No Smokin' - Dave’s Midwestern Ohio Memories

A Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

No Smokin'

Recently my brother and I played in my Club’s golf invitational; although we didn’t win, we had a great time. My brother enjoys a cigar while golfing so as he was playing a hole, he suddenly realized his lighted cigar was on a cigar holder like shown above stuck into the ground near the green of the previous hole. Since our group had a fore caddy to help hunt for lost balls, rake sand traps, clean golf balls and tend to the flag, we sent him in our cart to the previous hole to retrieve the cigar while we finished putting out. By the time we got to the next tee, he was just returning with cigar in hand, but no holder! Somehow that had disappeared. But the sight of this young kid holding a lit cigar reminded me of an escapade from my youth.

Back when I was about 8 years old, during a wedding at the Osgood Legion, a few of my cousins and I were able to latch onto a cigar that traditionally in those days was handed out by the groom after the wedding dinner. So here we were behind the wedding hall, matches in hand, lighting up our first cigar and passing it around for a whiff. After a few puffs, I became white as a sheet and felt really lightheaded. Soon I began “tossing my cookies” behind some bushes, drawing a big laugh from my cousins, until suddenly one of them started as well. Soon the entire bunch of us were sick as dogs! I recall spending the whole evening in the back seat of my parents car, periodically sticking my head out the window to barf! Not a pretty picture, but I sure learned my lesson by not ever getting into the smoking habit thanks to that dreadful incident.

I do recall a year or so later; however, watching an episode of the Beverly Hillbillies with Granny making a corn cob pipe that we kids had to try making as well. We stuffed it with corn silk and lit it up. It tasted so bad that the experience just reinforced my earlier disaster with the cigar.

And once during college, I took a puff of a friend's stubby marijuana joint, which burned the back of my mouth terribly, so for the third time, I again swore off smoking of any kind. So just like Bill Clinton, I never inhaled!

All these negative smoking experiences occurred before it was proven to cause cancer, so I’m thankful to have learned some early life-saving lessons. 

My parents did smoke at that time; Mom Viceroy’s and Dad Winston's. I couldn’t stand the smell of their burning cigarettes and was really glad when they quit in the late 60’s. However, I’ve found cigar smoke much more tolerable, especially outdoors in a golf cart. Wonder if our fore-caddy took a drag on my brother’s cigar while returning to the next hole? Unlikely, as he never missed a beat tending to his caddy duties.

Pouring Cement - Dave’s Midwestern Ohio Memories

A Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Pouring Cement

Our next door neighbors were recently re-doing the landscaping on their yard and while the work was underway, I noticed the landscaping company was about to remove and discard the above cement slab from the yard. It was created by the family who had previously lived there. They had three young children as commemorated by the footprints in the concrete and shown in the photo below.

The children's grandparents were all deceased, so we, in a way, filled that role for them. Fortunately we had stayed connected over the years, even though they were transferred overseas, but were in the process of repatriating back. So I texted them offering to save the concrete slab if they’d like. They immediately responded yes, so Sunday, the family came over to pick it up for placement in the yard of their new home. It was great seeing our old neighbors and their kids again.

This occurrence made me recollect times growing up as a kid when we’d leave our mark on any cement that Dad would be pouring around the farm. We would have plenty of time to scope out what to put on the cement as it took some time for Dad to set up the forms and mix the cement. Then as it was hardening after Dad had left to do something else, we’d do our thing in the cement before it fully set.

No doubt Dad got a kick out what he discovered when he removed the forms a day or so later. However, some were accidental. I can recall my young brother walking across the entire floor of a hog stable that Dad had poured earlier. The footprints were quite deep and no doubt are still there. Hogs didn’t care, but Dad sure did!

Sometimes my sisters would pretend they’d be movie stars just like on the sidewalk at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

But most of the time we simply wrote our name, initials or the year.

When older, I enjoyed helping Dad with the cement work, digging trenches for foundations, setting up the forms, adding rebar, mixing the materials for the cement (sand, gravel, cement and water) and finally pouring the cement. Dad would sometimes have me throw boulders in the bottom of the foundation trenches to save cement. I also remember a couple times burying a time capsule with some of our drawings or newspaper articles inside a tin can.

