Event List

My hands were tough from shucking oats but not tough enough. At noon of that day, my right hand had sixteen blisters, formed and burst, and my left hand had six or seven in the same condition, so at noon I trudged down to a small neighborhood grocery store and secured a pair of cotton gloves. The oldest man on the threshing crew had made the suggestion, and it was a good one. I knew by then that the pitchfork handle didn't "fit my hands".

That evening, the cook for the cook shack or cook wagon quit, and therefore the water boy, her son, quit also. I was taken off of the bundle wagon and put on the horse to carry the water jugs to the different men on the field. Of course, the first day all the hair on the insides of my legs was worn off, and in a few days I had blisters on the insides, but they finally toughened up.

Friday evening before quitting time, the boss man asked me to take a team and wagon a mile east and a mile north to some people that they belonged to. I tied my riding horse on behind and drove up there, then got on my riding horse, but before I could leave the farmer said, "Well, aren't you gonna unhitch this team and unharness them?" So, not knowing how to say no, I climbed back off my horse, went in, unhooked the team and put them in the barn, and unharnessed them.

Then, getting back on the horse, I noticed there was a large, very dark cloud back in the west, and I was headed south. I ran the horse as fast as he could go, but he'd been running all day, so he finally was worn out and he got down into a slow jog and eventually into just a walk. In the meantime, the rain started, and I became soaked. After about a mile of this, I turned west, facing into the rain and the old horse was just slogging along in the darkest night I had ever seen, in the mud. I was watching him to make sure he didn't slip and fall, but near the half-mile line he finally did. I thought he was going to fall to the left, and I swung that leg out of the stirrup, but he fell to the right and pinned me in the mud. I spoke to the horse, and usually a horse will get up when you tell him to. A mule doesn't, but a horse usually will gain his own feet quickly, but he just lay there, and I was afraid he was hurt. I was there several minutes when a Model-T Ford with brightening and dimming "mag" lights came down the road. I knew it was doubtful the driver would see us in time to stop. When the car was about fifty yards away, the horse rose to his feet, and of course I came up with him. We rode on back to the farmhouse where we were threshing. I unsaddled my horse and fed him, then went into the cook shack.

The rain had put the fire out in the cook shack, and the substitute cook had only some cold greasy salt pork and cold sweet potato pie. This I could hardly eat, so I left there and went to a smokehouse where several of the men had congregated, and asked where my bedding was. No one had picked it up, so it was on a wagon, soaked completely, and I was, of course, soaked. I was wondering how I was going to get through the night when the farmer's son, Emmet McKinney, came out. I had known him slightly, although he was several years older than me, and he asked me to come in the house with him. I went in and he gave me a large oversized pair of overalls and a clean shirt, and set me down to the table, where the womenfolk had fed the grain haulers. It was the first good meal I had had in ten days, and then he took me upstairs and put me in a feather bed for the night, which was the first time I had not slept on the wagon bed in the ten days.

The board didn't try to conceal the severity of TCFN's situation; they said that after years as an all-volunteer organization, they could either throw in the towel or hire an employee, and if I couldn't at least double membership, they probably couldn't afford to keep me on. What can I say, I like a challenge.

The day after I accepted the job, the Free-Net server crashed and was down for two weeks. The volunteers got it back up and running while I was in Minneapolis over spring break, and I met a motley assortment of both volunteers and members who played fairly significant roles in my life for years to come.

Long story short, I (along with many committed volunteers) was able to keep TCFN financially solvent for three years, at which point I hired replacements for myself and resigned. I stayed on the board for several years longer. About a year after I resigned, TCFN ran out of money and staff and became an all-volunteer organization again. It's still solvent, to my knowledge. This Web site was originally hosted on the TCFN server.