The Grainery

The Grainery


The combined grainery and machine shed stood across from the barn and was directly across the driveway from the large kitchen window.  Therefore an enterprising, seven or eight year old took great precautions for secrecy of movement.  It could be entered from the back.

Unlike the similar building at Grandma Lill's and Grandpa Lee's farm, Al Botcher's grainery was positioned side-on as viewed from the house.  The grain bins were in the right half of the grey wooden building and the machinery, such as it was, inhabited the left side and back behind the grain bins.

The grain bins were an awesome place to play.  They were each about eight feet wide by twelve feet deep and were arranged like a hallway of half a dozen little motel rooms.  Boards could be fastened across the little doorways and built up three or four feet if necessary.  My stepdad, Al, and his friend Al raised soybeans and would shoot them in the little ventilation windows so that each room had about three feet of them in it.

Sometimes they would raise oats and do the same regimen of storage.  In either case, but especially with soybeans, it was great fun to climb right into the bins, lie down, and bury oneself in them.  They were cool against the body everywhere they got in and their weight could be felt.  Moving about too much created a cloud of dust which scintillated in the sun shining in through the little windows.

The rooms smelled of mice.

The left side of the building had a sliding door, like the barn did, only smaller.  It was designed so that a tractor could pull a piece of machinery in the door and it could be unhooked and the tractor driven out the back, which was partly open.  Al Thompson had his own operation, so little machinery was needed to be stored in this shed.  There were a couple of hay wagons and perhaps a hay rake and an old plow, maybe a drag.  These were simple implements used for tilling and breaking up the fields in the spring.

More complicated gadgets like corn planters or hay balers were more expensive items and needed maintenance between growing seasons.  Al Thompson kept them where he could work on them all winter in his spare time.  Al kept the lawn mower in there as well, but that didn't take up much space.

Immediately inside the sliding door was parked the most wonderful item--a Model T Ford automobile, old and decrepit, just sitting in there on its hard rubber wheels.  It didn't belong to Al but was simply stored in there by whomever did own it.  No one ever came and did anything with it.

But I did.

I began by just sitting in it and grabbing and turning the steering wheel, pretending that I was driving it.  I had had the opportunity to look under the hood of Al's Buick when he checked the oil and had marveled at the grimy, oily motor and all the gadgetry associated with it, which really wasn't all that much as compared to cars nowadays.

But the Model T was totally unlike Al's car when you looked past the basic superficialities.  On the left and right sides of the steering wheel were metal sticks that stood out.  They weren't the turn signals and the shifter.  They both moved up and down, adjusting something, and there were corrugated grooves which kept them in the position that you put them in.

There were a few crude switches, but nothing like a heater or a fan.  It had headlights but no battery.  I had no clue then why it didn't have a battery, but of course it was because there was no starter motor.  There was a crank right in front.  I turned this crank around many a time in my sessions playing with the car but nothing ever happened except that the crank would come out of its receptacle very easily.

The Motel T had a flywheel with a "magneto", a coil and magnet arrangement, which generated the voltage necessary to fire the pistons and run the lights when needed, but I had no idea of this at the time.  The car probably had a broken crankshaft, which was why I could easily turn the crank with little resistance.

The seats were really, really old fashioned, much like buggy seats and there was a handle to brake the car.  It had a windshield but the side and back windows were made of clear, thick, plastic which was yellowed with age, but which could be snapped secure to the frames of the doors.

The hood opened on both sides, revealing the motor within, an aged, dirty benign chunk of metal.

I and my friends played in this car every summer.  No one ever came for it.

There was another machine shed of sorts, but smaller, containing all sorts of junk pieces of implements, none of it looking very useful and never used by the two Als to the best of my recollection.  A double corn crib stood between the larger shed and the hog barn.  This storage bin was for corn which was dried right on the cobs and thrown in.  A tractor could drive right between with a small wagon load of corn which had been mechanically picked from the stalks and flung around until the dry husks were torn off.  They wound up in the wagon pulled behind the picker.

These bins were made of slats of wood with spaces of about a half inch between them.  This allowed the air to dry the corn so that it wouldn't rot.  The birds arrived each morning and hung around all day until all the kernels adjacent to these slots had been eaten.

The hog barn was a miniature of the milking parlor without the stanchions.  The pigs could enter through small doors in the sides, much like pet doors.  Inside they could be fed and watered and could find shelter.  There were wider troughs for the manure which accumulated and the entire floor, which was smooth concrete, had to be cleared of excrement with a scoop shovel into the troughs and then they had to be scooped out and the dung thrown outside at the far end.  I did it a few times and it was a lot of work.

Farthest away was the chicken coop.  Inside were little cubicles, each with a nest.  Hens would be on the nests setting on their eggs.  If you were sent to gather eggs, you went in there and a general ruckus would erupt.  The roosters would start cackling and the hens would start clucking.  When things settled down, you simply stuck your hand under the hen and she pecked at your wrist as you removed the eggs and put them in your container.

That was the best part about Al's farm as compared to Grandpa Lee's.  Al had a variety of farm animals.  I didn't get too familiar with the cattle although I was not afraid to walk around in the cow yard.  I made limited sorties into the pig pen because it was so dirty and smelly, but the pigs were kind of fun with all their antics.

I really gravitated to the chickens.  The roosters would perch along pegs in the hen house and if you moved slowly you could get close enough to quickly grab one by both legs.  Then all heck would break loose!

All the roosters would start screaming and flopping around with their wings pumping and the one that you grabbed would scream the loudest, as if you were torturing him.  His body would rotate down, his squawking head would point toward the ground and his wings would pop open wide.  All the time he would be carrying on as though you were taking bites out of him.  Then he would settle down.

If you could manipulate him to tuck his head under one wing and gently swing him around in circles, he would calm down and you could set him right on the ground and he would stay that way for quite a while until you disturbed him.  It was the funniest thing!

Al also had about a dozen bantam chickens roaming around the place.  Some of them were pretty tame and could be carefully approached, petted, and even held if you were gentle enough to gain their trust.  Unlike the white leghorns the bantys were multi-colored and beautiful, especially the roosters which walked about like they were showing off.  I gave a lot of these chickens names and was very fond of them.

With about ten structures of assorted sizes to explore along with all the odd spaces around and between them, I rarely became bored in those first couple of years.  I did not really miss my mother during the summer days when she went to work because it really was just a continuation of how it was all my previous life.  She came home in the evening and made dinner and I was able to tell her of my adventures during the day.

I missed Grandma Lill the most, but we visited now and then and sometime during the summer I would go and spend a week there.

Marny had the best time of it, earning her money by ironing clothes, doing the dishes, mopping and vacuuming a bit, and making Kool-Aid.