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Names Robert Wilder
Title: Living Lore
Assignment: Northfield
Topic: B.O. Dunnell, Hay, Grain
Feed Man
Paper 16
kr. Dunnell was engaged in twisting a length of wire
about the nob that operated the door of his piping hot heating
stove in the little shack by the railroad track that serves as
an office for his coal, feed and fertilizer business.
"I'm trying to make a handle out of this, he said.
"The nob gets so plaguey hot that I burn my thumb and finger
every time I open the stove door. It don't hart me none. I
don't feel it. But it's kinder burning a ridge in my skin
turns it all Drown and it don't smell too good. Guess
begin to feel it before long if I don't do something about it.
"Got to do something about my shoes, too. That's why
I got boots on today. ky wife says last night, 'You got nails
in your shoes!' I says, 'I ain't neither.' She holds up one
of my stockings. And, by gosh, they was a whole ring of holes
around the heel. She says, 'I'll mend 'em this once. But if
you don't fix those nails, the next time I'll throw 'em away.
'13,y gosh, I hadn't felt no nails. But them holes didn't come
there all by 'em selves. Guess my skin is tough, or somethin'.
"You see that feller that was just in here? He was
in looking for a job. I told him about ichards wanting his
barn tore down. That feller has a wife and family and I felt
kinder sorry for him, so i saw Richards myself. They was willing
Name: Robert Wilder
Title: Living Lore
Assignment: Northfield
Topic: G.O. Dunnell, Hay. Grain
Feed Man
Paper 16
to pay him forty cents an hour him and a helper, too. But this
feller stuck out for fifty, and it just didn't figger out. 'Course,
if that feller could tear the barn down in record time, they could
pay fifty. But just looking at him, they knew he couldn't so's
forty was the best they could do probtly safer at thirty five.
They wanted the barn down when the money run out not half down.
And the feller wouldn't take it on contract. He had to have cabin
money once a week. Well, Richards is going to let the old barn
stand says it'll blow down next wind, probtly and now that feller
comes back cryin' to me.
"I don't understand it. Seems to me that I'd take what
work I could find to do, at the price folks was willing to pay.
Somebody's put ideas in that feller's head that if he stuck out
for fifty cents an hour he'd get it. And getting fifty cents an
hour while he was working would give him time to go hunting, or
somethins, the rest of the time. Well, maybe that's so. But the
catch comes in getting anybody to pay more than they can afford
for labor. .o.Ather they don't hire any, and let it go let things
run down at the heel or they do it themselves. The painters and
paper hangers tried it asked a dollar an hour. Said it was union
wages, and as they belonged to a union they had to get it. Well,
we done without wall paper. That is, we bought ready mixed paint
and right on top the old wall paper makes a good wall, too. And
Name: Robert Wilder Assignment: Northfield
Title: Living Lore Topic: G.O. Dunnell, HAY, Grain,
and Feed Man
Paper 16
we got ready mixed paint and painted our own houses. 'Course I
shingled mine. Used them nice, silvery gray shingles that come all
stained and never have to be painted. With that all done, we can
paint the doors and winders and around the trim ourselves. Don't
have to hire no painters at even ten cents an hour. I s'pose some
would say that we took the food out of some nice family's mouth.
But nobody's starved in this town that I've heard off, 'cept years
ago when we had a good Christian at the head of the welfare board,
and old feller did starve to death on Northfield ',mountain. No sir!
Those painters are still living. But they ain't gettin' no dollar
an hour. Maybe one or two of 'em are on the welfare. If they are,
I s' pose I'm paying out in taxes what I might have spent to get
my house painted. One of them indirect tax burdens yer hear of.
But I'll bet yer I'm not paying so much of them painters; keep
myself as I would be hiring 'em at a dollar an hour. An, if I am,
I don't care! I'd rather pay for their keep in taxes than have
the damn fools around under foot!
"There! I guess that will do for a handle. 'Tain't
exactly handsome, but I guess I can open the door with it if I
think to. When yer get into the habit of doing a think, it's
pretty hard to remember to do something else. And I s'pose I'll
be something like Uncle Anse Howard, and take the dum thing off
there so's I can burn my thumb handy again, one of these days.
