The Last Threshing in the Coulee
Life on a Wisconsin farm, even for the women, had its compensations.
There were times when the daily routine of lonely and monotonous
housework gave place to an agreeable bustle, and human intercourse
lightened the toil. In the midst of the slow progress of the fall's
plowing, the gathering of the threshing crew was a most dramatic event
to my mother, as to us, for it not only brought unwonted clamor, it
fetched her brothers William and David and Frank, who owned and ran a
threshing machine, and their coming gave the house an air of festivity
which offset the burden of extra work which fell upon us all.
In those days the grain, after being brought in and stacked around the
barn, was allowed to remain until October or November when all the other
work was finished.
Of course some men got the machine earlier, for all could not thresh at
the same time, and a good part of every man's fall activities consisted
in "changing works" with his neighbors, thus laying up a stock of unpaid
labor against the home job. Day after day, therefore, father or the
hired man shouldered a fork and went to help thresh, and all through the
autumn months, the ceaseless ringing hum and the _bow-ouw, ouw-woo,
boo-oo-oom_ of the great balance wheels on the separator and the deep
bass purr of its cylinder could be heard in every valley like the
droning song of some sullen and gigantic autumnal insect.
I recall with especial clearness the events of that last threshing in
the coulee.--I was eight, my brother was six. For days we had looked
forward to the coming of "the threshers," listening with the greatest
eagerness to father's report of the crew. At last he said, "Well, Belle,
get ready. The machine will be here tomorrow."
All day we hung on the gate, gazing down the road, watching, waiting for
the crew, and even after supper, we stood at the windows still hoping to
hear the rattle of the ponderous separator.
Father explained that the men usually worked all day at one farm and
moved after dark, and we were just starting to "climb the wooden hill"
when we heard a far-off faint halloo.
"There they are," shouted father, catching up his old square tin lantern
and hurriedly lighting the candle within it. "That's Frank's voice."
The night air was sharp, and as we had taken off our boots we could only
stand at the window and watch father as he piloted the teamsters through
the gate. The light threw fantastic shadows here and there, now lighting
up a face, now bringing out the separator which seemed a weary and
sullen monster awaiting its den. The men's voices sounded loud in the
still night, causing the roused turkeys in the oaks to peer about on
their perches, uneasy silhouettes against the sky.
We would gladly have stayed awake to greet our beloved uncles, but
mother said, "You must go to sleep in order to be up early in the
morning," and reluctantly we turned away.
Lying thus in our cot under the sloping raftered roof we could hear the
squawk of the hens, as father wrung their innocent necks, and the crash
of the "sweeps" being unloaded sounded loud and clear and strange. We
longed to be out there, but at last the dance of lights and shadows on
the plastered wall died away, and we fell into childish dreamless sleep.
We were awakened at dawn by the ringing beat of the iron mauls as Frank
and David drove the stakes to hold the "power" to the ground. The rattle
of trace chains, the clash of iron rods, the clang of steel bars,
intermixed with the laughter of the men, came sharply through the frosty
air, and the smell of sizzling sausage from the kitchen warned us that
our busy mother was hurrying the breakfast forward. Knowing that it was
time to get up, although it was not yet light, I had a sense of being
awakened into a romantic new world, a world of heroic action.
As we stumbled down the stairs, we found the lamp-lit kitchen empty of
the men. They had finished their coffee and were out in the stack-yard
oiling the machine and hitching the horses to the power. Shivering yet
entranced by the beauty of the frosty dawn we crept out to stand and
watch the play. The frost lay white on every surface, the frozen ground
rang like iron under the steel-shod feet of the horses, and the breath
of the men rose up in little white puffs of steam.
Uncle David on the feeder's stand was impatiently awaiting the coming of
the fifth team. The pitchers were climbing the stacks like blackbirds,
and the straw-stackers were scuffling about the stable door.--Finally,
just as the east began to bloom, and long streamers of red began to
unroll along the vast gray dome of sky Uncle Frank, the driver, lifted
his voice in a "Chippewa war-whoop."
On a still morning like this his signal could be heard for miles. Long
drawn and musical, it sped away over the fields, announcing to all the
world that the McClintocks were ready for the day's race. Answers came
back faintly from the frosty fields where dim figures of laggard hands
could be seen hurrying over the plowed ground, the last team came
clattering in and was hooked into its place, David called "All right!"
and the cylinder began to hum.
