My Life in the Little Brown House, part 29: Moving to the Farm

I have some poignant memories of the last year or so that we lived in the little brown house before the move to the farm. During the depths of the Depression I recall how my father had his pay at the bank reduced stepwise until finally he was terminated. After one of these pay reductions I recall him coming home and for consolation going out in the yard for some gardening activity. I dimly remember him going off, early in the morning during the winter, for some sort of WPA or PWA work program. I also recall as the plans to move out to the Peterson farm developed. The move depended on renting out the house and when this was achieved (the renter was the Percy Millard family — he was the agriculture and farm shop teacher at the high school) the move was made.

Uncle Carl assisted in the move, and I think at least Will Lines supplied some of the horses used. The two wagons I specifically recall being used were the hay rack and one of the “lumber” wagons. The latter had been outfitted with some springs between the rolling stock part of the wagon and the box part; this was done so that my mother’s piano would have an easier ride out to the farmhouse. Ordinarily in a “lumber” wagon, which was really a grain-hauling wagon as to any use I ever observed for it, had no cushion between the ironclad wheels as they rolled over the sometimes bumpy roads and the wagon box. Getting the piano out of the house presented a little problem, as the turn through the front hallway out onto the porch was too cramped. Eventually it was moved out through the large window onto the porch and thence on its way. In retrospect, recalling how the movers on our move both to Houston and then to Ashland charged extra for the piano (and in both cases no lifting was actually required, just getting it on a low set of rollers and then trundling it along) I can see the physical effort in all of the lifting needed to move the piano from its place in the parlor of the little brown house to its comparable location on the farm. I don’t recall assisting in the moving process, either any packing, loading furniture or anything else.

Although the move was made at a time of economic extremity and uncertainty for the family, I had a sense of excitement at the move to a new, unexplored and interesting locale. I wonder though with what trepidation my parents viewed their new circumstance.

After the move to the farm, I guess I didn’t set foot in the little brown house for fifteen years or so. It was only after my parents moved back to Gowrie sometime after the war, but before 1950, that I was in it again while vacationing with my parents. The house had probably suffered somewhat from lack of maintenance over the years and I suspect that my parents had some renovation — painting etc.— done. I don’t know how long my father continued working as bookkeeper at the Johnson Lumber Co. after the move back to town (he had stopped working at the county treasurer’s office in Fort Dodge sometime in the late ’30s or early ’40s and started fulltime at the lumber company). Between the time he quit work and when his developing Parkinson’s disease incapacitated him, he spent his time gardening and cultivating.

My mother had never had a refrigerator and I believe this was an acquisition she made when they moved back to the little brown house. The house had had natural gas service for years, and I think during the years it was extended to the kitchen range and furnace (although of this I’m not sure), also the hot water supply. I recall definitely that there was a water-softening unit in the basement, which meant I suppose that the cistern, with its runoff rainwater, was no longer used. Of these periodic visits to the little brown house I don’t have many specific recollections. I do recall the time I was there during Vincent and Jean’s wedding. Vincent was working for John Deere at the time and arrived back in Gowrie not long before the day we was to be wed — I was up in the “boys” bedroom and I saw him drive up in the Studebaker he had at the time. After my dad died (I came along to the funeral; Jean and the girls stayed in California) I stayed on for a week as company for my mother during those first days of the change in her lifestyle.

It may have been at this time that I was rummaging around in the old hayloft in the barn (then in use only as a storage place as my parents did not have a cow after the return to town) and I ran across the toolbox that I had made in farm shop during high school freshman days. In it were a few tattered remains of the play farm machinery that I had made on the early days on the farm.




I boxed the toolbox up with these fragments and railroad expressed them back to California. Since then I’ve used the toolbox for storing an assortment of smaller nails, screws, etc. And of course we visited the house as a couple or family the first time being in May of 1954 before Muriel was born when I was on the way to Holland for several months.











Carl’s toolbox, closed and open