Selling The Milk

This seemed to be the best solution but then I felt that I should still provide a home for Mike, who had spent most of his life working for our family and was now old and almost penniless with no place else to go. So I bought more cows and started over again. Then came more problems.
By now it was late in spring which is the high production time of year and the dairy had too much milk and could not take on another producer. The best that I could do was to sell the milk to Thomas Dairies in Flourtown for five cents a quart. Soon after that the dairy began to fall behind in their payments for the milk. This got progressively worse for over a year until I refused to send them any more. Thomas Dairies soon went bankrupt after that and a year or so later, due to lawyer costs and court fees, I received about ten percent of the money due me. The new milk market was Witchwood Farms and they paid me much better and promptly. But that is another story that I will tell later.

Disaster And A Dilemma

One of the first crops that we planted was soy beans that we made into good quality hay for dairy cows. I had never seen it before and we found it to be very worthwhile. When we moved, we brought with us seven cows and we borrowed three hundred dollars from the bank to buy two more. We sold the milk to Martin Century Farms which was just outside Lansdale, and our relationship with them lasted over six years until, in 1939, a routine examination revealed that all the cows had Bangs Disease. This is a contagious disease among cattle that causes them to abort their calves and makes them almost useless for milk production, and the Department of Agriculture requires them to be destroyed.
This left me with a serious decision to make. Should I give up farming and take a job at something else?

Getting Started

We were very busy that first year, but were helped some by several friends and relatives who would stay with us. Sometimes for just a day, a week, a month or more. We made many mistakes, sometimes for lack of knowhow, but mostly for lack of money or I should say absence of money. We did enjoy our battery powered radio and also the daily newspaper. It was The Philadelphia Record which went out of business later. I remember a couple of times when I did not have the two cents to buy it on my way home from the dairy every morning.
That farm was a great change from Roxborough. The fields were relatively level instead of hilly. The soil was a clay loam with a hard claypan underneath instead of sandy with many stones and rock.
We built a new fence around the pasture. We used old barbed wire that we brought from Roxborough, and posts that we salvaged from the original wooden fence. We had no money to spend for anything new.

New Farm: Equipment and Stable

We moved in in early April of 1932 with only a few pieces of farm equipment and they were very worn and antiquated. Before we moved I had converted an old Ford car into a tractor by using a conversion unit that I bought from some place in the Midwest. It had enough power but it was slow and cumbersome. However, we used it and were able to survive as well as many others did.
We had to cement the floors and stall of the cow stable. We broke holes through the stone wall and put in more windows, and then built a new, but small, milkhouse with a concrete water trough to cool the milk. This was all in order to pass inspection by the state milk inspectors before we were allowed to sell milk.

New Farm: The House and Barn

The house seemed tight and dry although there was no heater, no electricity, no water, and no plumbing of any kind, and the nearest water was in the springhouse abut a hundred and fifty yards away. There was a shallow well in the pasture where the original house and barn had been. There were signs that these buildings had burned down many years before and another barn had been built on the site of the present buildings. This had also burned down before the present buildings were erected. The present barn was relatively new, but it was poorly designed especially in the stable area. It looked like it had been built by a bunch of carpenters who knew nothing about farm work or the needs of farm animals. The stalls in the cow stable were much too big with the mangers also too wide and high. The floor was not paved and the whole stable was too dark with not enough windows. But it was cheap and we were young and enthusiastic.

New Farm: The Land

The farm was one of several in that area that were owned by the Louis J. Kolb estate. It was relatively level and consisted of one hundred and eight acres. We rented it for twenty-five dollars a month. Although some of the land seemed in good shape it was apparent it had been badly used in the preceding years. All of the plowable acreage had been planted to sweet corn, and some of the fields had been so badly washed out by the storms that previous summer, there were ditches as much as six feet deep and ten feet wide. This, we knew, was very poor management and should not have happened. But there were some good fields and some pasture land.

Looking For A Better Farm

About a year after Mom died I got the idea of trying to rent a larger and better farm and trying my luck elsewhere. Ed Renz offered to buy the chickens and try to make a go of the egg route. Joe and Mike agreed to come with me. Joe and I looked around for several weeks with no luck, until Frank Riggle, a neighbor who lived on our lane up near Ridge Avenue, told us that he knew of some farms near Lansdale that might be for rent. So the three of us drove around and finally decided on one at the corner of Welsh Road and Dekalb Pike, about two miles from the center of Lansdale. It was not occupied and we looked around the house and barn and fields. On the way home we stopped at the real estate agent in Ambler. He did not know that it was not occupied. It seems that the former tenant had moved out without notice and owing several months rent.

