cc  >> Welcome to the Wisconsin  Historical Museum.  This is our History Sandwiched  In program, and I'd like to  introduce you to Dr Richard L  Cates Jr, author of "Voices from  the Heart of the Land: Rural  Stories that  Inspire Community."  Dr Cates is a very busy man,  he's a professor at the  University of Wisconsin Madison,  he runs a family farm with his  wife, I understand, and  somewhere in there he found time  to write this book, talked to  some people, learn some of their  stories.  So with that short introduction,  I'd like to turn you over and  we'll hear a little bit more  about it.  Thank you.  (applause)  >> Richard Cates: Well,  thank you very much,  it's very kind of you.  And thank you all for spending  the time to come and listen in  on stories from the heart of the  land.  It's interesting that you  mention trying to fit it in, but  for years I grew up with these  elders in the town of Arena,  which is right next to the  township where our farm is,  we're in the town of Wyoming,  and this is the beautiful  driftless area part of  Wisconsin.  And I, for so many years, heard  elders say, "Somebody should  write these stories down."  Well, I thought, if I could  bring a tape recorder, and then  sift and winnow, that I would  have the open door opportunity  to listen to all these great  stories, and the benefit of  paying them tribute for them,  and so it was a long process,  didn't get in any big hurry,  five years or something like  that.  But really, sincerely, there's  more to it than that, and that  is that I felt for a very long  time that the values that have  sustained our culture,  particularly our rural culture,  are values that can serve us  well today and in the future.  And I'm gonna quote you from one  of my favorite writers, Nancy  Gibbs, who writes frequently for  TIME magazine, she's a very  thoughtful person, and she says,  "In tough times, the virtues  that inspire us are  old-fashioned, unglamorous, and  hiding in plain sight."  And she wrote this essay  shortly after the financial  fallout that we've all lived  through recently. 

 And she said that "this epoch  that we're living in rejects the  glamour virtues.  It calls for modesty, patience,  perseverance, proficiency.  We crave the company of ordinary  heroes, and especially now when  we're all on our own, thankful  for small distractions from the  big threats we face."  And she says, "It's a karaoke  moment, we can't afford a band,  but we'll gladly sing of normal  nobility all night long."  And truly, the voices in my  book are those voices, the  voices that in many ways have  lived somewhat normal lives, but  in important ways, have been  heroic.  And so I was very fortunate also  to have the assistance of Jerry  Apps, who I bet most of you  know, Jerry Apps, he's probably  read here a bunch of times, yep.  And he's so thoughtful and he  encouraged me to keep going on  this, and of course, my parents  and my dear wife, the book is  dedicated to those people.  And also to add Klessic Arill, a  man of heart and soul, passed  away a couple years ago.  His family was in the seventh  generation of their farm in  northeast Wisconsin.  The Klessic family were very  instrumental in me putting this  book together and also finally,  Aldo Leopold's daughter, Nina  Leopold and her husband, Charles  Bradley, where I was honored to  do the graduate work for my  doctorate on the Leopold land.  So again, listening, listening  to the land and the people, the  stories of the people from the  land.  So I guess in starting out, and  what I'll do is tell you a  little bit more about the  purpose of the book, and we'll  do some readings, and towards  the end I'd love for you to ask  me some questions and maybe  we'll pull out some of the  readings that I know are  valuable to you folks. 

 But essentially this is not a  book about, it's not nostalgia.  It's really a book about rural  story, and it's about listening.  It's not meant to be a  collection of things quaint or  nostalgic, it's about real  people and their rural  communities and the set of  values that's enabled them to  live rich and purposeful lives.  Their notion of community to our  collective loss is disappearing  from the American social  landscape.  And it's my hope that this book  can begin to awaken us to heed  the wisdom of these voices from  the heart of the land, and to  reinvent among ourselves a sense  of community that will help  reinvigorate and sustain our  culture.  They're all farm families except  one cheese maker, one railroad  worker, and a general store  proprietor, I interviewed more  than 30 families.  And their stories and  observations and opinions are  largely about family, and  working and character and  community and the land.  And they crystallize for me the  essence of what I believe are  our core human values.  Integrity, commitment,  responsibility, kindness,  decency.  And their stories illustrate how  these values have given meaning  and purpose to their lives and  their communities. 