Name: Robert Wilder
Title: Living Lore
Assignment: Northfield
Topic: G.O. Dunnell, HAY, Grain,
and Feed Man
Paper 16
"Uncle Anse got permotted (promoted) into having an oil
burner in his stove. Same stove he'd had for years. But he couldn't
break himself of a habit he had. He'd get to talking, and before
he'd thin4, he'd open the stove and squirt about a pint of terbaccer
juice on to the oil ourner. 'Course 't would sputter. And some
times it'd go out. his wife didn't like it either. Would give him
hell. But it didn't do no good. Finally, he give ap. He made 'em
take the oil burner out and went back to burning coal. Said he'd
spit in that stove all his life, as did his father before him. And,
by God, for the few remainin' years of his life he was goin' to spit
comfortable.
"Fifty cents an hour! I can remember when they used to
work for ten cents an hour. And ten hours a day! That was a dollar,
and what the town paid for working on the roads. Someway, they raised
the price to a dollar and a quarter a day, and all the farmers wanted
to stop farming and go to work on the roads.
"Let me tell you farming ain't what it used to be around
here. You'll probily live to see it I figure it'll take twenty
or twenty-five years but you'll see chain farms. We have all
kinds of chain stores now, things that's really chain factories.
And you'll see chain farms. Strings run by some fich fellers that'll
pay hourly wages and have a regular pay day every week. There'll
be someone to lay out the work, and the man will do as they're told
hear,
Name: Robert Wilder Assignment: Northfield
Title: Living Lore Topic: G.O. Dunnell, Ray, Grain,
and Feed Man,
Paper 16
just like factory workers. And the small farmer won't have a chance
any more than the small manufactarer had when he got up against big
business. He won't be able to guarantee a supply of stuff all sorted
and graded, so he'll lose the market. Maybe the fellers that belong
to co-operatives will get by. But I'm talking about the small farmer,
the 'rugged individualist' feller.
"Some rich fellers bought up farms ovei in the Berkshires,
around Pittsfield, but I guess that's mostly fancy stock. One
feller from Greenfield bought up a few in Heath, north of the Center,
on the road to the right of that cemetery that sits on the top of the
world. Feller's name was Pratt. 'Well, Pratt had some brand new ideas
about farming. He kept about all the kinds of tame animals they is;
sheep and cows and mules even. He built a great, big house with wide
piazzas that he held dances on, and fellers with plug hats used to
come up there from Greenfield to dance and drink rum. One night they
decided they'd ride the mules. So they all got on the mules and rode
around. It was pitch dark, and somethin' scared the mules so that they
run. They run into an orchard. And when they run under the trees the
limbs scraped whoever was riding 'en off their backs. And they didn't
find some of 'em 'til daylight next morning.' Mr. Dunnell almost doubled
up chuckling.
"New, that ain't the way the ordinary hill farmer cries on.
te used to have dances, too. And most generally they lasted 'til day-
light. Then we'd have to take our girls home an' sometimes that
Name: Robert Wilder
Titles Living Lore
Assignment: Northfield
Topic: G.O. Dunnell, Ray, Grain,
and Feed Man
Paver 16
meant driving a. good many miles then get out of our best clothes and go
to work without any sleep at all. 'Course we had hard cider, and cider
brandy, too, sometimes. But no decent young feller ever got drunk at
a dance. After we got married we stayed home and behaved ourselves.
We didn't go wearing plug hats and riding mules in orchards after dark.
They was a party, or a dance, up beyond our place one night.
My wife and i heard the teams going by after we shad gone to bed. And
once in a while somebody would yell at us, the way young people do. We
knew 'em all, of course, and they knew us. The next mog_ning, when I
got up, I couldn't find my milk paiii. I allus washed 'em out after
I had finished using 'em the night before, and turned 'am bottom side
up on the cooler in the shed. lay wife was never satisfied with the
way I washed 'em, so they were handy there for her to wash, too. But
this morning the pails was gone. 'Course I thought right away that
some of the young fellers coming back from the dance had hid 'em to
have fun with me. 6o I started looking for tracks. While I was
looking I saw a clothes pin. And a little ways further on, another.
