HAILSTORM
It was just getting light as I put on my shirt and overalls and headed for the barn. There was no need to remove night clothes. I slept in the suit that I was wearing when I was born. It was summertime. Of course in the winter we had long underwear and it was put on after a bath and stayed in place night and day until the next bath. A shirt and overalls was plenty of clothing even in the cool of the morning. I saddled Sailor and we headed for the pasture to get the work horses. We brought them in, tied each in its stall and fed them grain. After they were harnessed I went to the house for breakfast. It was early June and the days were getting hot. The corn had been planted in early May and it was up and growing but the weeds were growing too. I would be working two miles from the house so the noon time would be spent at the field. After breakfast I filled the water barrel in the wagon and loaded the hay and grain for the noon feed. The horses were hitched to the wagon four abreast and we left the farmstead and headed south for the field. When we arrived at the field the team was unhitched from the wagon and a few minutes later they were hitched to the weeder still four abreast. In those days corn was planted with a lister. This machine made a furrow and the corn was planted in the center of that furrow. The dirt from the furrow made a ridge between the rows of corn. The first weeds usually came along the side of the ridge and my job today was to kill them. We used a machine called a weeder (I have later heard it called a go-dig). It had discs which could be set to work the side of the ridge and throw the dirt away from the small corn plants. It also had shovels that could be set to get weeds missed by the ^_^ discs. Most corn rows were spaced forty-two inches apart. This allowed room for the horses to walk the ridges as they pulled the weeder through the field. All seemed to be going well that morning. I might get fifteen acres that day. Maybe if all went real good I might get en an extra round. It would be nice to be able to tell Dad how much was done. He was working away from home. When the sun was straight overhead I unhitched and fed and watered the horses. They ate out of the wagon bed and I sat underneath in the shade and ate my lunch and drank water from a gallon crock jug with a burlap sack sewed around it. The sack was soaked when the jug was filled. This helped to keep the water cool. We would spend one or two hours resting at noon and then go back to work. It was not long after noon when the clouds began to gather. It was nothing to worry about. Clouds often gathered like that on a hot afternoon. We kept at our work. The clouds were getting black and seemed to be tumbling about in a mass with here and there light streaks coming down. They didn't look very good but we lived with summer storms. They were to be respected of course. I fully understood the awful fury of the wind, lightening and hail together with the torrents of rain. I remember the times Dad told about his days night herding. That was before the barbed wire became so common. They bedded the cattle and circled the herd on horseback the whole night through. If it was dark with no moon and the night was quiet it was a lonely and long night and they sang. This was to help pass the time and it seemed to have a quieting effect on the cattle. Sometimes a storm came up. If it was a bad thunderstorm the cattle would be on their feet, a fretful, milling mass. Perhaps there would be torrents of rain, a flashing lightening and all the riders could do was try to keep the cattle bunched if they moved to turn them in a big milling circle.
Sometimes the electric storm would be so bad that there would be an eerie phosphorescent glow that seemed to play about the horns of the cattle. I had sat around the table and heard Dad tell these stories. My dad was not inclined to stretch the truth and I knew that what he spoke was true. These were my thoughts as I watched those storm clouds gather. When I came back to the end near the wagon I watched a while and decided to unhitch. No one likes to get caught at the far end of the field in a rain storm. It meant a good soaking at best. And my, how cold that rain is on a hot summer day. My action followed my decision and it was not a bit to soon. I unhitched and tied the horses to the wagon with their rumps into the wind, heads down as if to make as small a target as possible. The wind came and with it the rain. I crawled under the wagon. Then it began to hail. Waiting out a storm under a wagon with four head of horses is not a pleasant time but we were reared in a hard school and we merely faced the fury of the storms as best we could. I remember no sense of fear. It was more a sense of defiance; an inner feeling that to face a storm like this was a challenge and I wanted to rise up and meet it. Of course I would seek what shelter that could be found but I would not quail in terror as I faced that storm. Soon it was over and the clouds went away. I hitched the team to the wagon and started home. An eight year old boy driving home after the storm. It was beautiful. The sun was shining. The air was clear and it was good to be alive.