The elementary school I attended was small, and I did pretty well. I was always kind of devilish and I remember enjoying Friday afternoons when we had some kind of contest — a spelling bee or something like that. We could pick what we wanted, and I always picked arithmetic. When I was in 6th grade, there was a girl in 8th whom I could beat in that subject. I would beat her, she would cry, and that would tickle me. I remember to this day who she was but she is dead and gone now, as are so many I knew in those days.

I didn't go to high school. We had to pass tests in order to advance. We went to Corydon to take them, and they were no snap. Names of subjects were different than now. There were sections of questions covering Grammar, Reading, Geography, Arithmetic, Composition, Civic Government, Physiology, and Spelling. I passed those and Music so I would have been qualified to go on, but at that time Dad had an accident.

There was a machine called a header, used for heading wheat. Dad was using it one day when it tipped over and both his arms were broken. I was needed to take over the farm work. I never got off that machine until we had a combine. When Dad was able to work again, he told me I could go to high school but I was big and tall, and by then all the kids I'd been with in class were a year ahead of me. I chose not to go back.

From then until I was able to buy land of my own, I worked for farmers and continued to live at home. Because, as I said, I had a touch of devilishness in me, I had a good time along with hard work. When I was about 20, I worked for a guy who had a job with a government agency. He wasn't very big but his wife was a great big, tall, rawboned woman. I worked for her the summer before Wilma and I were  married. I cultivated, put up hay, threshed, and all the time, she kept tormenting me. One day I said, "You'd better cut that out, or I'll set you in the water tank." She said, "You're not big enough." I just grabbed both her hands and in about a minute she was on her way to the water tank! She said, "Marvin, please, don't put me in that water." I said, "You said I couldn't do it." She said, "I know now you can."

But she got even. The next time I was getting dressed and reached for a clean shirt, I discovered she had sewed shut all the buttonholes. Another time, she put her hand in the butter and washed my face with it.

Wilma and I met when we were threshing at Wilma's brother's farm, then at her sister's. I was working outside, of course, and Wilma helped cook dinner for the crew of threshers. We started going together in the summer and were married the day before Christmas in 1938. On December 24, 2009, we will have been married 71 years.

Wilma

I came from Allerton, in southern Iowa. My family stayed in that vicinity. My brother lived east of town and my sister lived a mile and a quarter south of there. I had all my schooling in Allerton except for one year when the folks moved from east of Allerton to west of Allerton. I went to a country school that year. I was in eighth grade. I never did get the best grades — they were passing, but they weren't the best, except on tests. There was one teacher I didn't particularly care for, and she always came in to see how we'd done on the tests. It surprised her when there were times I had the best grades of anyone in the class.

Generally pupils had to go to Corydon to take eighth grade tests to get into high school. They could pass out of them if their past test grades were high enough. I wouldn't have had to take the test, but because the folks had moved and I changed schools, I had to take them to get into high school. I qualified.

We had a choice of what to take in preparation for our chosen career. There weren't as many choices as there are now. Girls could choose secretarial, nursing, or teaching courses. A Normal Training course sufficed for teaching, and that was my choice. When we had finished, we had to take a test to get our teaching certificate. I met all the requirements, but when I graduated in 1936, I was too young to teach. I took other jobs until I was old enough. I worked in the home of some people in Des Moines, then I went to northern Iowa and worked in a home up there. When I was old enough, I taught school for a year or so.

Marvin and I had been dating and were married at Christmastime in 1938. We had a simple wedding — just a family gathering. Suddenly we realized nobody had a present for Marvin. He said that was all right, "I got the biggest present of all." That put an end to my teaching, because back then married women were not allowed to teach. Marvin likes to say, "She told me she was rich." Of course, I never told him that, but he may have thought I was rich because I had a job.

We continued to follow what Marvin had been doing, now hiring out as a couple instead of just him. Our first housekeeping was down by Clio. We worked for Roy Bott for two years, during which time we began our family. Emma was born January 25, 1940, delivered by Dr. Hyatt, and Marvin Jr. on August 30, 1941 delivered by Dr. Corbin. They were both born in a bedroom of the farm home. Roy Bott was kept awfully busy because he came to check on me every little bit while Marvin was gone threshing.

Wages weren't high in those days, and women were not averse to helping the men in the field. Marvin picked corn for a lot of people, and when he worked for Ed Crawford, I helped. We were paid by the bushel so my help earned additional wages. Alice Crawford came and doctored my arms because they got badly scratched. We were conscientious about our work. There was a lot of difference between picking and snapping, which left lots of shucks, and we knew which to do. Even so, by today's standards, we weren't paid much, but of course it didn't cost as much to live as it does now.