Mom's Death/The Depression

At that time Mom became very ill and was put in the hospital where it was discovered she had terminal cancer. She was brought home and Rose quit her job in order to take care of her. After a few months she died in 1931.
Shortly after that, Mary and Ed Renz and children moved in with us. This was about the bottom of the depression. Many of the banks were going bankrupt and many people were forced to use the barter system to trade or buy anything. The economy was in a terrible mess. Everyone had their own ideas about what was wrong and what should be done about it, but of course nothing was done about it, and we just had to wait and hope that it would correct itself, which it eventually did. But, for many people, it was much worse than it was for us.

Farming Problems

I can see now that Mike and I did not make the best use of the farm land. We were still using the old sidehill plow for one thing. It turned the soil down the hill at every furrow and of course after a few times much of the soil was at the bottom of the field. In some places the soil at the lower end of the field would be just as high as the fence alongside it. But this was the old way, and it was the only plow we had. I realize now that I knew very little about farm management or maintenance. But the farm was already worn out and full of stones, and in most places in the dry seasons, it could not hold enough moisture to grow anything.

The Great Depression

At about that time the great depression began to be felt. It started with the collapse of the stock market in nineteen twenty-nine, but it was not immediately felt by everyone as the mills, factories, offices etc. kept laying off their workers. Men and women worked at anything and everything to earn anything at all. Many had to move out of their homes because they could not pay the rent or mortgage installment. Some built hobo shacks on vacant lots and lived there while looking for some source of income. Some started small businesses and tried to sell things that they could produce. I recall one man who baked bread, rolls, cakes, cookies, etc. and carried them around in large baskets trying to sell them. Others sold apples on street corners for ten cents each for that was important money at that time. Of course the apples were not worth ten cents but it gave them a feeling they were not begging and many people with jobs were glad to help.
Ed graduated from R.C.H.S. in 1929 and could find no permanent job. Joe had been laid off at his job and was living at home. Jim, also unemployed, was living with his family in Dernly Park, and he and one of his neighbors would often play golf in the cow pasture. Joe and I would sometimes join them. We played with a homemade club made from a small sapling with part of the root still attached, but it cost us nothing and we enjoyed the game.

Disaster/Veggies

This worked out well for a while until disaster struck in an unforeseen way. Late one evening a pair of large dogs got into the building where I kept two hundred of my best young hens. Before it was discovered they had killed one hundred and thirty five of them. We shot the dogs but the hens were a great loss.
I also grew vegetables to sell to my egg customers and to stores at wholesale. The tomatoes and lima beans seemed to be the best sellers and the most profitable.

Drifting Into Farming

Even when I finished high school and started working on the family farm, I had never given any thought to having a choice if this should be my life's work. I don't think anyone ever advised me or gave me my choice, but I guess it turned out all right, although I realize, by today's standards, I was not equipped to be a farmer either physically or financially. Like Topsy, I just grew up and drifted into it.
After high school, I soon realized the farm could not produce enough milk to make a living by selling it at wholesale. So I tried to increase my income by producing eggs and selling them at retail on an egg route to Germantown and had to buy eggs at wholesale at the egg producers' auction at Center Point. I began raising more hens by buying baby chicks and growing them to productive age.

Graduation

My best friend in high school was Tom Lenihan, and he came to visit me at home several times. After we graduated, we corresponded for a year or two until his last letter came from a sanitarium as he had contracted tuberculosis and I heard later that he died soon after.
Just before I graduated from high school, Joe drove Mom and I to some place on East Market Street near Second Street on the second floor to buy a new suit. Somebody had recommended it to us as a place to find bargains. Besides the new suit I got a new straw hat which was the style for young men at the time. It was stiff and hard with a flat top about four inches high.
The class of '25 had, I think, a hundred and thirty five boys that graduated and ceremonies were held in a large hall on North Broad Street. I cannot remember the name of the place, but Joe and Mom attended, and afterward we stopped at some drug store in North Philadelphia and celebrated with an ice cream treat. Joe was the only one at home who could drive a car as Jim and Tom were married and living elsewhere by then. That car was the one I learned to drive the following year. It had the new "balloon" tires and several other improvements over the old 1921 model. This new car lasted for several years even into the depression at which time we traded it to Tom for his Ford coupe of the same vintage because he needed a larger car for his larger family.

