Remembering My Dad in My Childhood...

 I will start this story by sharing the earliest photo I know of that shows my father holding me. This would have been taken in early 1945. I had a brother that was nearly three years old when I was born. I think my father would have been very happy to have a baby girl join the family so I’m quite confident that Dad and I started off on very good terms upon my arrival.

My father was very hard working when I was a child.  He had the career he chose and dearly loved which was being a dairy farmer.  The life of a dairy farmer is filled with much labor which is sometimes seasonal but always daily.  Cows have to be milked twice a day, 365 days of the year.  Those cows have to be fed and cared for 365 days of the year.  My father preferred to do all of the farm work by himself with the support of his children as they were needed and as they grew in ability to help with farm tasks. Fortunately for our family, the first child born to my parents was a boy.   The photo below shows my parents and Jimmy who would not have any siblings for nearly three years.

My father had graduated from Viroqua, WI High School and a Normal School in Viroqua which was the school that trained teachers.  He did his practice teaching to complete his course work to become a teacher but decided that teaching was not a career that suited him.  He knew that he much preferred and excelled at dairy farming.  Following his schooling, he and his brother, Hubert, shared the farm work for his paternal Grandmother, Minnie B. Cox Groves.  His paternal Grandfather had died so there was an open need for my father and Uncle Hubert to become the workers who would care for the life and farm of their grandmother.  The photo below was taken in a hay field on my Great-Grandmother Minnie B. Cox Groves’ Farm.  Minnie’s oldest son, William F. Groves, is raking the hay with a team of horses.  My mother is driving the tractor that is hitched to a hay wagon and hay loader.  My father is using a fork to fill the hay wagon before it is taken back to the barn where it will be unloaded into the hay mow where it will remain to be fed to the cattle during the winter months when cows and other animals are kept inside the warm barn away from frozen ice and snow. 

My Great-Grandmother's farm had probably become the home of her son, William and his family of four after the death in 1937 of her husband, Isaac Newton Groves.  The four children are pictured below with their musical instruments which they used during their quartet singing and playing ministry as teenagers.  From L - R:  Hubert, Vernon, Mildred and my Dad, James.

As my Dad's siblings finished high school, they began to pursue further education and careers away from the farm.  Vernon went to college in Wollaston, Massachusetts which I think must have been Eastern Nazarene College.  Mildred would join him after attending Normal School and teaching in a one room country school for a few years.  Hubert and my father farmed together on their Grandmother's farm.  Dad and Hubert are pictured below beside the Viroqua farm home. 

Hubert would decide to become a Methodist Minister and moved to Chicago to attend school about the time of my parent's marriage in 1941.  My Grandparents, Bill and Amanda Groves, decided to leave farming also and moved to Chicago where they each got jobs until they retired in the mid 1950's.  

This left my father to farm alone on his Grandmother's farm.  

His years of farming began with horses. He added a tractor in the late 1930's and would continue in that manner until the early 1950's.     Two photos below show my father planting corn on his Grandmother's farm with a team of horses.  I don't know the names of these horses.  When my parents moved to another farm in 1948, their team of horses was Sadie and Boots.  Sadie was calm and blackish and Boots was spunky and white.  Sometimes my Dad let me ride on Sadie while she was harnessed to an implement he was using.

The next child to be born into my parent's family was a girl and that girl was Linda Louise Groves.  The photo below shows my Dad holding me with Jimmy close by.  I think we are just getting home from church with my brother holding onto his Sunday School papers.

And 18 months after I was born, another sister arrived, Kathleen Virginia Groves.

 And 15 months later there was the arrival of Barbara Jean Groves.  The photo below shows our family of six at our Grandparents home for Christmas in Chicago in 1949.

It would take another three years before the last child arrived for my family of origin and that was a baby sister I was thrilled to have join our family.  Her name was Margelyn Amanda Groves.

