Life now was drab for Jimmie. Gone were the glorious, carefree days along the banks of the Shiawassee. In their place had come the ceaseless task of picking up stones and rolling huge boulders out of the way. No longer had he the ambition to ride astride Kate Russell’s huge bustle, nor to own a whole stock of bananas. Just as any young boy of seven years would feel, Jimmie hated and dreaded work, and especially this type. It seemed that the more stones he and his brother Ed would pick up, the more there were. For with every furrow that their father’s plough would turn over, there would always appear a fresh supply of rocks, both large and small.
The two boys piled stones into great stacks higher than their heads; they constructed stone fences and they piled rocks until there were stacks actually higher than the farmhouse itself. There were great heaps of stones all over the forty acres of land. As a matter of fact there was hardly enough room left to break up the ground anew and plant crops. It was rapidly and most assuredly developing into a serious situation. Then, suddenly, relief came from an unexpected source.
The highway department of Erie county came to their rescue and took 3,000 loads of the stones at ten cents a load. For at that time the county needed stones for road repair and for numerous other repair jobs.
With the arrival of summer came long hard months of hot, back-breaking toil. Jimmie and Ed wore thick, hard callouses upon their hands, their backs seemed as if they were about to break, and the sun bronzed them until they began to look like Indians. Many times during the long three summer months Jimmie became overheated by the sun and fell in his tracks in that summer of ’85. But work had to be done if success in their new venture of farming was to be accomplished. There was little grumbling from anyone now with the realization that they must work and save if they were to live during the coming winter.
Directly across the road from the Curwood farm stood the home of Hiram Fisher, a kindly old farmer, who had developed a beautiful homesite and whose yard was filled with maple and pine trees.
The Fisher family was not as large as the Curwood’s, for there was but one child, a very lovely daughter named Jeanne who was young Jimmie’s superior by five years. Perhaps her outstanding characteristic was the beautiful brown hair which fell in glossy waves down to her trim and fragile shoulders. It was the most lovely head of hair that Jimmie or his family had ever set eyes upon. It is indeed odd that a boy as young as he was should take much notice of a girl’s hair, but its bewitching beauty made him secretly admire it.
She would always part it in the middle and let it flow down to her shoulders in long flowing tresses. She was gloriously beautiful for her age.
As time went on and Jeanne and Jimmie became better acquainted, he adopted a nickname for her that was to remain with her all the days of her life. He affectionately called her “Whistling Jeanne,” because of the beautiful tunes she whistled almost constantly.
She alone was the inspiration which helped Jimmie to hold his head high when he felt blue or useless. For Jeanne offered him companionship, untiring encouragement and wonderful guidance. She inspired him to greater things in life. Jimmie often was heard to make that remark both as a child and later as a grown man.
It was about the time that Jeanne was nearing her twelfth birthday and Jimmie his seventh, that this thought came to him: