When my parents began milking in a rented parlor in the early 1960s, it was with heavy Surge milkers. Dairy farmers in that era were paid approximately $3 per 100 pounds of milk, or about 36 cents a gallon.
“We felt we were rolling in high clover, your mother and me,” Dad once told me with sincerity. He was incredibly happy to be a full-time farmer, saying he loved being near his little family. “I felt like the luckiest man alive,” he said.
Perspective is everything. Dad appreciated renting the dairy farm from his neighbors after hand-milking six hand-tied Holsteins in an old barn twice a day for a year in hopes of leaving an off-the-farm job. Progressing to Surge milkers with an attached milk house felt as though this young man had won the lottery.
My parents were married in June 1951 and started out “poor as church mice,” my mom always said. After first living in a very nice upstairs apartment in Ashland, Dad found the courage to stop at a farm near Jeromesville after hearing it might soon be available to rent.
He was 19 years old and already had very definite hopes and dreams of the life he wished to build with his bride.
He set up a date to speak directly with the lady owner of the house and farm, Mrs. Ruth Funk, who had grown up there. They struck a deal, and my parents moved to what would become our home place on Pearl Harbor Day, Dec. 7, 1951. There was no indoor bathroom, nor was there running water.
“That’s how you know it was true love,” Mom said with a laugh. My dad started farming “on the shares” but worked full-time off the farm, as well.
In 1953 and 1954, my parents celebrated the births of two fair-skinned babies. Those baby girls added to the work, “but in a good way,” Mom told me. She would pack a picnic to take to Dad in the fields at night with the babies in tow so he could enjoy time with them.
Dad loved his girls and was thrilled in November 1955 when a third, Debi, came along. She was a pleasant baby, beloved by all, and would be the only dark-haired child, taking after our Dad.
It was during these early years that Dad struck another deal with Mrs. Funk, who lived in Canton. She agreed to allow him to have plumbing installed to place an indoor toilet, sink and bathtub, and a hot water heater in the old cellar, where a coal furnace served as the heat source for the home. Everything they completed was done “on the shares,” split 50/50 with Hugh and Ruth Funk.
Up until then, Dad would carry large buckets of water into the house, pumped from the well just off the north porch, each day before he left for work. Mom would heat water on the stove as needed, something she had not had to do in her childhood home for a number of years.
She did laundry, including lots of cloth diapers, in a wringer washer. She used the old outhouse while using a child-sized chamber pot to potty train her little girls.
“Every day brought its share of work, but we were so happy to be building our life together,” Mom told me in an on-the-record interview in 1992. “We were happy as could be … but I was more than ready to burn that old outhouse to ashes!” my pretty mama said with a hearty laugh.
Next week: Finale
