Four Episodes from "The Round Barn"

[Jacqueline Dougan Jackson’s Stories from the Round Barn and More Stories from the Round Barn (1997 and 2002, Northwestern University Press) were drawn from a much larger project, a third-person memoir and history of a Wisconsin dairy farm, and of dairy farming in America from about 1900 until about 1970. The following four previously unpublished episodes are set in the 1930s and 1940s and appear, among other narratives and historical chapters, in four different places within the complete work, The Round Barn. This unique project also includes many photographs and will be published by Beloit College Press in three volumes beginning in late 2011. W. J. Dougan, who is Jackson’s grandfather, founded his farm in 1906 and was succeeded as head of the farm by his son Ronald, who was Jackson’s father; both men figure in the episodes below. —The Editors] 

Red and Loretta Holmes
Hiring at the Dougan Farm is often a chain reaction. Hire one person, end up with the family. Lester Stam is followed by his father and mother. Herbert Hertzel’s sister Josie comes to work in the Big House. Earl Bown travels down from Soldiers Grove in Kickapoo Valley; he tells Rod Jennings; Rod tells his first cousin Orland Potts, who comes, followed by Orland’s sister. Whole clans migrate. If a person doesn’t get a job at Dougan’s, he finds one in Beloit and stays on in the vicinity.

“The largest export of Kickapoo Valley is her young men,” Ron Dougan has been heard to say.

Robert—“Red”—Holmes from Soldiers Grove is working for the WPA in Flora, Illinois, in 1941. His salary is $40 a month. His brother-in-law Rod Jennings writes from Beloit that he thinks Daddy Dougan will hire him for more than that. Red applies, and W. J. offers him a job at $65 a month, provided he doesn’t smoke. Red and his wife of a year, Loretta, can hardly believe it. They pack up and drive their 1929 Model A to Beloit. They carry a dozen baby ducks in an iron kettle in the backseat.

Red assures Daddy Dougan that he doesn’t smoke. It’s a lie, the only lie he ever tells Daddy. He never smokes on the job, only at home. He figures what he does off the farm is his own business. “I’d have told him I didn’t eat, if that was one of the requirements,” he says. He tells W. J. he won’t be able to do much right away, for he has the flu and is pretty weak.

“With all the Vitamin D milk you’ll be drinking, we’ll have you well and strong in no time,” W. J. says. “I’ll give you an easy job this morning.”

The easy job is digging post holes.

Red and Loretta find a house near Waverly Beach. It’s full of bedbugs and cockroaches. They fumigate for two days before they move in. The ducks go into a washtub.

At the end of the first month, Red gets raised to $100. He and Loretta drive down to Little Egypt to visit Loretta’s folks. They debate all the way whether they should tell anyone how rich they are, and decide against it.

They move again, into the Larson place on a lane far back from Colley Road, alongside the Hill Farm. They have three little rooms and a windmill. The ducks go into a shed. When they return one night, the rats have eaten them all. They make another move, into one of the apartments at the Hill Farm. Pete Hoff lives downstairs and fires up the furnace so hot that the upstairs dwellers, the Holmeses and Jenningses, can hardly stand it.

At first Red does general farm work. W. J. watches him unload corn. “You’re taking too many unnecessary steps,” he says. “You’re making work for yourself. Instead of shoving your scoop into the corn and stepping back to pitch it, just scoop it in and then pitch it.” He demonstrates, leaving out the backward step.

Red tries. It throws him off balance, it hurts his back. But if he does it by stepping back to get into position before he throws, his balance is fine, his back is fine.

He does it W. J.’s way while the boss is watching. “Good,” says W. J. “That’s more efficient.” When he leaves to supervise some other worker, Red returns to doing it his own way.

He’s sent up to Ron’s place, Chez Nous, to bring down a load of hay. He has a blind horse, old Molly, and a bay, May. Red has driven horses before, but never on a sharp curve with a load. At the turn above the dairy he chooses the higher side of the road. The slope pushes the load against the horses and the singletree hits their heels. They want to go faster and Red lets them. The horses and wagon get away from him. They are going so fast they don’t even try to turn in at the farm. They hit the ditch below the drive. The blind horse falls; the wagon goes over her and lodges on top of her. Grampa comes rushing out, agitated, fearful for the horse. Red is agitated too, not only for the horse but for his job. It takes many men and a tractor to get the wagon clear and to free Molly, who miraculously is unhurt.