The Apartments II

Before I worked on that project, I had helped to build the second of those three apartments. It is also very unusual and includes the area that had been the barn ramp where I had in previous years brought in so much baled hay. The kitchen is perfectly round because it is built inside what used to be the silo. There are two bedrooms and two baths and also a back stairway down to the garage. The front entrance is onto a concrete porch and small lawn where the original big barn doors and barn hill had been. I always had plenty of help on this project. One helper was Ben Walker, who moved in and still lives there.
While the barn apartments were being built, I worked from time to time on different projects of renovating and modernizing the big house where Joan and Roger lived. I completely remade the three bathrooms and repainted most of the interior. We decided to remodel and insulate the old sun porch.
It was while I was rewiring this room on September seventh that I got word that Judy had been hurt in an accident on her way to work.

The Apartments I

Over the next few years we cleaned out the old cow barn and built two more apartments. The second and last one is on three levels and is quite unique. It was designed by an architect who recommended many kinds of insulation that I had never heard of before. Besides the usual insulation in the walls and floor, we installed Thermopane windows that we had custom made into eleven different sizes and shapes. We used as many as possible of the original barn boards on the inside walls. The circular stairway led to the bedroom and bath, etc. This overlooks the dining and living rooms that are on the original barn floor. Another feature is the bridge over the lower entrance and hall. This bridge leads to an unheated area that had been the corn crib and now became a convenient and comfortable picnic and living room area for the summertime. Before I had finished this apartment we had a tenant ready and anxious to move in. He was Mr. Frank Fogel, a college professor and sometimes government envoy worker. He helped me to put on the hardwood flooring.

Sonya and Robert

In September of 1962, Sonya married Robert Driscoll and moved to some place in Connecticut. The big house was then rented out to another tenant for several years until Sonya and Robert came home again. They had been living in Des Moines, Iowa, where Robert had been studying in medical school. By that time, they had two children, Carroll and Robert, Jr.
Robert continued his studies by doing his internship at several hospitals in different parts of the country. He then went on to become a surgeon and started his work at Surburban General Hospital.

Transition

A short time after Bornot died, his wife Joan and her family moved away and I heard little more about them. Sonya, who had been working in New York, returned then and asked me to stay and help her manage the farm and buildings. We worked together for a while at the nursery and greenhouse business but soon gave it up to take care of the more important work of building maintenance and repair. This, together with the lawn and garden work, kept us busy from then on. We renovated and painted Jack's old apartment and rented it out to a couple who lived there for several years. It has been occupied ever since by several tenants. but we did enlarge and improve it a great deal later.

Physical Concerns

For over a year, I had been having trouble with my eyesight and the ophthalmologist that I consulted in Chestnut Hill had told me that I had glaucoma. He treated it with eye drops of ever-increasing strengths with little or no result. He spoke of having to operate, but seemed reluctant to do anything about it. Finally I consulted with John Shober who was our family doctor and he told me to go to Doctor Adler. Doctor Adler was an elderly man and the leading eye doctor in Philadelphia at that time. When he examined my eyes, he told me that it was important that I have an operation immediately to relieve the pressure in the eyes. He sent me to University of Pennsylvania Hospital where Doctor Shea operated the next day on my right eye and again on my left eye two weeks later. I was in the hospital for a little over a month.
In the same year I was having dental problems and when I got my partial plate, I felt that I was really cracking up. However, it all turned out all right.

Bornot's Remarriage and Death

Some time later Bornot married again, this time to a widow with three children. Her name was Joan Wood and the children were teenagers Charles and Joan and, slightly younger, Peter. By that time, Sonya was away at college in New York. She worked later in New York until Bornot died on February 27, 1961. He had been very sick for several months although he continued to direct my work and activities around the house and farmstead.
On the day he died, he had asked me to clean and oil his large collection of guns which he kept in a cabinet and he was very proud of. About midmorning, Joan came running in and asked me to call his doctor and ask him to come immediately, as Bornot was out of bed and collapsed on the floor. The doctor was there very quickly and I helped him to lift Bornot onto the bed, but he was dead. I went down to the barn and called Claire at home. When I told Claire, she immediately called the church and very soon a priest came and administered the last rites of the church. For me, this was the beginning of 27 (?) very eventful years.

