Old Man Willard's Farm

Old Man Willard's Farm

The author at Old Man Willard's Farm.

Old Man Willard was my first science teacher. He was my Uncle's father. My uncle was known as The Plow-boy when he was a football star for Scott High School in Coatesville. Old Man Willard was no blood relation to me as all of the Willards to this day remind me. There is a special Willard-ness about the Willards.

Old Man Willard owned a farm of about forty acres on Goosetown Road in a place unofficially called Little Washington. It was rumored that George Washington had slept at the Old Willard homestead. The stone foundation of the old house can still be seen in the meadow.

There were no permanent living geese in Goosetown, at least, they weren't there by the time I came along.  There were seasonal visitors that would land in the meadow. Perhaps, the permanent residents were there before the war, that is, the Second World War for those whose constructs don't immediately define “the war” as the Big One. Along Goosetown Road, Old Man Willard allotted building lots to his children to build homes. He gave them the best land. All road frontage. He was like Mother Goose but I doubt that is how the road got its name.  He was a short stocky man with a high voice that he had cultivated by shouting over the sound of his tractor at his children and over the exploding molten steel across the open hearth at Lukens Steel Company in Coatesville where he worked when he wasn’t farming. 

I loved going to Old Man Willard's farm but I wasn't allowed very often. I found out later in life that it wasn't because my parents didn't want me at the Willard Farm, it was that the Willards didn't want me there. I wasn't a Willard. There were many dead things around like bones, dried leopard frog skins, and hides from butchered steers. Mr. Willard threw animal carcasses in the meadow stream. When it was hot and we were thirsty from bailing hay, we had to be sure to drink upstream but Old Man Willard told us that the stream cleaned itself and that it was okay to drink farther down.  

We liked to kick the carcasses of steers, being careful not to fall in the stream, and watch eels scurry out of the remains. Eels were good eating, too.  Mrs. Willard showed me how to clean an eel.  First, you had to club it over the head to slow it down.  Then, you had to get an old towel or rag to hold it because it was so slimy; make a cut all the way around its head; take a pair of pliers and pull the skin all the back to its tail.  Then, cut off its head and gut it.  Afterward, Mrs. Willard would cut the eels in sections and fry them in Crisco Oil.  I swear they were better than marshmallows.

When I visited the farm, I used to like to watch Lennie. Anybody who came to the Willard farm had to watch Lennie for a few minutes. It was an unwritten rule. Mr. and Mrs. Willard had taken in Lennie. The Willards had eight children of their own. Lennie was Mr. Willard's sister's son but only a few people knew that. It was sort of a secret that everybody knew but nobody mentioned. Mrs. Willard's sister had run off with a pure bred Cherokee. I am told he was a very handsome man. You couldn't tell how old Lennie was but we did shave his face every now and then. Lennie was mentally disabled and couldn't walk very well or talk. Very well. He used to sit in an old cushioned lounge chair in the shade under a tree in the yard so that Mrs. Willard could keep an eye on him from her kitchen. 

It was really scary when he took fits but he would calm down when somebody would pick him up, put him back into the chair, and calm him down by combing his hair. I would go up to him and his erratic movements would stop. I would slowly touch his arm because his contortions scared me. Mrs. Willard. told me that Lennie liked it when people touched him and that he wouldn't hurt me. I remember Mrs. Willard. told my mother how Lennie would laugh when she or the kids would bathe him in a big galvanized tub, but only the close family did that. They couldn’t bathe him in the tub in the house because he would splash so much from sheer joy.

Lennie's nakedness was sacrosanct. When we took Lennie from the galvanized tub we made a quick look with our eyes one time at his privates and it would be all over. That obligation satisfied, we then focused on the task of making sure that Mrs. Willard had everything she needed to get the job done as quickly as possible. None of us looked at Lennie's body as separate from himself or his soul. Mrs. Willard would dry Lennie off. We would help her by handing her the towel, looking for the soap in the tub and when finished wrapping it in Saran Wrap. We stored the soap in the crotch of a sap sticky wild cherry in the yard. But mostly we helped Mrs. Willard standing by just in case Lennie slipped or took a fit. Sometimes he would have to pee. Mrs. Willard would turn him away from us to give him some privacy while he peed on the grass.

