Growing up on a Northwest Iowa Farm in the 1930s-1960s
There was a generation in my family of cousins that grew up together in the 1930’s to the 1960’s. They shared many things in common. Most grew up on farms within twenty miles from each other in Northwest Iowa. Many received their elementary education in country schools two miles away from their farmsteads. All experienced the transition from horses to horsepower. With few exceptions, all grew up under the tutelage of two parent families. They were friends to each other during the many years of schooling and church participation. All were active members of their churches. Marvelously, they married spouses with similar lifestyles and values. All became responsible citizens and contributing members of society.
The passage of time has witnessed the passing of some of those cousins. The loss of their presence is a void for us today, knowing that they too could have contributed even more had their lives not been cut short.
It is with great honor and respect that we write these stories. Many have endured great hardships, survived overwhelming challenges, and made admirable achievements in their quiet productive lives. These stories are dedicated to them and many others who lived during this period of time in America. There are millions of todays older generation who lived similar lives. May these stories also be a tribute to their steadfastness and resilience.
They are the salt of the earth.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Norm Te Slaa
The passage of time has witnessed the passing of some of those cousins. The loss of their presence is a void for us today, knowing that they too could have contributed even more had their lives not been cut short.
It is with great honor and respect that we write these stories. Many have endured great hardships, survived overwhelming challenges, and made admirable achievements in their quiet productive lives. These stories are dedicated to them and many others who lived during this period of time in America. There are millions of todays older generation who lived similar lives. May these stories also be a tribute to their steadfastness and resilience.
They are the salt of the earth.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Norm Te Slaa
Story Index:
Prologue to Farm Stories
1. The Bright Red and Blue Mobile Grocery Store
Prologue to Farm Stories
Growing Up on a Northwest Iowa Farm in the Middle Third of Twentieth-Century America
These stories, essays, and vignettes mostly describe rural family life from the 1930s to mid-1960s America.
We are the grandchildren of immigrants who left behind various Dutch provinces to come to America - traversing a vast ocean, leaving their farms and families, surviving an extended depression, and bearing front-row witness to World Wars I and II as well as and the Korean War, all to start a new life. We are the inheritors of such a legacy.
Their descendants shared similar Dutch backgrounds and espoused similar social and conservative political values. Their deeply held religious convictions guided their social order, and they held a deep-rooted affinity for the earth. They lived through the transition from the power of horses to the power of tractors.
Information about late nineteenth and early twentieth-century American ancestors is sparse. We know more about our second-generation ancestors.
Most of these stories relay the experiences of the third and fourth generations of the first immigrants, those born in the middle third of the twentieth century. We are fortunate to be able to hear first-person recollections from some of those people.
These are stories of experiences - not diaries - of a place in mid-America. They are presented as generic stories, most without the names of parents (referred to as Mom and Dad) or children. I do this so you can bring your own perspective to each story.
These stories are based on real events and circumstances. My hope is to share stories that uncover the challenges and spirit of these people, discerning their values, understanding their ethics and spirituality, and learning about them as people.
With the passing of our ancestors and contemporaries, so passes their histories. I hope these stories can lead to a deeper understanding of what rural life was during these years.
I welcome your participation in these stories. I hope you will be able to contribute details of their experiences to add greater depth, more facts and information, and more vivid color to each story. It need not be your personal experience, either. It could be a recollection of a grandparent, parent, or friend you’ve heard talk about the subject of any of these the stories.
Let me know if others in your family or friends would like to receive these stories, and I will include them in the story distribution list. I would love our children and grandchildren to respond to these stories.
Thanks to all of you. Let’s see where this will take us!
With respect and affection, Norm Te Slaa
These stories, essays, and vignettes mostly describe rural family life from the 1930s to mid-1960s America.
We are the grandchildren of immigrants who left behind various Dutch provinces to come to America - traversing a vast ocean, leaving their farms and families, surviving an extended depression, and bearing front-row witness to World Wars I and II as well as and the Korean War, all to start a new life. We are the inheritors of such a legacy.
Their descendants shared similar Dutch backgrounds and espoused similar social and conservative political values. Their deeply held religious convictions guided their social order, and they held a deep-rooted affinity for the earth. They lived through the transition from the power of horses to the power of tractors.
Information about late nineteenth and early twentieth-century American ancestors is sparse. We know more about our second-generation ancestors.
Most of these stories relay the experiences of the third and fourth generations of the first immigrants, those born in the middle third of the twentieth century. We are fortunate to be able to hear first-person recollections from some of those people.