In those days the machine was either a "J. I. Case" or a "Buffalo
Pitts," and was moved by five pairs of horses attached to a "power"
staked to the ground, round which they travelled pulling at the ends of
long levers or sweeps, and to me the force seemed tremendous. "Tumbling
rods" with "knuckle joints" carried the motion to the cylinder, and the
driver who stood upon a square platform above the huge, greasy
cog-wheels (round which the horses moved) was a grand figure in my eyes.
Driving, to us, looked like a pleasant job, but Uncle Frank thought it
very tiresome, and I can now see that it was. To stand on that small
platform all through the long hours of a cold November day, when the
cutting wind roared down the valley sweeping the dust and leaves along
the road, was work. Even I perceived that it was far pleasanter to sit
on the south side of the stack and watch the horses go round.
It was necessary that the "driver" should be a man of judgment, for the
horses had to be kept at just the right speed, and to do this he must
gauge the motion of the cylinder by the pitch of its deep bass song.
The three men in command of the machine were set apart as "the
threshers."--William and David alternately "fed" or "tended," that is,
one of them "fed" the grain into the howling cylinder while the other,
oil-can in hand, watched the sieves, felt of the pinions and so kept the
machine in good order. The feeder's position was the high place to which
all boys aspired, and on this day I stood in silent admiration of Uncle
David's easy powerful attitudes as he caught each bundle in the crook
of his arm and spread it out into a broad, smooth band of yellow straw
on which the whirling teeth caught and tore with monstrous fury. He was
the ideal man in my eyes, grander in some ways than my father, and to be
able to stand where he stood was the highest honor in the world.
It was all poetry for us and we wished every day were threshing day. The
wind blew cold, the clouds went flying across the bright blue sky, and
the straw glistened in the sun. With jarring snarl the circling zone of
cogs dipped into the sturdy greasy wheels, and the single-trees and
pulley-chains chirped clear and sweet as crickets. The dust flew, the
whip cracked, and the men working swiftly to get the sheaves to the
feeder or to take the straw away from the tail-end of the machine, were
like warriors, urged to desperate action by battle cries. The stackers
wallowing to their waists in the fluffy straw-pile seemed gnomes acting
for our amusement.
The straw-pile! What delight we had in that! What joy it was to go up to
the top where the men were stationed, one behind the other, and to have
them toss huge forkfuls of the light fragrant stalks upon us, laughing
to see us emerge from our golden cover. We were especially impressed by
the bravery of Ed Green who stood in the midst of the thick dust and
flying chaff close to the tail of the stacker. His teeth shone like a
negro's out of his dust-blackened face and his shirt was wet with sweat,
but he motioned for "more straw" and David, accepting the challenge,
signalled for more speed. Frank swung his lash and yelled at the
straining horses, the sleepy growl of the cylinder rose to a howl and
the wheat came pulsing out at the spout in such a stream that the
carriers were forced to trot on their path to and from the granary in
order to keep the grain from piling up around the measurer.--There was
a kind of splendid rivalry in this backbreaking toil--for each sack
weighed ninety pounds.
We got tired of wallowing in the straw at last, and went down to help
Rover catch the rats which were being uncovered by the pitchers as they
reached the stack bottom.--The horses, with their straining,
out-stretched necks, the loud and cheery shouts, the whistling of the
driver, the roar and hum of the great wheel, the flourishing of the
forks, the supple movement of brawny arms, the shouts of the men, all
blended with the wild sound of the wind in the creaking branches of the
oaks, forming a glorious poem in our unforgetting minds.
At last the call for dinner sounded. The driver began to call, "Whoa
there, boys! Steady, Tom," and to hold his long whip before the eyes of
the more spirited of the teams in order to convince them that he really
meant "stop." The pitchers stuck their forks upright in the stack and
leaped to the ground. Randal, the band-cutter, drew from his wrist the
looped string of his big knife, the stackers slid down from the
straw-pile, and a race began among the teamsters to see whose span would
be first unhitched and at the watering trough. What joyous rivalry it
seemed to us!--
Mother and Mrs. Randal, wife of our neighbor, who was "changing works,"
stood ready to serve the food as soon as the men were seated.--The table
had been lengthened to its utmost and pieced out with boards, and planks
had been laid on stout wooden chairs at either side.