In the meadow, we used to ride their horse that they named Maverick after the TV show. I could touch Maverick too, but Mr. Willard told me to be careful because he liked to bite. We fed him apples, worms, bumblebees, snails, minnows, salamanders, and crayfish but not black walnuts. Maverick ate anything and if we weren't careful he would nip our fingers. The Willard's loved Westerns and listened to a radio show called Campbell's Corner on WCOJ radio broadcast from Oxford, PA on Sundays before the Phillies baseball game. Patsy Cline was their consensus greatest woman singer while Hank Williams was their consensus greatest man singer; and Robin Roberts was their consensus favorite baseball player but they liked Harry Anderson, too, because he was from West Chester. Harry had one good season with the Phillies before he got hooked on Philly Cheesesteaks and his weight ballooned.

One day I was visiting my Aunt with my mother. I was maybe five-years old. Little Luke., my Aunt's nephew who lived down Goosetown Road, came running in my Aunt's house in a frenzy. Little Luke. was named after Old Man Willard.  Little Luke was two years older than I was. He was kind of a bully but not like the bullies we have today who pick on or make fun of weaker kids. He was an ethical bully and a bit of a snitch.  Not surprisingly, he became a policeman when he grew up. 

Little Luke pulled me out of the kitchen shouting, "Come on! Come on! My Grand-pop is cuttin' the heads off of chickens." 

We ran down through the yards until we reached the farm. Under a black walnut tree, Mr. Willard had a large, round cut of tree. It looked like a tree stump without roots. He paused in his work, hatchet in hand, "Who's dat?" he asked. 

"Emmie's boy," Little Luke said. 

Our job was to catch the chickens. Little Luke. was good at it, I wasn't. Twice I tried to catch a chicken but gave up and just watched. Catching chickens was an art and took lots of practice. You couldn't be a fake chicken catcher. Either you caught chickens or you didn't. There was truth there. You couldn't be perceived to be a chicken catcher like you could today.  Perception wasn't perceived as truth in the old days and if you did rely on your own perceptions as truth, there was always an ethical bully like Little Luke to straighten you out.  As I said, that's why he became a police officer because even though you can perceive to have stopped at a stop sign, if a cop perceives that you didn't, you will know the truth.  That's why I know there are absolutes in the universe.

After each chicken lost its head, I counted how long it took for them to stop running. If they kept running without their head over ten seconds, I stopped counting because I didn't know any numbers passed ten and struggled with seven, eight, and nine. I had done my first empirical experiment. My bias for the chicken disappeared as my empiricism and facticity increased. I tried my best to not to disclose what I brought to my chicken hatcheting research. 

Afterward, just for fun and out of curiosity, I found a stick and went around poking the chicken heads still gasping for breath that were strewn on the ground. I stuck a chicken head on the stick being careful that it didn’t fall on my arm and pointed it at Little Luke who shouted at me that I was stupid to do so. I saw a night crawler, and held chicken head on the stick over the night crawler to see if it would bite it. Little Luke told me not to do that because I was making the heads dirty by pushing them into the dirt with the stick. He said that night crawlers weren’t big enough to eat chicken heads and anyway worms had no teeth. He didn’t understand. I was experimenting to see if the chicken head would eat the worm not vice a versa. It didn’t and I guessed that if you had no stomach, you had no appetite. There was thick blood on the stick that didn't drip but I was still nervous about getting the chicken blood on me.  I wanted to make sure that I took no evidence of the chicken massacre home with me.  

Little Luke gathered the heads up by hand, no glove, and put them in a bucket. We took them into the barn and gave them to the pigs. I asked Little Luke about the feathers and he said that the pigs didn't care about the feathers. We watched the pigs for a while. Little Luke slapped their backsides to hear them holler.  Old Man Willard shouted to leave the pigs alone and to come out of the barn.  Mrs. Willard told me that my mother was looking for me and that I'd better get on up the hill to my aunt's house.  I walked up through the yards. 

Mary, one of the Willards daughters, came out of her back door and yelled, "Richie, your mother's looking for you and she's really mad."  I ran.

That night at dinner, my mother told my father what I did. After dinner, my father beat me for making my mother mad. While he was beating me, I thought about how lucky I was not to be born a chicken.

(2/20/2012)
(Published in Leftovers 2020)