Flowers

One of our activities in those years was the growing of trees and flowers. We planted rows of different kinds of trees and shrubbery bushes that we sold with limited success. We did better with the chrysanthemums both in the greenhouse and in the field. The greenhouse variety were the large pompom variety that we forced with only one bloom to the plant. These we sold to a wholesale florist in Philadelphia. The field variety were the hard varieties that we grew from cuttings and transplanted later to the field where we could cultivate and take care of them easier. We had over a hundred varieties of all kinds and colors. In the fall when they were in bloom we dug and sold them as potted plants mostly to stores at wholesale prices. We also made cuttings and started many other hard shrubs and plants. Yews and azaleas were very successful and popular. We designed and built a much larger greenhouse that we added to the original one and this helped a lot. I enjoyed these activities and learned a lot about plant propagation and marketing.

Bornot

We put a new concrete floor in the old cow stable, and Bornot equipped it with all kinds of tools and machines for repairing cars, for doing all kinds of carpenter work, plumbing, painting, electrical wiring and woodwork and cabinet work. We both enjoyed working there together because, at that time, Bornot's wife Yvonne was sick and after some time in Jefferson Hospital, she died suddenly. This was a big blow to Bornot and he felt lost without her. We spent much time together at various jobs around the farm and house. But he seemed depressed and I feel that he was never the same again. I don't know what he did when we were not together, but I think he drank too much and did not get enough rest. He bought and drove different sports cars but did not seem satisfied with anything.

Learning By Doing

After about five years, the older Mr. Jules Dehan died and Bornot decided to sell the dairy farm and quit farming. He asked me to stay on as maintenance and general handyman. And so for the next thirty-seven years I did all kinds of work of almost any trade. If I didn't know how, I learned by doing. If I wasn't very fast no one complained and I soon learned to do anything required.
Bornot and I worked together to clear out the cow stables and make them into a workshop. We had to use a compressed air jackhammer to break up the concrete cow stalls and I hauled many tons of concrete and rubble down to the lawn in front of my house. There, we raised the level of the lawn to replace a wooden porch that we had removed.
It was during this time that I did most of the renovating of the house where I lived. I tore out the flooring of the living room and hall as well as the partition and stairs to the second floor. It took most of one summer to rebuild and finish this job but I learned a great deal about carpentering and stair building.

Flowers and Stock

On the east side of the barn, near Jack's door was a small greenhouse that was heated by the furnace in Jack's house. In here we grew many flowers and vegetable plants that we used to decorate the lawns and gardens.
We had as many as twenty milking cows and that many more of the young stock that we were raising to replenish the herd. This required a lot of hay and grain to feed all that livestock over the winter and we traveled all over the township to find and bale hay. We had enough help and equipment that it was not hard or boring work.

People At The Farm

Sonya, who was eight years old when I came there, was in elementary school at Fontbenne Academy and later at Raven Hill Academy in Chestnut Hill, and I was often called on to take her there or home again. Sometimes I took her to dancing lessons in Mount Airy, or in the summer, to riding school at a horse farm near North Wales. So, besides being a farmer, I became the maintenance and general handyman.
I had plenty of help to assist me in these jobs. There was Jack Threlfal, an Englishman who worked most of the time in the barn keeping the stables clean and feeding the cows and horses. At that time we had five horses which Bill and his friends often rode. Jack lived in an apartment in the corner of the barn. There was also one or more of the Brown boys. They were a Negro family who lived in another house on Gravers Road at the lower end of the farm. Of course, Bill was not usually around to help with the work of plowing, soil preparation, crop planting, hay making, baling, etc.

Move to Norristown

The job at Norristown at the Dehon (later Driscoll) farm was the same as what I had been doing most of my life: In the barn by six in the morning to milk the cows, then cooling the milk while feeding the cows and cleaning up, then delivering the milk to the dairy before going home to breakfast. Later I would work at whatever farm work the season demanded. However, I soon found that it was not all farm work. I was given such jobs as mowing the lawns, trimming hedges, feeding the dog and being the chauffeur to various members of the family. They were all very friendly and understanding and we got along well.
The family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Jules Dehon, their son Bornot, his wife Yvonne, and their daughter Sonya. The older Mrs. Dehon was in the hospital and died about six weeks after I moved there, and so I never did meet her. I moved into the farmhouse on the lower end of the farm on February 6, 1946 and lived there until August 29, 1988, when I came here to PVRC.

