Got to thinking the other day about hired men and hired girls. Young folks today, unless they live on a farm, don't even know what we mean by such names. It used to be in the last century and the early part of this one before automobiles got to be so common that doctors, storekeepers, businessmen, or anyone of any means had to have a horse or horses. He had to have someone to take care of the horse and have it ready to go when he needed it. This was the hired man. Years ago, James Whitcomb Riley's "Raggedy Man" was a well known hired man. He not only took care of the horses, but mowed the grass with a scythe and "If our hired girl says he can, milks the cow for Lizabeth Ann."

Our Dad didn't have a hired man all the time but during planting and haying or grain harvesting, he would. The first one that I remember was a slow talking fellow named Rol Rogers. I was too young to go to school so I shadowed Rol all day. He must have been a rough talker as well as slow for one time they had just planted oats and were getting ready to float them. A float was made of three heavy hardwood planks fastened together and with places to hook the team to pull it. The driver stood on this and was helped keeping his balance by holding the reins or lines as we called them. When Rol stepped up on the float I stepped up beside him. He looked over at Dad and, getting a nod, he spoke to the team who started up and I came dawn hard on the seat of my pants· When I came up I had both hands full of dirt and pebbles which I pelted Rol with and called him all the pet names I had heard him use on the animals. That summer after our sister Elsie was born, Mom had been real sick and they had taken my two older brothers to Stay with relatives in Tunkhannock. When they brought them back they were like strangers and I warned them about playing with my stuff. Later we went to the barn and started playing "Hide and go Seek." My older brother Jady was "It." He found me right away but we both could not find Bob. After a while I said to Jady, "Let's not bother with the son of a B." My folks were wise enough not to make a big issue of this rough talk and when Rol moved on I didn't hear it anymore and soon forgot it, Bob and Jady used to pick on the hired men if they found something that bothered them. Sometimes they would have brass decorations for the bridles and strings of white and colored rings for the harness which they would wash and polish and take with them wherever they went.

Some Sunday afternoons after they had spent a lot of time polishing the brass medallions that were on each side of a horse's bridle, he would find that the boys had breathed on them and then put a big thumbprint on each one. One hired man was so naive that he believed everything the boys told him. One rainy afternoon, he couldn't find one of his rubber boots. He complained to Mom that the boys told him they had thrown it on the horse barn roof which was over 40 feet high. One time, Mom noticed when he was spraying potatoes with Paris Green he would first knock all the bugs off on the ground. When she asked him why he did this, he said he didn't like to get it in their eyes.