw snowflakes. I told Pa it's supposed to be spring, but he said that here in Wisconsin it can snow any month of the year. I think he was stretching the truth a little, but those surely were snowflakes that I saw. Little Annie said they were pretty, but she says that about everything.

Ma didn't say anything. I think she was tired. I know I was. It's a long drive from Cleveland, Ohio, to Link Lake, Wisconsin. By the time we pulled into the driveway at Hillside Farm—that's the name on the sign by the road—it had already snowed an inch or so and was coming down so hard Pa could scarcely see out the windshield of our old Plymouth. The windshield wipers made a kind of clunky sound as they pushed the snow aside. By the time we unloaded the car and the trailer, it was snowing so hard you couldn't see from one building to another.

While we were carrying things into the house, Pa told us that this is the beginning of a Great Adventure and that no matter what happens, we should always look at the sunny side of things.

I understand the adventure business. Pa has been talking about how this move to Wisconsin will be a Great Adventure ever since he and Ma started talking about leaving Ohio. But look on the sunny side, in the midst of a snowstorm?

So I thought about the puppy he promised to buy me, back when I raised a fuss about moving to a farm in faraway Wisconsin. But today when I asked him when I can get the puppy, he just laughed and said, “First things first.”

The next thing I discovered about our Great Adventure is that it doesn't include indoor toilets! When I asked Pa where the bathroom is, he kind of smiled and said he saw it out back of the house when we first drove up. I asked him to show me where it is. So much snow was falling and the wind was blowing so hard that I could see just a few feet in front of my face. Pa walked with me to the outhouse, and even he had trouble finding the way. Can you imagine getting lost in a snowstorm trying to find your way to the bathroom?

Do you know what an outhouse is, Grandma? It's a little building with a door in the front and a kind of bench with holes in it where you can sit. When you drop your trousers and sit over one of the holes, you about freeze your backend. And there isn't even toilet paper. You use pages from an old Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog! I tell you, you do what needs to be done and get out of there as fast as you can. It doesn't smell very nice, did I mention that? I was worried that I might fall through one of the holes. That would be just about the worst thing that could happen to anybody.

When I stepped into the kitchen of our new farmhouse, I saw Ma staring at the sink. There are no faucets! I asked Pa if we have running water. Do you know what he said? He said, “Sure we have running water—just go out to the pump house, pump a pail full, and run back to the house.” Then he laughed. I didn't think it was funny, especially because Pa knows I can't run at all since I broke my leg last year. I think he must have forgotten about my limp. He never mentions it. Ma talks about it, though. She's always asking me if my leg hurts. It doesn't hurt much, only when I walk on it a lot. Ma is still upset with the doctor who tried to fix my leg. He didn't do a very good job of it. I guess the break was pretty bad. You wouldn't think you could break your leg falling out of a tree, but I sure did. The doctor said it will take a while for the leg to heal. How long is “a while?” It has already been three months.

One of the first things Pa did when we got inside was to start the fires in the kitchen and dining room stoves. That's how our house is heated, Grandma, with wood-burning stoves. There's a woodpile just a few steps from the west side of the house. Pa says one of my chores will be toting wood from the woodpile into the house, where I'm supposed to stack it in a wood box that stands beside each stove.

Ma has to do all the cooking on the wood-burning stove in the kitchen. She hasn't said so, but I'll bet she doesn't think much of that idea.

Tomorrow Pa's going to drive me to school and see about getting me enrolled. I have already missed a week since we left Ohio, and I am worried about falling behind. Seventh grade is not an easy year—at least, it wasn't in Ohio. I suspect it won't be easy here in Wisconsin, either. I am worried about going to a country school where all eight grades are in one room with one teacher. In the city the seventh and eighth grade students have their own room, with their own teacher. I'm also worried about my leg and whether I'll be able to walk to school. It's a mile from our farm.

This letter is my first chance to try out the writing paper and pencils you gave me. Ma says I must be sure to say thanks for such a fine present—so, thank you very much. I will try very hard to write to you as often as I can and let you know how I am doing in this new place.

I have also found a spot in my room for the leather tools you gave me. I hope I will have time to work on some new leather projects.

Ma is calling me to fetch some more water, so I must stop writing. I hope I can find my way to the pump house without getting lost in the snowstorm. We all miss you, Grandma. Little Annie keeps asking for you and wonders where you are. I guess she's too little to know that you are not just around the corner like you were in Ohio. I sure wish you were here. I wish we hadn't left Cleveland.

