I don't have any memories before 1943, but from my earliest memory in 1943 until I started college in 1957 we had some kind of building work going on on our home farm.
The first that I was aware of was the building of our hay barn in 1943. My Dad had bought the farm from his brother, Eugene Nichols, in 1943, and early on he started work to replace the old barn that stood on the place. At that time, the buildings on the farm included the old farmhouse, built sometime in the 1800s, a small, very old barn, a small chicken coop which Dad soon turned into a farm shop, and our smoke house. Many people in that time had smoke houses, where they could cure and smoke the meats they produced on the farm. Smoke houses usually also doubled as tool sheds and general storage spaces. Oh, and we also had an old outhouse, a two-seater, behind the smoke house.
The year 1943 was, of course, during World War II, and also was a time when the USA was beginning to feel some easing of the Great Depression. Money was scarce. My Dad had already borrowed about $5,000 to buy the 100-acre farm, and he was not wanting to spend money. But, we had oak trees on the farm, and oak trees were frequently a source of building material for farm buildings in those earlier days.
My Dad, Russell Nichols, and my Grandpa, Scott Nichols, set to work cutting down oak trees, hauling the logs over the hill east by horse-drawn wagon to a sawmill on the Lewis Patterson farm, operated by Ray Patterson and Oscar Coughlin. Ray and Oscar sawed the oaks into lumber of various sizes, heavy 10 by 10 beams for upright standards, 2 x 4s and 2 x 6s for framing, 1 x 10s for siding, 1 x 4s as strips to lap over siding seams, and so on. I'm pretty sure no money passed between the men.
Dad and Grandpa cut and hauled the oak trees, Ray and Oscar did the lumber sawing, and they received part of the lumber as their pay. That work gave us enough oak lumber to build a 45' x 45' hay barn, a hen house, and a brooder house and harness shed, with many boards left over.
Those were days when I think most farmers were sort of carpenters as well as livestock, crop, and poultry producers. You basically needed to be able to build buildings yourself, because few farmers then could afford to pay somebody to build for them. It was also a time when neighbors frequently helped neighbors. At times they put up crops together, helped out with the farm work when a friend was sick, and joined in with a team of workers to build a building. Even churches in those times could often build their church buildings and houses for their pastors by organizing volunteers from among the congregation. The economy was not so much a money economy in those days, especially in the rural areas like northwest Arkansas. But neighbors might exchange work for work, or trade for trade.
When I was becoming old enough to notice and remember things happening around us, Dad was finishing our brooder house. Previously we had even brooded little baby chicks in the house by keeping them in a corrugated "fenced" enclosure around the wood stove. But with the brooder house, we could provide heat to keep the little chicks warm and cared for as they began to feather up and to be able to handle the variations of the weather. I especially remember the glass jar waterers with which you filled the half-gallon jar with water, put on the glass thing the chicks would drink from, and turn the whole thing over to set it in place. I remember marveling that the water stayed in the upside down jar without spilling out. Dad explained that the waterer didn't let air get in until the water in the cup got low, then it would let a little air in and the cup would fill. It was a pretty clever invention, I thought.
After the brooder house was finished, we also began adding a shed on the lower side of it, intended for keeping the car under cover. Until then we had always parked the car up near the south side of the house where the chimney was, with the idea that the warmth might make the car easier to start in wintertime. The shed didn't actually turn out well for that purpose. Apparently Dad had not accounted for the radio antenna when he planned to park the car in the shed. He soon found that if he ran the car into the shed it would break off the radio antenna. So, that was the end of that idea. The shed was then re-adapted to become a harness shed and implement shed, a place to keep some of our farm tools.
Keeping the harness for the horses in the new shed freed up needed space in the barn. Soon after, undaunted, in 1948 Dad decided to take down our old smoke house and build a regular garage on the spot where the smoke house had been. That would provide a proper place for the car, as well as space for work benches and shelves for stashing bolts and nuts and miscellaneous parts that were being saved in case we needed them for something later on.
My Dad always kept a lot of miscellaneous stuff in case we could use it for something later on. I guess that's where I get some of my own habits. I hate to throw away something that might be adapted for use later on for some new purpose.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge and an award-winning columnist, is vice president of Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 10/16/2019