I picked 'em up, and hollers to my wife about her being kinder care-
less in the way she looked after clothespins. I supposed, of course,
that the children had been playing with 'elm. But she let out a
squawk that all her washing was gone. She'd taken it off line the
evening before as she thought it might rain before morning. And
had left it in a basket on the porch. She'd dropped the pins right in
Name: Robert Wilder
Title: Living Lore
Assignments Northfield
Topic: G.O. Dunnell, Hay, grain,
and Feed Man
Paper 16
with the clothes, expecting to put them in their bag when she folded
the clothes and dampened 'em before ironing. 'Weill I says,
don't find no tracks where a team has stopped, so I guess whoever's
been around here raising hell must a been 400t. I see it rained a
bit in the night, so I guess I won't have no trouble tracking him.'
*I had to let the milking go. And I was getting a little
mad by this time. Taking my milk cans mieht be a. joke on me. But
taking my wife's clothes want no joke that could see. Ana hiding
the palls where I couldn't find 'em quick enough se's I could milk
the cows at the regular time, want funny either.
*Sure enough, I found tracks. And they wadt of anybody I
knowed. There were two men. And one of 'em seemed to have something
wrong with his foot, for he toed way in with that the other seemed
to be all right. Sois to make it easy for me.- I found another clothes-
pin. And a little farther along I found another. Afterashile I come
to a sand bank, near Old Doc. Thomas' house. The ground vas pretty
well littered with clothespins. I figured they'd stopped there to
divide up the load better, and that I wouldn't find no more clothes-
pins along the road. 'Course I knew which way they went 'cause they
was only one road. I'd just started when a. young feller met me with
a team. Seems he'd been down to Gpswoldville, or somewheres, to carry
his girl home, and was just getting back. He said he hadn't seen no-
body, but when he and his girl come away from the dance they saw that
somebody had built a fire out on a sandy piece behind a stone wall.
Name: Robert Wilder
Title: Livina Lore
Assignment: Northfield
Topic: G.O. Dunnell, Ray, Grain,
and Feed Man
Paper 16L
And that he'd show me where 't was. So I got in, and we went out there.
Sure enough, the embers was still smoking. And I could tell by the
tracks that they was tWitsame ones that robbed me. Seemed like there
was a woman and another man that they'd met here. And that meant that
the tracks of the wagon they had must have been an express wagon's
tracks. For they all went off riding basket of clothes and all
as fur as we could see.
"When we come to the fork of the road we took the opposite
fork from that that the young feller had travelled, 'cause we saw
from the marks that's the way the express wagon had went. Finally,
I saw an old wood road where the express wagon had turned off. And
looking a little closer I saw it standing behind some bushes, a lit-
tle off the road. I clumb out and went up the wood road. The young
feller hitched his team before he follered. They had a fire. And.
one of the biggest women I ever see was messing up something in a
kettle on it. I didn't see nobody else around, 'cept the feller that
toes in. Re was stretched out sleeping. And he had funky shoes on.
Laying there on his back the left foot toed in.
"'Where's my milk pails?'" I hollers.
"The man didn't wake up nor nothin, but the woman jumps and
turns 'round. I tells again 'Where's my milk palls?' and she pointed
at the wagon pop -eyed and her chin hanging on her chest. 'Where's
the clothes and the clothes basket?' A tough looking guy came from
Name: Robert Wilder
Title: Livina Lore
Assignment: Northfield
Topic: G.O. Dunnell, Hay,Grain,
and Feed Man
Paver 16
from somewhere, no hat, a toothpick handing out of his mouth and his
hands in his pockets. 'What's that to you?' he said. I'm a constable,'
I says. 'And you'd better hand 'em over. Else I'll have to take you
to headquarters,' I says. 'Don't know what you're talking about,'
says the man. 'We ain't done nothin.' 'No?,' I says, stepping back
sudden and pulling the canvas cover off the express wagon, 'What yer
doing with my milk pails?' 'Them yours?' the feller asked. An' I
guess he was really surprised. 'Yes,' I says, And I want the clothes
you took, too, and the clothes basket.' Be said he didn't know any-
thing about 'em. I says, tAll right, I'm sorry, but you'll have to
tell it to the judged At this the woman began to squawk. The young
feller that come with me was standing in the road where they didn't
know how many they was of us.