These are stories of experiences - not diaries - of a place in mid-America. They are presented as generic stories, most without the names of parents (referred to as Mom and Dad) or children. I do this so you can bring your own perspective to each story.
These stories are based on real events and circumstances. My hope is to share stories that uncover the challenges and spirit of these people, discerning their values, understanding their ethics and spirituality, and learning about them as people.
With the passing of our ancestors and contemporaries, so passes their histories. I hope these stories can lead to a deeper understanding of what rural life was during these years.
I welcome your participation in these stories. I hope you will be able to contribute details of their experiences to add greater depth, more facts and information, and more vivid color to each story. It need not be your personal experience, either. It could be a recollection of a grandparent, parent, or friend you’ve heard talk about the subject of any of these the stories.
Let me know if others in your family or friends would like to receive these stories, and I will include them in the story distribution list. I would love our children and grandchildren to respond to these stories.
Thanks to all of you. Let’s see where this will take us!
With respect and affection, Norm Te Slaa
1. The Bright Red and Blue Mobile Grocery Store
It was Friday afternoon during a hot dry July in a far corner of Northwest Iowa. It was not unusual for a mid-summer day in 1952 for the farmstead to be so parched and stifling with temperatures reaching into the high nineties.
The family was waiting for a visitor - one special visitor! Throughout the week, many visitors showed up at the farm, all unexpected but regular visitors. There were visits from neighbors, friends, and relatives. Others came to the farm to work. There was Chris, the corn sheller, and Mr. Grevengood, the ear corn grinder and the rendering truck driver. There were cattle buyers and sellers, who a day or two later would be followed by the drivers of strait trucks and semi-trucks, hauling livestock to and from the farm. Less frequently but no less important was the preacher from the Middleburg Free Grace Reformed Church coming to check on the health of their souls.
Many salesmen came to the farm since to save the farmers the many miles of travel it would take for them to come to the salesmen. There were salesmen such as the Watkins man, who sold bottles of vitamins and varieties of elixirs; the Raleigh man, who championed the gastronomical benefits of castor oil and cod liver oil. (Mom always seemed to be low on both.); the Fuller brush salesman, who came by every few months selling what he said were the best, longest-lasting brushes the world had ever known; and feed and supplement salesmen too. One of the family’s favorite feed salesmen was the handsome and curly-haired Ray Van Pelt, who ventured all the way from the distant nine-mile-away town of Orange City to sell his protein bags of Moorman’s Calf Manna.
But, by far, the weekly family favorite was the Friday visitor who was about to arrive. The kids and mom were waiting for him on the porch of the house. That special visitor had come to their farm weekly for years. They knew that, for a short while this afternoon, he would make their day full of sweets, fun and laughter.
That special guest was Mr. Hank Brinks.
Mr. Brinks owned and operated, along with one helper, a grocery store and mobile peddle wagon[1] from a one-room, wooden 1920s building situated in the village of Middleburg. The fifty-two-person town was named after a place in the Netherlands, as it was located almost an equal distance of seven or eight miles from several larger Dutch settlements including Hull, Orange City, Sioux Center and Boyden.
For most farm families in the 1950s, the three- or four-mile trip from their farms to the Middleburg grocery store was a significant distance and a cost of time and money. Mr. Brinks knew that busy farm families had little time to travel to his Middleburg store, so years before he decided to meet those families on their farms. Mr. Brinks had several routes with his peddle wagon, and Friday afternoon was his stop at Mom and Dad’s farm. It was a joy for him to visit the farms of his friends and neighbors, and his patrons returned the joy.
Mom and the kids knew that Mr. Brinks would soon be coming over the hill near the Vander Wilt farm, nearly a mile down the gravel road to the south. They would be his next stop. His weekly summer visits were as predictable as the church bells ringing on 9:30 Sunday mornings to mark the beginning of Free Grace Reformed Church worship services. Now it was only minutes before they would see his brightly painted, fire-engine-red, and deep-ocean-blue, mobile grocery store come into view.
And then, right on time, it appeared!
The colorful relic lumbered painfully slow as it inched its way to their farm. Gravity gave help to this little peddle wagon as it picked up speed coming down the hill. Mr. Brink’s peddle wagon was powered by a Model A, four-cylinder Ford engine. He, or someone before him, had attached to these four skinny tires, a painted blue frame. Hanging on for dear life to this frame was a collection of red painted boxes and bays of odd sizes and shapes, popping out here and there from its strung-together body. Somehow, this blue contraption with its attendant red cubicles, moved in a miraculously discordant unity.