 And so I embarked on this work  to celebrate a rural community,  Arena township, a place where I  felt a shared sense of  responsibility for each other's  well-being had been in place for  about 150 years prior to my  presence.  And that relationships had  fostered trust and a social  compact that places a high value  on helping each other.  I wanted to pay tribute to folks  who lived on the land, farming.  I think it's a high calling,  worthy of our best and brightest  citizens, and I think as we move  into the 21st century, there's  somewhat of a reinvention or a  rediscovery of the value of  taking care of our place and the  land.  I look at all the interest in  local food and the support of  small farms.  So I think that land ethic is  tremendously important in our  culture, and when I started this  work I knew that I cared for the  folks, but I really didn't ever  expect how endearing the  relationships would be and their  stories would inspire me,  because in just such a  non-coveting way, they've lived  good lives.  And it's not been about hoarding  things and piling things up,  it's been about the richness of  the relationships and the  assistance they could give each  other, and I think we're all  blessed if we have an  opportunity to create such rich  lives.  So no one in our history has had  the same perspective as we do  now, and we won't again,  everything keeps changing.  We'll never have that virgin  soil in the sense of discovery  and technological simplicity, or  this great space that our  forebears had and we can't say,  "Oh, it was a great time, we  wish we could go back to all of  that," because we can't.  But I think we can extract their  wisdom, the wisdom of the past  and help it to help us  illuminate our future. 

 So with that, I'll do some  readings.  The book is organized around  various themes.  First, the land, then roots,  community, and character and  characters.  So I'll read a couple things  from each section, there's a  nice picture of a map of Arena,  all the old cheese factories and  the schools, one-room schools.  And of course many of the  stories revolve around those  local communities, the schools,  which were also neighborhoods  for the farm work, etc.  "I have pictures of my  grandfather up the valley with a  team of horses, and I'm  wondering what he must have been  thinking when he was tilling the  ground.  Oh, if the land could talk, tell  us what those before us thought,  what they were doing when they  were here.  The land has a calling for me.  When I drive back down the road  and I see the old Lloyd place,  the Demby place, the old Pope  farm, I start thinking about  when my dad and I used to go  thrashing with those families.  And a big part of the day was  dinner, when we went to their  house with the big crews, the  community around all that. 

 I think about all the teams of  horses that used to be out here,  and the fields had character.  We had saved a good oak tree  somewhere in the middle, could  have a picnic lunch.  We used to come down here, have  dinner under the oak tree in the  middle of that field, bring food  and sit there, and I think about  that.  It was nice and shady."  I have a lot of heart-wrenching  stories, but I also have a lot  of humorous ones.  So we'll kind of keep away from  some of the tragedy, because we  all know that tragedy exists in  everyone's lives, and one of the  interesting things to me was how  communities pulled each other  through those very difficult  times.  Ice storms, drought, etc.  "I remember when I first took  over the farm, I wanted badly to  put in a waterway, and I went to  the government, the US  department of agriculture, and I  wanted to see what they could do  to help me get a waterway put in  this farm to keep the soil from  eroding down the valley.  I found out there was  cost-sharing to get that  waterway in, but I didn't have  the money to cover my portion of  the cost, so I met a contractor  who wanted to do it for the  'black dirt,' he said.  It was in the way, that is, for  the topsoil that was next to the  waterway.  And I said to myself, there was  no black dirt that's in the way,  he just wants to take a whole  bunch of black dirt in return  for his labor. 

