The Life of Me: An Autobiography

by Clarence Edgar Johnson

At least once each year, we had to brand all the new calves, those we had bought as well as those we had raised. We had to reduce the little bull calves to steers, vaccinate all young cattle against blackleg, both young and old had to be vaccinated against some other disease—I have forgotten what it was called, and I'll bet a quarter we farmers didn't call it by the same name that veterinarians called it. And finally, all calves that had not been dehorned had to have their horns cut off. I remember one time we had 25 cows, a large bull, and 55 calves to work. That meant 135 vaccine shots, 30 to be branded, about 20 to be dehorned, and maybe 15 little bull calves to be worked on.

Anita was big enough to keep a fire going and to keep branding irons hot and to hand them through the fence to me. Dennis was big enough to help drive the cattle into the stanchion, hand the vaccinating needles to me, bring in more cattle from the feed lot, and turn out the ones we were through with. I was big enough to catch the cattle in the stanchion, vaccinate in the shoulder with one needle, in the hip with another, brand a Lazy-J on the left hip, cut off their horns, and work the little bull calves.

We never fooled around with a chute because we found that cattle were reluctant to enter a chute. That would be too slow and too much work. Instead, we used a stanchion that was installed permanently between two small pens. It opened large enough for the largest bull to go through and it closed small enough to hold the smallest calf. And it wasn't all that expensive. It probably cost me $1 for second-hand lumber and 50 cents for a rope to pull the top ends of the bars together.

It was easy to get the cows to go through the stanchion since it formed a gate between the two pens. Our milk cows passed through it every day. Most any cow or calf would be glad to go from one pen to another, especially if there were some cows in the other pen.

The system was fast, and by far the easiest I have ever worked with. We three did the 80 cattle one morning but finished a little late for dinner. We sat down to a one-o'clock meal instead of a twelve-o'clock meal.

I mentioned before that we sometimes cut feed for the public. At first, Ima went along to drive the car. But later on, I build an iron "basket" at the back bumper of the car to carry the front wheels of the tractor. Then I could drive the car and trail the tractor and the binder, and Ima could stay home. One patch of feed was 50 miles away in Kent County. Where the road was so sandy that the car couldn't pull the tractor and binder, I would crank the tractor motor and let the tractor push, with no driver on it. And we learned that low air pressure in the auto tires would allow it to go most anywhere in sand. We parked that Buick on top of nearly every sand hill in Carriker's big sand field.

When the binder needed a repair job underneath, we threw a chain over the top of the binder and hooked one end to the frame and the other end to the tractor. Just a little pull with the tractor would roll the binder over for easy access to the underside.

By the end of World War II, our old coal oil cookstove was pretty well rusted out and was looking like a reject from a junk heap. Ima was looking forward to something better. In fact, she knew exactly what that something was, a new butane range. She and I went to Stamford one day to inquire as to whether we would be able to get a butane tank and how much it might cost. We got this information from the appliance dealer. He could sell us the butane and tank, but we might have to wait a year for a permit to buy a stove. He told us we might go to the ration board and find out. Now, I knew we couldn't get a permit from the Stamford board, because that was in Jones County and we lived in Fisher County.

The ration board was only a short distance away, so I went over to ask a question or two. But the woman in charge ignored my questions and, very undiplomatically, ordered me to, "Sit over at that table and fill out this form."

I filled out the form and presented it to the not-so-friendly woman. She looked it over, mumbled a few words, which I couldn't understand, placed another paper before me and said, "Sign here."