The minutes went by slowly for the waiting kids. Finally, the peddle wagon passed over the wooden bridge of the West Branch Creek, only a pasture’s length away from their driveway. By the time Mr. Brinks had made his slow turn into the farm’s newly leveled, gravel driveway, the kids and Mom were all waiting at the end of the sidewalk.
Excitement rushed over the kids as the treat wagon slowly came to stop at the end of the sidewalk. It was at that moment when the five pennies in their pockets, given to each of them for their weekly allowance, began to jingle in their pockets. Their fingers pinched the pennies checking to see if they were still there.
Mr. Brinks turned off the engine and smiled at them from behind the steering wheel. They returned his smile with laughs, waves of greeting and smiles of their own. Mr. Brinks was a kind, patient man.
Mr. Brinks slowly stepped out of his peddle wagon. He sauntered to the waiting assembly. His walk reminded the kids of the story of a sloth that their teacher, Mrs. Bomgaars had told them. The older kids smiled knowingly at each other.
He greeted each of the kids by name in his easy-going speech. His affection for them was obvious. His eyes showered kindness over them as they crowded around him. His quick smile and the sparkle in his eyes were genuine, and they were memorable.
Memorable, because it took some time for his smile to travel to the far corners of his mouth. His smile seemed to open his droopy eyes and creases in deep horizontal lines appeared on his forehead.
His broad smile also revealed a man who seldom, if ever, had visited a dentist. His eye teeth were missing on his upper jaw, there were some empty spaces between teeth on his lower jaw. The older kids had heard a neighbor talk about smiles like Mr. Brinks’ as “summer teeth” – som-er here and som-er there! It never occurred to them that his tooth-missing smile, slow gait, and the peculiar tilt to his body was in any way different from most of their family, friends, neighbors, and fellow church members. Most of them also had some form of modified facial appearance, characteristic body limp, or leaning acquired from one of their many life challenges.
Mr. Brinks approached the family with a modest nod and greeting to Mom. He surveyed the family with slow, eye-to-eye recognition of each child, smiling broadly to them and addressing each of them by their first names in a breathy, soft-spoken slow drawl. Their returning smiles mirrored their admiration for him. The children, barely able to contain their excitement, waited patiently for Mr. Brinks to finish his greetings while secretly thinking, Let’s get over the hi’s and hellos, Mr. Brinks, and get on with buying our treats!
Mr. Brinks moved to the driver’s side of his mobile store. For perhaps the umpteenth time that day, he began to place large metal support rods into metal pockets of the peddle wagon to hold up the wooden sides. The now-opened peddle wagon revealed cubbies, compartments, doors, drawers, and boxes, some of them were held with a latch and a fastener. Others were drawers that opened with brass pulls and white porcelain knobs, some were held in place with a clasp and a pin attached to a chain, while still others were like tables that dropped down and held in place with flimsy chains.
Every section he opened was like celebrating Christmas Eve in the middle of a hot July day. As he opened his Pandora’s wagon of treats, he continued his casual conversation with the kids. Finally, all the doors and drawers, cubbies, compartments, and tables were opened.
Mr. Brinks declared he was ready for business.
The kids clamored around the peddle wagon, trying to get a better look. The drop-down tables were higher-than-eyeball view for the kids. They could see the myriad colors and shapes of their sweet choices. There were foot-long braids of red and black licorice. In other drawers there were white
and pink unwrapped peppermints, selling for fifteen cents for thirty peppermints. In the next drawer were small packs of Black Jack and Juicy Fruit gum.
In another drawer were small metal containers with “Sin-Sin” inside. The kids called the contents Sin-Sin because they only tasted them when sitting sleepily on hard church pews. Mom knew them as Sen-Sen, a candy with a lofty purpose, -- to stay awake in church! The kids knew about “sin” but not” sen”. For years they had incorrectly heard Dad and Mom to refer to them as “Sin-Sin”. They had no idea what ‘Sen-Sen’ was! So, the bitter, distasteful bad breath treatment of ‘Sen-Sen’ persisted as “Sin-Sin” in their minds.
