Mark’s Thanksgiving
Winter came early. The snow in mid-November was totally
unexpected. Not only was it unexpected,
but it was overwhelming. When three feet
of snow falls in a 24-hour period, everything comes to an abrupt
standstill. Everything stops. Except the cows need to be fed and
milked. Eggs need to be collected and
the chickens need fed. The ice in the
water troughs needs broken. The pigs
still need to be slopped. It all has to
be done with heavy boots, gloves, and winter coats. You don’t wear heavy winter gloves when you
milk cows.
Fifteen
year-old Mark would not have to go to school this day. It wasn’t that school was cancelled. It’s just that there was no way that he could
trudge through three feet of snow to get there especially given the fact that
it was going to take twice as long to take care of his regular household and
farm chores. Then, since he would be
staying home anyway, Pa would take advantage of Mark’s presence to take care of
some other chores on the farm that needed attention. There were never enough hours in a day to do
everything that needed attention. Much
of that work was done on Saturday, but that amounted to Band-Aid work. You simply did the best you could under the
circumstances and pray that things would hold together until the next
Saturday. Pa didn’t allow work on
Sunday. The cows still needed milked on
Sunday and all the farm animals had to be fed; otherwise, Sunday was the
Sabbath. It was the Lord’s Day and it
was a day of rest from farm
labors. Sunday was the day the family
dressed up in their best clothing and went to church down the road. It was a day to sit in the parlor after
dinner and read the Bible together. It
was a day to take a loaf of hot bread to the neighbors across the way. It was a day when the family would feast on
Ma’s fresh berry pie. Mark often
wondered why Ma had to continue working around the house if it was a day of
rest from farm labors. That didn’t stop him from eating Ma’s fresh
berry pies and scraping the bottom of the pie pan for any leftover remnants of
a pie.
Saturday in
the winter was a gift to the farm.
During the summer work could be done six days a week and it would be
possible to keep up with the work.
Daylight hours were shorter in the winter and Mark had to be in school
six hours a day. Added to those six
hours of school was another two hours of walking to and from school. Eight hours away from the farm during the
winter was a burden. Mark had considered
dropping out of school when he turned 16 so he could help around the farm, but
Pa wouldn’t hear of it. Pa had made it
to the tenth grade before he dropped out to help Gramps on the farm, but that
was then and now was now. Mark needed an
education so he could manage the farm better than what Pa had done. Pa wouldn’t bend.
If working
extra hard on Saturday to make up for lost time during the week wasn’t enough,
Mark still had homework to do every night.
That meant he would get home from school around four-thirty in the
evening, just before it got dark and have just barely enough time to start his
evening farm chores before supper time.
There’d be another couple of hours of chores to do and then he could
start on his homework. Often it would be
midnight or later before he could turn out the lights and get some sleep. Sleep was something that Mark cherished since
he awoke each morning at four to do his morning chores before heading off to
school.
Supper time
on the farm was good. It seemed like it
was really the only time other than Sunday when Mark could sit for a spell and
relax. Since they lived on the farm
there was always plenty of beef, pork, and chicken to eat. Pa always butchered a pig and put it in the
smoke house until it was cured. Mark
loved the hickory smoked ham and pork chops.
Ma and his two younger sisters tended to the garden in the summer and as
a result they had lots of vegetables and fruits to eat through the winter. Potatoes were stored in a dugout bin
outside. Corn and green beans were
canned in blue Mason jars. There were
always turnips, beets, and carrots to add to the dinner table. There were lots of greens in the summer, but
salad makin’s were pretty scarce in the winter.
Onions seemed to be able to keep year round. The half dozen apple trees they had provided
more than enough apples for the family through the year. The volunteer crab apple tree out by the road
produced the best apples for apple butter.
Supper time
was also time for family members to talk about their day and things that were
going on in the world. Pa had saved up
money over the years to buy a Philco Tombstone Radio and with a little fine
tuning the family would spend a little time listening to music or radio shows
and news of current events. They had
even relished the time they could listen to their President, Franklin Roosevelt
once in a while. It was over the radio
that they had learned of the Hindenburg disaster and union strikes at General
Motors and the Chrysler Corporation.
There had been violent conflicts between police and union workers that
resulted in several people being killed.
Machine guns had even been used.
It was over the radio that the family learned of a gas explosion at a
Texas school that killed 295 children and teachers. They learned about the lost woman pilot,
Amelia Earhart from the radio. Of
course, not everything was gloom and doom over the radio. The
Shadow with Orson Wells was weekly entertainment for the family – when
there was time.
The radio
was also where Mark and Ma and Pa heard Franklin Roosevelt’s Quarantine Speech. Roosevelt had called for an international
quarantine of “aggressor states”, which everyone knew to be Germany, Japan, and
Italy. In spite of the isolationist view
held by the country, everyone subconsciously knew that the non-interventionist
approach probably would not keep the United State out of war. The Panay Incident, where Japanese bombers
sank an American gunboat would only be an opening scene to what would follow in
four years.
