StoryCorps: David John

David: We had a good time at the farm. It was nice growing up here. Something like the Waltons, it really was. My Aunt Sophie’s kitchen was always, depending on the time of year, there were always baby chicks, baby ducks behind the stove. She had a wood stove in the kitchen, a cardboard box. She had baby cats, baby dogs. She had three or four dogs in the house at all times, probably six or seven cats.

It was a good life, though. That’s how I learned to take care of animals; that’s how I fell in love with chickens. But I was allowed to do what I wanted at the farm, run free. You got 15 acres to do what you want. I got up in the morning, eight or nine years old. My aunt was the old fashioned type as far as food. You had a big hot bowl of oatmeal, I don’t care what time of year it was. Big bowl of oatmeal, you had an orange cut in four pieces and a glass of Kool-Aid, and that was your breakfast every day. For dinner it was usually peanut butter sandwiches, or jelly, and Kool-Aid. And off for the day. She said, “You can do what you want to do, just keep checking in.”

There was a brook down back full of trout. Out of sight of the house, but I would go fishing almost every day. Berry picking was unlimited. There were berries all over. I picked more berries that you can think of. That’s how you got your money, really. You got an allowance every week from your mother, not much it was just a little allowance. But if you wanted money you were expected to earn it. And one of the ways in the summer time was picking berries. And the day went by quick, you’d just fill the berries up. You got 50 cents a quart for them, that’s what you got as a boy. I gave my mother what she wanted, she’d pay me. And then you go next door to your neighbors and you’d sell them for 50 cents a quart. That’s how you got money.

In the springtime, Burpee catalogue had in the magazines back then, if you wanted to sell seeds to your neighbors, they’d send you a sample package. You went door to door and asked people if they’d like to buy vegetable seeds. And everybody back then had a garden. You knew everyone in town anyway, it was a small town. The prize would be, you’d get so many points for so many monies sold and you could end up with a football or a football helmet, or maybe a jack-knife or a wrist watch or something.

And then, you’d pick up Coke bottles. Back then they were glass Coke bottles, thick green ones. And on the bottom they had different towns. There were a lot from Berlin, New Hampshire. In fact, Berlin, New Hampshire was the only time that Coca-Cola made-they worked on Christmas Day. And it said right on it: “Christmas, 1923. Berlin, NH.” It was right down on the Berlin-Gorham road was the factory. They were making Coca-Cola in the 1800s, it was a real old company. People always threw them away just all over the place. So you’d get two cents for a small bottle and a nickel for a quart bottle.

Pam: Recycling before it was cool.

David: You’d pick up a couple of hundred of them per week sometimes. Especially at the paper mill, everyone would have two or three Cokes a day, out the window in the grass, wherever. That’s how you made your money, stuff like that.

I used to sleep upstairs, on a three-quarter bed in the corner. There were all kinds of noises in that old farm house. Up above us there was a full attic, a walk-in attic. There were bats in the attic, there were owls back then, whip-poor-wills, all sounds of the night. Chimney swifts that lived in the chimney. They were like swallows, but they called them chimney swifts, they only lived in chimneys for whatever reason. But when you go to bed at night, you’d hear them twittering, the little ones, in the chimney. When you got up in the morning there were these brown wasps. I think you got them around your house, they’re brown.

Pam: Yeah, I don’t like them.

David: They’re not aggressive, they’re kind of lazy and docile, really. But big stingers on them and they only sting if you trap them. But, you’d get up in the morning and right by the window sill, windows were wide open in the summer time, there’d probably be a dozen walking around the window, walking into your bed by your pillow. I’d go ballistic in the morning. Aunt Sophie would come up and say, “ I told you don’t let that bother you.” I never got stung either. But the old farm house was full of mosquitoes. Quite the life.

Pam: Sounds like it.

David: Yeah it was.

Pam: Does Sophie’s farm still stand?

David: Yep. My mother and I went back to it probably 10 or 11 years ago. It’s been bought twice since and remodeled twice.

Pam: I want to go.

David: You can. The only thing is. You won’t realize it, but I was disappointed. You can’t believe the houses. 15 acres, when my uncle Duke sold it. First of all, it was the hub of the family. My Aunt Sophie died when she was 51 and that was the end of the hub. She was the hub, it wasn’t the farm it was her. So it was sold as 15 acres and a farm, and through the years, land was sold, land was sold off and on. I think there are five houses right around the farm house now. You could throw a stone at every one. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t think they even kept and acre, maybe just about an acre.