Growing up

I remember living on four farms in my life. Actually, it was five, but I don't remember living on the first one. Dad was a hired hand until he bought the last farm...a chicken farm.

The first farm I remember was on the W. W. Benner farm near Coatesville, Pa. (A pharmaceutical laboratory is there now. The house we lived in was torn down where the parking lot now stands.) Mr. Benner was a gentleman farmer, you might say, who had a herd of pure-bred registered Guernseys which Dad took care of, along with a couple of other hired hands. I'm the oldest in the family but I don't remember life without any brothers or sisters because Ronald was born 14 months later, then my sister Sallie, and then Joyce, all about a year or so apart. You can believe we were a handful for Mom and Dad. But being on a farm had its advantages. After we developed our toddling skills we soon had the run of the place. I remember when the next one was born; Arlene. Then there were five of us.

I remember that time distinctly. I was five years old, and Ronny was four. Dad took Mom away and told us that she was going to get us a baby brother or sister. Ronny and I asked for a baby brother. In fact, we prayed for one in our bedtime prayers. We had two sisters already, and with another one we would be crowded with girls. Would you know it, we got another baby sister! I remember thinking, why didn't they just wait until a brother was available? But we doted on our baby sister Arlene. We were about old enough to lend a helping hand sometimes.

Mom must have been a blonde in her day. Dad's hair was almost black. We kids were a mixture of blonde and brown. Ron, Joyce and Arlene were blondes, while Sallie and I had brown hair. Later Jane and Marge came as blondes.

As children we developed somewhat of an affinity to some of the cows that were in the barn on the Benner farm. They all had names; and two that come to mind are Hester and Hector. They all gave the richest milk and during the summer Dad would get out the ice cream freezer and whip up a batch of homemade ice cream. Mom would cook up the recipe and pour it into the container; Dad would pack the wooden bucket with ice and salt and the youngest would start turning the crank, then an older and stronger one would continue, and Dad would finish it up. The results were delectable, to say the least.

Dad always had a garden. He grew everything there was to grow in a temperate climate: corn, string beans, lima beans, pole beans, wax beans, peas, carrots, celery, kohlrabi, white potatoes, sweet potatoes, rhubarb, cantaloupe, melons, cucumbers, radishes, even peanuts occasionally. Invariably,, he'd find wild groundcherries which he'd transplant into rows and later harvest for use in ground cherry pies. Ground cherry pie was a staple in our family when they were in season.

Life for us kids on the Benner farm was rather idylic as I remember it. We had our share of sadness and happiness, but for the most part they were pleasant memories. I do remember the first time I went to the dentist though, which was a sheer terror to me. I had been in hospita at 3 years old with major surgery and it wasn't many months later that I had an infected tooth. Off to the dentist I went, with Dad. But when I saw what the dentist was doing, I was struck with sheer panic and I let everyone know it. He was going to put me to sleep. I knew the procedure from what I experienced in the hospital. I still have the scars of a tracheotomy that was necessary a couple years before in the hospital, that attested to the degree of reaction, whether allergic or panic, that ether gas afforded me. It's not easy to convey one's feelings in a calm, rational manner when you're a small child, but a few hefty screams of terror did the trick. The dentist gave up. I did not get my tooth pulled.

We finally moved to another farm near Phoenixville, Pa. where Dad had the task of milking 40 cows. That too was quite a place to remember. I was about five or six then and sometime later I started school. I was kept back a year until Ron was old enough to go to school "to keep an eye on you", meaning me.

After a short number of years, Dad finally saw an ad in the paper for a hired hand needed to help run a farm. Instead of calling the number and asking about the particulars, he had us kids look up the number in the phone book. A to M is a long way to look for a name but we found it under Mack. Dad happened to know them and he then called them up. We moved

That was where Ron and I raised rabbits, and trapped for muskrat. The first victim of trapping season was a mallard duck which was caught by the tip of the foot. We let it go...no fur!

Then one day Dad bought a chicken farm; Pine Top Farm it was called. There were flocks of hens already in progress and we spent our time learning to gather, wash and grade eggs. The transition meant that we stayed in a cottage on the premises, while the owners, the Tuchinski's showed us how to go about the work. That was in 1956. I was 12 years old. Jane and Marge had come along by this time, and Ron and I were rather frantic. No more brothers? We had five sisters now.

The novelty of chicken farming wore rather thin over time, what with all the young hens that literally almost raised the roof as soon as you entered their pen. They were a flighty bunch and one had to be rather quiet; no sudden moves or the whole chicken house would explode with dust and feathers. And there were two other buildings full of chickens too. The older flocks were more reasonable.

Two years later, in February 1958, we finally got our prayers answered. We got a baby brother, David. I now had two brothers and five sisters. We were quite proud of the kid.

But tragedy almost struck. Ron and I were away at the neighbors a couple of miles away and when we returned on our bicycles we found the sunporch, Mom and Dad's bedroom, was entirely gutted out by fire. It was March and a heavy snow had knocked out the electricity for a few days. The bedroom was kept warm for the baby by a kerosene stove. It was knocked over and flames caught onto the diapers stacked by the bassinette. Mom leaped over the flames, snatched month-old David and ran for safety. Dad ran in, called the fire company, and shut everything tight. The flames came within about 3 feet of the staircase, otherwise the whole house could have gone up.

Kind neighbors took us in for awhile. The Mennonites built a two-story renovation, which enlarged the house considerably. For a family of eight kids, it was a godsend.

Dad gave up chicken farming years before he finally sold the place. However, he continued with truck gardening. One year he planted five acres of sweet corn, and lost count of the harvest at 25,000 ears. One year he disked down the remnants of the corn crop and sowed a quarter-pound of turnip seed over the acreage. We had turnips you wouldn't believe! Tons of them. We sold them to neighbors, and to my Mom's sister's supermarket--Landis Supermarket in Telford.

One day there was another fire. The largest chicken house on the place burned down. Spontaneous combustion, they said. The chicken house wasn't cleaned out after the last flock of chickens years before. The resulting insurance claim helped Dad on his feet financially, and when he sold the farm, he was on Easy Street. Dad and Mom moved to New Jersey in retirement.

You can thank Jack and Jane (my sister) Hobson for the care they gave to our parents in the last years. Dad passed away in 1999 and Mom went in 2006.