The kids’ favorite was the soft, gooey goodness of the pink bubble gum: They knew what would happen if they chewed just a single chunk of gum: bubbles would grow so large that they would cover their faces, popping in a muffled poof, leaving bubble gum stuck to their mouths, chins, and noses. The kids also knew what would happen if they packed two of the gummy wads into their mouths. It would pop with an even softer “poof,” but the bubble would settle slowly, covering their faces from their chins to their foreheads and cheek to cheek. They knew the feat of blowing the biggest bubble with a double bubble gum would give them bragging rights and garner the admiration of the other kids.
But there also was a bonus to the pink, one-cent bubble gum: it came wrapped in waxed paper, on which was printed a six-panel, folded, comic strip…in color!! Some of the six-paneled stories were short stories of heroes overcoming tremendous odds, all told within those six panels. Others were stories of cartoon character’s humorous exploits that drew smiles and ‘ahs’ as the kids passed the stories around. It didn’t matter whether the kids could read them or not. The older siblings, Mom or Dad, would read the stories aloud as the kids followed along with the pictures.
Another of their favorite treats was jawbreakers. They came in every color imaginable, but each color seemed new and exotic to the youngest kids. There were so many colors that their country schoolteacher had not yet taught the youngest of the children the color names. The smaller jaw breakers sold for one penny each. The giant jaw breakers, nearly twice the size of the smaller ones, sold for two pennies each.
The giant jaw breakers were held in high esteem with the kids. They were so big that they could last for hours inside their cheeks. There were squeals of laughter as they tried to talk with the giant spheres in their mouths. There was no way they could be understood. It was gibberish. The kids found ways to overcome this babbled speech among the gaggled group. They could tuck the jaw breaker into one of their cheeks, giving the appearance of having a major toothache. Or, they could hold the sticky confection in their hands and continue to negotiate for additional treats in an understandable language.
By popping the jaw breakers in and out of their mouths, their sweet goodness could melt down for hours, until only a BB-sized-center remained, and with a strong bite of their grown-up teeth, crush it into sweet oblivion. The kids had another way of extending the life of jaw breakers and gum: storing them overnight on the top of the bedpost or on a nearby windowsill, the gum waiting to be softened and re-chewed again for another four or five days of enjoyment.
Two of the boys decided to combine their allowance and buy a package of candied Lucky Strikes. They were a bit smaller than the real cigarettes that the grown-ups smoked, but they did have a red colored tip, simulating a real-McCoy. It was fun to hang a cigarette from their loosely pursed lips and imitate some of the older boys smoking the real cigarettes. They figured for today they could afford to spend half of their allowance for a pack of candy cigarettes. Besides, they might be able to sell two of them for a penny.
While the children were making their precious .05-cent weekly allowance buying decisions, Mom went about doing her weekly shopping with Mr. Brinks. The two grownups walked around the back of the peddle wagon. Mr. Brinks already knew what Mom was going to order, as it was the same order she had made every week for many months.
On the back hung an additional box, not much larger than a trans-Atlantic steamer trunk. It was the ice box. Among the blocks of ice were processed meats such as red-dyed ring bologna, small packages of liverwurst, sliced salami, and more. Store-bought meat was the first item she examined as the squeaky hinges of the ice box were lifted. Processed meat was a special treat for a family normally accustomed to eating butchered and colorless home-canned meats for their daily meals and lunch pails. But Mr. Brink’s ring bologna was colorful, salty, perfectly formed, and tied up into an oval shape, with both ends held together with a waxed string.
On the opposite side of the wagon Mr. Brinks carried his bread and cereals. The bread loaves were wrapped in white plastic, printed with different-sized balloons of many colors. They came to know it as Wonder Bread. It was rare that Mom would indulge in any of the store-bought bread baked outside her own farm kitchen. She reminded herself that it was only last Saturday that she and the girls had baked six loaves of bread. She knew her family would object to her buying Wonder Bread. Her home-baked fresh bread, with buttery crusts and big holes in the slices, was one of their favorite foods. Everyone looked forward to smelling the freshly baked bread in their greased rectangular pans, with breadcrusts spilling over the sides of the pan. Wonder Bread had no such smell. It looked and tasted sterile. It had no air pockets of their sliced homemade bread. No, there was no need for store-bought bread.
The cereals were different and regularly caught her eye. She was accustomed to purchasing large, round cardboard containers of Quaker Oats oatmeal with a picture of a pilgrim on the side. One such container purchase would usually last two weeks of breakfasts and baking.