Life was good on the farm. With coal in the basement to burn through the
winter and food in the family storehouse to set on the table. Unlike some of
his friends in the town, Mark and his family would always have enough to get
them comfortably through the winter.
What they
didn’t have enough of was time. And
money.
Mr.
Gifford, Mark’s history teacher was also the school’s basketball coach. Mr. Gifford had been leaning on Mark to sign
up for basketball. Mark was tall for his
age, strong from baling hay on the farm, and he was fast on his feet and had
good eye-hand coordination. Mr. Gifford
was certain that if Mark was on the team that the school would do well in
sectional and regional competition. In a
couple of years Mark could take the team to state competition.
Mark wanted
desperately to play basketball but knew that even one more hour away from the
farm every day would mean that either work would not get done or he would have
to stay up later each night on his homework.
As it was, Mark had a hard time staying awake in school after his lunch
hour. High school basketball just was
not going to happen.
Pa had just
finished saying grace over breakfast when a knock came on the door. It was unusual for anybody to be knocking on
the door early in the morning. The only
folks who did that were neighbors looking for a couple of extra eggs or a cup
of sugar. There had been a time when
some poor folks’ car had broken down in front of their home and needed help,
but that was the only time a stranger had been to the door. Twelve year-old Peggy Sue jumped up and ran
to the door before Pa could even scoot his chair back from the table.
While Peggy
Sue ran off to the door, Mark brought up the subject of basketball. He knew of an old car that was for sale. It was at least ten years old and still ran. He was certain that if he had a car to drive
to school that he could do an extra hour’s worth of work in the morning before
heading off to school and would still be able to be home on time after school
to get his chores done. Pa didn’t outright
dismiss the notion, but for some reason he didn’t necessarily cotton to it
either. Mark was about to learn why.
Peggy Sue
opened the door and motioned for the well-dressed man to quickly come in out of
the blowing snow. He asked for Pa.
After Mark
heard the door close behind the visitor he saw Pa walking into the kitchen, all
worn and tired with a worried look on his face.
Trembling, he held a piece of paper in his hands. The crops that they had sold and the beef
they had taken to market had not been enough to meet the mortgage on the farm. If the mortgage wasn’t paid in full in ten
days the bank would foreclose on the farm.
Peggy Sue
and Millie didn’t know what the word “foreclose” meant, but they could tell by
the tears that were flowing down Ma’s cheeks that it wasn’t good. They excused themselves from the table. Mark knew what it meant to foreclose on the
farm and he sat with head bowed and in shock.
Food
remained uncovered on the table while Mark sat and listened to his parents talk
about what they could do to pay off the mortgage or at least make a couple of
payments so they could keep the farm.
What farm equipment they had was literally held together with baling
wire and even bubble gum. Selling off
the equipment wouldn’t make a dent in the payment they would have to make in
order to convince the bank to hold off on foreclosure. Perhaps by selling off a few more head of
cattle and a couple of pigs they could make a sizeable payment, but Pa doubted
that it would be enough to stop the bank.
By selling off some of the remaining cattle they could sell some of the
excess hay that they would no longer need.
It would help, but would never be near enough to solve the problem.
Mark’s
offer to find a job was met with Pa’s shake of his head. There were no jobs to be found anyway. Besides, any money he could earn by working
evenings and weekends would never arrive in time to meet the demands of the
bank. Quitting school and working in the
coal mine was simply out of the question.
Mark could barely get the words out of his mouth that he could drop out
of school and join the army as everyone knew war was on the horizon. Pa’s glance with his steely eyes sent a
message that made Mark want to crawl under the table.
Everything
they thought of or talked about would pay out too late and come up too
short. Ma said she and the girls could
make and sell quilts and with Christmas around the corner there would be a
market for them. Pa liked the idea. He told Ma to go ahead make her quilts. Pa knew that she could never make enough
quilts in the next ten days to make a payment to the bank, but it would give
her something to do to make her feel like she was helping to resolve their
financial crisis. Besides, who
knew? Maybe between the sale of some
cattle and hay and a quilt or two they might come up with enough money to
satisfy the bank.
Pa knew
better.
The reality
was that the banker was a shrewd business man.
Who was Pa trying to kid? The way
the economy was at that time he could take the money and give it to the bank
and the bank would foreclose on the farm anyway. In the end they would be better off selling
what they could and keep the money so they could rent a place until they had
money to move on or buy a new place.
Pa had made
up his mind. He gathered his coat and
hat and kissed Ma on the cheek before he headed out the door to the
market. Cattle would be sold. Since there was too much snow on the ground
for the girls to get to school they could help Ma start the quilting. Mark was left to tend to the remaining chores
of the day. He knew the routine. He would need to add machinery maintenance
and repair to the list of things to do.