After Salfordville

When we moved from Salfordville, we planned to come back later and we rented out the farm, but when we changed our minds we sold it for slightly more than we had paid for it. That paid for the improvements we had made. I can see now that we should have held on to it, but that is just another of the mistakes that we usually made, as it would have doubled in price very quickly.
This whole story probably sounds like a confession of incompetence and continued bad luck, but we did have some happy and entertaining times. One of the acquaintances that we made in those years at Salfordville was the Haney family, who lived on a farm on the other side of Lederach, and we visited each other many times even after we moved to Norristown. The parents and grandmother are now dead but we still keep in touch with the others. They lived in the same parish as we did and that is the same St. Mary's Church where we now live over forty years later. The parish at the time had only forty families and now it has over a thousand.

Salfordville

When Claire and Judy came home, we lived there near Salfordville for only about fourteen months. Our so-called conveniences were very few. We did have running water as far as the kitchen since I had had a well drilled the previous summer, but we had no bathroom or inside toilet. We had no central heating system and no heat at all upstairs. On the first floor, we had two coal burning stoves besides the relatively modern kitchen range which burned liquid propane gas. This made the first floor relatively comfortable.
Those coal stoves had names which were cast in the door in front of where the coal was put in. I don't remember the name of the one in the living room, but the other one was "Lillian" and we always called it by that name.
We had made many improvements and were planning more when we decided to move. At that time, we planned to come back later when we were better off financially. However, we soon realized that we were better off at our new home and job. I feel today that was the right decision for once.

Judy

Of course the big event of those years at Salfordville was the birth of our daughter Judy. That was on November fifth of 1944 and we lived there only until she was fourteen months old. When Claire had become pregnant we had engaged a doctor in Mount Airy near where Claire's family, Dolly, Helen and Charley lived. When the time was near for the baby to be born, Claire stayed with them in order to be near Chestnut Hill Hospital. I made many trips in order to be near when the baby was born but she was delayed and I was at home when Judy arrived. After they left the hospital, they stayed in Roxborough at John Spratt's house for a few days so Claire could get used to caring for the new baby.
When Judy was an infant we had many problems before it was found that she had several allergies, such as milk, corn products and peaches and other foods containing them. After taking this into consideration, we had no unusual problems with her.

Asbestos Plant/Dehon Farm

My next job was also interesting but short lived. It was also about ten miles away but in the other direction. It was at the Keasby and Madison asbestos plant in Ambler. I was put to work in the paper mill making asbetos paper to be used in the manufacture of stoves, refrigerators, etc. My job was to roll the paper into huge rolls and then to cut and roll it into various sizes and weights of smaller rolls. The machinery for doing this was modern and efficient and I liked the job.
The manufacture of the paper was interesting although I had nothing to do with that. The dry asbestos was made elsewhere and came in in bags. It was then thrown into a large vat by hand where it was thoroughly mixed with water and wood pulp by a large mechanical blender and pumped into another vat at the end of a line of dryer drums. The asbestos was transferred to the dryer drums by a large pulley wheel that slowly revolved in the asbestos mixture. It was then scraped off that pulley wheel as a very wet sheet onto the first of the hot dryer drums. It then wound over and under these drums, about a dozen of them, until it was dry and came to me, where I helped to roll, cut and weigh it for sale.
It was a union shop and I had signed up to join the union when after about two weeks, the union called a strike and we were all out of work. This was just after the first of the year 1946, and I did not wait for the strike to be settled but started looking for another job at once.
A few days later, I answered a want ad in the Norristown newspaper for a dairy farmer in Plymouth Township. In this way, I met Bornot Dehon and I took the job that lasted for the next forty-three years.