But there were newer cereals of interest to Mom. One was a newer General Mills cereal called Cheerios. Their taste, shape, and crunchiness were quite different from the eggs, meat, bread, balkonbrei, leberwurst, fet, and strop of their typical breakfast. Mr. Brinks could count on Mom to buy at least two boxes of dried cereal every week. But she recently had second thoughts about purchasing these cereals. Last month, one of the boys had poured out the Cheerios into his breakfast bowl only to find maggots writhing about in the milk and Cheerios.
Now with the shopping nearly done, it was time for Mom to barter with Mr. Brinks. Mom had set aside cartons of four dozen fresh, cleaned farm eggs on the sidewalk. She asked Mr. Brinks if she could exchange them for two rings of bologna, a small box of brown sugar, and a box of corn flakes. Mr. Brinks smiled with his approval. He was certain he could re-barter or sell them to other farmers or Middeburgans who needed eggs. It was only a matter of seconds before they both agreed to the exchange.
Finally, each kid made their buying decisions. They paid Mr. Brinks for their treats with their five-penny weekly allowance and celebrated their purchases. Mom looked at the kids with pride. They had learned a valuable lesson in making their own decisions. She then settled up with Mr. Brinks.
The kids barely noticed Mr. Brinks as he began to close the doors, drawers, and boxes of his bright-red- and-blue-peddle wagon. Their chatter and happiness were in full bloom. They laughed at each other with their jaw-breaker impeded-speech. Their eyes were wide with amazement as the pink double bubble gums popped, covering their faces. They guffawed as the oldest boy read the bubble gum stories to them.
Mr. Brinks surveyed this happy scene, then stepped on the running board of the jalopy and slid behind the steering wheel. He gave Mom a modest goodbye wave and turned the starter of his Model A, making the motor sputter to a wheezing start. Startled by the labored start of the motor, the kids’ attention suddenly turned to Mr. Brinks. He smiled at them, and they returned his smile with waves and enthusiastic goodbyes.
Suddenly, it was over as quickly as it had begun. Mr. Brinks was off to his next neighborhood customer, trailed by a small cloud of farm road dust.
The family had just experienced one of their favorite weekly visitors to their farm. Already, the kids knew Mr. Brinks would return next week, bringing with him store-bought groceries, colorful sweets, and fun! Even now, they could imagine Mr. Brinks coming down the Vander Wilt hill and turning into their driveway in his bright red-and-blue mobile grocery store.
They could hardly wait!!
[1] Peddle wagons were rather common in the 1920’s to 1950’s. It was so named because merchants travelled the countryside, selling their goods from a wagon. The body of the peddle wagon could be almost anything if it was powered by some sort of a motor. The peddle wagon depicted is a precedent of peddle wagons 15 years prior to Mr. Brink's wagon.
CONTRIBUTORS: Cleo Te Slaa, Dee Gorter, Clarence Gorter, Mitchel and Emily Punt, Arlene Schovald, Vicki Trautman, Pat Haverman, Cathy Te Slaa, Proofreader, Josephine Moore, Editor. Caesar Orosco, Web Master
The family was waiting for a visitor - one special visitor! Throughout the week, many visitors showed up at the farm, all unexpected but regular visitors. There were visits from neighbors, friends, and relatives. Others came to the farm to work. There was Chris, the corn sheller, and Mr. Grevengood, the ear corn grinder and the rendering truck driver. There were cattle buyers and sellers, who a day or two later would be followed by the drivers of strait trucks and semi-trucks, hauling livestock to and from the farm. Less frequently but no less important was the preacher from the Middleburg Free Grace Reformed Church coming to check on the health of their souls.
Many salesmen came to the farm since to save the farmers the many miles of travel it would take for them to come to the salesmen. There were salesmen such as the Watkins man, who sold bottles of vitamins and varieties of elixirs; the Raleigh man, who championed the gastronomical benefits of castor oil and cod liver oil. (Mom always seemed to be low on both.); the Fuller brush salesman, who came by every few months selling what he said were the best, longest-lasting brushes the world had ever known; and feed and supplement salesmen too. One of the family’s favorite feed salesmen was the handsome and curly-haired Ray Van Pelt, who ventured all the way from the distant nine-mile-away town of Orange City to sell his protein bags of Moorman’s Calf Manna.
But, by far, the weekly family favorite was the Friday visitor who was about to arrive. The kids and mom were waiting for him on the porch of the house. That special visitor had come to their farm weekly for years. They knew that, for a short while this afternoon, he would make their day full of sweets, fun and laughter.
That special guest was Mr. Hank Brinks.