 And all of a sudden I put a stop  to it, I said, 'Jeepers  creepers, it took millions of  years to get the black dirt and  it's gonna stay right where it  is.'  All my life, my dad would  watch so we didn't have deep  dead furrows in the field, so  the water would start to run.  We'd always have hay in the  steep parts of the valley so it  didn't erode.  And I'm thinking about giving  the black dirt away?  Oh boy, all of a sudden it hit  me like a sledge, I said, 'No,  forget it.  That would be the dumbest thing  I could do.'  I left the trees in the valley  and the waterway could wait, a  couple years later, I had enough  money for my share of the  expense.  And we put the waterway in and  made a nicer farm out of this  old valley."  Again, this is the section  called "The Land," and so these  people were bound to this place  through their love of the land.  "You spend so much time, I'm  talking about when I was three  years old, I was working with  it, the soil, the land.  I'd given my life to it.  Many old timers want to die in  their own homes, 'cause they  were born there.  Worked their whole life there,  and they want to die there.  Our father had a spell in the  barn one morning. 

 He dropped down and called for  help.  My brother Tim and I got him on  his feet and took him back to  the house.  Mom said we should take him to  the hospital.  So we put clean clothes on him  while Mother backed the car out.  Then Tim and I walked Dad around  to the passenger side of the  car, and as we opened the door  for him to get in, he stopped  momentarily, and he put his  hands on the top of the door and  he just stood still, looking  around at the farmland.  I was watching him as he was  looking.  I suppose he thought this might  be the last time he would ever  see the farm.  I could see in his eyes he was  looking over the home he had  created, the land he had worked  most of his life.  We farm with care for the soil,  and the land we will take, and  we'll leave it better than when  we started, and that started  with our father.  He started making grass  waterways so the water ran off  the fields and didn't carry the  soil. 

 And I remember filling potholes,  eroded areas, in the waterways  when we first put them in, when  the seeding wasn't well  established.  We used to carry pails of dirt,  and fill those potholes by  shovel full, and then re-seed  the area.  We didn't own the land, I think  that's a bad term.  We're here briefly, and someone  else will, supposedly, own it  after us.  I can't get away from the land  and the people, it's the same to  me, the community spirit.  I can't get away from that."  Storytelling.  Del Bryant told me...  "My dad and his brother,  Uncle Jefferson Bryant, were  great storytellers.  Uncle Jeff loved to rock in a  rocking chair, as he told a  story, the chair would keep  sliding and sliding and he'd end  up across the room."  Helen Knight.  "Ufda. 

 We had a lot of hardships.  We were so poor we couldn't  hardly pay attention.  (laughter)  But we existed.  We sure had a lot of family  love, and a real good bonding.  When Bruce -- came through the  area, we lost 29 cows.  And we had our very first  hardship.  One of my brothers, Bud, got to  go along with my father when  they went with the landlord to  get the next set of cattle to  replace the ones we'd lost.  I was the oldest of nine  children, and I had to stay home  and help with the chores, to see  things got done.  Well, of course, I got kind of  pouty, I'd never been further  than ten miles from home, and I  said, 'Well, yeah, if you bring  me a tube of lipstick, I'll stay  home and help, you know.'  Never dreaming that, well, in  those days, there wasn't a dime  store so often along the way.  I got home that night after the  chores were all done, and hear  Dad come in and said, 'Here's  your lipstick, May.'  That was his nickname for me. 

 And it was a tube of that big, I  looked at it, and I said, 'I was  just hoping for one of the  little ones that you get free,  but here's one of those big  ones.'  And she called it 'Keranome  lipstick.'  Oh, my eyes went so wide and  my dad said, 'I paid a whole  dollar for that.'  And I cried.  Well, a dollar was a terrible  amount in that day, and some  people worked the whole day for  a dollar."  "Everybody knew everybody else.  Knew where they came from, knew  who each child belonged to.  Everybody neighbored.  That's the way it was.  New person moves in now, they  say they live in Arena.  When I was a kid, they lived in  Mounds Creek, Coon Rock, Blue  Ridge, Dover, Bawden, Ray  Hollow, Hogan, Pleasant Point,  McCutchen, Meadowvalle, Helena,  and Arena.  Now, they say Arena.  It's every little neighborhood  centered around a schoolhouse or  a cheese factory.  It's the community that I love  and the people that taught me  when I was a kid, most of them  are gone now. 