We moved to LeRoy in 1942. Like many southern Iowa towns, it has since disappeared. We moved there at its height. There were 230 people living in LeRoy. It was a bustling town with a livestock shipping center, a lumber yard, stockyards, two elevators, a hotel (used largely by traveling salesmen who came and left by train), the depot, general stores, a blacksmith shop, bank, creamery, barber shop, cafe, American Legion hall, hardware and implement stores, telephone office, millinery shop, livery stable, post office, garages, filling stations, doctor's offices, hospital and church.

There were four passenger trains a day through LeRoy requiring a full-time agent. The train went to Centerville and all the little towns — Weldon, down to Van Wert, with Shenandoah at the end of the line. It had just one or two little cars. They brought the Des Moines paper and kids who had paper routes would pick up and deliver the bundles. The Register and Tribune both could be bought for 25 cents.

Of course, times changed. Livery stables were replaced by garages, horses were replaced by tractors. With improved roads and highways, use of the railroad for travel and freight was replaced by trucks. When people had their own vehicles, they went to larger towns for shopping. Trains were discontinued in 1945.

The fact there were no fire departments, volunteer or otherwise, created many changes. Once a fire started, it usually resulted in total destruction, and few buildings were replaced. When we moved to LeRoy, there was just one store. Marvin told, "I was behind the store unloading cream and eggs and getting some feed when the owner, an old man Isaac Dueling, came to the door yelling, 'Marvin come quick! There's a fire!' He was very nervous, but he had the presence of mind to set up a ladder, and give me some flour. It was an electrical fire, so I went up, put flour on the wires and put it out. That tickled him so much!"

Marvin went to work for the Thurlow brothers and continued for seven years. Each of the brothers had a farm, and Dan also ran the bank. He lived to be two months past 100. During that time, I stayed home, milked the cows, raised a garden and the kids. Robert Lee was born August 9, 1945, in a hospital in Corydon; and Eva Mae was born in the hospital in Osceola on January 13, 1952. We lived in LeRoy until 1949.

Marvin picked up the story: The last day of 1949, we bought an 80-acre farm on the edge of Clarke County. We were still in the LeRoy school district and I was on the school board part of the time. In consolidation, they combined LeRoy, Humeston, Garden Grove, and Derby, making it the Mormon Trail School, as it remains in 2009. Of course, schools like LeRoy were phased out. Our oldest son graduated in 1959, the last class to graduate from LeRoy. Robert was in the first class that went clear through high school at Mormon Trail. We had two children who graduated from LeRoy and two from Mormon Trail and I think the ones from LeRoy had as good an education as those who graduated from Mormon Trail.

It would be hard to make anybody believe we could raise a family with four kids on 80 acres, but we did and made enough extra that we could buy another 80, so we had 160 altogether. A neighbor told me we couldn't grow soup beans on that land, but I plowed deeper than he did and sold enough corn off it that year to pay for it. He sat in his front yard and kept track of every load they hauled to town. The joke was, when he rented us the 40 acres he said wouldn't raise anything, I plowed it down and it yielded 100 bushels to the acre. He never would rent me an acre of ground after that.
Farming wasn't a bed of roses. We farmed with horses and one mule. Wilma was working the cultivator and told "One afternoon I fought that team. I couldn't keep them on the row. That night the horse had a colt. It was no wonder she didn't feel like cultivating."

Marvin continued: Other people had tractors long before I did. The fellow who sold John Deere tried to sell me one, but I didn't buy. When they first came out they went "pop pop pop" all day long. That would have driven me nuts. I bought a Farmall. That is a difference between father and son. I wouldn't have a John Deere and now our boy has started with a John Deere. We mention it from time to time.

We had a team of horses and a tractor in those days. Tractors were a curiosity for quite a long time and not everyone made the adjustment immediately. One instance was the change from the way we did simple things. We had a dog, Bob, who used to go to get the cows. Another farmer, Pete, was there when I sent old Bob to get them. He looked like a lazy old dog lying there. Pete said, "I'll bet he won't go," and I said, "I'll bet he does." I said to Bob, "I'll be home in a little bit. You get the cows up." Pete came up to where I was in the field, and watched Bob jump the fence, and do just what I'd told him to do.

Our horses understood also, and that was part of the radical change from farming with living animals to farming with machines. It took quite a lot of adjustment and not everyone "came on board" at the same time. Dad came one day when I was getting ready to cultivate. He had done this for years with horses and a one-row cultivator. It was built in such a way that the farmer could sit there and look down at the row. As I was putting the cultivator on, preparing to use the tractor, Dad said, "Now, Marvin, you cannot cultivate with two rows." He couldn't conceive how that would be possible, but he came back in a few days, beat it out to see the field, came to the house, and said, "Well, I guess you did a pretty good job with two rows."