Mr. Brinks owned and operated, along with one helper, a grocery store and mobile peddle wagon[1] from a one-room, wooden 1920s building situated in the village of Middleburg. The fifty-two-person town was named after a place in the Netherlands, as it was located almost an equal distance of seven or eight miles from several larger Dutch settlements including Hull, Orange City, Sioux Center and Boyden.
For most farm families in the 1950s, the three- or four-mile trip from their farms to the Middleburg grocery store was a significant distance and a cost of time and money. Mr. Brinks knew that busy farm families had little time to travel to his Middleburg store, so years before he decided to meet those families on their farms. Mr. Brinks had several routes with his peddle wagon, and Friday afternoon was his stop at Mom and Dad’s farm. It was a joy for him to visit the farms of his friends and neighbors, and his patrons returned the joy.
Mom and the kids knew that Mr. Brinks would soon be coming over the hill near the Vander Wilt farm, nearly a mile down the gravel road to the south. They would be his next stop. His weekly summer visits were as predictable as the church bells ringing on 9:30 Sunday mornings to mark the beginning of Free Grace Reformed Church worship services. Now it was only minutes before they would see his brightly painted, fire-engine-red, and deep-ocean-blue, mobile grocery store come into view.
And then, right on time, it appeared!
The colorful relic lumbered painfully slow as it inched its way to their farm. Gravity gave help to this little peddle wagon as it picked up speed coming down the hill. Mr. Brink’s peddle wagon was powered by a Model A, four-cylinder Ford engine. He, or someone before him, had attached to these four skinny tires, a painted blue frame. Hanging on for dear life to this frame was a collection of red painted boxes and bays of odd sizes and shapes, popping out here and there from its strung-together body. Somehow, this blue contraption with its attendant red cubicles, moved in a miraculously discordant unity.
The minutes went by slowly for the waiting kids. Finally, the peddle wagon passed over the wooden bridge of the West Branch Creek, only a pasture’s length away from their driveway. By the time Mr. Brinks had made his slow turn into the farm’s newly leveled, gravel driveway, the kids and Mom were all waiting at the end of the sidewalk.
Excitement rushed over the kids as the treat wagon slowly came to stop at the end of the sidewalk. It was at that moment when the five pennies in their pockets, given to each of them for their weekly allowance, began to jingle in their pockets. Their fingers pinched the pennies checking to see if they were still there.
Mr. Brinks turned off the engine and smiled at them from behind the steering wheel. They returned his smile with laughs, waves of greeting and smiles of their own. Mr. Brinks was a kind, patient man.
Mr. Brinks slowly stepped out of his peddle wagon. He sauntered to the waiting assembly. His walk reminded the kids of the story of a sloth that their teacher, Mrs. Bomgaars had told them. The older kids smiled knowingly at each other.
He greeted each of the kids by name in his easy-going speech. His affection for them was obvious. His eyes showered kindness over them as they crowded around him. His quick smile and the sparkle in his eyes were genuine, and they were memorable.
Memorable, because it took some time for his smile to travel to the far corners of his mouth. His smile seemed to open his droopy eyes and creases in deep horizontal lines appeared on his forehead.
His broad smile also revealed a man who seldom, if ever, had visited a dentist. His eye teeth were missing on his upper jaw, there were some empty spaces between teeth on his lower jaw. The older kids had heard a neighbor talk about smiles like Mr. Brinks’ as “summer teeth” – som-er here and som-er there! It never occurred to them that his tooth-missing smile, slow gait, and the peculiar tilt to his body was in any way different from most of their family, friends, neighbors, and fellow church members. Most of them also had some form of modified facial appearance, characteristic body limp, or leaning acquired from one of their many life challenges.
Mr. Brinks approached the family with a modest nod and greeting to Mom. He surveyed the family with slow, eye-to-eye recognition of each child, smiling broadly to them and addressing each of them by their first names in a breathy, soft-spoken slow drawl. Their returning smiles mirrored their admiration for him. The children, barely able to contain their excitement, waited patiently for Mr. Brinks to finish his greetings while secretly thinking, Let’s get over the hi’s and hellos, Mr. Brinks, and get on with buying our treats!
Mr. Brinks moved to the driver’s side of his mobile store. For perhaps the umpteenth time that day, he began to place large metal support rods into metal pockets of the peddle wagon to hold up the wooden sides. The now-opened peddle wagon revealed cubbies, compartments, doors, drawers, and boxes, some of them were held with a latch and a fastener. Others were drawers that opened with brass pulls and white porcelain knobs, some were held in place with a clasp and a pin attached to a chain, while still others were like tables that dropped down and held in place with flimsy chains.
