I have found in an ancient file the beginnings of a novel I wrote when I was 13, shortly after the 4-H debacle when my calf behaved so despicably at the county fair and I was horribly humiliated. It’s fiction, so my heroine is doing everything right with her calf and winning a blue ribbon at the fair. I can see that I was trying to make everything “right” by writing it right. I realized this may be the reason for much writing by many novelists. Anyway, after all was well at 4-H with my heroine, she wanders in the fields at night enjoying the moonlight and watching a storm approach, sees lightning strike the barn and manages to sound the alarm, all animals are saved, etc., etc. Talk about compensation! And then the novel petered out and I remember at the time not knowing where to go next. I’d saved my psyche, I’d saved the farm, where else was there to go? Too young for sex.

I’m putting this pic back in because it’s of my calf and me at the fair. This too I drew at about 13, but showing the problem, not solving it.

In my book Taste of Spruce Gum (1966), Libby’s stepfather spent the long icy winter evenings doing what he called his knittin’ work. This could be to sharpen saws blades or mend logging equipment. We’re not over winter yet – still snowbanks over what I trust are my snowdrops. Do they bloom underneath the snow? Funny to go into daylight savings time with snow, and robins blowing on the tips of their wings to keep warm. It’s hard to know what farmers do now, the big factory farms and CAFOs operating all year regardless of weather. Of course, they aren’t farmers…

When I published Taste of Spruce Gum back in 1968 or so, I used actual names gleaned from Grandma Vi of people who lived and worked on top of Shrewsbury Mountain in Vermont in 1905. To my surprise, I got letters from people knowing those folks and telling me what happened to them! So this is something I’ve had to be aware of in using real names. Current problem: In Vol. 4, I have a lovely chapter of my dad in the 50s traveling Wisconsin with a young Swede, visiting seed-corn salesmen. He has written this trip up in a lively letter to his kids. At one point, he describes having lunch with a family: “the father, a widower, married a school teacher. Together they added a half-a-dozen more children to the ones he already had.” My dad describes the house as “dirty,” the former school teacher as “blowsy,” and the children as “absolutely beautiful.” The last name is distinctive and he gives the town. So, I looked up that name in that town and find the area is absolutely crawling with this family. If this chapter is published as is, there’s a likely chance this unusual name will be recognized and the adult kids will read Dad’s description. Question: Do I change the name in the book? Or, do I let that extensive family know how beautiful they were? Of course, the house was dirty – so is mine. Of course that overworked mother was blowsy! This might sell a lot of books. So what would you advise?

If I didn’t have deadlines, all this Round Barn work would be total fun and absorption and interest. But with the amount of material I have, that lopped over Vol. 2 into Vol. 3, now ditto into Vol. 4, I really have to get Vol. 4 out and finish up this project, especially since it’s been advertised as out last year. Just got a phone call from John Onken up in Madison, Wis., who publishes the Agri-Dairy Newsletter, and writes a column in another dairy publication, informing me that Farm Progress Day of 1961 was held on the Dougan farm and 160,000 people came, and how come I haven’t written about that? Did I know about that?! Well, of course, I’ve known, and I told him that Vol. 4 has three chapters, rich with pictures, on Farm Progress Days. Well, he wants to write about it NOW. And so we have had to send him pictures and other data, even though I tried to dissuade him til Book 4 was out. So, deadlines and I’m not getting any younger…

Here’s how old I was when I began this book:

Here I look now:

I’m heading to Nevada to put Book 4 together, with my “staff,” before this is my deadline:

Speaking of tombstones, my friends have come up with the epitaph to go on mine: “It’s around here somewhere.”

How can you see me in living color and talking, too? How did the Round Barn become part of Illinois? Listen, my children, and ye shall hear –
I’d heard that Illinois’s two major museums: the Illinois State Museum and the Abraham Lincoln — were into a big oral history project on Illinois farming. So of course, I ignored it. However, I attend an archaeology lecture once a month at the Illinois State Museum, and one night after the session, a man approached me holding the Northwestern “Stories from the Round Barn” and a colorful map of Illinois marked off into counties, and on the very top – Illinois makes a straight line – a little red square cupola. I began to laugh for it was obviously Rock County, Wisconsin: from our back field, you can spit into Illinois with a high wind. The man laughed, too. It turned out that Illinois wanted to incorporate Rock County, Wisconsin, into Illinois for the purposes of their oral history, for I had more going back than anybody. I figured Rock County wouldn’t mind, so I didn’t ask it, but the oral history project recorded me talking for nine hours (yes, we did it in two sessions) and I still have a half hour to add because their last question was important and took me by surprise (I’ll write about that later). You can find the whole interview at the Illinois State Museum’s Audio-Video Barn along with a lot of other interesting interviews, but of course, none so interesting as mine. 🙂 Another reward of all this activity: the museums had a show at the State capitol, their booth right in the middle of the rotunda, huge television screen – I walked in and there was me, talking away. I found me rather fascinating, but needing a hair cut.