One cement project that unfortunately Dad never accomplished was to pour a basketball court in front of our garage. To improvise, I played on a cement pad outside our milking parlor where the cows were left out after being milked. I hung a rim and net from the barn and could play basketball between milkings; however, since the cows had a habit of pooping just as they were released outside, it meant dodging cow paddies while dribbling!

For posterity, be sure to inscribe something on the next wet cement you run across!

Making Hay - Dave’s Midwestern Ohio Memories

A Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Making Hay

This time of year on the farm while growing up was always an extremely busy time. Back in the 50’s and 60’s, my Dad could make a decent living while supporting a family of seven only farming 100 acres. He rotated the crops each year by planting corn, wheat, oats, hay and then back again to corn in sequential years. That way he didn’t have to use much if any fertilizer or herbicide as each crop took out or added the appropriate nutrients to complement the crop planned for the following year. Mom used a similar technique for her garden as noted in the diagram below.

Weeds were prevalent in the fields and garden, but us kids would be sent out with hoes to clear them out several times each season! I can recall times with Dad driving by one of our fields when he suddenly spots a weed, stops the car and sends me out into the field to pull it out.

Thinking back on those times, using today’s terminology, we had an extremely sustainable and organic farm. Literally nothing was wasted. All food scraps were fed to the hogs and no more than a grocery bag of trash was accumulated each week, which went into the coal furnace to help heat the house. The manure in the stables was spread over the land and plowed under in the spring to provide natural fertilizer for the corn, which depleted the land more than any other crop. Any metal junk was dumped into 55 gallon drums and collected by the high school’s Future Farmers of America organization during twice-a-year scrap drives. I can’t think of a single item of waste generated by our farm during those years. Amazing!

July meant it was time to harvest the wheat and oats, bail hay and straw and cultivate the corn. Those efforts along with the routine livestock feeding and milking of the cows lead to really long days working in the heat and humidity of a typical Ohio summer. Dad would enjoy every minute though, especially if the weather had cooperated and the yields were good. He knew the family’s livelihood was directly impacted by a successful harvest.

Of course, as kids, we didn’t really have that same appreciation, so found the work much less enjoyable and a real chore most of the time. I can recall sweating profusely in stifling heat and dusty conditions up in the hay mow packing away bails as they were loaded onto an elevator from the wagon full of bailed hay. Each load held 100 bails each weighing about 75 pounds, so it was quite a workout. We much preferred the lighter straw bails which also didn’t itch as much as the hay. Hay was used to feed the milk cows and the straw was used to bed down the stables all winter while the cows remained in the barn. During other times of the year, they were let out to pasture to eat grass as pictured in this aerial photo of our family farm. Note the cows under the shade trees near the creek at the upper left corner.

Harvesting the wheat and oats was a much more enjoyable process, primarily because it was significantly less labor intensive. The harvester or combine as it was called back then was quite a machine that intrigued me to no end.

Amazing how it could cut the stalks and thresh out the grain, separate the straw and auger the grain into hopper wagons that would self unload into an elevator carrying the harvest up to the storage granary in the barn, all by barely lifting a finger compared to the hard work associated with the hay and straw bailing process.

But Dad would always remind us how good we had it compared to when he was younger, as they farmed with horse-drawn equipment. He would tell about all the neighbors convening for a threshing “party”, that really wasn’t much of a party, at least until the work was done, when the food and drink was served well into the night.

But of all the chores at that busy time of year, cultivating corn was by far my favorite farm task, as it meant I could listen to the radio mounted on the tractor while traversing the rows and rows of corn. It provided a restful interlude to the busy farm life during the summer months.

Farm life back then was indeed a challenge, which was the primary reason I chose a different career path and studied engineering. However, I’m very grateful for the farm experiences that helped me throughout my entire career and beyond, especially with the skills to fix things and solve problems, along with the farm work ethic ingrained into me.