Equipment would have to be sold if they had a prayer of a chance of
paying off the mortgage. Mark followed
Pa out the door just a few minutes later and made his way to the barn.
The most
valuable piece of equipment they owned was the tractor. It had come with the farm when Pa had bought
the farm the year Mark was born. It was newer then. Over the years Mark had learned how to tune
the tractor so it would run long enough to get the plowing and harvesting done,
though sometimes he would have to do some work on it while it was in the
field. He decided that if he took extra
care in making repairs that he could fix the tractor so that it would start on
its first or second try. He could
straighten out a few dents and work out rust and then put on a fresh coat of
paint to give it a little more sales appeal.
The seat had an old leather covered cushion that had holes in it. As he looked around the barn he spied an old
cowhide hanging over a rafter. Thinking
that Ma could use the old cowhide to cover the tractor’s cushion, he climbed up
and dropped it to the floor of the barn.
A cloud of dirt and pieces of straw mushroomed into the air as it hit
the ground.
Mark stepped up on the tractor and
pulled the cushion down. When he did he
noticed a key that had been under the seat.
He thought it odd that a key would be there since he had never used a
key before to start the tractor. With
key in hand, he climbed up into the seat and began looking at the dials and
gauges on the tractor. There as plain as
day was an ignition keyhole. He started
to insert the key into the ignition, but it wouldn’t fit. Satisfied that the key was worthless as far
as the tractor was concerned he started to drop it on the ground but remembered
that one of the animals might try to eat it and make it sick. He put the key in a pocket and carried the
cushion and cowhide into the house and explained to Ma what his idea was. She thought it was a marvelous idea.
Hours seemed to melt away as he
worked on the tractor. He had found some
copper wire in the barn that he used to replace some of the electrical wiring
on the tractor and did some fine tuning here and there. After he pounded out the dents in the tractor
he decided he had done all that he could do without getting some paint to help
it look like new. That would take a trip
into town. That was not going to happen
today.
By now his hands were greasy and
knuckles were bloodied from prying nuts and bolts loose on the tractor. As much as he knew there was other equipment
to work on he looked for something that he could do while standing up. Straightening up the barn would do just
fine. Besides, perhaps a cleaned barn
would make the property more valuable in a sale. If nothing else it might lift Pa’s spirits.
By mid-afternoon the barn was
starting to look organized. It wasn’t
that it had not been organized before as Pa held to the axiom that there’s a
place for everything and everything needs to be in its place. But there had been cans and old pieces of
rope and broken boards that were just lying around. Loose boards needed hammered back into place and
hand tools could always use a good sharpening and hung just a little more neatly.
The longer Mark worked in the barn
the warmer he became. He had first
loosened his coat and later took off his hat.
The cold wind may have been swirling around outside, but sweat was
dripping from his brow while he was inside the barn. He had long since taken off his coat and hung
it on a nail on a ten-by-ten support. He
now rolled up his shirt sleeves as he began his final job in the barn.
Mark had gathered all the trash
into a back corner of the barn. Later he
would burn what could be burned and pile everything else in the community
dump. That back corner seemed like a
good place to sweep all the remaining loose dirt and rubbish. After sweeping for ten or fifteen minutes
Mark saw a leaf rake and thought to himself that the rake would probably do a
better job of moving debris around than an old broom. He would come back later with the broom and
go over the dirt to give it a fresh clean look.
As he raked the odd collection of
dried leaves, straw, chicken feathers, and bits of paper and broken glass, his
rake snagged onto something that had been hidden just below the surface of the
dirt. He pushed the rake back and drew
it toward him one more time. Again, one
of the tines of the rake snagged onto something that prevented Mark from
drawing the rake any further.
Frustrated, he pushed his rake away from him and drew the rake back
quickly and forcibly. Though the rake
flew over the spot where it had previously been hung up, he noticed that tines
on the rake jumped as he pulled over the spot.
Determined to remove whatever it was that was causing the rake to hang
up in that one spot, he tossed the rake aside and kneeled down next to the bump
in the ground. He began rubbing dirt
away from the bump and found what looked to be a rounded piece of rock about
the size of a twenty-five cent piece.
Rather than continuing to rub the dirt away, he pulled his pocket knife
from his pocket and began digging around the rock. When he stuck his knife blade in the ground
where he thought the blade would be under the rock, the knife came to a sudden
stop. He began stabbing around the rock
only to find that he could only dig his knife in the dirt an inch or so. Dead set upon removing whatever it was that
buried beneath the surface of the ground, he moved to get a shovel and began
digging around the rock.
