Time Like a Furrow

TIME LIKE A FURROW Essays by James Hearst Iowa State Historical Department Division of the State Historical Society 1981 Web Page 2 Several of the essays in this volume have been published previously in other forms. “Rites of Spring on the Farm” originally appeared in a somewhat different form as “Spring Rites on the Farm,” in Kansas Quarterly 12 (Spring 1980): 91-97. Several statements made by the author in the essays originally appeared in “Young Poet on the Land,” from Growing Up in Iowa, edited by Clarence Andrews © 1978 by The Iowa State University Press, Ames, Iowa 50010. Others were included in: Bill Witt, “A Conversation with James Hearst,” The Iowan (Spring 1979): 14-22; and Judith Gildner, “An Interview with Iowa Poet James Hearst,” Midwest Review, 2nd ser., 2 (Spring 1980): 38-45. Three of the essays appeared in a slightly different form in the Palimpsest: “We All Worked Together: A Memory of Drought and Depression,” 59 (May/June 1978): 66-76; “Farm Life When the Power Changed,” 60 (September/October 1979): 156-fol. 160; and “A Road through Summer,” 62 (May/June 1981): 72-79. The three poems, “Protest,” “Progress,” and “Close the Accounts,” have been reprinted by permission from Snake in the Strawberries: Selected Poems by James Hearst © 1979 by The Iowa State University Press, Ames, Iowa 50010. The title, Time Like a Furrow, was adapted from a line in “The Plowboy,” from Music for Seven Poems © 1958 by the Iowa State Teachers College, now the University of Northern Iowa. Copyright © 1981 by the Iowa State Historical Department/Division of the State Historical Society, 402 Iowa Avenue, Iowa City, Iowa 52240. All rights reserved. Composed, printed, and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Hearst, James, 1900— Time Like a Furrow: Essays by James Hearst I. Hearst, James, 1900- --Biography—Youth. 2. Poets, American—20th century—Biography. 3. Iowa—Social life and customs. 4. Country life— Iowa. I. Title. PS3515.E146Z475 818’ .5203 [B] 81-13736 ISBN 0-89033-004-2 (cloth) AACR2 ISBN 0-89033-005-0 (paper) Library of Congress Card Catalog Number 81-13736 Web Page 3 For Paul Engle, whose fields are clean and fences straight. Web Page 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Web Page Dedication 3 Acknowledgements 6 Foreword: Kelly’s Woods 7 Balance Sheet: An Introduction 9 POEM: Close the Accounts 10 POEM: Progress 16 PEOPLE POEM: The Orchard Man 19 Two Traditions: Hearst and Schell 21 Church 29 Relatives 37 Hired Hands 53 Dansk 61 POEM: The Movers 70 The Movers 71 Faith and Feuds 77 POEM: Belief 78 Toward a Better Life 84 We All Worked Together 91 POEM: On Relief 95 RURAL CHILDHOOD Country School 101 A Road through Summer 111 POEM: Protest 118 A Ride to Town 119 The Grove 124 CHORES Learn by Experience 131 Hard Jobs 146 Wood Gathering 153 POEM: Spring on the Farm 159 Rites of Spring on the Farm 160 Farm Life When the Power Changed 167 Continued Web Page 5 HORSES AND MEN Horse Power 176 POEM: Three Old Horses 180 Bridles, Saddles, and Buggies 184 The First Pony 188 Horse Medicine 193 The Death of Beauty 199 Web Page 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book emerged from a prolific but somewhat deceitful memory. It tricked me several times, but I put up with it as best I could. I received support from several people to whom I am most grateful. My friend and neighbor, Dr. Leland Sage, himself an historian of wide repute, brought me books and encouragement. My friend Carl Hamilton of Iowa State University made copies for me from manuscripts in the University Library and gave me valuable suggestions. Alan M. Schroder – the editor with whom I worked – cajoled, scolded, rearranged, repaired damage when I jumped the track, and helped shape the essays. My wife Meryl took on the task of proofreading, and she can spot an error at fifty paces that I wouldn’t see if it kicked me in the shins. But I did my best, and the mistakes crept in by themselves. All the experiences in this book are true and all the people are real. But I have at times used other than their real names to save embarrassment. Web Page 7 Foreword KELLY’S WOODS Kelly’s Woods—our picnic grounds on the banks of the Red Cedar River five miles northwest of town. The Beaver Valley Livestock Farm opened its gates for us and we drove along the fields past Railroad Lake until we reached the river. We tied our horses and parked our cars