Robert Palmer Memories -- Ruth Lundy and Robert Palmer, Photo
Photo
left: Ruth Lundy, Robert Palmer
Born the 2nd day of May 1922 in a little town of Melba, Idaho, and the Glendale school district, a neighbor lady helped with my delivery at the home of my parents. When I was born, the lady who helped my mother was sitting by the stove holding me when she slipped and I rolled into the oven. Much excitement ensued, but we all survived.
When I was a few months old the folks moved to within one fourth of a mile of Melba where we lived until I was fifteen, and then moved to Nampa about fifteen miles north of Melba. There was a lot of activity on the farm. We milked cows and separated the cream from the milk with a big centrifuge machine that was run by “crank” power. The cream was sold to the creamery and the milk fed to the animals. This skim milk was put into a barrel to which barley was added, making a mix to feed hogs. By doing this we could put a litter of hogs on the market in five months instead of the normal six. Since time is money, we were ahead by one month and some little money.
My father was a man who spent a lot of time in research to find the best way for the production of whatever crop he had in mind: animal or vegetable.
My father was a strict disciplinarian and didn’t believe in sparing the rod and spoiling the child. I was a boy with a lot of dreams and questions and I am sure this was a real challenge to my father : I was always ready with questions and he was ready with the answers.
One day I asked why he wouldn’t water the corn while it was in bloom. He took an ear of corn and pulled the shucks back. Then he showed me the silk strands, each one attached to its own kernel of corn. He then explained that each of the silks were consecutively attached and ran from the base of the ear to the top, the outside ones went to the stock end of the cob. “Then,” he said , “if you scald the silks they won’t make a long ear of corn because the scaled ones will not be fertile and grow.” He showed me that this can affect other crops as well. Peas are another crop that can be ruined by watering the wrong time of day, when the hot sun is out and the vines start to die. He taught me how to tell if the potatoes need water, how to ‘stress’ the plant so it will branch out and produce more and stronger potatoes. Just as we face challenges in life it enhances our lives, and we grow with adversity.
I learned early in life that if I wanted something I should earn it .
I wanted Dad to take us to our football team to different games at the various schools , so I did extra chores so he would have time to do this. My Dad liked to pitch horse shoes but they were too heavy for us younger kids to lift and toss easily, so he got some mule shoes which were much lighter. I have seen him in a game of horseshoes put one on top of the other, whether by skill or by chance we did not challenge him. This was just another facet of his being ‘our father’, the best at everything !!
By the time I came to the family, Dad seemed old and I always thought of him as a strong and determined person. Dad had a temper which I understand was like my Grandfather, George Bowman, and when he got angry, he used some strong language. I guess it came naturally—or at least he was well taught by his father. To me this was a very hard habit to break. The only way is to not let your temper get away from you in the first place.
I like to remember back to the first time I drove a car. I was 11 years old and we were at the Glendale ranch. Dad needed my brother, George who was at the Melba place, five miles away. So Dad asked me if I could drive the car to go and get George. What 11 year old kid is going to say no? He sent me on my way . I was so short I had to stand up to drive so it took quite a while to travel the distance: I was in low gear all the way.
To this day my wife thinks I started our boys driving our farm equipment at too young an age. And it bothers her more when her grandchildren get their chance early in life. But my father always warned me of the dangers of not being cautious around running machinery, and I try to give the same advice to my children and grandchildren. We think of the children of the pioneers and how at age 14 they were almost men, but somehow we like to protect our own from developing the same independence We forget that to learn is to grow !
I remember making a miniature golf game in the back yard for a birthday party for John. I remember pounding nails in every board I could find until the board was almost all metal. I remember the cellar where we stored our produce for the winter months . Butchering hogs and rendering the fat for our use was a major project each year.
When the butchering was complete, the hams were seasoned with sugar cure, wrapped in cloth and put into a wooden whiskey barrel with metal staves on the outside. First there was a layer of wheat, then a layer of ham or bacon and another layer of wheat until the barrel was filled and set aside to cure for the coming months, when it would be taken out to slice for eating.
Bob Palmer on Bicycle (left)
Buckets of fruit were place in trays on the roof to dry in the sun for winter eating as well as hundreds of quarts of fruit and vegetables canned in our kitchen. Mom and the hired girl had their work cut out for them. Farm life was busy and productive. Pickles and Jams were processed in abundance. Fruit trees, a large garden and some of the animals all contributed to the family larder.
There were many things you could learn that would sustain you in future years. How to repair harnesses was a skill that took many hours to develop, and although the tractor replaced the horse on the farm as a means of plowing and harvesting, it was a good skill to know and appreciate.
When the folks went back east to visit and pick up cars and trucks for the farm, I was left behind with the hired man, Jack Cramm. My cousins, Glen and Benny Westlake were there and helped me stack hay and milk cows, feed 50 hogs and 500 chickens as well as 17 horses and ponies. Jack Cramm came in the evening to help with the chores and then went home to the Glendale ranch which Dad sold to him, along with some of our stock of calves.
When I was about six or seven years old, Clarence and I took the eggs from under the hens, proceeded to town and sold our bounty to the unsuspecting merchant at the store When they asked us if they were fresh, we told them we got them directly from the hen’s nest---not knowing the hens were laying to raise chicks. I’m sure she had some explaining to do to her customers who bought those ‘fresh’ eggs! We also used 12 dozen eggs trying to make an angel food cake---the first ones being inedible. Those little escapades lowered the family income by a bit that month.