"The woman says, 'The boys took your pails because they wanted
'em to put blueberries in. We thought we could pick some and make a
little money. They took the clothes, too, and I tried to have 'em
back. But they said the folks they took 'am from was rich, 'cause their
porch had a marble floor, and they wouldn't do it.'
"Our porch floor was made of that white stone you get in the
fields up that way. Some of the slabs was real sizable eight or ten
foot long but shucks, 't was only field stone. Huh? Maybe 't is
marble, but 't ain't wuth nothing but the labor.
"Where's the clothes?" I wanted to know. "And where's my
Name: Robert Wilder
Title: Living Lore
Assignment: Northfield
Topic: G.O. Dunnell. HaY, Grain,
and Feed Man
Paper 16
basket?" They pointed to the feller that was asleep. I fetched him a
kick in the ribs, 'cause I thought he was bluffing making believe he
was asleep. *Wake up and hear the bird's sing!, I hollers. He wakes
up all right. *Where's them clothes?4 lie pointed to the wagon. OGet
'em.4 he got up and limped to the wagon, pulled out a funny looking
suitcase and dropped it in front of me. *Open it uplk I says. He
seemed trying to make me bend over. I said for you to open iti3O I yells.
1,e spread his hands out sideways and cocked his head on one side. 411
right,4 I says, *Come on the whole bunch of her, off to jail** The
woman squawks again. And the lame feller gets a sight of my friend in
the road. 'Fore I could stop him he goes ploughing through them brush
like a deer. *Take him! I boilers. OTake him dead or alive. Bring
back his scalps4
"Well sir, you'd had ter laughed to see how scared them others
was. They opened the feller's suitcase and got out my clothes. They
done 'em all up nice in a sheet. And they told me where my basket was
too. Said they threw it over the wall where they stopped and had the
fire. I made 'em promise that they'd never come around those parts
again. Told 'em if they did I'd arrest tem. And that I'd arrest 'em
any way if I didn't find the basket where they said 't was.
"It was there all right. So I telephoned my wife from the first
'phone I come to. Told her I had everything but one pair Opants. And
maybe a petticoat, or somethin' that the woman was wearing.
Name: Robert Wilder
Title: Living Lere
Assignment: Northfield
Topic: G.O. Dunnell, Hay,_ Grain,
and Feed Man
Paper 16
"Me a constable? No, I never was a constable in my life. But
I didn't think it did any harm to toll them people I was. By the time
I had tracked them people, sworn out a compaint and found a constable,
they'd a been in Californy, or samewheres. I wanted my stuff. I didn't
care nothing about putting them people in jail as a valuable lesson to
the public.
"T wan 't for a good many years afterwards that I found out what
them people might have been. They was a marble monument built to Jim
Fisk up to Brattleboro, and the sculptor, Larkin hiead, used to live in
Chesterfield. 'Course, he didn't do it, but the business men that sold
the monuments used to get t;yetalians over here from Italy. They'd tell
'em about the good wages and how the kids could have free schools and
everything, and get the best workmen to come. But when the job was fin-
ished, after the businessmen had used them good Eyetalian workmen, they'd
turn 'em loose. And they could work witL a pick and shovel or starve
for all the business men cared. I think probably they was stone cutters
coming down from the quarries up north to some new ones they was opening
near North Adams probably the Hoosac Tunnell. 'Cause the woman said
they was going to North Adams. And the poor devils probably didn't
have the rail road fare. Probably made some kind of a dicker with the
man that owned the horse or who'd stole it the man I didn't see.
"Lots of p‘tople read detective stories to amuse themselves. But
up in the hills we don't bother to waste our time reading. When we have
some detecting to do, we go out and do it. Have the excitment ourselves,
not read abo ut somebody's else having it.0