As he continued to dig he found
that what he had been running his rake over was not a rock at all, but a small
wooden box that measured about six inches wide and deep and about a foot
long. The corners of the box were
covered with pieces of round brass. Its
edges were covered with leather.
Try as he could, he was unable to
lift the box out of the ground. Using
the shovel as a lever he was able to lift the box out of its bed and flipped it
over onto its top. He turned the box
upright. On the center of what was opposite
of hinges was a small keyhole. Mark
reached into his pocket and pulled out the key that he had earlier thought of
dropping onto the ground.
The keyhole was caked with dirt and
there was no way that Mark could tell if the key would fit, so he picked away
with the dirt as best he could. Then he
brought a bucket of water over to the box and began gently bathing the
keyhole. Within a few minutes the water
was running clear as it fell from the keyhole.
Again, he attempted to slide the key into the hole. This time the key fit perfectly. When he turned the key clockwise in the box
he heard a distinctive click. His heart
raced as he opened the box. He had read
of buried treasure before and had dreamed of finding lost pirate’s gold on a
tropical island in the middle of the Caribbean, but never dreamed of finding a
treasure chest in his own barn.
The top of the box was filled with
papers. They appeared to be some type of
legal or bank papers. The first paper he
saw had the name of the previous owner of the farm, Mr. Gruenberg. Mark knew very little of Mr. Gruenberg except
he believed that he or his father had come to America from Germany before the
American Civil War.
Below the thin layer of papers was
a German Bible. Mark instinctively knew
that he had found items that were at least intrinsically valuable. He placed the papers back inside the box on
top of the Bible and looked around the barn for something to spread on the
ground. He didn’t want to get items in
the box dirty and he certainly did not want to show disrespect for the
Bible. He looked again to the rafter
where he had previously found a cowhide and spied another one. He scrambled to the rafter and carried the
cowhide back down with him instead of dropping it to the ground.
After spreading the cowhide on the
ground next to the box he began lifting the papers and the Bible out of the box
and gently placed them on the hide.
Beneath the Bible were yet more papers.
With the exception of one paper, he had no idea what the papers were
about. Perhaps with closer inspection he
or Pa would be able to tell what the papers were about. But, there was one paper that he understood
immediately because on it in big bold letters were the words, “In Payment for
Duty in the Union Army”. He held in his
hands the original deed to the farm where he was now living. Mr.Gruenberg was about 90 years old when he
had died ten years ago. Mr. Gruenberg
had served in the Union Army during the American Civil War!
Mark gingerly lifted a cloth from
the box that had been under the deed to the farm. Civil War medals had been carefully lined up
on the cloth. He carefully removed the
cloth with the medals still on top of the cloth. When he removed the cloth and the medals he
could not believe his eyes. There on the
bottom of the box was an inch thick layer of gold coins dating back to the
Civil War. The 1905 five-dollar gold
piece looked as new as the day it was minted as did the 1912 Indian head gold
piece. But, those were the newer gold
coins. Others dated back to the Civil
War and even before. All he could do is
stare at the box in disbelief. Perhaps
Mr. Gruenberg had buried some of these coins before or during the Civil
War. It was common knowledge that land
owners and bankers of the South had buried their valuables during the war
before Union troops came through. Many
of those treasures remained hidden to this day.
Perhaps Gruenberg did the same before he went off to war, and then added
to it after the war as his own personal bank, protecting himself against
poverty in depression times. Whatever
the reason, Gruenberg had left a treasure to be found at some future date. Surely he could not have simply forgotten it
when he sold the farm to Pa. But, it
didn’t matter now as Gruenberg had died years ago and Mark was certain that
there were no heirs.
As he sat on the ground in the barn
he heard the door open. He looked up to
see Pa walking in and to hear him calling Mark’s name. Mark jumped up and ran to Pa, but before he
could say anything Pa began telling him that he had sold all the cattle and a
couple of pigs and that the bank would accept that as partial payment. If Pa could come up with at least one full
payment on the farm, the bank would not foreclose on the farm. However, if the family missed one payment in
the future, even by one day, the bank would foreclose.
Pa looked around the barn and saw
that Mark had been working hard all day long, but could not understand why he
looked so animated after a full day’s work in the barn. What was really unusual was for Mark to grab
his father’s hand and pull him over to the side of the barn where he had found
his Caribbean buried treasure. Pa’s eyes
went wide with wonder. His eyes dashed
back and forth between the gold coins in the box, the German Bible, medals from
the Union Army and the Grand Army of the Republic, and bank papers.
The following week, the day before
Thanksgiving, Mark approached Mr. Gifford and told him that he would be able to
stay after school and practice basketball.
However, he would still have to be home in time to do his chores and sit
with the family for supper. Perhaps now
Mark would get to listen to The Shadow
a little more often and the family would be able to listen to President
Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats.
_____
The occurrences described over the
radio were actual events that took place in 1937.
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