Clarence and I were good buddies. One day we decided to go to Sproat Springs to swim. Clarence said he would go if I carried him. It was quite a chore for six year old , but off we went and were home before the folks were aware that we had gone. So much for close supervision! But we survived all things surprisingly well. I am surprised we found our way home because we took every trail across ditches and fields that we thought was a short cut to home.
We dug holes out behind out chicken house and made underground caves. One day the horses got out and walked over the top of our caves. None of them broke a leg, but it could have been disastrous if we had been inside the cave. Dad let us know we were not going to do that again, so we went up on the straw stack to make other tunnels. We lived a charmed life because the straw never fell on us.
We made a ball field out in Paulson’s field and put up a fence for a backstop. Many pleasant hours were spent here.
One cent a tail for ground squirrels was bounty paid by Dad and we made quite a project of drowning squirrels by dumping water in their holes. One day a big bull snake came out of the funnel we were using and scared us to death. We were just little fellows, about 7 or 8 years old. We got enough money to buy a few candy bars.
Another “project for money” was de-tasseling the corn. We had to be careful to keep on the right row or the field would not make hybrid corn. The seed was a cross between two types of corn. One year we went to Carl Harris’ farm who had a burrow he pulled his cultivator with. We blocked lettuce as he went through the field. He had quite a time getting us to do it right. So that was another learning experience, just like corn. For this we were paid ten cents an hour. Al Davis, Elmer Davis, and other kids from the Friends Church were there.
Business men in town were the Cummins who owned a drug store, Wharton Dry Goods Store , where we sold the ‘fresh ‘ eggs, the Boise Payette Lumber yard, Eichenberger’s Feed and Seed, Beal’s Garage, Selby’s Gas Station , Knox’s Cold Storage, Gray’s Mercantile, IGA Store, Art Montgomery and Tex Smith Welding Service and Garage, Bernard’s Garage and Blacksmith where Charlie Ommen worked.
Inez Beal and Mabel Palmer had a little lunch counter called Snappy Lunch. They sold a hamburger, piece of pie, salad and coffee for five cents.
My bedroom was at the end of the house. It had a dormer window with a chimney that went through it and made it quite warm in winter. There was no insulation, so the chimney warmth was very welcome. From one window you could see the barn and chicken house, the Melba Friends Church where they rang the bell for church on Sunday. My dad never attended regularly and this was a sore spot for Mom because she always wanted him to go. He attended more as he grew older.
There was also a train depot where you could catch a train to Nampa and come home the next day. Yoder’s Packing shed on the railroad siding employed people and packed out quite a few potatoes for the market. All these people were close friends and some relatives, who made the difference in our lives. We learn honesty, integrity, friendship and love by associating with our peers as we attend school and church and listen to others’ viewpoints.
Mom did volunteer work with the church missionary society where they made quilts, etc. It was hard for her to attend because she had no car, but she enjoyed the association with the ladies.
Dad’s volunteer work consisted of taking the football team to games when they had to leave for another town.
Five churches serviced the religious needs of the town, Mormon, Catholic, Methodist, Baptist and Friends. Our family attended the Friends church where Clark Smith was the pastor. He moved to Portland, Oregon to pastor in the church where Ruth attended. So our circle seemed both large and small. The Friends church had a ball field out back and we all played in a league between the churches in the valley: Boise, Star, Greenleaf and Nampa. So it served to make us acquainted with a larger group than just our home town.
The farm was a good life. It had a lot to entertain and teach if you were in the mood to learn. We made whistles in the spring from sapplings, and since we never had a “professional “ anything, made baseballs in the summer from golf balls and Rockford sox with shoe leather sewn on the outside. We made paddle boats out of pieces of lumber, sling shots out of the crook of a limb, with rubber straps and a leather pouch, guns from rubber bands and later from bamboo with a plunger and Australian peas for bullets, little cars and tractors with spools and rubber bands that wound up to make them run. The same things that other enterprising kids have made over time. But we had time on our hands to think—time on our hands to do what we pleased to entertain ourselves.
Dad made us a large wagon out of an old potato digger’s front wheels and an axel with a bed attached . We pulled it to the river with a rope tied to the saddle horn of our horse, old Nell. We got back very late and Dad was worried. One time we made a boat out of lumber Dad had set it aside for making pig pens. It was not very sea worthy—it took some time setting in the water to soak the boards enough to make them tight enough to quit leaking. I don’t know what happened to it—we probably left it on the pond instead of taking it to the canal as planned. That was probably a good thing because if we had taken it to the canal we would probably all have been drowned.
We dug up ground owls from the ground to play with. We made a running high jump with a bamboo pole to practice, swam in the irrigation ditch (sans swimsuits), rode horses when they were not busy doing farm work.
Fishing Friends, Bob Palmer
Life was good. The summer was long enough to have a lot of things to do and projects to finish. I remember so much it is not possible to put it all in writing. But most of all, I remember my Dad and the love and attention he showed me---teaching how to do the things that he had learned from his Dad before him. It gives continuity to life as well as purpose, we must pass to our children some of the things we learned to appreciate as children. Parents, friends, good times, good fun, teachers---the things that make up a life time of living are just everyday stuff. The good stuff !