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    Afterthoughts
    Afterthoughts
    Afterthoughts
    Ebook105 pages1 hour

    Afterthoughts

    By Robert S. Turner M.D.

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Afterthoughts describes rural life and beekeeping in Iowa, before
    the author was a medical student at the State University of Iowa.
    Turner traveled as a Pfizer medical student representative in the 1952
    summertime, before working on an acute poliomyelitis ward later
    that summer. A blind date with polio nurse Dorothy Turner led to
    marriage in 1953, and the experiences of medical intern and nursing
    life together in Phoenix, followed by nursing and U.S. Public Health
    Medical Service positions in 1955 serving Oklahomas Cherokee and
    Choctaw Native Americans.

    Orthopedic residency training in San Francisco and Philadelphia
    preceded a long career at the renowned Lovelace Clinic in
    Albuquerque.

    After Dorothys 1985 death from cancer, eventual marriage in 1990
    to Karen Howard led both of us to challenging and meaningful
    retirement non-profit organization positions, and to unique foreign
    travel experiences.

    Afterthoughts is a retrospective book, after previous publication of
    Pathways Taken - A Hawkeye In the Enchanted Land by AuthorHouse
    in 2004.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateSep 1, 2011
    ISBN9781463438517
    Afterthoughts

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      Book preview

      Afterthoughts - Robert S. Turner M.D.

      Chapter 1

      Farm Life in Iowa

      The rural Iowa that I knew sixty years ago has not disappeared, but major changes have occurred.

      The bountiful Iowa soil remains, but the trees and shrubbery along the roads and fields have given way to crops planted up to the ditches and roadways.

      Pasture—land is now used for crops, and dairy farmers specializing in milk production keep large numbers of dairy cattle.

      Hog production for pork is also a specialty utilizing large buildings to raise many thousands of pigs, usually in a location far distant from other farm homes, due to odors.

      The same type of specialization is true for egg and chicken production, with large buildings holding thousands of egg-laying hens.

      With emphasis on producing only corn and soybeans, lack of crop rotation eliminates the growing of alfalfa or clover that enrich soil.

      Except for Amish Mennonite farmers, horses are no longer used for plowing, pulling machinery or pulling wagons or buggies.

      The threshing rings of farmers working together for oat or wheat harvesting are history, with the use of combines that have eliminated the old-time grain binders, threshing machines and wagons that hauled bundles of oats or wheat to a threshing machine powered by a belt from a tractor. Combines also eliminated the grain wagons that were filled with the threshed grain that was scooped into farm grain bins, for feed for livestock or poultry.

      With the disappearance of livestock on most Midwestern Iowa farms, there is no need for fences for livestock. At the same time, the use of silage to feed dairy cattle has ended the need for the large silos that stored the silage.

      The cement silos, girded with steel rods, stand as white or gray monuments to a bygone era in Iowa and the rural Midwest.

      With no dairy cattle, swine, chickens or horses to feed and tend at least daily—and twice daily for milking and feeding dairy cattle—there is no required chore time. It is now possible for a farmer to have another job or occupation, in addition to farming.

      Roads have improved, so it is possible to have farms at locations several miles apart, and to thus increase the amount of farmland that one farmer can run. Also, the tractors have increased speeds and increased power, so greater acreage can be farmed during the time consuming planting and harvesting.

      With the use of deep tillage instead of plowing, and the limited need to cultivate row crops, the busy and demanding times for crop farming are limited to the planting and harvesting times in spring and autumn.

      Chapter 2

      Childhood Life

      Everyone has early memories, shaped by their families, environment, school, churches, friends and events.

      My parents did not expect me to have chore responsibilities until age 9. As a result, I had considerable playtime on the farm, as a child.

      With large maple trees shading the ground below those trees, it was fun to use wooden blocks as play trucks or play tractors and drive them on the play dirt roads and fields. My brother Donald, one and one/half year older, was my playmate.

      In winter months, sledding downhill on the road north of our home was a highlight. As we became older, we played basketball in the driveway of the barn, adjacent to oat bins and haymows.

      Fourth of July celebrating often included softball games in a small field, with extra servings of ice cream on those hot July afternoons.

      During the warm late spring and summer months, a hammock was attached between the large trunks of two tall maple trees, and the hammock was used for relaxation.

      As mentioned earlier, after reaching age 9, my parents expected we children to have chore or housework responsibilities—and that certainly applied to me. At that age, I had four older brothers: Theodore [Ted], Richard [Dick], Floyd [Tub] and Donald [Don].

      The parental decision was made that I would help my mother with household chores—including pumping drinking water, washing dishes, sweeping and mopping floors. In addition, I was to help with care of baby chicks and to gather eggs from the hen houses and to clean the henhouses.

      This poultry responsibility was related to the fact that my mother would have the egg money for her personal income and use.

      After another one or two years time, I also had to help with the morning and evening chores that included milking the dairy cattle, cleaning the barns of manure and helping feed the cattle, baby calves and horses—and feeding hogs with swill composed of grain and skim milk.

      Chapter 3

      Harvest Times

      Harvest season for oat threshing combined hard work with the pleasure of having noontime meals. I was able to watch the process of harvesting before I had to be one of the workers at harvest time.

      Binder machines were use to cut the oat stems, then form and tie bundles that were placed on the ground. Shocking meant that several bundles were placed together by hand in a shock of bundles shaped to shed rain, in case rain occurred.

      A threshing ring was composed of six to eight neighboring farmers, working together, using one steam engine or a tractor to power a threshing machine by using a wide belt running from the tractor to the threshing machine.

      For the threshing of oats or wheat, wide and long hay wagons had to be loaded with the separate bundles of grain, using pitchforks. The bundles would be stacked high on the wagon, and then taken to the threshing machine, using horses to pull the wagons, and then each bundle was tossed into the threshing machine, powered by a belt from a tractor.

      A spout from the threshing machine emptied grain into wagons. The grain wagons then were pulled to have

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