Well, today I'm getting a taste of what the former owner and occupant lived with for years, living alone. The machine today has its own ideas about spacing. Well, I guess I can live with it. 

 Billy Welch who lived alone here for quite some many years. Of course he had his cows and horses and cats, he loved those cats, you could hear him talking to them as though they understood all he said. In the winter when sometimes the  water trough would freeze up, you could see Billy with his single bitted axe in hand, strike off for the little stream that ran through his pasture, looking for a waterhole that would hold enough to give every one of his heard a drink. They seemed to know what he was after for they would line up single file and follow him till he found water. 

 He had another thing that he was very emphatic in his belief, that a farmer living alone, if he was going to be sick or indisposed that day, he had better plan it between sometime after 9 in the AM and 5 in the PM. For those were chore times and no self respecting farmer ever neglected or delayed chores no matter how he felt. 

 When we moved on the hill in ‘31, there were two men that owned their own small acreages, but these farms weren't equipped for farming and so these men seemed to prefer working as hired men for other farmers. 

 When we came on the hill Tom Mason was Billy's hired man. They usually worked for $1 a day and board. Tom's whittling project at the time was making a handle for a single bitted axe. One could make a handle out of greenwood then there's always the chance of it warping as it dries out. Although he used a rasp and a file to help his jacknife he was still at it when he left there and moved on to another farm. I really don't know if he lived long enough to finish that handle. 

 Nat's case was different he and his wife had an older boy, able to do for himself and a pair of twin girls and a younger son. He always drove a horse and buggy back and forth to work. In the winter he wore a heavy overcoat and in warmer weather he wore what used to be called a duster. I often wondered if the reason for those long coats was so that he could carry a paper bag with one feeding for his horse in pocket.

 There's a story about Nat and a straw mow. They were threshing grain at the farm of Roll Taylors. Whether Nat was hired there or was working at the labor exchange that a lot of farmers used to do. You'd send a man and team to the place where they were threshing and then they'd do the same for you. 

 Whoever placed the men had put Nat in the straw mow. That job needed a long legged, quick-footed man and Nat was neither of these. Nat was heavyset and by nature slow motioned. After the tractor slowed down as they were pulling in another load, they could hear Nat calling for help. When they went to see what was wrong they found Nat standing in straw that came right up under his arms. He hadn't been quick footed nor active enough to keep on top of the straw as it came in. So they had to put Nat in a different place.