The men came in with a rush, and took seats wherever they could find
them, and their attack on the boiled potatoes and chicken should have
been appalling to the women, but it was not. They enjoyed seeing them
eat. Ed Green was prodigious. One cut at a big potato, followed by two
stabbing motions, and it was gone.--Two bites laid a leg of chicken as
bare as a slate pencil. To us standing in the corner waiting our turn,
it seemed that every "smitch" of the dinner was in danger, for the
others were not far behind Ed and Dan.
At last even the gauntest of them filled up and left the room and we
were free to sit at "the second table" and eat, while the men rested
outside. David and William, however, generally had a belt to sew or a
bent tooth to take out of the "concave." This seemed of grave dignity to
us and we respected their self-sacrificing labor.
Nooning was brief. As soon as the horses had finished their oats, the
roar and hum of the machine began again and continued steadily all the
afternoon, till by and by the sun grew big and red, the night began to
fall, and the wind died out.
This was the most impressive hour of a marvellous day. Through the
falling dusk, the machine boomed steadily with a new sound, a solemn
roar, rising at intervals to a rattling impatient yell as the cylinder
ran momentarily empty. The men moved now in silence, looming dim and
gigantic in the half-light. The straw-pile mountain high, the pitchers
in the chaff, the feeder on his platform, and especially the driver on
his power, seemed almost superhuman to my childish eyes. Gray dust
covered the handsome face of David, changing it into something both sad
and stern, but Frank's cheery voice rang out musically as he called to
the weary horses, "Come on, Tom! Hup there, Dan!"
The track in which they walked had been worn into two deep circles and
they all moved mechanically round and round, like parts of a machine,
dull-eyed and covered with sweat.
At last William raised the welcome cry, "All done!"--the men threw down
their forks. Uncle Frank began to call in a gentle, soothing voice,
"_Whoa_, lads! _Steady_, boys! Whoa, there!"
But the horses had been going so long and so steadily that they could
not at once check their speed. They kept moving, though slowly, on and
on till their owners slid from the stacks and seizing the ends of the
sweeps, held them. Even then, after the power was still, the cylinder
kept its hum, till David throwing a last sheaf into its open maw, choked
it into silence.
Now came the sound of dropping chains, the clang of iron rods, and the
thud of hoofs as the horses walked with laggard gait and weary
down-falling heads to the barn. The men, more subdued than at dinner,
washed with greater care, and combed the chaff from their beards. The
air was still and cool, and the sky a deep cloudless blue starred with
faint fire.
Supper though quiet was more dramatic than dinner had been. The table
lighted with kerosene lamps, the clean white linen, the fragrant dishes,
the women flying about with steaming platters, all seemed very cheery
and very beautiful, and the men who came into the light and warmth of
the kitchen with aching muscles and empty stomachs, seemed gentler and
finer than at noon. They were nearly all from neighboring farms, and my
mother treated even the few hired men like visitors, and the talk was
all hearty and good tempered though a little subdued.
One by one the men rose and slipped away, and father withdrew to milk
the cows and bed down the horses, leaving the women and the youngsters
to eat what was left and "do up the dishes."
After we had eaten our fill Frank and I also went out to the barn (all
wonderfully changed now to our minds by the great stack of straw), there
to listen to David and father chatting as they rubbed their tired
horses.--The lantern threw a dim red light on the harness and on the
rumps of the cattle, but left mysterious shadows in the corners. I could
hear the mice rustling in the straw of the roof, and from the farther
end of the dimly-lighted shed came the regular _strim-stram_ of the
streams of milk falling into the bottom of a tin pail as the hired hand
milked the big roan cow.
All this was very momentous to me as I sat on the oat box, shivering in
the cold air, listening with all my ears, and when we finally went
toward the house, the stars were big and sparkling. The frost had
already begun to glisten on the fences and well-curb, and high in the
air, dark against the sky, the turkeys were roosting uneasily, as if
disturbed by premonitions of approaching Thanksgiving. Rover pattered
along by my side on the crisp grass and my brother clung to my hand.
How bright and warm it was in the kitchen with mother putting things to
rights while father and my uncles leaned their chairs against the wall
and talked of the west and of moving. "I can't get away till after New
Year's," father said. "But I'm going. I'll never put in another crop on
these hills."
With speechless content I listened to Uncle William's stories of bears
and Indians, and other episodes of frontier life, until at last we were
ordered to bed and the glorious day was done.
Oh, those blessed days, those entrancing nights! How fine they were
then, and how mellow they are now, for the slow-paced years have dropped
nearly fifty other golden mists upon that far-off valley. From this
distance I cannot understand how my father brought himself to leave that
lovely farm and those good and noble friends.