Notater |
- Notes: Residence Date & Place: 1920/1960 Mendon Twp, St. Joseph Co, MI
----------
Birth records "Arthur O. Everson son of Christ & Iona Klett b. APR 1914" (H6 pg 143) Allen Co, Indiana.
----------
Orv and I seemed to hit it off very well as I grew older (starting at about age 14 or so). He would take me fishing quite often and more usually it was in the winter. I worked the fields for him on occasion cultivating corn or else milking cow s for him when his custom farming operations got to be too much for him. I don't recall ever being paid to do this, but just because he asked I did it. I enjoyed that because I suppose that while living on a farm my family did not farm and this ga ve sort of a validation for me. I remember finally giving up on cultivating his corn on one occasion because he gave me a tractor that had two flat front tires to work with and after I got blisters on my hands trying to keep the tractor in the row I quit.
Orv sort of picked up where his dad had left off, but the procedures had changed. Instead of threshing more modern combines were used. Instead of corn shredders more modern corn pickers were used. Orval tried to keep up with the same type operat ions as his father had done before him. I guess he did quite well, but it wasn't like the old days. Farmers were buying their own rigs to do the various tasks and it was no longer necessary to get the whole neighborhood together to harvest crop s for progress was making that unnecessary.
He and I could set and fish on the ice for hours. Even later after I met Edith and was going with her we went icefishing together on the St. Joseph River. I never did go hunting with him, though. Being a confirmed bachelor I guess his eating habits were terrible. Sometimes he and I would go over to the Parkville grocery store and he would buy a bag of chocolate marshmallow cookies and between us we would finish them before we got back home. I think he ate this wa y all of the time. My mother thought that he did not bring proper groceries for Iona to prepare decent food for them to eat often enough and that was probably correct.
(Personal recollections of James H. Stahl)
|