1.23.2006

"My father's farming youth": a YAME special request feature

Well. I really don't know much about it, in fact. After the gardening episode he tended to avoid the subject, except for an occasional mumbling about chores (stuff straight out of the Fathers' Handbook and nothing much more). I do know the farm was in Central Ohio outside Circleville and that it had no electricity or indoor plumbing while his family lived there, which is kind of neat when you consider he lived to see a man walk on the moon.

I know he spent most of his "elementary school" years attending a one-room schoolhouse at which his own father, a guy with the imposing name, Martin Luther, was the only teacher. Then when Martin Luther died his mother sold the farm to a relative and the family moved to Circleville, and he went to high school there.

While he, Russ, was in high school his older brother, Glenn, finished college and moved to New York to enjoy the libertine life of a writer, a feat that made him simultaneously a hero and a family "black sheep." Russ, in his turn, went off to college and when his younger brother, Herman, followed their mother came along and operated a college "eating club" in Naperville to help pay the tuition - she didn't remarry until Herman, then and forever after known as "Spud," also graduated and she moved back to Circleville. She married her then-widowed brother-in-law - a fact that resulted in Russ's having a bunch of half-siblings who were also cousins and in me, as a tyke, attending my own grandmother's wedding.

The new grandfather was Uncle Lawrence to us and he owned the grain elevator in Circleville. I was dutifully taken on a tour, an event that produced about 40 years of occasional nightmares, but other than that I never knew much about Uncle Lawrence. We moved to Nebraska and then to Minnesota, and by the time we got back to within driving distance of Circleville Russ's mother, Ida, was a widow again.

I did visit the old farm once, was plunked onto a pony for a while, and shown the barn.

And Russ never again fooled around with growing potatoes, that's a fact. The only farm-boy trait that remained after the Victory Garden adventure was that he never, ever that I recall would eat cottage cheese. To him it was spoiled milk, and that was that.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

so was it Martin Luther Compton? thanks for the special request. can you tell me more about the nebraska chapter?

Ted Compton said...

Martin Luther Compton. Right. I might have a picture around here somewhere and if I find it I'll put it up.