outside the fence and crawled through to a glade open to the river, a forest of tall trees at our backs. We built fires to heat fried chicken and coffee, we kids toasted marshmallows. The whole family traipsed up there several times each summer: aunts, uncles, cousins, stray guests who happened to be visitors. Kelly’s Woods—our doctor uncles made us wait an hour after dinner to go swimming. We waded out from a long, sloping sandbar. If you cut your foot it was on a clam shell, not a beer can. My cousin wore silk stockings and pulled up her dress to show me her garters. At fourteen I burned with the fires of lust but when I sneaked her off among the trees and we lay hidden all I could do was to ask her if she liked fish. Web Page 8 Kelly’s Woods—too far up the river for boaters but once a canoe slid by with two young sprouts and their girls. They spied my mother and aunt sitting on the bank and called out vulgar names. My uncle stepped out of the trees and threw a chunk of wood in the water beside the canoe. It splashed and soaked them and they turned nasty and headed for the shore to “beat the hell out of him.” But Lauritz, our hired man, who always went on our picnics, had been target shooting and stepped up with a rifle in the crook of his arm. In his Danish accent he said, “Ay tink you go now.” And they did. Kelly’s Woods—a kingfisher watched us from a dead branch, a snake swam across the river, head daintily erect, butterflies hovered over the water. We saw a hawk and called it an eagle and wrestled each other to prove we were right. We broke crusts of fungus from a stump and built an altar to burn as sacrifice a frog we caught. But my uncle called us barbarians and we let the frog go. Kelly’s Woods—suddenly it was time to go home. Tired, dazed with food, sun and water we carried the baskets to the fence and shouted good-bye, good-bye. The woods aren’t there anymore, maybe they never were. We aren’t there either, scattered to city offices, retirement homes, snug under headstones, memories like darkened shadows of Kelly’s Woods. Web Page 9 Balance Sheet: An Introduction A balance sheet, however struck and for whatever purpose, sets out the only information it pretends to give, a record of gains and losses. But the items that make up this record must be set down with their values in order for a total figure to speak the truth. The records may have values that are not expressed in money terms. The bookkeeper who makes the record may use a different pencil than the one who draws up a financial sheet for the banker’s files. There are accounts more revealing than the addition of figures, the sums of sales and expenses. There could be a balance sheet of time, one for achievement and failure, and one for change. The financial balance sheet comes first to mind. In my grandfather’s day, a drawer in an old desk held scraps of paper where someone had written, “Father sold hogs today and received $4.50 a hundred. He hauled them to town in a bobsled.” Another slip of paper might say, “Father brought home a load of coal for which he paid $10.00, and a hundred pounds of flour, and a barrel of salt for the livestock.” Sometimes the prices were mentioned, sometimes not. One entry says, “Some cloth for a dress for Mother, seemed very expensive.” But we are not told what “expensive” meant in 1875. Perhaps the important financial balance sheet came after harvest, when the bank account showed money saved, or borrowed to pay debts. My father showed spurts of record keeping. It seemed to depend mostly on how busy he was with field work. A man, after a long, hard day in the fields, may not have an inclination to jot down an expense—a trip to town for a spare part for a machine, or the sale of a young boar to a neighbor. Yet, after a fashion, Father did keep accounts. In a long, narrow, soft-cover book—it says Web Page 10 Close the Accounts The putting away time shows up on the calendar after frost prompts me to turn the page. I grease sickles, back the mower into the shed beside the plow and planter, coil the hayrope on a hook inside the barn, turn off the water at the pump that runs to the pasture, drain the tanks there. This is the day to straighten barn doors with new hooks and hinges, fold back gates to the fields and let the cattle glean empty rows, to file away spring’s expectations with heart’s discontent.

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