Newspapers / The Duplin Times (Warsaw, … / March 21, 1935, edition 1 / Page 2
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r - ! ,J three U s a dltcb c to blll- AIR CS, at : 1.) - Jf ! L By lUiascIl Lord. ; J - . '. gTg' Hr' TV SP'4;f ?tt : . ir-rXifckpHv-. HANDS 'S iM was my father'! first hired man. He was a good farmer and he did his best to make a good farmer out of me. I was poor material. To become a good farmer is, more than anything else, ;a matter of biological adaptation. Tbe process rarely take bold of lone Id whose ears the earliest Lords and sounds are other than poultry words and sounds. 1 My father proved an exception to this generality. He was past thirty Iwhen be went to the land, yet In hrm the thing took, and for the past 25 years he has lived on earth of his own. He has built op one farm and sold it, and then built up an other; and has seemed himself to jdraw strength from the sight of thick green crops made to grow on fillls that used to be thin and rut-feed.-' Still a townsman In that be till earns, most of bis living there) tie has none the less become a farm er at one with his land and all that at grows. In open weather, be will often be out over bis fields until nearly bedtime, his lantern bobbing contentedly as be walks alone in the darkness. My own elementary agricultural experiences started when his did, In 1007. I was eleven years old at the. time I do not remember clear ly what I thought when they told . me that we were to quit the refined suburb which had nurtured ns and move way out Into the country, two miles from a railroad station, Into a big bouse without either a gas stove or a furnace. The name of our farm was "Iona." The price was $1LS00. about $200 nn acre with Improvements. The country gentleman from whom we bought had lost Interest In main taining the expensive but badly planned outbuildings he had erect ed and the rare shrubs and tree be had planted around the tiro-acre lawn. .'..ii" That lawn expressed the fatal flaw In "Iona." It was the thing that made the farm fancy. To keep the premises presentable In summer took almost a day's labor out of the working week. If any city reader bf these words considers buying a farm to belp support his declining years. let blm look out for too mnch lawn. Two acres is generally all bf an acre and three-quarters too much. , . Sam told me that, soon after we bought" the place. A epare, soft spoken weather-beaten man, be had managed the farm for the previous owner. We got him with " the place. He said : , "There ain't any farm could sup port all this lawn. It alnt Just so much the land you lose, or even the time: but it's lust that It gives yon too much to live up to. And the way this lawn lays, yon can't put lit into potatoes; It's too billy. Ton Can't even throw It into pasture i you don't want cows messing, up oor doorstep.",.;. 't,?S.-iOi;;. ',i- Here be paused and stared at me Absently ; a way be. bad when be 'had reached the crux of hla argu 'went, and wag ready to sum tip; -t , et the lawn grow .. np and run .ragged." . he concluded, "knock i all the walls out of the big bouse and store hay In it;. live In one of the tenant homes; get; yourself some Rood cows; and you could make a (living here." ' J' . , " , Sam; bad theories, and hla, the ories, one found . afterwards, i were irrefutable. But he was a practical man as well, and when he saw that a perfect plan would not apply to 'the situation, be made bis plan less perfect.' 'h ' :''- -,"y:'- ' The four higher and more north ern fields of the farm were not so rich. They had been "corned to eath said Sam. by a fellow who, ground ten years back, bad farmed the place on shares. Cropped now In rotation; these four higher fields were rarely from year to year of stationary color. Corn would in four years make four removals from field to field. Wheat would follow In the same order on the same fields but would stay two years in each field between hops. Then, after the second crop of wheat, hay timothy and clover. One thing about our rotation Sam couldn't ' stand "cornstalk wheat" He said It didn't look right to see, all summer long, those long bare