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TI: Growing up, let's talk about just some childhood memories. I mean, what were some, some fond memories growing up in, say, in Indiana, Michigan, right there, on this new farm?

VW: Well, in Indiana, I don't remember at lot of things. I wasn't old enough really to have things change my life in any way, but when I got to Michigan, we had so much work to do on that farm. We had 240 acres, and so, and we were trying to raise mint in, you might say, sand burr country. And sand burrs were, if you've never seen a sand burr, you haven't missed a thing. Because they stick in your fingers, and then they hurt for several days after that. The barb would come out and stay in your finger or your feet or legs and so on. So, and then those burrs would stick to your clothes, and you'd have to pull 'em out and you had to be careful not to have it go into your skin. And then we also had rattlesnakes, a lot of Michigan rattlesnakes were on the farm. And we had to be careful. If we walked out in the marsh, they always advised us to wear boots, hip or at least the heavy rubber boots. So that if we got struck by, if we stepped on a rattler, they'd bite you right away. I learned how to drive the Model T when I was nine years old, and I'd drive around the farm, never drove into town with it. And I had to look through the steering wheel in order to see the, see where I was going. And the Model T, if you've ever driven a Model T, they aren't easy to drive. And the clutch, you push the clutch in, and then that's the low gear. And then in the middle between the clutch -- well, if you let the clutch out completely, then that's high. But in the middle, it's neutral. But you've got to find that neutral spot, and you couldn't let your foot off of it, because if you did, it would either go into high or you'd push down and you'd go into low. So coasting downhill or something like that, you'd have to hold your foot right in the middle there, hopefully, and then you would coast down the hill. But Model T was our first mode of transportation at the time.

TI: Well, how did you learn how to drive at nine years old, a Model T?

VW: Nobody told me. Nobody showed me. I just got in, and I had watched people driving. And so it was fascinating. And I just got in and started driving. I'm not saying I was the best driver at that time, but I mean, I never had a wreck with it. But back then, there wasn't much traffic or anything. I wouldn't drive on the road very much at first. Then as I became ten, eleven, I became pretty good at driving, very good.

TI: What was the reaction of adults when they saw a nine year old driving a Model T around? Is that common, or was that unusual?

VW: Well, I don't remember anybody complaining about it at all. Farmers were a little different then, I think. Because they expected a lot out of their sons. And that was just one of the things that I could do, which I did. And I, of course, would drive the team, I knew how to drive the team very well when I was nine and ten, and cultivating and plowing and hauling manure and dragging and all those, and planting, too. And, in fact, we planted potatoes, we had a potato planter, and you'd, for two people, and then it would dig a furrow, then you'd drop the potato in there, this side and this side, so it'd end up about that far apart. And it was quite a, I felt it was quite a machine. And then the two wheels would come and it'd close that furrow up. And so it was a good way of planting potatoes, very fast, too. And I was always fascinated with that machine. Then we had the cultivator eventually. Before that, it was walking cultivator. You had to drive your team and cultivate the soil and so on. But eventually my dad got a riding cultivator. And that was quite an improvement, too, over and above. Walking plow, we never had a riding plow at all. Because you needed three horses for a riding plow, and so we always had, we had to walk behind and plow, and plow the furrows. And we had two horses. Once we got three horses, we didn't have the harness equipment for three horses to drive at the same time. And so we stayed with the walking plow. And then we got a Fordson tractor. Now, if anybody knows anything about a Fordson tractor, it was probably the most dangerous piece of equipment that Ford ever put out. Because it was so light in the front, that if you -- and you had these big wheels with the lugs on 'em in the back. And if you had a plow and you let that clutch out too fast, the whole front end would lift right up. And many people had been killed because their tractor had flipped over on, upside down on these guys. And so we were very... I never drove the Fordson tractor, never. And sometimes we put an extra wheel, so the wheels were, let's see... it'd be about that wide, and it'd be beyond the fender, the fender was about that wide and then these lugs were sticking out over here. And if we were in a, kind of a marshy situation, sometimes they'd pick up those rattlesnakes and flip right on the, right on the seat where the guy was driving. [Laughs] And they never liked that very well, I'll tell you, have a rattlesnake come right up and flip on your, on your seat. And so eventually we got rid of that tractor. Couldn't start it in the wintertime. We'd build a fire underneath the, underneath the tractor where the engine was, and heat up the oil, and then we could crank it and start it. But those were days that were tough. Those were tough days.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.