Etcetera

By: Dennis D. Price

etcetera

[et-set-er-uh, ‐se-truh]

1.  a number of other things

2.  extras or sundries

3.  Random stories from the past told for Christmas, 2018

Seventeen Dogs

This story happened before I was born, but I was told the story of my dad owning 17 dogs at one time—many of them hunting dogs. Some were coon hunting dogs. I think this happened soon after my mom and dad moved to the Rockbridge farm in the spring of 1947. Mr. Zeno Curnutt, the landlord, said to him, “I never knew anyone to amount to very much who owned a lot of dogs!” The story goes that my dad got rid of most of them soon after this comment.

Granger

    I don’t know if I remember this or I just remember being told about it. Granger was a dog that my mom and dad had when I was a toddler or perhaps a little older. When I was in the yard and started out toward the barn, Granger would lay down in front of me and not let me go any further. Don’t know anything else about Granger, but I’ve always been glad Granger was around. He obviously helped keep me around! [Addendum: I probably shouldn’t tell this for security reasons, but even now when one of the websites asks me to pick a security challenge question, I sometimes pick “Favorite Pet” and my answer is “Granger”!]

Head First

    After our house burned in March 1955, we moved into a new house in July 1955. The new house was built on the same spot of ground on which the old farmhouse stood. This event probably was sometime later that year. I was in the basement with a little toy broom sweeping along the edge of the wall. I heard a noise at the top of the basement steps and ran over to the staircase. My little sister, Debbie, was falling down the steps. She was only a couple years old. Miraculously I made it to the steps just in time to catch her before she hit the concrete. I still remember holding her head when mom heard her fall and came down to get her.

A Frantic Search

     Not sure what day or year this happened, but it was a frantic search by all of us when we discovered that my sister, Debbie, was nowhere to be found. We looked all over the house, the barn, barn loft, and other buildings around the farm. We had a couple of tanks of water including a concrete tank that we used to play in from time to time. We walked down there and checked. Fortunately, she was not in or near any of those. Everyone was getting really worried about her disappearance. One more time, I went to the basement. We had an old couch down there and behind the couch Debbie was sleeping on the floor. It was a good place to take a nap for a couple of reasons: it was cool there and she was effectively getting away from a couple of teasing brothers. We were relieved and very glad that she was found.

Dramatic Rescue

     I guess it is by God’s grace that we survived our childhood. There were some close calls. I’ll tell you about one of them. We had a wagon equipped with a water tank on it that we used to haul water for livestock. We creatively called it the water wagon! In the front part of the wagon there was some space that a little boy like me could ride. Many times, I rode there as dad took water to various tanks around the farm. I wasn’t very old the day I was riding on the water wagon and Greg was sitting on dad’s lap while dad was driving the Oliver tractor. We were heading up a hill by the hedge row when the pin came out of the water wagon tongue and the wagon started rolling backwards. I don’t know how he did it, but my dad stopped the tractor, put the parking brakes on, set Greg on the ground, ran toward me and the water wagon, grabbed the tongue and turned the wagon just before it rolled into the creek at the bottom of the hill! It was an amazing and dramatic rescue! There were other close calls that will have to be told by others and at other times, but this one is my story and I’m sticking to it!

Bert and Mert

     My dad’s name was Basil. My mom’s name was Agnes. If anyone was near the door when my dad came in to get something from the house, they would hear him call out, “Mert!” That was what he called my mom! Somewhere along the way, she told us that when they were younger, they went to a movie where there were characters named Mert and Bert. After the movie, they decided that they would call each other by those names. Mert stuck. Bert didn’t![1]

Exodus 34:21

[Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest. Genesis 34:21]

     From just about my earliest memory, my dad did not do any farming (except feeding and occasionally some “emergency” work) on Sundays. One time he told me the story of how this practice got started for him. We have one field of bottom ground on the farm. He wanted to finish planting that field before the rain, so one Sunday (I think it was during the 1957 planting season), he planted the bottom field. That night it rained four inches and washed out the seed corn on that field. He had to replant it later. He decided then and there he would not do any work on Sunday. On our farm, this has been a five-decade practice. And as  Exodus says, it’s been a practice even during the plowing and harvesting season!