Getting There/Detention

In high school, my biggest problem was in getting there on time. At that time I always helped to milk the cows in the morning before going to school. Then I walked a good mile to the end of the Ridge Avenue trolley line at Leverington Avenue and Main Street in Manayunk. From there I would ride to Broad Street and Fairmount Avenue and then walk down Broad Street to Vine Street. This would ordinarily take a little over an hour, but that trolley line on Ridge Avenue always seemed to be delayed by construction work. We were required to enter the school building by a door in the basement where the lockers were located. At nine o'clock sharp, this door was locked and anyone coming later had to enter by the main door on the first floor where we had to sign a paper that would be used for roll call at a detention class after regular hours in the afternoon. This was always in room 35 and that room was always considered the punishment room. Sometimes when there were other offenses, we would be kept until five o'clock which left it very late when I would get home. In the winter months, that would be long after dark.

High School

When I was in grade school at Holy Family, I don't remember giving any thought about what I would do when I finished school. I suppose I thought I would just continue farming somewhere. I don't remember thinking about high school or college at all. During the summer after I finished eighth grade, Father Grace, our pastor at the time, asked my parents and me if I would like to go to Roman Catholic High School as each parish was supposed to send at least one pupil there each year. So in September of 1921, I started high school by going to the high school annex at Saint Columba's at Twenty-Third and Lehigh Avenue. Here I met many of the boys I eventually graduated with. My second, third and fourth years of high school were spent at the main building at Broad and Vine, and while there I got to know center city Philadelphia pretty well. I even visited and watched a trial in a city hall courtroom. On of my favorite places to visit was the public library at Twelfth and Locust Streets.

Automobiles

At about the time I was in high school our family decided that we should have an automobile because the horse and wagon were becoming quite obsolete. So we soon became the owners of a new 1921 model Ford touring car. It was the old model T type with three foot pedals on the floor and had a canvas roof and isinglass sides that cracked and fell out after the first year. So of course we did not use the sides and that left us very cold in the wintertime and we did not drive much in cold weather. After four or five years we did get a closed model, another Ford model T. It was much more comfortable and lasted quite a while. That was the car in which I learned to drive during the summer of 1926, a year after I graduated from high school. That car is long gone now but I am still driving after sixty-three years.

Aunt Rose

Sometime during my early days in grade school, my Aunt Rose bought a lot on Wilde Street in Manayunk near the church and had a house built on it for herself. At one time I spent a week or so living there with her and was impressed with all the people living nearby and mostly with the fact that most of them seemed to work at the mills at the bottom of the hill along the canal. Early in the morning I could see or hear them walking down the hill and in the afternoon as they came home again.
Manayunk was a mill town in those days with the knitting and paper mills mostly along the Manyunk Canal. The kids from the school and the neighborhood would play a lot and congregate in front of and on Aunt Rose's porch and this annoyed her a great deal. She had pieces of metal with sharp pointed burrs put on top of the railing to discourage them. Some time later she sold that house and moved away. She bought a house in Germantown where she lived for a couple of years before she died. Tom lived there in Germantown with her for a while until, in summer after being on vacation for a few days, he returned to find Aunt Rose dead in bed.

The Garden

The vegetable garden was just above the lower house and was surrounded by a high, homemade picket fence to keep out the chickens which roamed all over the place. The pickets were made of any kind of wood boards, broken rails, or any kind of straight sticks nailed to a post and rail fence. The garden was about a half acre in size but the upper end of it was shaded and full of stones although most of it was good and quite productive. On the western or barnyard side of the garden was a full length row of grape vines with four or five different kinds of grapes. Every year Mom made grape jelly and canned all kinds of fruit and vegetables. So I guess we were a typical farm family of that time, plenty to eat, plenty of work, no money, and almost no neighbors or company. But that was the way country people lived. What a difference from today: no radio, no television. Everyone made their own entertainment without expense and I believe were happier than people of today with all their so-called advantages.

Amusements And Fruit Trees

About that time, Jim obtained a pool table somewhere and we set it up in that double room on the ground floor. It was a regulation sized table with a slate base and we enjoyed it very much.
That room was used a great deal. Pop often sat by the window with the homemade radio and earphones. Tom had made the radio and it was the wonder of the year. A crystal set with "cat's whiskers," a sliding station selector bar, etc. Later, when we moved to the North Wales farm, we took the pool table with us and used it for several years until we needed the room.
Up behind the house there was more orchard. There was a plum tree that had fruit that we called green gages. I guess that was the name of the variety. Also pears, apples and cherries "oxheart cherries." I remember falling out of one of those cherry trees but I was not seriously hurt.

