The “Great Parachute” story is a tale that legends are made of. Okay, maybe a little dramatic.

My uncle Ray was in WWII serving in Patton’s army. He wrote a wonderful account of his amazing life, sacrifice and adventures. I took it upon myself to add a bunch of maps, photos and formatting. You can see it on this Family History website.

German WWII Parachute

Growing up we knew about Ray’s German parachute that he brought back from Germany when his unit captured the airfield at “Bad Langensalza”. One day when ALL of the cousins were at the farm, it was brought down from the attic and taken to the pasture. I don’t remember if we still had any cows at that time but if so, they were put into the barn/corral area and locked up.

One of the older cousins strapped it on while the parachute was spread out on the field. We lifted the edges until the parachute was filled with air and the person strapped in tried to keep if from dragging him off. If it did, a bunch of us would run ahead of the parachute and jump into it, thus deflating it and saving said cousin from the barbed wire fence.

In the meantime, someone went and fetched one of the sleds we pulled behind a tractor during the winter and it was attached to the parachute. It was thought that the ride would be way smoother and safer for the idiot, I mean cousin doing the parachute dance.

Cow Pond

Cousin Scott, one of the Frank Cernik’s boys, jumped on the sled ready to man-up and give it a try. So, we lifted the edges of the parachute, and it caught a good amount of wind and off went Scott. What we didn’t quite calculate was the speed you would now go since the rider wasn’t using his legs to slow down. Scott went off like a rocket and the rest of us took off to get ahead of the chute to stop its progress thus saving him and the chute for the earlier mentioned fence. However, though we were quick enough to collapse the chute prior to hitting the fence, we weren’t quite fast enough to do it before the chute dragged the sled with Scott hanging on for dear life right through the cow pond. Scott, much like the pond, did not smell great when he stopped. We laughed for hours after that stunt.

The chute is still around, and rumor has it that it’s in Cousin Chris’ attic, minus a sled.

DANGER: DO NOT PROCEED if you are squeamish about your feathered friends and their untimely deaths.

Along one side of the barn where the outside wall meets the overhang of the roof, we had a pigeon coop. They were essentially a row of wooden boxes with a nice little opening for the pigeons to come and go. Each box had enough room for a mom and her chicks. There must have been a good dozen of more of these wooden boxes.

It was quite a way up a ladder to reach each box. But sometime in late spring we would climb up to check out each box. You would reach in; the parents usually flew away. You had to be careful not that have the shit frightened out of you and fall off the ladder when they did. You would grab a young pigeon and take it out for a look. They were called “squab” and they had yellow peach fuzz like feathers, almost hairs, on them. The key was to get them before they were old enough to fly but not too soon as they would be too small. We would have them for dinner. To me the work to get enough to eat off of one bird was not worth the trouble. Some people swear the taste is out of this world but for me it was “meh.”

Just remember before you get all emotional, most people consider pigeons to be flying rats. And there was the incident in Europe where a sick pigeon was about to crap all over Amy. I moved her out of the way only to take the full explosion from the pigeon. I had to wash my shirt in a fountain. Maybe it was karma.

We had a white poodle named Brandy and we would sometimes take her to the farm with us. One time one of us was up on the ladder checking out the pigeons when a young pigeon escaped and took flight. Because it was not a full-grown adult, yet it couldn’t get higher than maybe 5 feet off the ground. But it was moving way too fast for any of us to chase after it and grab it. Not to mention that it’s a bird that would simply zig and zag if we tried.

But Brandy had other thoughts. She took off straight after this pigeon. The pigeon, not having eyes in the back of its head, had no idea that Brandy was chasing it. She caught up to the pigeon and leapt into the air and snatched the pigeon and landed on her feet. She came trotting back all happy like a hunting dog, not some sissy-ass French poodle.

Original barn being moved off the property.

Like any Midwest farm the barn was usually the biggest, most versatile and used building. Our barn was no different. The lower part had stalls for the cows, storage areas, the shop with all the tools and so on. The second story or “hay loft” was where all the hay bales (made from alfalfa) a straw from wheat. It was harvested and put up there to dry for later use in the winter to feed the cattle.

Typical haystack

One day all of the cousins were on the farm and at some point, we went into the barn and were climbing the stacks of hay bales on the second floor. In the front part there was a large pile of loose hay or straw or probably both. It was at least 5 feet high. On the front wall there was a ladder that you could climb to get to a platform that was in front of a huge barn door that was currently closed. Several cousins proceeded to climb up the ladder and jump into the haystack. Lots of fun ensued and the barn began to fill up with the usual dust.

Typical pitchfork

Eventually, Jimmy — one of the youngest cousins — climbed up there and jumped off. And what should happen? He landed feet first directly on a pitchfork. After lots of screaming and panic we dragged him out with one of the tongs having gone perfectly through one of his feet. If I recall correctly, my grandfather came running from the house and proceeded to carry him back to be patched up. I don’t recall who exactly pulled the pitchfork out of his foot. How several cousins were able to jump several times without hitting the pitchfork or none of us seeing it is a mystery.