strips of corn stubble across the field, where the harvested corn bad stood In shocks the fall previous while wheat was being seeded. "The fellow who thought that out," Sam would say, "he was a cute one, all right, when it come to keeping out e the sun!" Tbefartber I followed him through the laborious cycle of seedtime and harvest, the more, I esteemed farm era who could think of ways to sit In the shade, and the more heartily I wished that they had redoubled their researches. Slight for my age and physically Indolent, I was learn ing my farming in a region where labor-saving machinery was neither heavily employed nor very respect fully regarded. A sustained capac ity for heavy bodily labor was the governing measure of man or beast. Haying became, often a race, one side of the wagon taunting the oth er and daring them to keep up. In threshing, the game was to pass bundles so rapidly to the next man as to force him behind In bis work. Then doubly at him, piling wheat around blm faster than . be can flick It along, bombarding him in his sweating confusion with more and more sheaves, shot at the face. Desperate obscenities from'the man attacked. Shouts from all the rest "Cover him up I" Now he's groggy. Close in for your kill. See if with your pitch fork yon can snatch his from bis band. If you do, ; "Half-pint!" Everybody yells this battlecry - of the harvest and the man who baa lost hla fork Is supposed next pay day to make good with a half-pint of some brand of rye whisky, I front Wight and Hylandt store, in jthose days; today,, from the bills, l And so 1 was learning about farm ing the needy physical Joy that oc casionally it Instills; the toll of It, the dull ache; the numb and rather helpless wonder at those Immense, Intricate and still secret processes by which a great deal of air, a cer tain amount of water and a very little of earth combine into elabor ate living structures for people to eat , 1 " " These processes proceed with a relentless and terrifying efficiency. God knows bis business. It Is only man who is the blunderer, trying to understand and to keep up. ,i TJn tit a man takes hold of land .and tries to make growing do his bid ding,', there are never any serious questions as to son fertility, plant diseases. Insect control. . in tne nat ural order, all such things operate against one another toward the end desired maintenance ofr , tenuity and the-survival of the ti,Mt : The minute a man takes hold of a piece of land be stir up trouble. He plows The rains smite upon hi nnorotected earth and " frisk away;' a particle at a time, tons' of his best topsou. ; His -heaviest la bors go to enrich a delta far away, Consider also gravitation that guardian, force of soil fertility, drawing back Into the earth all that cornea from the earth : Gravitation fights against the farmer T all tho time. When he bends to pick up the rocks from his field, It togs at bis arms, i When be puts np his hay to the wagon, and then again' up to the stock or loft, he feels the earth Dulling mightily against his sboul dera. "The land wants Its bay Five years, passed. Earn went to a place of his own; , I -as fifteen years old now, and in the third year of an agricultural high ' loul that bad been opened five tul up the road, near Sparks. We bad a new man Ernie, . Ernie bated cows. Cows were the. one ; thing In the world that could, even for a mo ment, sour blm on life and quench his test for living, ' la any .other company be moved cheerfully, hla tongue prattling, bis mind disport ing itself in considerations far afield. I bad talked and worked with blm nearly a year before I found out that be could not read. The Balti more gun came to him daily in our H, r. P. box, and be was forever leading me "as be worked" Into long discussions of the more romantic features of the news, It was John Tawoey (the gently sardonic one legged man who, scrupulously kept bouse for his three motherless chil dren. In the cottage by our - west gate) ; It was John who pointed out . to . me that Ernie's discussions of the news always took start from something one could make out from the pictures. After that, be Just led yon