Upper House and Lower House

The upper house was really a double house and Aunt Rose lived most of the summer time in the lower half. The upper half was never occupied that I can remember. Mom kept a bed in the front room downstairs and Joe and I often slept there probably because our lower house was crowded after Tom came home from his shift in the navy at the end of the first World War. Soon after that Aunt Rose died and it was decided that we could combine the two houses and move in. I think that Jim and Joe did most of the work of renovating. The kitchen and dining room of the lower half were combined as well as the dining and living rooms of the upper half. Two doors were broken through on the first floor and one on the second. The wooden kitchen of the upper half was torn off. This gave us much more space, but Ed and I still had to sleep together on the third floor and Mike had the other room up there.

Preserving

My first recollection of the farm on Domino Lane was different from what it was later. The area between our house and the upper house (Aunt Rose's) was full of peach trees, and in the summer, these trees were so loaded with fruit that the limbs had to be propped up to keep them from breaking under the weight of the peaches. Mom used to can them for use over the winter. Preserving she called it. We children would often help to skin and cut up the fruit. A whole bushel or so of peaches would be put in the wooden washtub and covered with boiling water for a minute or two. This would loosen the skins. We also followed the same procedure with tomatoes and in the fall there were a couple hundred mason jars full of different foods for the winter. They were usually kept in the cellar of the upper house.

Minding the Cows

In the summer, when quite young, we boys never wore shoes except on Sundays to go to church. By the end of summer our feet were so tough and callused that cinders and thorns did not bother us. Joe's and my job, and later Ed's, was always to mind the cows. We would watch and keep them from wandering away as they would graze on the surrounding countryside. Our own farm was always short of enough pasture grass and there was idle grassy land nearby. Some of the cows would often try to sneak away and get lost from the others or wander onto the railroad track and be in danger of being hit by a locomotive. I heard that we had lost a cow that way at one time, but that was before my time.

A Wagon Mishap

On streets where there were trolley tracks it was common practice for wagons to use them as they made easier and smoother traveling. When the wagon was leaving the tracks the back end would often slide sideways temporarily. This happened once with Jim and the trolley which was starting to pass struck the left real wheel and smashed it. This happened on Main Street near Shurs Lane in Manayunk. Jim had to walk all the way home with the horse to get the spare wagon and drive back to transfer the load before he could finish delivering the milk in East Falls.

Milk Delivery

In other memories of my early childhood, I often think of the job that was usually mine, of first, lighting a wood fire in the kitchen stove of the lower house and then heating a wash boiler full of water that I used to wash the milk bottles for the next day's delivery. The bottles were filled in the evening after the milk was thoroughly cooled. We used a common garden watering can to fill the bottles and then capped them by hand. This did not take very long because there were usually only sixty or seventy quarts to be prepared. The milk was then left on a bench overnight to be loaded into the wagon and delivered early the next morning. In the warm weather we often had ice to put on the bottles to keep them cool. In the bad weather of winter my father, and later my brothers, often had much trouble in getting out the lane because of the snow. It often accumulated in drifts in the lane so deep that they would have to use the fields, usually with an extra horse to get out to Ridge Avenue. At other times they would have much trouble on the hills of Manayunk. At one time Joe was driving alone up the hill in the woods at the bottom of Domino Lane early in the morning when the horse slipped and fell. Joe unfastened him form the wagon but still could not get him up. Joe then walked home for help and when he arrived back with Mike, the horse was missing. They later found him on Umbria Street about a quarter mile away at the lower end of the back pasture.

The Farm and a Weekly Allowance

Pop died in April of 1924 and as Joe was anxious to quit the farm and take a job elsewhere, I took over the job of running the farm and selling the milk. Just before I took over, Mom and Joe decided to give up the retail route and sell the milk at wholesale to Missimer Dairies on Delmar Street in Roxborough. Joe became a carpenter and worked at it until the depression put most everyone out of work.
When I was young, I can see now, we were very poor as far as money was concerned although I never thought so at the time. We never had a regular weekly or monthly allowance. Once when I was in high school, we were asked to fill out a form in which we were asked to tell how much weekly allowance we received. I answered one dollar, but I did not say that seventy-five cents of it was for trolley fare (five trips at 15 cents a round trip). However, I did not think we were poor. I always considered us as upper middle class. This was probably because we always had plenty to eat, three meals a day, much of it produced right at home on the farm.

