Farm Boys

The wide-spreading pond, and the mill which stood by it,

The bridge, and the rock where the cataract fell,

The cot of my father, the dairy-house nigh it,

The old oaken bucket — the iron-bound bucket

The moss-covered bucket, which hung in the well.

In 1899, William Templer Becker published a book of poetry he called “Some Rustic Rhymes,” that contained the following not-so-fond memories of another oaken appliance that was not so fondly remembered by the boys who had used it.

THE OLD OAKEN SAWBUCK

No fond recollections surround the old sawbuck,

The old oaken sawbuck that stood in the yard.

But woodpile and chip yard bring up sage reflections

Of when we were youthful and cord wood was hard.

Did we wish to go fishing, or e’er go a-swimming,

Or take other exercise seemingly good,

We were told that good health through our veins would go skimming,

If we took all our exercise by sawing the wood.

How we wished for a rest, when the midday once over,

We sought out a place ‘neath the shadiest tree,

But then heard that the women had chanced to discover,

That firewood was needed for baking and tea.

Then we slowly adjourned to the woodpile so hated,

And bent our young backs to the nerve-scraping stroke,

Nor could we return till the monster was sated,

Our noon spell exhausted in service of oak.

When we came home from school in the winter-time dreary,

With visions of sleds or of skates on our minds,

Chained down to the sawbuck until we were weary

‘Twas there, recreation we’d certainly find.

We grew up apace, and the problem of fuel

was solved with a buzz-saw, with help of horse power;

The sawbuck itself, by a process quite cruel,

Went the way of the wood it had once helped to devour.

‘Tis years since we saw our old enemy perish,

We have trod through life’s valleys and climbed up its hills;

There was nothing about the old sawbuck to cherish,

But yet, when we think of it, memory thrills.

With sighs for our boyhood, now getting quite distant,

When we bent our young backs to the nerve-scraping stroke,

And noon-spells and night-spells demands so persistent

Were made on our muscles in service of oak.

Then there was school — the following essay on eggs was laboriously written by a fifth-grade farm boy at the behest of his teacher. It came from a 1921 issue of Farm Mechanics magazine. 

THE EGG

Every bird used to be a egg, espeshly chickins. When you eat a chickin you don’t generaly stop to think it used to be a egg once and would be still if it hadnt of been hatched, and when you eat a egg you dont generaly stop to think how it would look if its mother had sat on it all she wanted to.

If you hold a whole raw egg in your hand it will just stay there perfeckly still, but if you all of a sudden crack it in half it will do just the opposite.

Hens lay eggs just for the plasure of doing it and not for the plasure of thinking how much enjoyment somebody will get out of it at breakfast. When a hen lays a egg it goes around cackeling as if it had just done something hardly anybody else can do, which it has. Roosters cant lay eggs and proberly dont want to.

By just looking at a egg before it is hatched you can’t tell if the chickin will grow up to be a hen or a rooster, and after it is hatched you cant even tell just by looking at the chickin. This proves that nature is misterious.

The most popular time for eggs is breakfast with people eating ether one or two depending on how hungry they are. Eggs look prettiest fried and most natural soft boiled and most unnatural scrambled.

A egg cant hardly ever be dropped without losing its shape.

Those were the days, my friend.

Sam Moore