An Accurate Throw

     I always liked to hear stories that my dad would tell about his growing up years. One story I particularly liked was the one about an accurate throw! He said that his dad was in a nearby field plowing. This was during the time when a horse pulled the plow, the reins that were used to guide the horse were slung over the neck of the “plower” as he walked behind the plow. While my grandpa was plowing, my dad saw a grease bucket lid on the ground nearby and thought it would be interesting if he could throw that lid all the way to the field. He threw it like a frisbee and he said the lid came down perfectly on the back of the horse. Of course, the horse bolted. My grandpa was thrown to the ground. The plow was bouncing as the horse ran all the way to the barn. The rest of this story, according to my dad, included a whipping with a harness strap!

A Dad Joke

     Way before anyone heard of dad jokes, we heard our share of them. One of my dad’s favorite jokes that he told was this one: a man walked into a restaurant with an onion behind his ear. It never failed, every day he had an onion behind his ear when he visited the place. One day, he entered the establishment with a carrot behind his ear. The staff at the restaurant finally asked him, “why do you have a carrot behind your ear?” He said, “Because I’m out of onions.” I can still hear him tell it. He thought it was funny and laughed a long time after telling this joke. We laughed too—at the joke and at the way he laughed when he told it. If truth be told, I laughed a bit when I typed it out just now!

It probably isn’t good to analyze a joke of this type, but it is interesting to note that the people at the restaurant asked the wrong question. If they really wanted to know what was happening, they should have asked why he had anything behind his ear, not just the carrot on that day! I’m afraid this dad joke thing might have been handed down to succeeding generations!

A Couple of Pranks

     Not only jokes have been part of our family, but pranks and teasing have also shown up from time to time. One time, my cousin, Mike, was visiting with us. Late in the evening, we were playing in the basement. Suddenly, there was a knocking on the basement window. It was startling and scary. But, knowing my dad, we figured it was probably him. We raced upstairs. My mom and dad were in bed, but not asleep yet. There was no way my dad could have come in from outside that quickly after knocking on the basement window. We thought maybe we were hearing things, so we went back downstairs. After a few minutes, there was another knock on the window. We ran upstairs again. Dad was in bed. Now we were really scared. In fact, Mike did not go back downstairs. He sat on the top of the staircase. Finally, we discovered the truth. My dad had used a fishing rod with a weight on the end of the line. He opened his bedroom window, reached out with the fishing line and “knocked” on the window with the fishing weight. Before we ran upstairs, he reeled in the fishing line, put it under the bed and got back in bed. Pretty clever!

     Another time, dad dressed up as an old woman and sneaked out the front door (which we rarely used) and came to the door we always used and knocked. I answered the door and the old woman said, “Is your dad home?” It scared me just a bit as I hollered for my dad. About this time, my mom came in (she was in on this, too). Something about the way my mom looked at me caused me to look again at the old woman. I recognized that it was my dad and just slammed the door! They laughed at the time. I think I might have laughed later. Maybe.

A Chiropractic Ride

     Occasionally, my dad would have trouble with his back. He would describe it as his back being “out.” An observer could tell that it was “out” because while he walked straight ahead, it looked like he was walking a bit sideways! One time, his back was bothering him so much that he couldn’t climb on the tractor.  He asked my mom to drive him back to the pond so he could feed the hogs we had there. She was to drive; he would sit in the back of the feed trailer. My mom didn’t have too much experience with tractors. I don’t remember her being on a tractor much at all. On this day she did fine. She got back to the pond in record time—driving a bit too fast. When she finally stopped, my dad was ready to complain that she went too fast and the bumps were excruciating. When he stood up and started his somewhat indignant speech to her, he suddenly changed his tune and said, “hey, you fixed it!” His back was not “out” anymore, but “put back in place” by an amateur chiropractor on a speedy chiropractor ride.

A Picture-Perfect Temper Tantrum

    I think this story happened on a Sunday evening. My dad needed some help with some feeding or something outside. He asked me to come and help him. I didn’t want to. For the next several minutes he kept asking and I kept saying I wasn’t going to help him. I started crying and refused to get ready to go outside. At one point he got the camera out and said he was going to take a picture of me having this temper tantrum. That really made me mad and I started to run out of the room. In the process, I slipped and fell on the end table and cut my forehead—just above my eyebrow. I was now crying and bleeding. My mom called Dr. Baldwin and he met us at the office and I had to have stitches. It would have been a whole lot better just to have been obedient!  I hope my dad didn’t feel bad about all of this because it was my fault, but I’m sure he did. I don’t like thinking about this story, but it happened. I’m glad it wasn’t repeated--at least to this degree!