DANGER: DO NOT PROCEED if you are squeamish about your feathered friends and their untimely deaths.

Chicks

Full-grown egg layers and frying pan ready

• • • Only daughter, check.
    • On a farm, check.
    • Her pet chicken, check.
    • And a tornado, check…..

Marie by the chicken coop in ~1935

 

Then one day a very ominous storm approached. Everyone went to the basement, which was the safest location. But I guess mom saw her pet chicken tumbling in the yard as the tornado approached. To Frank and Bessie’s surprise, Marie burst out of the house to save her pet chicken. She grabbed the chicken and huddled with it in the yard. As luck would have it (destiny maybe) the Tornado left the ground just as it approached the farm. Marie, the chicken, the farm and family were safe.

Rooster chasing kid. Kind of looks like Kevin.

 

 

As kids we would get yelled for chasing the chickens around the barn yard, which is the big open area between all the buildings. But sometimes the chickens, and especially the rooster, did the chasing. They could be quite aggressively defensive.

One of our favorite buildings to play in besides Grandpa Frank’s tool shop in the barn was the Grain Storage building. This is the same building that Dale had is Corn sheller, “That Was My Hand” incident.

In this case we decided to go up into the grain storage bin on the 2nd floor. It was a huge open bin with a hole in the bottom of it. On the other side of the hole was the grain chute that the trucks could drive under.

Grain Chute

This particular time there were soybeans that were drying in this bin as opposed to corn. This bin was probably ten feet deep and was at least 20′ x 10′ in size. And it was filled to the top with hard soybeans.

Soybeans coming off the field

Soybeans in a large, constrained area give you some support. It’s not quite as firm as wet sand but not quicksand either. We would go up and roll around in it and act like we were sinking and shit. But we would also throw handfuls of it at each other. It would sting but no big deal. One handful hit me in the side of the head, and I brushed it out of my hair and ear.

About two weeks later I was swimming and some skin like thing came out of my ear. I thought it was something that was in the pool. A few days later I started to get an earache, which I got a lot of and still do. My mom took me to the doctor to look into my ear. He used his scope and peered in and said, “you have a bean in your ear.” He flushed my ear, and a soybean came plopping out into the pan.

Everyone was stunned and laughing and then it all made sense.

DANGER: DO NOT PROCEED if you are squeamish about your feathered friends and their untimely deaths.

Just like with the ground squirrel story a lot of what drives a farmer is protecting his family and his livelihood. It’s nothing personal and is never done in malice. It’s just being very pragmatic. Mother nature often crushes you with weather or pests and you fight back and rebuild.

That’s the way it was with sparrows or rats or coyotes or chicken hawks or wasps with their nests and many other pests. My grandfather was always in a battle with many of them. The men and older grand kids would go out to hunt chicken hawks when we started losing too many chickens. And my grandmother had her nemeses also. She shot at coyotes and paid us to deal with the sparrows.

They would build their nests just about anywhere they could. They might take over part of the pigeon coop which meant less space for raising pigeons. They would clog up the various grain chutes needed to fill up trucks going to town to sell grain. They’d eat a lot of the grain.

She had an easy solution that would also keep us busy and allow her and grandpa more time to do important stuff. She had a bunch of grand kids with BB Guns who liked to shoot shit. We were told to tear down their nests in buildings (the trees were off limits) and paid us $.025 per egg and $.05 per sparrow. Not a lot of money but we were kids, and this was the 60’s. It worked for all parties, other than the birds.

Grandma Bessie LOVED her garden, and my mom inherited her green thumb. That garden provided us with fresh vegetables all summer long and into the fall. And we always had excess, which was the plan, so that we could “can” them or freeze them. This gave us veggies until the next harvest. Then it was “rinse and repeat.” There are more details in the “Canning” story.

Just like Bessie’s garden

Her garden was massive is size. It was easily 10,000 square feet. She grew sweet corn for canning and for eating on the cob. She had green beans, yellow wax beans and lima beans. She had carrots, onions and peppers of all colors. She grew potatoes up the wazoo (they stored well and lasted forever under the basement stairs) and radishes. She grew cucumbers that would produce hundreds of fruits, and her dill pickles (she also grew the dill in the garden) were legendary. She grew rhubarb for pie (which I never liked). Tomatoes, celery, peas and many kinds of lettuce. A few watermelons each year to top it off. We also had a mulberry tree that we would harvest. My mom got the same green thumb as her mom, and I loved helping out in the garden. It could be hard and hot work, but I grew up with such fresh vegetables. I would often pick something and eat them right there in the garden. Even radishes after dusting off the dirt. And almost everything was canned in Mason jars or frozen to be enjoyed the rest of the year.