Every section he opened was like celebrating Christmas Eve in the middle of a hot July day. As he opened his Pandora’s wagon of treats, he continued his casual conversation with the kids. Finally, all the doors and drawers, cubbies, compartments, and tables were opened.
Mr. Brinks declared he was ready for business.
The kids clamored around the peddle wagon, trying to get a better look. The drop-down tables were higher-than-eyeball view for the kids. They could see the myriad colors and shapes of their sweet choices. There were foot-long braids of red and black licorice. In other drawers there were white
and pink unwrapped peppermints, selling for fifteen cents for thirty peppermints. In the next drawer were small packs of Black Jack and Juicy Fruit gum.
In another drawer were small metal containers with “Sin-Sin” inside. The kids called the contents Sin-Sin because they only tasted them when sitting sleepily on hard church pews. Mom knew them as Sen-Sen, a candy with a lofty purpose, -- to stay awake in church! The kids knew about “sin” but not” sen”. For years they had incorrectly heard Dad and Mom to refer to them as “Sin-Sin”. They had no idea what ‘Sen-Sen’ was! So, the bitter, distasteful bad breath treatment of ‘Sen-Sen’ persisted as “Sin-Sin” in their minds.
The kids’ favorite was the soft, gooey goodness of the pink bubble gum: They knew what would happen if they chewed just a single chunk of gum: bubbles would grow so large that they would cover their faces, popping in a muffled poof, leaving bubble gum stuck to their mouths, chins, and noses. The kids also knew what would happen if they packed two of the gummy wads into their mouths. It would pop with an even softer “poof,” but the bubble would settle slowly, covering their faces from their chins to their foreheads and cheek to cheek. They knew the feat of blowing the biggest bubble with a double bubble gum would give them bragging rights and garner the admiration of the other kids.
But there also was a bonus to the pink, one-cent bubble gum: it came wrapped in waxed paper, on which was printed a six-panel, folded, comic strip…in color!! Some of the six-paneled stories were short stories of heroes overcoming tremendous odds, all told within those six panels. Others were stories of cartoon character’s humorous exploits that drew smiles and ‘ahs’ as the kids passed the stories around. It didn’t matter whether the kids could read them or not. The older siblings, Mom or Dad, would read the stories aloud as the kids followed along with the pictures.
Another of their favorite treats was jawbreakers. They came in every color imaginable, but each color seemed new and exotic to the youngest kids. There were so many colors that their country schoolteacher had not yet taught the youngest of the children the color names. The smaller jaw breakers sold for one penny each. The giant jaw breakers, nearly twice the size of the smaller ones, sold for two pennies each.
The giant jaw breakers were held in high esteem with the kids. They were so big that they could last for hours inside their cheeks. There were squeals of laughter as they tried to talk with the giant spheres in their mouths. There was no way they could be understood. It was gibberish. The kids found ways to overcome this babbled speech among the gaggled group. They could tuck the jaw breaker into one of their cheeks, giving the appearance of having a major toothache. Or, they could hold the sticky confection in their hands and continue to negotiate for additional treats in an understandable language.
By popping the jaw breakers in and out of their mouths, their sweet goodness could melt down for hours, until only a BB-sized-center remained, and with a strong bite of their grown-up teeth, crush it into sweet oblivion. The kids had another way of extending the life of jaw breakers and gum: storing them overnight on the top of the bedpost or on a nearby windowsill, the gum waiting to be softened and re-chewed again for another four or five days of enjoyment.
Two of the boys decided to combine their allowance and buy a package of candied Lucky Strikes. They were a bit smaller than the real cigarettes that the grown-ups smoked, but they did have a red colored tip, simulating a real-McCoy. It was fun to hang a cigarette from their loosely pursed lips and imitate some of the older boys smoking the real cigarettes. They figured for today they could afford to spend half of their allowance for a pack of candy cigarettes. Besides, they might be able to sell two of them for a penny.
While the children were making their precious .05-cent weekly allowance buying decisions, Mom went about doing her weekly shopping with Mr. Brinks. The two grownups walked around the back of the peddle wagon. Mr. Brinks already knew what Mom was going to order, as it was the same order she had made every week for many months.