Jim

My brother Jim worked around the farm and later took over the milk route after graduating from R.C.H.S. in 1918 when Pop became disabled with asthma. In September of that year he joined the S.A.T.C. (the Student Army Training Corps). This was a branch of the army that was to be trained as future army officers. He was sent to Villanova College in regular army uniform and started intensive training. But a couple of months later, on November 11 the armistice was signed and the war ended.
After the S.A.T.C. was disbanded, Jim stayed in college and graduated in June of 1922. This was all in addition to driving the milk route every day which he had shortened to the near end of Manayunk. Jim married soon after college and Joe took over the milk route when Jim moved away.

Tom

Tom, my oldest brother, was twelve years older than I and so I did not know him well until we were older. I do remember his right hand being bandaged up from an accidental gunshot wound. He attended R.C.H.S. and graduated in 1914. Later he worked in an office at the navy yard. When World War One broke out, he joined the navy and was soon sent to Europe on a supply ship. The ship was sabotaged and burning on the way over. It sank near Gibraltar but most of the crew were rescued. He returned and spent the rest of the war and his enlistment in the U.S.

Mike Sherin

We had no close neighbors except the Fox family but they were all older except Augusta (Gucky) who was younger and became Rose's friend. Living and working for us, there was always Mike Sherin. Mike was never married and had few relatives that I know of. He had come from Ireland as a young man and after working at various jobs around the country for a couple of years, he came to work for my father as a farm hand and continued for the rest of his life. I do remember a sister visiting him when I was quite young and later a niece and her family who lived in East Falls. Mike was a hard and conscientious worker except when he went periodically on a drinking binge for a week or so. He would become very drunk and that seemed to be his only pleasure or amusement, if you could call it that, because he was usually sick for a week after he sobered up.

Grammar School and Recess

I started school in September of 1913 at Holy Family in Manayunk. The school was about a mile and a half away, I think, although we always said it was one mile. Sometimes we walked on the roads, but very often we found it shorter to go over the fields and through the woods because most of the route was either wooded or idle lots.
I remember very little about the classroom, but the recesses and lunch hour left quite an impression. All the new kids and new games. Many of them became friends. Ray Ballesty, Bill Wolf, George Smith, Tom Costello, Jerry McNally, Ed Kroose, Steve Scully, Sylvester McCormick and many others.
One of our games at recess was to form a long line holding hands and then they would crack the whip. I was usually at the end of the line and would have to run with steps about ten feet long. At first I didn't realize that I was being set up, but I soon caught on and enjoyed it. We were taught by nuns and in those days there were always enough to teach every grade and a couple extra, a music teacher, a housekeeper, etc.
Looking back, I think I was always small and skinny, the runt of the litter, but I always had a very good appetite and was always very active and inquisitive. I often worked and played alone even though I enjoyed the company of others. I am sure that this was not good because I missed learning from the experiences and fellowship of others.

Ice Tools

My family had moved there in 1905 just before Joe was born and about two and a half years before I showed up. Another remnant of my father's earlier activities was a set of tools that had been used for cutting and storing ice. It consisted of an ice cutting saw, what looked like farm forged ice tongs and various poles and hooks. They had been used for cutting ice on a lake in winter and storing it for the following summer. This happened at the Christ Church Hospital farm on Monument Avenue near Belmont Avenue at Bala. The ice was used by the hospital, I believe, and the work was in lieu of part of the rent for the farm.

Swollen Glands and Horsepower

Sometime later a swelling developed on my neck just below my right ear. Doctor Custer called it swollen glands, and came to the house a couple of times to cut and remove them. It must have hurt me because I recall being very frightened when he made subsequent calls. Oh yes, doctors made house calls in those days. There was a recurrence later when I was in first grade. A lump in front of my right ear. Mary took me to the doctor's office after school and he opened it up and scraped it out with what appeared to be a tiny spoon. I have never had that problem since.
Joe and I used to play in an old piece of farm machinery that was rusting out in the barnyard that was behind the barn. It was called the horsepower and was a treadmill where a horse furnished the belt power to operate a threshing machine, a circular saw or any other machine that required belt power. I don't think it was ever used on the Domino Lane farm, but it was fun to play in.