Viewing page 115 of 207

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

While Earl was rather short but strongly built and not at all striking looking, Mike was tall, nice-looking, with curly dark hair and while no Adonis, had Earl all the way for looks. But more importantly, Mike had better taste than Earl and knew how to handle himself better. Mike had had the misfortune to have lost two or three fingers of one hand when a dynamite cap had exploded in his hand but this didn't seem to handicap him appreciably. Mike could talk better than Earl, had a better vocabulary, and acted more like a gentleman; you could also wonder why he was a farmhand. I know nothing about his family background but he had a girl who lived down the road and had matrimonial intentions. I believe Earl had a girlfriend in the city whom he kept in touch with in a desultory way and visited occasionally when he felt the need.

The large barn behind the house housed the livestock, which were not extensive. There were two horses, one named Ben, who was quite old and on his last legs. There were two or three cows and a small flock of chickens just large enough to supply eggs for the household. Also there were numerous cats of various combinations who worked at keeping down the rodents and who engaged in intercourse frequently and freely about the property and provided me with some of my early education on the subject. The barn also housed most of the equipment such as a democrat wagon, two old carriages, hayrack, mowing machine and spraying apparatus. Also there were a hayrake, hayloader, harrow and plows and cultivators. A Chevy truck was acquired along about this time, maybe a year or so later. Indenting the west end of the property, was the Onondaga Hill Cemetery where some of my ancestors were buried and adjacent to the cemetery, a new orchard was being developed although still quite young and much smaller than the main orchard. At he back of the main orchard, there was an abrupt drop-off into a stone quarry which intrigued me although it was a dangerous area because of the blasting. Up beyond the vegetable garden sort of in the center of things, was another barn which had a huge basement which was used as an apple storage warehouse while hay was stored in the barn itself. Hay was also stored in the several big lofts of the main barn. There were three large hay-raising areas, each several acres in extent, as well as several acres in sweet corn for which they had a market supplying some big customers in town, the Onondaga Hotel in particular. There was a pasture behind the main barn for the horses and cows and a very messy barnyard directly behind the barn as well as a smaller barnyard to one side; these areas were serviceable but definitely run down, fences in poor condition. But behind it all, was the big orchard which really provided the income that made the farm a going concern. I had a recollection of hearing they produced 8-10,000 bushels of apples a year but I think this must have been high -- but it was well up in the thousands and at $3-4 a bushel, that meant good money was coming in.