Brewer Chronicles - Labor Day Weekend in Salem

By Labor Day on the farm, the crops were in the phase where all we could do is stay out of their way while they finished growing. The second cutting of alfalfa was already in the barns. Our time was spent on trying to control those rampant weeds, pick the wild berries, and scratch chiggers.

CHIGGERS! (AKA 'damned chiggers')

I have so many wonderful memories of growing up (or at least aging) in Washington County, Indiana. The years have refined my memories to enhance the sweet ones while buffering the not-so-sweet.

 

Not so, my memories of chiggers. Those dastardly nearly invisible little spawns of Satan hunted me down for their evil sadistic rituals. Like their cousins from hell, the sweat bee, they made my summer days miserable. 

 

Did I mention that I spent most of those days in hay and grain fields oozing my sweat nectar for their enjoyment? One day when I was about 12 yo, I climbed down from our 1950 B John Deere while cultivating corn to chat with Bill Lusk on his farm while he was picking blackberries near a big brush pile. I waded through about 10 rows of knee high corn, chatted with him for ten minutes, staggered back through the corn, climbed back on, and pushed the clutch forward. I was wearing some jeans cut off at the knees (actually they fell off) and no shirt.

 

When I pulled my hand back from the clutch and my arm reached my ribs, I felt like someone jabbed me with a cigarette butt in my inner upper arm. One of those damned winged piss ant got me good.

Recovering so that I would cease simultaneously plowing down four of corn while searching my vocabulary for appropriate adjective-verb-noun combinations, I began to feel an irritating situation in my crotch. This seemed to be expanding like that big mushroom cloud in those old 1950 atom bomb pictures.

 

It takes both hands to steer those old John Deeres. I tried, but alternating single-handed efforts resulting in many waves of rows missing missing corn stalks. I gave up, raised the cultivators, shifted into 6th gear, and made a beeline toward the nearby pond at a perfect 45 degree angle to the corn rows. I was not even noticing the sweat bees any more while I was madly scratching at those waves of itching skin.

 

I jumped into the cow pond into the three ft deep mud with two ft of water over it while trying to extract my jeans. I had about 200 welts from my waist to my knees. Most of them had the tops scratched off. I sat in that cow poop/mud ointment for a long time, but not long enough to make the pain go away.

 

I raced (about 12 mph remember it's a John Deere tractor) about two miles home (I had plowed down enough corn for the day).  Staggering into the house, Mom noticed my glassy-eyed staggering gait. She immediately put a pot of water on to heat to remove my mud pack "BEFORE YOU TAKE ANOTHER STEP IN MY HOUSE!". She took me outside to the cistern and started throwing water on me as if I was on fire.

 

The bath revealed the danger to my person. Mom was worried about infections. She cupped her hand full of rubbing alcohol and slapped it on my scratched raw butt.The reason you didn't hear my scream all the way to Salem is that it was above the audio range.

We had ridden our buses to the schools on that Friday to meet our teacher (for me, only one) and to get our book/supplies lists. That made for a very busy Saturday. In addition to our normal routine of feed store and grocery shopping (usually Zink’s), we had to squeeze in some special events.

Our first destination was ‘Greeks’ (we had our own way of naming stores) which was actually the Salem Candy Kitchen. The Sampanis family really knew how to run a restaurant. My Mom would budget and save for this visit so that we could each have a sandwich (I still miss those ‘toasted ham salad’ sandwiches). After that, we could have an ice cream sundae. I still cannot replicate that wonderful Buffalo Sundae (vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, and crushed nuts). After our energy tank was full, it was onward to shopping.

I usually got new shoes twice a year – first day of school and Christmas. Since summers usually had me barefoot, that pretty much covered my shoe seasons. Christmas shoes usually came from Boggs & Justi, but school shoes always came from Voyles. Selecting and trying on the shoes were spiritual events for me.

Next were the school clothes. For my sisters, it was the Style Shop to pick out an outfit that didn’t previously come with feed in it. They often got their shoes there, too. For me, I got to go into the basement at Batt’s to pick out one pair of Levi’s and another pair of cheaper jeans. A couple of plaid shirts topped it off with a chunk of new underwear.

 

The trip to the ‘Dime Store’ would get me most of the supplies. I could count on a new Indian Head tablet with that funny yellow color paper, lead pencil, protractor, compass (for drawing circles), and a pencil holder (with a sliding cover that had a handy sharpener). Since I usually lost my scissors already, I would need that as well.

Sometimes, Mom would replenish our energy tank with soft peanut shaped candy or the maple nougats. My brother always held out for the orange slices even though they cost more.

The feature event would be our trip to McClintock Drugs to buy our books. (I bet it took a lot of computer time for them to identify the books, determine the numbers of each, and arrange for their timely delivery). This was akin to the country fair atmosphere (except that it seemed quite dark all of the time). You could meet a lot of people you hadn’t seen for a long time plus meet some other neat people (it seems that ALL of the people in Salem were neat people). We tried to be there early to snag the used books (but the kids usually openly lusted for the new ones). Our family made some new friends while doing these transactions. McClintock’s also had the special items needed for the classes (protractors and those compass things used to goose the student sitting in front of you) as well as those items to supplant our learning (a lot of maps). Our checkout time seemed like an eternity.

Sitting in the back seat of the old 1940 Dodge waiting for Dad to finish socializing didn’t seem as long while we paged through the books. We were SO anxious for Tuesday to get started.