along until he knew aa much about the thing aa If be bad read it all. Then he would start in to do a little talking. Ernie was always ready to listen first and Im part afterwards; . and , be - never cared much : what the .talk was about Just so It continued. ,r f I'We rareli "talked farming; only agriculture! or something even more general. As for farming, Ernie was neither fof nor against its It was simply something you did, offhand, for the things you needed at the store. But be would draw me dry of the last long scientific word and theory that I was acquiring op there at that agricultural high school, i That was easy; There was good teaching under way at that small high school; and I waa amazed at all that I knew. There bad been a night for Instance, when I bad sat up to see the wheat blossom the flowers open and fade eu in an hour, and only at Bight . ,L. Then there bad been the discovery that if yon toss , a penny a thousand times you get five hundred beads and five hundred tails, and that the. same "lawa , of ; chance" govern everything from the Interpolllna- tion of corn to horse raang. And still other discoveries: that people really do not take cold walk ing In the rain; that you can look In a stream and watch the hills dwindle Into otter flatness; that It Is not unmanly to feel that quaint lift to one's Insldes which comes when hush settles upon the val leys, and the stars come out and fireflies light their lanterns in the wheat; that a speck of pollen dust must poise upon and fuse with the tip of every strand of cornsllk before there can be a foil ear; that man is made of the same stuff as mua and manure, except for a .touch of starshine,' or something, In the veins. ... ' ' It was never admitted between us that be coma not resa ; ' no learned readily enough, and with pride in bis learning that "V meant carbon, which was use nam coal; that "O" meant oxygen, the gaa in the air that 'people bad to draw in their lungs to live. Also: That If yon . burned coal you turned the carbon part of It which waa most of lt-. Into CO. caroon dioxide, a .gas that formed when ever two -parte of carbon "met up with" one ' part of tne oxygen which la In the air. The same thing happened when yon burned weeds or corn-cobs or anything that Would burn. And also ' when people breathed out they breathed out CO. because people were always slowly burning np inside.- , ' - But about as fast as people breathed out CO plants breathed It In; and made starch out of It which people ate and burned in their bodies, and breathed out more CO for the plants to breathe it again. And the net of such Iwas.CiH0 earbohvdrates starch. :-mu '.. . only a plant 'could do that The dry matter of potatoes Is four-fifths starch; rice, wheat corn,,: nearly that .Peas and beans '. are half starch, half air and water mixed. "What'a i the land !; good ;-tutf asked Ernie, sarcasUcaUy. "To set onrvS'u;:V'::'ft;''J:1r;.'. r Wen, the land supplied the ash minerals. How much' of an ear of corn, or a eow.'or a human be tug 'would be left when burnt to a crisp That would be the part that bad come out of the land; the part that bad come out of the thin air" would Save aU gone Into the thin air agatiL&i im.1, 4, Tnls was nuts for, Ernie. He knew the answer; ' bo ' had .once known a fellow whose sister bad been cremated, and he bad seen the urn. - "In the parlor." J- v1; Shortly after, he left'us, and we" never beard of him again. I should like to see blm now and. hear how things have worked out for him. He bad gifts; among -tbenl, : courage. He was a thoroughly careless and unprincipled person I but ' a good friend of mine and, aa far : as, I know,, the only , living being : who ever regarded me aa an' authority. ' But an aunt of his had -died, "out near California," and had "probly left a good bit of money." so be sold about everything he had, bought a $50 car and passed gallantly over the western rldgea of our valley, out of our ken. '. WNU SrrlM. : Events 35 rfS' fmMr yy 7 A, mmthM, W. It 1U FINNEY OF Tl!lE B - V P Ott FWNaV 1 I HEARD 4 PIP Ol HEAR V fUAf MR. ROOMEY MAS br I AmrT IT? SHl 4M A ACCERPNTf TD YOU . a m. & t a ' J mm Aita aW kNT T n 1NOT, ' DVUI It--" I I I 7 T - f WAL- WUX WURRK1N' ON A v UH rANCT UN 'Of wr- FELL OM "TH PORCH BRICKS nc H Ay m r&-f - THE FEATHERHEADS HERfc'S irlB POORBELL AS AIM ANOTHER SA LES MAM, NO DOUSTJ. . ' 1YV6 est iTeRiMS AUL PAT j!a. 1 plELL- - iHAT'fi JOO V ft I :'"(t : BUT fAATBEi ' mA CoLlrcTo!? PUSIN uSo Wiuu 1 PICK UP OON I in the Lives c." '.'