Some Observations from the Hill
by H. H. "Hub" Brown

 At last we're beginning to get some rain. At first it looked as though we were going to have a very early Spring. Mostly warm weather, a few light frosts but without rain nothing grows. The ground was so dry Jim Hines came and rototilled my garden on the 11th of April. 

 I had a lot of volunteer garlic plants and as deer don't like garlic, I transplanted a row across the end of my garden. Then I put in a row of red onion sets and two rows of white onion sets. If everything goes right this will give me enough onions for all winter. I still have a few down cellar from last fall. I forgot to mention that one row is five onions wide and the other is four wide. Then I put in a double row of sugar peas. A light frost shouldn't hurt them. A single support should take care of both rows, they're only eight inches apart. Fritz says that Tom Smith used to plant a row of sweet corn every week. I'm going to try that. Maybe it'll extend the season.

 Probably young people today don't remember the Arthur Godfrey Show. It started on radio and then continued on TV. He had the same idea as Garrison Keillor does out in Minneapolis. He would broadcast a show but charge people to watch him do it. Ag and her two sisters drove to New York once to watch. He had a farm or a ranch near Leesburg, Virginia. Fritz Rudin had started out traveling with a small rodeo. They were showing in Indianapolis and Fritz was to ride in the wild bronc competition. They had just brought in seven right off the prairie and some of them were so wild that two of them had run down a long runway and right into a concrete wall and killed themselves. 

 The one Fritz was riding threw him and just as he had gotten to his hands and knees the horse reared up and came right down on Fritz's back. When Roy Rogers, who was the star attraction of the show found how badly he was smashed up he sent word to his own personal doctor and asked him to come and fix his back. 

 Fritz had enough broken bones so that the doctor put him in a body cast to be worn for a year. Fritz said that after about 11 months having to wear that cast was really getting to him.  He put some oil on a couple places that were chafing him and that caused those places to start to smell so he got a hack saw and a ball peen hammer and started altering the cast. He said by the time he got the cast feeling more comfortable he couldn't see that it was doing much good so he finished taking it off. 

 Some time after this Fritz went to visit a friend who worked at the Godfrey place and he ended up with a job there. He worked there seven years. Fritz said one job someone had to do after a storm. There were lots of wild cherry trees on the edges of the fields. If a cherry limb from one of those trees broke off, as soon as those leaves started to wilt, they developed prussic acid and this will kill an animal. 

 Mr. Godfrey must have enjoyed watching Fritz ride as I always did for he and Fritz rode in Madison Square Garden. Fritz on an Arabian stallion and Arthur on his famous Goldie. Fritz is the youngest boy in a family of five boys and five girls. Of the boys only he and his brother Ernie are still with us. All the girls are still alive. We had another family neighbor that had the same number of children, the Vroomans. I'm not sure about the girls but only Shorty, the youngest boy, is still living.