There was a big difference between southern and northern Iowa. My uncle lived in northern Iowa, around Spencer. One time when they came to visit, it was hot and dry. Dad remarked that we wouldn't have any crops. They said, "Oh, well, we'll raise a crop up there and sell it to you." Dad said, "Yes, probably you will, but I can remember when you didn't raise a crop and we sent it to you in a box car for free." Uncle Jim didn't say any more about crops.

But there are many great memories of those years. It wasn't all grubbing farn work. We had lots of fun. One time I went to the restaurant at the same time high school boys were returning from a track meet. The ensuing conversation was about running, and I said, "Boys, I'm way older than you but I can outrun all of you." Warren Akes goaded us into having a footrace —the "old guys" against the "young kids." We all went down to the church corner which would be the starting point, and we would run to the filling station on the corner of the other block. I just had on my work shoes, and my opponent had on track shoes. He bet me a dollar he could beat me. I won the race but I didn't ever see my dollar.

There was another time the boys wanted to wrestle me. I said, "I don't want to do that. I might hurt you." They insisted so I put one hand under the suspenders of my overalls, wrestled him with one hand, and won.

There was another "suspenders story." One of the pastimes was pitching horseshoes. One guy always showed up, not to pitch but to watch, make remarks, and do ornery things. We fellows wore overalls with suspenders and there were buttons in the back. This guy thought it was funny to unbutton those buttons. One day the pitcher got tired of it and he picked up the prankster and hung him up by his suspenders on the nails where they hung the horseshoes. Nobody would take him down and he hung until his suspenders broke. By then they had finished their game.

Warren came out of his barber shop one day when several of us were sitting on a seat that was out front. A guy had parked his Model T there while he was in the restaurant drinking a cup of coffee. There happened to be a block of wood lying there, and Warren said, "Marvin, go get that block of wood and put it under the axle." The boys lifted the car up and placed the block of wood like Warren had said. About that time, the guy came out of the restaurant and got in his car to go home. It wouldn't move. He suspected the rear end had gone out, so he jumped out and told somebody to take him to the mechanic. As soon as they left, I raised the car up, took out the block and put it back down. The mechanic came and got in, kicked it in reverse and flew backwards. Of course, we didn't laugh.

There were some scary minutes. One day when I was getting my hair cut. Dean Akes was running the garage across the street. He had been cleaning a part with a wire brush and a pan of gas. He came across the battery and a spark burned the gas. He jumped, throwing the gas all over himself, which set his clothes on fire. Somebody saw it and yelled, "Oh, my land, that boy's clothes are on fire!" He was running around and around instead of lying down and rolling to put the fire out. I stripped his clothes off him and they took him to the hospital, but by the time I drove home I realized what had happened, and was so weak I couldn't even get out of the car.

Frank Hitt had a filling station. His wife was crippled and rode in the car, but she never got out. One day she called me over and said, "Do you live on the Bumgamer farm place?" I said, "Yes," and she said, "There used to be some pear trees out there, do you pick pears?" We picked a bushel of pears and took them to her. It wasn't very long until Frank dug sweet potatoes and brought us a bushel of sweet potatoes. After that I was gold to that old lady. Every time she saw me she would yell, "Marvin, come here. I want to tell you, those were sure good pears!"

School was a gathering place for school related activities, but also for social functions. We had an active PTA (Parent Teachers Association). We held some money-raising events, and each month during the school year, the PTA put on a program with different ones appointed to plan it. When it was our turn, I told Wilma I was going to kiss her during the program. She said, "Don't you dare," but I did.

Church was another gathering place both for worship and for social affairs. We were affiliated with the Presbyterian. Church, which was LeRoy's earliest church building. The church was organized in 1882, finally dedicated to God in 1890. Everything but the pulpit, Bible, and a large chair of the original building burned in 1911. It was rebuilt with a full basement and dedicated in 1914. From 1896 until the early 1940s, there was also a Methodist Episcopal Church.

Records show the initial cost of the Presbyterian church was $2,400, the Ladies Aid contributing $300, and the ladies remained active. They had the "penny suppers," a penny charged for each spoonful of food until food prices forced them to charge more. They served farm sales and at the Humeston Sale Barn, to raise money to help those who had needs. In 1951, the church began a God's Portion Day with Humeston Methodist, Christian, and Baptist Churches. I was head of the Harvest Festival parade for 40 years. Even after we moved to Osceola, they wanted me to come back to head it. I said, "No." Enough was enough.

I retired from farming and we came to Osceola eight years ago — on October 14, 2001. I worked for the government five years. We moved into the West Ward apartment complex, and have been very happy and pleased with our lives in general. As I said in the beginning, life is a lot different than it was. We have had to adjust to many changes. Not all were good but not all bad. Life goes on.

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Last Revised November 29, 2014