The Foundry

My first job was as a molder in a foundry at Limerick, about ten miles away. The work was interesting, but hot, and at times strenuous. My partner at the job, who was supposed to teach me, I found out later could not get along with the other workers and did not always keep up with the work on his side of the molding form. This left it doubly hard and dangerous for his working partner. My hands became sore and blistered from pounding the damp sand when making the molds. We were making cast iron pipes, to be used by plumbers in drainage lines. After making these molds of wet sand for about five hours, we awaited our turn with other workers to pour the white hot molten iron into the molds.
One day my partner was operating the crane and trolley carrying this liquid iron, when it was not lifted high enough to clear the top of the mold. It spilled and splashed all over the place. I had seen it coming and had leaped over into the next aisle, and so I was not burnt except for a few small holes in my overalls. This convinced me and that was my last day on that job.
Looking back, I think that was a very primitive and labor wasting place. I believe much of the hardest work could have been done by mechanical methods that would also have been more economical.
Another interesting aspect of that place was the wash room. Everyone really needed a bath when they finished their work there. The washroom was a large, bare room with a concrete floor and a single open-ended water pipe in the middle of the ceiling. The water was warmed by mixing it with steam which was regulated by valves on the wall. The toilet was also interesting. It consisted of two rails laid parallel over a pit. Period.

Drought

The year 1945 was very dry with little or no rain. The pastures dried up and the cows suffered from lack of grass. I extended the fence to include more land, but they kept breaking out and causing much trouble. I was forced to start feeding hay by the middle of August and by fall it became evident that I could not continue over the winter. So we decided to sell the livestock and I would take a job somewhere to tide us over until the following spring.

The Black Market

In looking back at our years in Salfordville, I am always reminded of the war years and their shortages, ration stamps, regulated prices and black markets. The price for most farm products was regulated by the government. My only experience with the black market was in the summer of 1945. In that year I bought and raised three hundred baby chickens of the White Rock breed and intended to sell them in the fall as roasting chickens or capons. I had the male ones caponized and the whole flock was doing very well until they were about two and a half pounds each. At that time, a man came around and offered me about two and a half times the legal price for them. I took it and made a nice profit. That was the only experience that I had in the black market. I did save ten of the capons and in the fall they weighed ten pounds each. We had them killed, dressed, and frozen at a commercial freezer place in Harleysville, where we kept them and used them one by one in the following months. They were very good and the whole project was profitable.

Marriage

Claire and I were married in the fall of 1942 and we moved to our new home about five weeks later. The move itself was quite an experience. Besides the usual household furniture and equipment, we also had to move the livestock, feed and equipment. We rented a large truck and hauled many loads of loose hay and field corn. We spent much time traveling back and forth and in getting settled. We were there only a few days before discovering that the house was infected with bedbugs. So instead of moving our bedroom furniture into the house, we put it into a neighbor's barn where we left it until spring and we had thoroughly cleaned and fumigated our house.
On our wedding day, of course, we had to get back to the old farm in order to milk the cows in the evening. On our way home from the wedding, as we were passing the William Penn Inn, we stopped to watch the firemen fighting a fire in a large frame building behind the Inn. The firemen kept it from spreading but the building was completely destroyed. In the evening, we went out to have our dinner at Trainers, a restaurant about ten miles north on Bethlehem Pike. On our way there, we were caught in a blackout, which were common in those days to make us familiar with what to do in case of an enemy air raid. After about fifteen or twenty minutes of sitting in the dark we were allowed to proceed. We often intended to go back to that restaurant but we never did, and I don't know if it is still in existence.

WW II

By this time the second World War was at its height and was being felt in everything we tried to do. Every man between eighteen and forty-five had to register for military service. They were then graded according to their fitness or their degree of necessity to the war effort. I was exempt from military duty because, as a farmer, I was considered to be necessary to produce food stuffs necessary to the war effort. Many things were rationed and this included gasoline, tires and many kinds of food and hardware. Other things just disappeared from the stores and so were not available. Everyone was issued ration books which contained stamps to be used to purchase some foods that were in short supply, even alcoholic drinks, of which I think everyone was allowed one bottle a month. As a farmer I was allowed to buy more gasoline than others because I needed it to run the tractor and farm truck. Helpers to work on the farm became scarce or unavailable. Many women, even from rural areas, took jobs in factories, mills, foundries, etc. keeping those places going day and night for maximum production.

A Missed Opportunity?