A Marksman at the Wrong Time

     I had a couple of BB guns in my growing up years. I used the gun to target practice and sometimes I would try to kill sparrows. My dad didn’t mind us killing the sparrows. They were a nuisance in and around the barn. However, we weren’t supposed to shoot any other birds, especially the graceful barn swallow. So we would go up in the hayloft and try to eliminate some sparrows. I admit it sounds kind of heartless given the witness of the scriptures that says God knows when a sparrow falls, but in my case, God saw that I missed 99.9% of the time. I shot tubes and tubes of BBs at sparrows and missed. One day a barn swallow was sitting on the power line by the barn. I was frustrated that I couldn’t hit a sparrow, so I decided if I couldn’t hit anything, I might as well shoot at the barn swallow. Unfortunately, this one time my aim was deadly. I still remember seeing the swallow falling to the ground.  Probably God notices when barn swallows fall as well. Dad saw it too. And I didn’t see my BB gun for a few weeks!

The Grove

    My dad always liked pecan trees. He planted pecan trees between our house and the road in 1969 or 1970. Anyone who drives by the farm can now see the beautiful, tall, majestic pecan grove that was planted almost 50 years ago. My dad didn’t live to see what this pecan grove looks like today and the many pecans that it has produced. There is this reality in my dad’s experience that is embodied in this quote by Regan Sutrefield: “The best of what we sow we won’t live to reap.”

Vacation Fun

     Our family didn’t have very many traditional vacations. The only time all of us traveled for a few days was in 1958. We spent some time in the Ozarks, toured Marvel Cave, and stayed in a cabin in Forsyth, Missouri. Another year (1967) everyone but me went back to the same area. I didn’t want to go, so I stayed home and took care of things on the farm.

     But another vacation week stands out in my mind. One year, mom and dad decided that we would stay home but consider it a vacation week. No farm work would be planned outside of normal feeding. The rest of the time we would do “vacation” things. Honestly, the only thing I remember was that my dad built a raft during that week. He took four empty 55-gallon barrels and constructed a wooden raft with the four barrels on each of the corners. He also built a ladder on one end of it so we could swim in the pond and be able to get on and off the raft. He also built a bench on it for fishing. We took it back to the pond and had fun floating and swimming. It worked great.

Can’t Fool Her

     One of the most popular combines in the 1950s was the Allis Chalmers pull-type combine. This means that the combine was pulled by a tractor. Allis Chalmers or AC as it was called, sold a ton of these combines. Over the years, they made them a bit bigger and used improved technology in the mechanics of the machine. However, they looked essentially the same. My dad had at least one of the earlier models, then traded for the looks-the-same-but-a-little-bit-bigger-improved model. It was parked in the barnyard and my dad asked my sister, Debbie, how she like his new combine. She went to the window, looked out at the machine for just a second, turned away, and stated in a matter-of-fact way: “you can’t fool me, you just painted it!”

A Lesson Learned the Hard Way

    We have almost always had a Ferguson tractor around the farm. These tractors were small, utility, chore tractors. They were used nearly every day for something. (While we don’t use a tractor like this anymore, we still have a 1957 Ferguson that my grandpa bought new.)

     A Ferguson is the first tractor I learned to drive. I probably wasn’t more than six years old. As a matter of fact I was too small to push the clutch and the brake at the same time, so I had to improvise by making sure if I needed to stop, I pushed the clutch in to take it out of gear then shifted my weight over to the brake. I’m not sure how safe that was, but I distinctly remember doing it.

     The Ferguson was the tractor I used when I started doing field work. I think I was in the fourth grade and one day after school, my dad had the Ferguson and the culti-mulcher ready for me to use in one of the fields. After a few years, I spent so much time on the tractor that I knew all about it—so I thought!

     One day I was using the Ferguson to rake hay, as I remember. Perhaps I was doing something else, but I do know I was in the field about a mile from the house when I ran out of gas. I thought I had enough to finish the task, but I didn’t. So, I walked back to the house. When I got there, I told my dad I had run out of gas. He asked me if I had used the auxiliary tank on it. As much as I had driven that tractor, I had never heard of the auxiliary tank. I thought he was teasing me. He said that if you open the fuel line control knob a couple turns, there is another gallon or so in the tank. When he took me back to the tractor, he did not take any gas, he just turned the knob a couple of turns, and the tractor started up. I had enough gas to drive it home! There was more to learn about that tractor. I have discovered that there is more to learn in just about any situation in life, too!