Love,

George

March 17, 1938

Thursday

Dear Grandma,

After the big snow I wrote to you about, we couldn't go anywhere until the snowplow struggled past our farm and plowed us out. That meant I didn't go to school until today. Our first day here we shoveled paths to the pump house, to the outhouse, to the woodshed, and from the car shed to the road. Pa said there'd be a lot more shoveling if we had cows and chickens and had to shovel our way to the barn and the chicken house.

Today Pa drove me to school and came and got me, too. The schoolhouse is a rickety, little, faded white building with no electricity, a woodstove, and outdoor toilets—one for the boys and one for the girls. There are only twenty students in the whole school. I am the only one in seventh grade. Miss Harvey, our teacher, is a tall, thin woman with black hair, long bony fingers, and eyes that stare right through you. She teaches all eight grades, besides making sure we do our duties. One of the duties Miss Harvey assigned to me is to carry in kindling wood from the woodshed each day. More wood carrying! The woodshed is a small red building not far from the schoolhouse. It is piled high with oak wood chunks and pine kindling for starting the fire in the schoolhouse stove.

Miss Harvey has everyone doing something. The first-graders pound the dust from the blackboard erasers. Older kids carry water from the pump house to fill the water cooler that stands at the back of the schoolroom. Kids that have been especially good at doing their duties over the years and stay out of trouble get to put up and take down the flag each morning and afternoon. The flag flies from a pole in the schoolyard near the front gate.

I don't know if I'll like this school or not. Pa keeps reminding me that school, too, is part of the Great Adventure.

Your grandson,

George

March 18, 1938

Friday

Dear Grandma,

Today I started walking to school on my own. It's only a mile, and the hills are not too steep. With all the fresh snow on the ground, I spotted some rabbit tracks. The snowstorm didn't seem to slow down the rabbits any.

Pa said it is an easy walk to the schoolhouse, but between my bad leg and stopping to inspect the rabbit tracks, I was a little late arriving at school. Well, you'd think I had committed a crime. When Miss Harvey saw me come in the door, she told me to hang up my coat and come up to her desk. She has a tone to her voice worse than Pa when he's mad. When I got up to her desk, she laid into me. In a voice loud enough that everybody in the school could hear, she said that nobody is ever late at Rose Hill School. She actually said it twice. While she was giving me a going-over, the rest of the kids were snickering and covering their mouths so Miss Harvey wouldn't see. I suspect if she had caught any of them laughing, she would have given them a talking-to as well.

I told Miss Harvey that I broke my leg last year—that it isn't right yet and keeps me from walking fast. She said that doesn't matter. She said if I can't walk fast I should leave home a little earlier. She doesn't seem to understand what it's like to have a gimpy leg.

Grandma, here it is, only my second day of classes, and I'm in trouble with the teacher. For punishment, she said I have to sweep out the boy's outhouse every morning and afternoon for two weeks!

Things got worse at recess. We were all outside in the schoolyard, getting ready to play a game Miss Harvey calls anti-I-over. Half the kids line up on one side of the little red woodshed, the other half on the other side. All that's needed to play the game is a rubber ball. A kid throws the ball over the woodshed while yelling “anti-I-over.” The ball is supposed to bounce at least once on the opposite side of the building's roof. If someone on the other side of the building catches the ball, everyone on that side runs around to the other side. The kid who caught the ball tries to tag a kid on the other side, either by touching the kid or throwing the ball at him. If he succeeds, the kid who is touched by the ball joins the other team. The game goes on until one side captures all the players from the other side.

I had never heard of this game, but it sounded like it would be fun. I must have been standing there looking dumb, because just then Amos Woodward (he's an eighth-grader) stepped up to me and said that everyone should call me Limpy Late. Then he said, “We don't like city kids in our school, especially when they limp in after school starts.” He was practically snarling, Grandma!

Amos Woodward is taller than I am, with arms that look like fence posts and a head that seems stuck straight to his shoulders, with no neck. His brown hair looks like it hasn't seen a comb for days, if ever.

I wanted to tell mister bigmouth Woodward to shut up, but I thought better of it. He'd probably pop me one in the choppers, and then I'd really be in trouble with Miss Harvey.

I noticed that Amos was staring at my leather belt—the one with all the designs on it that you showed me how to make. He asked me where I got it, and I told him that I made it. He said he didn't believe me. Before I had a chance to answer, Miss Harvey said there would be no bickering. So I kept my mouth shut.

This was not a good day. The only good part was learning a new game.

Love,

George