So you see with this history of births in our family, another boy did not arrive on the scene.  For my Dad, that meant that the girls would have to learn the ways of the farm.  Since I was next in age after my brother, I was the first to get recruited for working outside in the barn and the fields.  I remember standing at the steering wheel of the Case tractor which was pulling a wagon.  My Dad had started the tractor, put it in gear and told me to steer it down the row of corn.  He was walking along, breaking off ears of corn from the stalks and throwing them into the wagon.  This would be feed for the hogs.  Dad would jump onto the tractor when we got to the end of the row and turn the tractor around and I would continue to steer it while he harvested ears of corn.  Pretty impressive for a 4 year old!

That was just one of my early jobs that helped Dad with the outdoor farm work.  Here is a list of other jobs I did with Dad during my childhood.

1.  Carried pails of water to the house from the pump on the cistern because we didn't have indoor plumbing in our house until I was six years old.

2.  Plowed and/or shoveled snow to open paths around the buildings after big snow storms in the wintertime.  Dad made a push type snow plow in a size for kids which I used to make a path from the house to the granary, the barn, the milk house, the chicken coop and to the mailbox across the road.

3.  I also learned to milk by hand which was necessary when the electricity went out and the milkers stopped working.

4.  Eventually I learned to do lots of field work with a tractor along with the milking chores.

5.  And I shocked lots of grain in the summer.

6.  Picked blackberries, plums and apples in season.

7. Went into the pasture to get the cows when it was milking time in late afternoon.  Sometimes I rode our horse Patches to do this task.  I loved that job.

8.  Helped saw wood for our wood burning furnace and kitchen  stove.  Dad got slabs from a local sawmill and we kids helped him get it sawed into the right length for the stove and furnace.  We threw the wood through a trap door on the side of the house into the basement from the saw that was mounted on the tractor and ran with a power takeoff belt pulley.

9.  In the years before we baled our hay, we had to get loose hay into the haymow.  The haymow had a track with a fork on it which would get set into the loose hay.  Then the fork was lifted to the track which was mounted in the top of the barn roof by rope pulleys.  From the center of the barn roof, the fork could be directed to either side of the haymow and then the fork could be tripped to dump its load of loose hay onto a growing pile below.  In our days when we still had a team of horses, one of the horses would be used to pull the ropes that took the fork of hay up from the hay wagon to be stored in the haymow.  Someone had to lead the horse on a path away from the barn door to a certain spot and then had to stop the horse and wait for the fork to dump its load before backing the horse which let the fork down to be set into the hay for the next round of off loading the loose hay.  Someone also had to be deep in the haymow with a fork to receive the hay and keep it evenly spread out in the haymow so the whole hay crop could be harvested and stored to feed the animals during the winter months.  Another person had to set the fork int0 the hay that was being unloaded.  Eventually this process became more automated with a motor driven fork so that a horse was no longer needed.  When baling became the way that hay was preserved for winter feed, there was still the need of a person spreading out the hay to keep it level and a person to set a different type of fork into the bales which had been loaded from the hay fields.  

Dad was almost always the one that had the big fork deep in the hottest parts of the haymow to keep the loose hay or baled hay level and accessible during the winter months.  Mom set the fork until a child was old enough for that job.  I remember leading the horse, Sadie, out and back when we unloaded with that version of advancement.  A tractor was used after a horse before the process became motorized and I also had that job sometimes.  Occasionally I set the fork when we had bales of hay. 

10.  There were also daily jobs requiring lifting pails of milk which had been filled from the milking machine after it was taken off a cow.  The pails of milk were taken to the milk house where it was poured through a strainer into the bulk tank.  

11.  Another daily job was throwing down silage after climbing into the silo and using a fork to throw out enough to feed all the cows twice a day that were being kept in stanchions in the barn during the winter.  

As you can imagine, a number of these jobs create a way for a person to develop some muscle.  I worked alongside my Dad during my childhood and became a valuable "farm hand" for my him.  My Dad was a man of few words.  He expressed his love for his family by how he treated and provided for us.  This trait in my case had a very initially misunderstood element which brought Dad and me to a place of explosion one day on my part.

I was born with large hands.  At birth, my mother thought there might be something wrong with my hands because they were so large.  My large hands continued to be a significant part of my life.  (That issue will be its own story in the future.)  