During the summer of 1942, I was notified that the farm was to be sold and I was asked if I wanted to buy it. There was no price put on it and I did not think I could afford it. So I told them I was not interested. I know now that it would have been a great bargain as the price would have been only ten or twelve thousand dollars. I had no idea how to finance a purchase of that kind and so I did not even consider it. Also I had decided to marry Claire in the fall of that year and I did not feel competent to take on any more worries or tasks right then. It was probably just as well or perhaps better because if I had bought that farm I might have been struggling to make a go of it for the rest of my life. I know now that I was not equipped either financially or educationally to make a good living at farming. I was trying to work the old way that farming was done a century earlier when everything was done by hand in the old slow and tedious way. That was all right in the old days when labor was cheap and plentiful but now everything must be done cheaply and quickly with expensive machinery and modern methods.
But I had not yet learned these facts. Instead, I looked around and soon found a smaller farm near Salfordville, about ten or twelve miles away. It was only thirty-seven acres and of course, that was not enough, but there was idle land nearby that I thought I could rent.

Threshing Day

Threshing day was always a big event because it took eight or nine men to operate. There were usually two or three men in the mow where the sheaves were stored to throw them down to the man who was feeding the threshing machine. He would cut the string and push them into it. Another man would tend the chute where the grain came out, attaching empty bags and taking away the full ones. The finished straw fell into the baler which compressed it into bales of about one hundred pounds each. A man or boy was required on each side of the baler to feed the baling wire into the machine. Finally the bales were dragged away and stacked for later use as bedding for the animals or for sale. It was hard work, hot and dusty and at lunch time there was always a dinner ready that had to be prepared by others working in the house.
All this took a lot of planning. Usually all this help was supplied by neighbors and their workers, and to repay, we had to work in their barns at the same job. One of our neighbors was a German family with two big strong daughters and they were the equal of any man. I know that I could not keep up with them.
Today's combines and field balers are a big improvement and save a lot of that work and, of course, money. But even with this equipment there is still a risk of losing the crop because of bad weather or bad timing. I suppose any business must have that kind of risk but it can be very discouraging.

"Bringing in the Sheaves..."

At that time, combines for harvesting grain were new and not much used. Most farmers used binders to cut and bind the grain in bundles which were called sheaves. These sheaves were stacked in the field in shocks of about a dozen each. After a few days or weeks a commercial thresherman would bring his big machine to thresh out the grain, put it in burlap bags and bale the straw. But often the weather would be too wet and stormy, so instead of stacking the sheaves in the field, it would be brought into the barn and stacked there until the thresherman arrived sometime later. This is what I always did as it was much safer in this climate where the weather is so changeable in the summertime.

Horses And Machines

We kept and raised a couple of female calves to be used later as replacements in the dairy herd but they were never much good. We had another bad setback that first year. We brought with us from Roxborough two work horses to do some of the heavy work and we were given another by my cousin John Byrne. In the early summer all three horses died from an ailment that horses get from eating feed that ferments in the stomach and forms a gas. It seems that cattle can pass off this gas and it doesn't hurt them, but horses cannot do this and it kills them. We had been buying brewery grains to feed the cows and Mike gave some to the horses.
So we gave up using horses and after looking around we found and bought a second-hand Fordson tractor along with a disc plow and disc harrow. They were well worn but after much work and repair they were very usable and continued to be for several years. Later on I bought a new John Deere tractor with attachable cultivator. I liked that one very much and found it very economical. But the steel wheels and wheel cleats wre not good at making hay because the cleats would dig out clogs of dirt and make the hay dirty and dusty. So after two years I traded it in for a new Minneapolis Moline tractor also with cultivator. This was a wonderful machine and I kept it and used it until I gave up farming for myself several years later.

Water

One of the problems that we had at the Lansdale farm was in getting enough water. There was a small stream in the pasture that was enough for the livestock but it was inconvenient for them in the cold weather. Water for cooking and washing we had to haul from the springhouse. After several years we had a pipeline put in from the old well in the pasture to the house and barn. A pump with a small gasoline motor was used to push the water, and had to be installed five feet below ground level in the well to prevent freezing. This system was only partly successful as we had no tank to hold the water, and we had to go down to the well in the field every day. Later, we persuaded the landlord to drill a new well for us near the house. They found some water at seventy feet but it was only about three quarts a minute and so they decided to drill for more. They went down more than four hundred feet and still no more. So they stopped drilling and put in a deep well pump using the depth of the well as a reserve. This worked all right as long as we did not need much water at one time.