On the back hung an additional box, not much larger than a trans-Atlantic steamer trunk. It was the ice box. Among the blocks of ice were processed meats such as red-dyed ring bologna, small packages of liverwurst, sliced salami, and more. Store-bought meat was the first item she examined as the squeaky hinges of the ice box were lifted. Processed meat was a special treat for a family normally accustomed to eating butchered and colorless home-canned meats for their daily meals and lunch pails. But Mr. Brink’s ring bologna was colorful, salty, perfectly formed, and tied up into an oval shape, with both ends held together with a waxed string.
On the opposite side of the wagon Mr. Brinks carried his bread and cereals. The bread loaves were wrapped in white plastic, printed with different-sized balloons of many colors. They came to know it as Wonder Bread. It was rare that Mom would indulge in any of the store-bought bread baked outside her own farm kitchen. She reminded herself that it was only last Saturday that she and the girls had baked six loaves of bread. She knew her family would object to her buying Wonder Bread. Her home-baked fresh bread, with buttery crusts and big holes in the slices, was one of their favorite foods. Everyone looked forward to smelling the freshly baked bread in their greased rectangular pans, with breadcrusts spilling over the sides of the pan. Wonder Bread had no such smell. It looked and tasted sterile. It had no air pockets of their sliced homemade bread. No, there was no need for store-bought bread.
The cereals were different and regularly caught her eye. She was accustomed to purchasing large, round cardboard containers of Quaker Oats oatmeal with a picture of a pilgrim on the side. One such container purchase would usually last two weeks of breakfasts and baking.
But there were newer cereals of interest to Mom. One was a newer General Mills cereal called Cheerios. Their taste, shape, and crunchiness were quite different from the eggs, meat, bread, balkonbrei, leberwurst, fet, and strop of their typical breakfast. Mr. Brinks could count on Mom to buy at least two boxes of dried cereal every week. But she recently had second thoughts about purchasing these cereals. Last month, one of the boys had poured out the Cheerios into his breakfast bowl only to find maggots writhing about in the milk and Cheerios.
Now with the shopping nearly done, it was time for Mom to barter with Mr. Brinks. Mom had set aside cartons of four dozen fresh, cleaned farm eggs on the sidewalk. She asked Mr. Brinks if she could exchange them for two rings of bologna, a small box of brown sugar, and a box of corn flakes. Mr. Brinks smiled with his approval. He was certain he could re-barter or sell them to other farmers or Middeburgans who needed eggs. It was only a matter of seconds before they both agreed to the exchange.
Finally, each kid made their buying decisions. They paid Mr. Brinks for their treats with their five-penny weekly allowance and celebrated their purchases. Mom looked at the kids with pride. They had learned a valuable lesson in making their own decisions. She then settled up with Mr. Brinks.
The kids barely noticed Mr. Brinks as he began to close the doors, drawers, and boxes of his bright-red- and-blue-peddle wagon. Their chatter and happiness were in full bloom. They laughed at each other with their jaw-breaker impeded-speech. Their eyes were wide with amazement as the pink double bubble gums popped, covering their faces. They guffawed as the oldest boy read the bubble gum stories to them.
Mr. Brinks surveyed this happy scene, then stepped on the running board of the jalopy and slid behind the steering wheel. He gave Mom a modest goodbye wave and turned the starter of his Model A, making the motor sputter to a wheezing start. Startled by the labored start of the motor, the kids’ attention suddenly turned to Mr. Brinks. He smiled at them, and they returned his smile with waves and enthusiastic goodbyes.
Suddenly, it was over as quickly as it had begun. Mr. Brinks was off to his next neighborhood customer, trailed by a small cloud of farm road dust.
The family had just experienced one of their favorite weekly visitors to their farm. Already, the kids knew Mr. Brinks would return next week, bringing with him store-bought groceries, colorful sweets, and fun! Even now, they could imagine Mr. Brinks coming down the Vander Wilt hill and turning into their driveway in his bright red-and-blue mobile grocery store.
They could hardly wait!!
[1] Peddle wagons were rather common in the 1920’s to 1950’s. It was so named because merchants travelled the countryside, selling their goods from a wagon. The body of the peddle wagon could be almost anything if it was powered by some sort of a motor. The peddle wagon depicted is a precedent of peddle wagons 15 years prior to Mr. Brink's wagon.
CONTRIBUTORS: Cleo Te Slaa, Dee Gorter, Clarence Gorter, Mitchel and Emily Punt, Arlene Schovald, Vicki Trautman, Pat Haverman, Cathy Te Slaa, Proofreader, Josephine Moore, Editor. Caesar Orosco, Web Master