 When I was a little boy waking  up at the crack of dawn in the  summer, everything was quiet and  still.  I could lie in my bed and hear  Howard Linley, north of us, on  his little Ford tractor, down in  the pasture to bring the cows  home.  You could hear him as clear as a  bell.  You could hear the -- brothers'  chickens crackling, three  quarters of a mile away.  Roosters crowing, and Frank  Sheehan calling his pigs to feed  them, clear as a bell.  I remember the Bryants had two  farms along the town road and  dad Jeff would bring a team of  horses down to his son Donald's  farm, take the tractor home to  do field work, and once he got  caught up he'd bring the tractor  back and take the team of horses  home."  I'm gonna read a little bit  about the meals that everybody  enjoyed so much.  A pie apiece and goose for  dinner.  "Gibb and Ada -- had just gotten  married and my dad and Dale  Pope's dad, Vince, were going up  to where the crew was to shred  their corn for them, and Vince  and Dad said to Ada, just  pulling her leg, "If you don't  have a pie apiece and a goose  for dinner, we're gonna pull out  and won't finish shredding."  But the crew of ladies got us  back.  Ada was just a young lady, newly  married and she got worried to  death.  A pie apiece?  Well, the other mothers got  together and made everyone all a  pie, a little tiny pie. 

 But they did cook a big goose.  And Vince, the one that was  bragging, he got so sick he  couldn't even work with the crew  anyway to finish up the work."  "The day you know you're not a  kid anymore, I was the tail end  of those generations that  thrashed in the community  shredding bees.  The men that had the thrashers  and the shredders, they moved  from farm to farm, never made a  penny going round.  But at noon you were fed just as  good as royalty.  Because the ladies of the house  had such a glamorous array of  hams and chicken, roast beef,  potatoes, and pie.  It's unimaginable.  And those fellas looked forward  to that.  And that's why they did the  business, ate like kings all  summer.  When you were a kid, you were  given the odd jobs, run around  with the grease gun, go up in  the barn and throw some fodder  around.  There comes a time when the men  go to eat. 

 The head man, the engineer, so  to speak, he was considered the  king of the table.  And then when you're invited to  set at the main table, and  you're taken into the group, you  feel like a man.  I was twelve or thirteen years  old."  Alice Crooks, I interviewed her  when she was 92.  She said, "When you had the  thrashing and the silo filling  and the corn shredding bunch,  why, you fed the whole crew, and  that's for sure.  I usually had either a big pork  roast or beef roast, a lot of  vegetables, fresh bread, and I  made pie.  'Cause they thought I could make  pie good.  Always made pie, raisin and  apple, mostly raisin and apple.  I never changed that very much.  Once in a while, peach pie, if  it was in season.  But I had pie because they  expected  some pretty good meals."  Let's see. 

 Things go around, you know it's  kind of interesting how we're  back to where, as a culture,  we're really beginning to  appreciate fresh food and food  where we know how it was raised  and where it came from.  I think we all remember a time  when it was different.  I'll read you about "boughten  bread."  Boughten bread.  "Alice and Virgil Crook had  eleven kids, a bunch of them  around my age.  Eleven kids requires a lot of  room, a level of efficiency to  feed 'em all.  Well, I remember when the Crook  kids came to the Hogan school,  there was up to five of them at  any one time.  Joann, Eddy, Donna, Marie, and  Albert were there when I was.  Well anyway, Alice Crook had a  lot of kids to feed, and she'd  send her kids to school with  boughten bread once in a while.  Our ma always made our bread,  and every time we had our    sandwiches, why, they'd fall  apart.  But the Crook kids, with their  boughten bread from time to  time, that bread all stayed  together. 

