Note: The "Pulliam girl", referred to above, later became an aunt of Dan Quayle, U.S. Senator from Indiana and Vice President under President George Bush.
MEAT SCARCE, EVERYTHING UP BUT FARM INCOME
June 6, 1945
My dear Sarah Jane: . . . Of late, Ira has had me on the seed wagon, filling up the drill for him with seed and commercial fertilizer, while he rides the tractor and does the sowing. Between fills I try my hand on thorn and other sapling stuff, and Tuesday night I came home almost a physical wreck. Each year it gets harder and harder climbing up and down on wagons. I used to climb the fences but now I take to the gates. Ira says I should work in "gopher hole coal mines" if I really want to know what work is. In one of those things is where Ira got his hip busted—the darned thing caved-in on him. As a result he is crippled in one leg and can't run very fast.
But you should see him running to get between young ground hogs and their holes. Monday we drilled soy beans on what Ira calls the "wind mill field." This field has a big tile ditch running through it, and along that ditch is a clump of willows. Ira was driving the tractor pulling the drill behind, when all of a sudden he flew off his tractor and ran to the willows. He had caught three young ground hogs up a bush. He ran to the holes and kicked them full of dirt—and here the young hogs came. Having no club he used his feet. His foot batting average was .666, meaning he got two of the three. That noon he "butchered", and that took half an hour. Skinning ground hogs isn't quite like skinning rabbits. Ira eats them and says they are fine. I say nothing because long years ago, Lum Alspaugh and I went to Eel River Falls to run his grandfather's farm while the family attended Methodist Conference at Greencastle, and we tried eating everything about in wild life that wears hair or feathers— rabbits, squirrels, quail, crows, chicken hawks, buzzards, ground hogs, skunk, domestic chickens, etc. Both did the hunting but Lum was head cook—in fact he was sole cook.
I did the dish washing, if it could be called that. . . I ate enough of whatever it was to be able to say I had partaken. . . Young ground hogs are not bad, but they aren't very good either— too greasy. Ira relishes them. I prefer corn fed beef. . .
And that brings me to your questions about beef. . . The hotels and restaurants hereabouts have very little meat. Sugar Foot tells me they have red meat at the Theta House one meal each week, so that may be an indication of the general situation. . . I killed a beef in April. He has been a Godsend for Aunt Margaret and me. What we haven't eaten and the attendants out at the Locker Plant haven't stolen is still there. If you or Bob could hunt around and find a box of the right sort that would hold, say, 50 pounds of meat together with 50 pounds of dry ice, and if shipping meat to children is not contrary to law, I think something could be done to relieve you and the rest of the children in this part of the country. . . I am too busy on all this land we have to be finding out all the details and hunting up all the containers. I get up from 3 to 4 a.m. and get to bed from 9 to 10 p.m.
Now about your so-called black market. A lot of that is "old wives" and political talk. There are black markets, especially in the big centers of population, but Worcester is no big center, and if the people there are the right sort, then there is no opening for much of a black market—unless the people themselves make it. Whenever you hear of a black market you can rest assured the inhabitants themselves are to blame, because if there is no patronage then there will be no market. I am sorry to hear you say you will patronize such a market if you can find it. That is exactly what causes black markets. Blaming it all on the government or anything else is not the remedy—it is only a flimsy excuse. . . We had an embyro black market at Russellville even. Two men went down to the Hazlett boys and tried to buy a steer they were fattening for the Indpls. market. They offered a good price—more than the steer would have brought on the legitimate market. They said they would butcher it there on the farm, then in the evening they would come down and truck it home. The Hazlett boys got a bit suspicious and came to me. I told them nobody could buy a steer and butcher it then and there, farmer or no farmer. The owner would have to feed it for not less than 30 days. They refused this sale. I told them to report the prospective buyers. Don't think they did. If they come to me— which they won't—I'll report them. We don't need that sort of people in and around Russellville, or anywhere else. . .
Footser goes to Mexico City, leaving St. Louis June 20 on the Missouri Pacific Lines. She has a lower to San Antonio, then another lower to Mexico City. . . So she is set for what she thinks is a nice time in Mexico in school at that University, taking Spanish. Just the fare there and back will take a sizable steer, at the price we get for our steers, so there is where I can put in a howl, good and loud. . . George Spencer told me that before the War he paid $1.39 for shirts at Montgomery Ward's. Today the same shirt costs him over $5.50 per shirt. And George doesn't lie or resort to his imagination. Just the cold fact. At the price we pay for shirts, we should be getting $50 for cattle on the hoof. We get $16 to $18. . . Yesterday I bought 5 bananas at A&P for 23 cents. I think they were the first for two or three years. Based on that price, cattle should be bringing between $30 and $35. So if anyone has a kick coming it is the farmer—just like it always has been. . . Now the thing for me to do is quit howling and get out of the cattle business and into the banana or textile business—for both of which I am too old and inexperienced. But better still, is to wait until this War is over and go into politics for the farmer, teeth and toe nail—for which I am also too old to do the very best job. "Pap"