Claude Eddleman Farm (1939-1958)

The Shack - 1939

It was a bright sunny, warm Saturday morning in late March of 1939. I was six, the oldest of 4 kids and in the first grade at Milltown Public School. Margaret Ann, my sister, age 4, and I were playing in the south yard of our old frame house in Milltown. Mom opened the bedroom window to shake out some bed linens. Puzzled, she asked "What are you kids doing?"

I explained that she had recently told Dad about a nursery man near her childhood home that grew fruit trees. I had picked up some sprouting peach seeds from beneath a tree in the backyard, placed them in our new red wagon, and I was selling them to my sister, who was paying good hard rocks for them, and planting them in the flower bed. "You ought to take some of them to our farm," Mom suggested.

That was the first I ever heard about the farm, but Mom and Dad had been looking at home and gardening magazines all winter. I recall looking at them myself. Also we had looked a farm between Milltown and Marengo one weekend. It turned out my parents had traded the house in Milltown for some recently abandoned fields just south of Pilot Knob Hill.

The next day, we all loaded into the car and went to the farm for a picnic lunch and to work on the shack that Dad been driving 7 miles each day to construct. I mainly remember the smell of the recently sawn oak board and dropping my egg salad sandwich in the sawdust. Later, we walked over the fields. The main vegetation was wild onions, a useless plant notable for ruining harvested wheat with its seed heads of bulblets. It was a beautiful sunny day, but windy and a little chilly.

One reason we called our temporary home "The Shack" was because it constructed in a manner called Shack contruction. There was no frame. The four walls consisted of 1 inch oak boards nailed vertically to horizontal rough oak 2 by 4's. On the outside 5 cm wide strips about 1 cm thick were nailed over the cracks between the boards. The inside surface of the walls were covered with a thick blue building paper and that prevent wind from blowing through the walls. The roof was 5 V-galvanized iron, "tin", nailed to more oak boards supported by 2 by 4 rafters.In 1997, 58 years later, the shack still stands. It served as our home for the six months it took to build the house, and then it became a garage, tool shed, and held 2 grain bins. It is still used for farm implements and firewood and tool storage.

My first year of school ended April 21, 1939 and that was moving day. Dad and Ked, my brother-in-law, spent the day hauling furniture from Milltown to the farm and spent the night in our new shack . The Shack had a single room about 14 feet by 20 with a metal pipe chimney at the west end for the kitchen stove. Dad was cleaning some saplings from the field and in late May a neighbor came with his horses to plow the ground for half the corn. We grew 150 bushels of corn and 75 was our share. Mom and Dad had already started a garden 60 feet south of the shack during March and added more in April May and June. During May Dad was laying out the homesite. Back in Milltown, the prior winter, He and Mom had pored over home magazines loaned to us by many people.

While unloading the last truckload of furniture, dad unrolled a brown paper bag and said, "Peach seeds? Who put these in here." I explained I wanted to grow peach trees and he helped me plant them in a row in the garden he had already started. The orchard page gives the outcome of this project.

Ira Haycock was the tenant on the farm north of us. He planted corn on our farm for half the production that year. As soon as Ira finished planting the corn in May, he and dad began using Ira's team of horses to pull a slip scraper to dig out the red clay for a basement for the house dad had drawn plans for. They cut oak boards to build the forms for the concrete basement walls. The biggest excitement of the summer was the day 10 men arrived with a huge concrete mixer to mix concrete and wheel barrow it into the forms. Days later the wall forms were removed and the basement floor was poured. After that cured a huge rain came and water filled the basement with 6 inches deep. All the kids of the neighborhood had a great time wading in the water while the alkali from the concrete made big wrinkles on our feet.

Lucky for us, the brother of the store keeper lived across the highway from us and they had four kids also, but their oldest kid was six years older than me. They had a bright son a year younger than me and we became good friends. Thirty years later, I named my son Glenn after him.