 And we thought we were being  cheated."  Alice Crook replies, "Well,  even so, I baked a lot of bread  over the years, about three  times a week.  It's pretty hard to tell when  you've got a bunch of kids,  eleven of them."  And Paul said, "Well, I'm sure  you did bake bread, but from  time to time, there would be  some boughten bread that would  come to school, and we thought,  geez, they are way  ahead of us."  (laughter)  Now, Ted Saul was the only  centenarian I interviewed, and I  had known Ted for a very long  time, since the 70s, and I cared  deeply for Ted.  Ted passed away earlier this  year, he was 103 and eight  months.  I interviewed him between the  times when he was about 95 years  old, up to 100.  When I went to see him and this  book was done, and he was 103  and he was in assisted living, I  read him sections, and he sat on  the edge of his chair, and he'd  shake his head, and he'd get  wide-eyed and excited.  And I was so afraid he'd catch  an error, but he just said,  "Yes, that's right, that's  right."  So that made my day when Ted  Saul endorsed my interpretation  of his voice, so I'm gonna read  you something from Ted Saul,  just a classic individual.  He's gonna tell us now how he  came to Arena township.  He says, "I married a girl from  Chicago, Roma Rachel Rockcastle,  she's deceased in 1990.  But I married her in '31, and  I'll tell ya how I met her.  Highway 14 down here, before it  was cemented, was a quagmire. 

 And every spring cars would get  stuck and they'd have to be  pulled through the mud hole.  We'd have to put on four horses  because the mud would be pushed  up right against the axles.  Once we pulled a guy through  there and gee, I believe they  charged him pretty darn good  money, around 20 bucks or  something.  But a man named Jones said to my  brother, 'Well Sam, I think we  ought to go up and turn off some  of the water.'  As if we were doing it on  purpose.  Wouldn't make you too happy to  hear something like that.  Well anyway, this one man was  coming through from Chicago to  go to Rochester for a goiter  operation, and he came up to the  house to get our help to pull  him out of the mud.  Turns out we got talking and  enjoyed him, and he went back to  Chicago and told the Rockcastle  family what a wonderful farm we  had up here.  Well, they had three or four  daughters, and they came out  visiting and two of us brothers  married two of the sisters, just  because of that mud road.  Well, my wife Roma wouldn't come  out here until I had electricity  and plumbing in the house.  You know, for out in the  country, that was pretty darn  early to have electricity and  plumbing, 1931. 

 And would you believe, we were  married in May '31, and by  October I had the house --  wired, a well dug 20-foot deep  with the pump rigged up,  plumbing in, two wires from the  grist mill, the water wheel for  the grist mill served as our  generator.  Number four copper wire that's  darn near big as a lead pencil,  a thousand feet, 46 bucks.  I had 18 automobile batteries in  the cellar of the house for  reserve.  Excuse me.  Of course, Roma brought an  electric stove, and that would  pull the batteries down pretty  quick.  Her friends told her, you'll be  out there for two weeks.  We were married for pretty near  59 years, which wasn't too bad.  Before we were married, Roma  used to shop at Marshall Fields  on Michigan Avenue, and she had  lots of pairs of shoes.  Shortly after we were married  she gave the neighbor woman a  pair of her nice shoes.  And what do you suppose they  brought back?  They gave her half a hog with  the head on it. 

 Brought it in, laid it on the  kitchen table.  I bet it was a 200 pound hog,  but it was half a hog with the  head on it.  Imagine, a girl from the city.  But she took care of it, cut it  up, hogs at that time were only  two to three cents a pound.  Things were pretty terrible  then."  And then Ted says he had nine  children, and 24 grandchildren,  40 great-grandchildren, and five  great-great-grandchildren.  Ted Saul told me when I  interviewed him, he said, "I had  30 years of farming, 30 years in  the grist mill, and 30 years in  the woods and sawmill.  I just kind of enjoyed things."  Three working lifetimes,  amazing man.  Who remembers chivarees?  Yep, they were, had a lot of fun  talking about chivarees with  folks.  And who doesn't know what they  are?  I love your honesty, I love your  honesty.  Essentially, when these country  folk got married, the neighbors  got to throw a party on their  expense, basically, you could  interpret it. 