.'.' Zfcs 11 M f, m T'-t r 7 1 i , FORCE flltL 'BOUT T? AM' 0 SEEM IT I dl rtVl r- T'Z I ' , I 1 V.Poor wpe"- - ILLtD OFF; --w w l Z V.mVv.7 dtVNKC III OiWm riOt -fOPAT1!- Ill p. bom'T - i:: , L' WANT, lb - 55?. J AHTTHtKjtS-y NOT A f pio Sfoti : ia irs Ufcr.l rv-r. OF Hllvl HAVE: A peAR4 j &LL. -J '"..Eoattfc- 1 :zzw ,r Sympathetic SHURT OH KAtS' I ! SJBBJ8 VM VAS WE HURT 6At HIS , - ' r -' Sold BUT ' II . j tm lis-',. , r 7 sss 4 ' IllllllllllMIIIIIIltllll I II 1 111 I M 111 JUPil r v iwvii iin lftW -W ' v VMM A ;ots-mut 'i : mum n ,(,.. a a it wstj i lf?RMT-lWlNorl 0 : j. TJin I. I f,',d : ' r f,; f ir s- ' - a r . i r it i I J t u s is 1 - t I ( I SS t' t i. t.! b have . f . J fcf v!;:!on Of t have 4 it to'lSii' the luvUll'.e. Tie Pauper's C. The run.i-r's oaib is 0 permitted to persons i ; bankruptcy and in - r nun. wherebv on the L ' a ''statement supported by o t the person is without any t a assets, either personally o 1 or In expectation, be may ue 1 4 from the payment of cert. 0 t .U gatlons and 'permitted to ra-c ib- llah himself on a soua t ia.uu foundation free from debt. : Ciurf Sm la' Total DarluMM 7 Neither doc nor cat can see la total darkness, contrary to popu lar holiBf. Because of aptness la negotiating dark environs, they have been so credited, tws is accom plished, not through ; vision. Due through the sense of smell and the sl4 which their whisk five mem In feeling their way. , , f CirlotbOU ; Ceylon is one of the oldest settled areas of the earth., No other Im- , portant aubdlvlsion of. Asia, baa been so long under European influ ence. The Portuguese controlled it for more than a century and a r , the Dutch for 140 years ana s y 1708 It has been a British colony. '.The Hoase of Rotksebild Phj, nHirlnal -name of the Eoths- hiM funiiiv was Bauer, tne founder of the bouse being Mayer Anselm Bauer (1743-1812). He set np aa a money lender at the Sign of the Bed 8hleld (Rothschild). 1 It waa from this alga that the ramuy u. um name of Botbacblld. riaatfaic of NoUm !a ItZS After 1069 bunting In Bnglnnd be- eame. the sole pnvuego oi 1-0 nnhiM and the common people v. ere prohibited, ander severe penn' from bunting game. uuu-i Conqueror, It was aa great a crime to kill one of the king's deer as to kill one of bis aubjecta. V ; The Gaaw of Carting I The horae8hoe" sport, c known as curling, la actuulij blnation of horseshoes and 1 k.k niavoH im Ice., ConU t-mtA r : throwing shoes, t heavy welghta along the ice, ain..ug for the center or cirem . . peg. ,:.;'-r-r-,.--:rV4;;--, .:.t. . ; - ., , -.!:: :":':V-.-: Cbataaa Toatp The Chateau do Temps Is 25 nnea r from Parte. It dates from the Seventeenth century and waa ones , k. . ui da Pomnadour. - Cohen d'Anvers presented It to the nation as an official residence f on the President. . ) " -'" Sutaas la Salt MiaM The salt mines near Cracow, PoV, , end, worked for more than a thon- , sand years, are decorated with star . , toes, altars and other religious sym- bote . carved by devout miners through the years. . ' 1 .. ' " ' . ; r " i"'- '.-".'v;,' Most Aeearato Clocks . Probably the most accurate clocks In the world are two at Greenwich observatory In England. Ear'' " checked every 30 seconds by a , dulom swinging In a vacuum. '.V Wlao Are Coastaat Becauae of the world'a rotation, -there axe certain latitudea in which , the winds blow In a more or less definite direction almost the whole year through. '-, . 1 - - ,S -t y Craaborry Littla Cbaar ',' ' k TJnUke many fruits that have 1 n almost "made over" by cultlvt. n, the cultivated-cranberry is not greatly different from fv rnllve or. wild plant,';,;:' '-,X,;, i II :
The Duplin Times (Warsaw, N.C.)
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March 21, 1935, edition 1
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