More "Others"

For several years after Chris and Andy left, I had the same kind of arrangement with two other families. First there was Bill Davis with his wife and mother-in-law and little boy. Bill worked for Martin Dairies as a driver salesman on a milk truck. When they moved after a couple of years, another milk driver salesman moved in. This was Al Ithan and his wife Thelma and their two small children. The Ithan family stayed with me until Claire and I were married in the fall of 1942. By that time World War II was at its height with all its shortages and inconveniences and I was getting ready to move to the farm at Salfordville. Al Ithan later was drafted into the army and spent some time in the South Pacific where he was injured in an accident and sent home.

Others On The Farm

In the first couple of years at the Lansdale farm, especially during the summer, we had several friends and relatives staying with us when they were out of work and they helped us with the field work. Bill Wolf, Larry Downing, a friend of Joe's named Thomas and others. After about 1935, the depression began to ease and Joe and Ed found other work and moved away. This left just Mike and I and we were so busy I decided to get somebody to keep house for us.
In the spring of 1936, I found the Zollers family and persuaded them to come and live on the farm. Andy Zollers, his wife Chris and their daughter Norma. They lived and boarded with us in return for Chris' services as a housekeeper and cook plus fifteen dollars a week. This worked out very well for a couple of years. Chris would sometimes come out to the field and help Mike and I if we were making hay and I would take Norma to and from the school bus. Andy worked the night shift at Lee Tire Co. in Conshohocken and he was usually asleep during the day. After a couple of years they moved back to Norristown. We kept in touch with the Zoller family for many years, even after Claire and I were living in Plymouth Township. Chris and Andy both died about twenty years ago and we have not heard of the others for some time now.

Vegetables

The first few years at Lansdale, we grew vegetables as a cash crop to bring in some more income. This was only partly successful as we were too far away from any good market and the prices were very low. At one time I had to sell about a dozen five-eighth bushel baskets of tomatoes for fifteen cents each after paying ten cents each for the empty baskets. Of course this was an unusual incident and it was during the depression when money was scarce and vegetables were plentiful.
We had a Dodge screen body truck at that time and I sometimes would take a load of vegetables into Dock Street in Philadelphia. On that street there were several wholesale dealers who sold them at auction very early the next morning.
One year we planted a whole acre to carrots, and they grew so well that we had more carrots than we could handle. After we sold all we could in the fall and the weather got cold we dug up the rest and piled them right in the field. We then covered them with burlap and corn fodder and finally about twelve inches of soil. They kept very well and in the spring, I sold them by the basket to the A and P in Lansdale.

More On The Catholic Club

One time we invited the Doylestown club to our hall and entertained them with a one act play. I played the part of a condemned convict, and what I remember most was a very emotional scene with my sister, played by Catherine O'Neill, another club member. Catherine was a very attractive girl and it was quite a thrill to be kissing and embracing her. I often wondered later why I did not try to get to know her better.
Of course I knew that I couldn't become too familiar with any girl. I was just a poor farmer with no money and no prospects of ever making a good living at it. I suppose I always thought in the back of my mind tat I would some day marry and raise a family but that was in some vague future time and I gave it very little thought.
The club also had other activities. A yearly banquet, doggie roast or picnic. I became the secretary in charge of keeping records and the minutes of each meeting. Most of the time, in the president's absence, I would act as chairman.

Social Life: The Catholic Club

Shortly after we moved to "Lansdale," as we called that farm, I heard about and joined the Lansdale Catholic Club. This was a group of unmarried young men and women who met once a month in the church basement. I suppose the purpose was to help Catholic young men and women to socialize and become better acquainted. But I don't think that happened much, at least with me. The boys would play pool or sit around the table while the girls would sit and talk, etc. on the other side of the hall. After this we would have a formal monthly meeting, then refreshments, after which we would play cards usually separately until it was time to go home. Occasionally we did go on trips to various places, or we were entertained by the Catholic Club in Doylestown. One time we traveled to Coaldale, Pa., and were taken down into a coal mine after being issued boots and raincoats. We were shown the seams of coal and the machinery used to mine it. It was very interesting and I learned a great deal.