My large hands were a definite asset to my ability to handle lots of farm chores so Dad was very proud of my hands.  Sometimes there would be other farmers around to help with things like thrashing oats, filling the silo and maybe harvesting corn.  During those times, my Dad would often call me over to where he was and ask these other farmers to shake hands with me so they could see what large hands  and what a strong grip I had.  I hated it when my Dad did that because it always had the same result.  All the men shook my hand and then exclaimed, "Wow!  What big hands and what a strong grip you have!  You are going to make a great wife for a farmer someday!"   An inside me I was thinking, "I will never marry a farmer."  

My Dad probably didn't realize that I didn't want to be praised for my physical strength.  I wanted to be like my sisters who in my mind were more "feminine" than I was.  But Dad continued to "present" me in his way until the day we were visiting his parents when Dad's brother, Vernon, was there for a visit.  My Grandparents were living about five miles from our farm so I saw them quite often.  I liked going to their home to visit and I really liked my uncles and aunts.  But sure enough, while there, my Dad decided to have me shake hands with Uncle Vernon so he could "see how big my hands were and how strong my grip was".  And again the follow-up was customary.  Uncle Vernon was "shocked" at the size of my hands and the strength of my grip.  I remember feeling humiliated again but as usual decided not to make a scene around all the relatives.  But after all seven of us were packed in our little 1950 Ford sedan car and started out for home, I decided I would let my Dad know how I felt about his way of bragging about me to men.  I vividly remember that I was sitting directly behind my Dad in the back seat with my three sisters.  Dad was driving.  My words came with intense force!

"Dad, if YOU ever, EVER again, MAKE me shake hands with another man, I WILL..."

I do not remember how I finished that sentence and I probably didn't finish it because I think I was sobbing.  But my message had been clear and it had exactly the result I was longing and hoping for.  I do not remember that my Dad ever again had me shake hands with another man nor did he praise me for the size of my hands and the strength of my arms.  

As I grew into my teens, I would have greater understanding of Dad's love for his family expressed in the best way he knew how which did not come with words of affirmation but works of love and understanding of each of our strengths.  

My father was a tender hearted man who had become a Christian during a tent revival that came to the Viroqua, WI area when he was a teen-ager.  He attended the meetings with his parents and siblings and they all responded to the message of forgiveness of sins that they heard preached in those meetings.  My father from that time on was a faithful follower of the Lord.  In letters he wrote to my mother before they were married, he quoted Bible verses and expressed his desire to have a Christian home. 

In a letter to my mother during their engagement dated March 10, 1941, my Dad wrote the following:

"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he will direct thy paths. (Prov. 3:5,6)"  ..."The fellowship that I enjoy with you is always so helpful and strengthening to me.  I often think about the wonderful times we have had in the past year and always how agreeable and considerate you have been.  I think it was almost a miracle how we were drawn together that night at Walter's.(Note - Walter's were people who opened their home for what was called, Saturday night meetings.)  I'm sure it was an answer to prayer.   I believe God will bless our home if we only keep true to him and put him first in our lives...May the Lord bless you and keep you.  Lovingly, Jimmy" 

My Dad would keep his commitment to my mother for all of the 65 years they were married.  He also stayed true to the Lord.  He lived his life in a way that showed his desire to be Christ like.  People knew he never used bad language, never lost his temper and he kept his word.  I remember one time when another neighbor who lived near our farm told me that he was so amazed about the response my Dad had to an accident that had happened on our farm.  Apparently Dad had a large load of hay bales on a hay wagon and a wheel on the wagon came off causing the wagon to tip over to one side and caused all the hay to slide off the wagon.  This man told me that my Dad just got off the tractor without any cussing or cursing, fixed the wheel, reloaded the bales and carried on with his work.  That quality of Dad's temperament had made a huge impression on the neighbor who considered it highly unusual for a normal person who has just had an expensive accident involving time, energy and money.  But that was true of Dad.  He was a man who lived what he believed and he was true to what he learned as he read the Bible and prayed.  His day always ended as he knelt beside his bed and prayed.

There are many other things I could say about my Dad which I may write in future stories but for now I will stop.  My last photo was taken on my wedding day.  The day I did NOT marry a farmer but I married the man who once said to me as we dated, "Have I ever told you, you have beautiful hands?"