Be Sure That the Envelope Says Kool-Aid!

     A line in a vintage (probably 1950s era) Kool-Aid jingle says “be sure that the envelope says Kool-Aid.” Well, one day my mom didn’t. The back story that you need to know about that day is that my brother (when he was very little) used to take labels off the cans in the cupboards. He used to take labels off other things, too. Like Kool-Aid packets. (I guess at the time, Kool-Aid came in packaging that had paper on the outside of it.) My mom was fixing a lunch to take to my dad in the field. She fixed the food, then was stirring up the Kool-Aid. Since the paper had been removed by my brother, she didn’t know what flavor it was going to be until she poured it in the pitcher. It was purple that day. She said later that it didn’t look quite right, so she took a drink of it. Then she took another drink trying to figure out what was wrong with it. Then she realized she had mixed up purple dye! Her mouth, tongue and teeth were now purple.

     Then she panicked. She stepped outside and hollered at my Aunt Norma who lived across the field. (Aunt Norma didn’t have a phone.) Mom said she wanted to let someone know that there was a problem in case she keeled over dead! She called the doctor and he concluded that the dye would not hurt her. It didn’t. She lived to laugh and tell about it. But the jingle was right—be sure the envelope says Kool-Aid!

Always Read—and Follow the Instructions

    There is an adage that teaches us “when all else fails, read the instructions.” A corollary to that adage is “when you read the instructions, you should  follow them.” This corollary was played out on a cold day on the farm. My dad and our neighbor, Stu Fitzsimmons, had each bought a new auger feed wagon. They got them cheaper by buying them unassembled and met at our shop to begin putting them together. A fire was built in the stove in our shop for warmth and the task began. As the wagon began to be assembled, the instructions clearly said, “do not tighten bolts until after certain sections of the wagon were assembled.” However, it was the consensus that to save time, the bolts should be tightened as they go. They got to the aforementioned step in the process and it could not be assembled until they went back and loosened all of the bolts that they had previously tightened. They finally got it assembled. The assembly of the second wagon went much quicker because they didn’t ignore the instructions. As a young kid watching all of this, I learned that instructions should not only be read but obeyed! Another way to put it: We must be doers of the instructions and not just readers only!

Church and Community Servants

     My parents were good role models when it came to church and community service. My mom and dad volunteered for many ministry tasks through our church, the Rockbridge United Methodist Church. Mom taught Bible School and Sunday School and helped in many other ways. My dad served as treasurer of the church and also volunteered for things. I remember for several years he was on the team that erected the elaborate nativity scene the church displayed out by the highway during Advent and Christmas.

     My dad also served on the Fire Protection District Board and the Greenfield School Board for at least a couple of terms. I’m not sure exactly what years he served, but it was interesting to see his picture at least in one of my high school yearbooks as a member of the board! 

     It has always been interesting and a matter of pride to see his name on the plaque when the new high school gym was constructed in Greenfield. This new building was first used during my freshman year (1965) in high school. Even though it was built over fifty years ago, people still refer to it as the “new gym.”

     Even now, I will occasionally drive by the building and look at his name, Bail D. Price, on the plaque on the front of the building.

     And another interesting fact is that my step-father, William Hembrough, was also on the school board at the time and his name is listed on the plaque, too!

     I’m grateful to God for the legacy of church and community service that has been handed down to my generation and hopefully will continually be handed down to succeeding generations.

One Last Thing

     There are many other stories that have been told in other writings and could be (and perhaps will be) told in the future. I’m grateful to God for the memories, experiences, and lessons I’ve learned in these etcetera’s in my life.

---

[1] I recently discovered through Google that there was a movie released in 1945 called Murder, He Says. There was a cast member who played both of these roles:  Mert Fleagle and Bert Fleagle. The movie is about a pollster who stumbles on a family of murderous hillbillies,  and joins in their search for hidden treasure. I’m not sure if this was the movie or not, but it was the right time frame and the Google search did not return any other movies with Bert and Mert in them!