There was a pasture along the front road entrance to the farm. It had a small pond for the cows to drink from — though they had much cleaner water by the barn — or roll in to cool down. We would spend time down there collecting frogs or tadpoles. It also played a major role in the “Parachute” story above.

Tadpoles

There was one time when the four youngest of us Smith brothers captured dozens of tadpoles and put them into a large, clear plastic bottle of some sort. We begged our mom to let us take them home to raise them into frogs, maybe sell them or some other such nonsense. She let us.

A few days later we realized that we were idiots and decided to get rid of them. We couldn’t dump them down the toilet, and there were no ponds, streams, or lakes close enough for us to go to. So, we decided to pour them down a storm drain that collected rainwater from our back porch and then ran under the house addition that was added several years earlier. It emptied out the other side of our house and went into a small concrete ditch/gutter that fed stormwater between our house and our neighbor’s house down to the street.

Baby Frog

We quickly forgot about them and their poor, meager lives. About ten weeks later, I was mowing the front lawn and saw some tiny frogs hopping down the ditch/gutter. I followed them to where the pipe came out from under our house, and dozens of baby frogs were emerging out of the pipe. Evidently, there was enough water in a low spot under the house drainpipe to allow the tadpoles to complete their cycle and become frogs.

Idiots 0, Frogs 1

Another pond story revolves around a very hot day and four of us younger Smith boys. We spent the day doing various things we often did around the farm — chores, hunting, building crap, breaking crap and getting all sweaty. One of us decided that it was a good idea to go for a swim in the pond to cool off, though we had never done so before. But we didn’t have any swimsuits and we sure weren’t going to go skinny dipping. We weren’t complete morons.

What to do? We stripped down to our “tighty-whities” and jumped in. After some time and lots of splashing, wrestling and other crap, we crawled out and realized that our “undies” were not even close to being white anymore. They were sort of a mud-colored grey. And our bodies weren’t much better. We sheepishly went up to the house where our mom was waiting. She was pissed, to say the least. She made us go into the front yard where she proceeded to hose us down at full pressure with REALLY cold water. We never did that again.

Idiots 0, Mom 1

Mark driving with Diane on the tractor. Six Cernik/Smith kids in the wagon.

Whenever we were on the farm someone would want one of the older cousins — or whomever grandpa allowed to drive his tractor around — to take kids on a tractor ride. But if there was snow, it was a whole different ballgame.

Usually around Christmas time all of the Cernik/Smith clans would gather at the farm. Grandma “Bessie” Cernik’s cooking was legendary with no recipe books, just her memory, feel and taste buds to guide her. But more of that in the Holidays stories.

On many of those Holiday visits we were lucky enough to have some snow. We would grab all of the sleds we had around the farm and attach them by rope to the back of tractor. It was usually three sleds maybe four. Anymore and you risked major collisions between the sled riders. The tractor wasn’t built for top speed, but it had great traction and was fast enough. Going around a corner usually resulted in someone being tossed from a sled. I don’t recall any broken bones or bloody clothes, just lots of fun and cold kids when all done.

Rows of Soybeans

Growing up our grandparents grew an assortment of crops. Cousin Steve, the oldest cousin, remembers them growing corn, wheat, milo (sorghum), alfalfa (purple flowering plant in the legume family like clover) and occasionally oats. Sometime after Steve’s family moved to Florida our grandparents switched away from oats, while keeping the others, and over to soybeans. I’m sure it was part financial and part crop rotation.

Both milo (think bird seed) and soybean fields are ripe for tall growing weeds. Corn less so since it grows so tall and doesn’t leave a lot of sun for anything else. The price that a farmer gets for a bushel of grain is impacted by the amount of foreign matter. More weed seeds in it, less dollars per bushel.

In order to prevent that, farmers will hire young pups such as us to walk the fields with a machete to chop down any tall weeds. One needs to make sure the weed falls to the ground so that it is below the combine forks. But also, to not cut down the actual crop. Bad for business.

Rows of Milo “sorghum”

The fields that we walked were 1/2-mile fields. You’d walk 1/2 mile chopping as you go and then you’d reach the end. You would then step all of about 3 feet to the next row and walk back in the other direction for another 1/2-mile walk.

• • Rinse and repeat.
  • All day long.
  • In the sun.
  • Uphill both ways (OK that part was a lie).

Walking Soybean fields wasn’t too bad, just hot and boring. But Milo (grain sorghum) fields were a whole different ballgame. Milo looks a lot like corn stalks with their broad but sharp leaves, only shorter. They come up a little higher than your waste. We usually walked the field in short sleeve shirts because it was hot. However, as you walked milo the leaves would brush against your arms a cut the hell out of them. And the nice salty sweat would roll right into those fresh cuts and rest is doesn’t need much of an explanation. It hurt.