 Morvin Nelson told me that  "chivarees usually happen soon  after the wedding when you  thought they were home from the  honeymoon.  You'd made a heck of a noise,  anything that'd make a noise.  A shotgun, cowbells, or you'd  hit a buzz saw blade with a  hammer.  My favorite was the first thing  I could fine that would make  noise.  The best time was after you were  sure the bride and groom had  gone to bed.  I was chivareed by all the old  neighbors.  Everyone expected to get a treat  from the bride and groom."  Paul Swenson told me, "Some  places it'd be ice cream and  cake, some places it would be a  beer or something like that.  Ina Byrd told a story about  what they did to Paul Jones when  he got married.  He lived up on Blue Ridge there.  They hung dynamite in the tree,   next to the house, and when they  set it off, it blew out all the  windows on that side of the  house. 

 Dick Keen married a girl that  none of us knew, she was from  Arizona.  And she lived in Arizona before  they got married.  And we knew that if the phone  rang late at night, it was Dick  calling his girlfriend in  Arizona, so everybody would  listen in.  But when they got married, we  knew they were gonna go to  Dodgeville for a fish supper,  and then we were all sitting up  at -- near the Keens' trailer  house, and the women were over  at Doris Crook's.  So when the Keens passed the  Crooks' on the way home,  we got a call.  And one of our group crawled  under the trailer house with an  MA firecracker and set it off.  Got 'em up with a start.  When Judy and I got married, we  never got chivareed, but we had  a wonderful wedding party down  at White's tavern.  Sometime after that party, one  of the fellows that had been  there said to me, 'You know,  that was the best band I ever  heard at your wedding party.'  But we never had a band."  Richard Haman said, "I  remember we chivareed a neighbor  in the 40s, he did come out, he  gave us money rather than  treats, and when we divided it  up it was like 21 cents apiece,  so we took the money and went to  Chuck Robert's filling station  and general store.  But when you got chivareed, you  didn't get to invite your  friends. 

 It's just whoever comes, and so  at our chivaree we all went to  Lilac Gardens nearby, and I had  to buy until they wanted to  home.  When Harold Ziebarth got  married, he lived at the Anding  place, below where Dean Swenson  lives now.  We chivareed him and they  wouldn't come out.  We made all the noise and  everything.  Finally, someone went and  knocked on the door, to tell 'em  the terms of the deal.  And they wouldn't come out.  Now this was in late Autumn, and  they had a wood fire going.  So somebody climbed up, put a  board on the chimney, and we  smoked 'em out!"  (laughter)  We did touch a little bit on the  party lines here in that story,  so I'll follow up with one of  those good stories about the  party lines, and what it was  called when you listened in on  the party line, anybody remember  the name of that term?  Rubbernecking or rubbering.  So Alice Crook says, "Two rings,  a long and a short.  That was our telephone. 

 Pines was three short, Hogans  three longs, of course some  people rubbered.  I didn't have time to  rubberneck."  This is Alice Crook now, she's  got eleven kids.  Paul Swenson says, "I can tell  you the names of people who  rubbernecked every time the  phone rang."  And then Steve Harrington  says, "Mounds Creek used to have  a ladies', a mothers' club, and  one year during Lent they were  sitting at one of their meetings  in the Mounds Creek schoolhouse,  and it was told to me that one  of the ladies announced to the  crowd that she had given up  rubbering for Lent.  (laughter)  She thought that was  a true sacrifice."  And Alice Crook, again with  eleven kids, says, "It was worse  than TV.  The amount of time some folks  spent rubbering."  And Carol said, "A farmer  might have a difficult time  calving and call the vet for  emergency assistance, and  neighbors rubbernecking on the  party line would show up to help  before the vet could arrive."  (laughter)  And Warren Hoyter  told me, "One morning the phone  was jingling and Laurel grabbed  it.  A bull had a man down on the  Hickock's farm.  It wasn't only a few minutes,  there were about ten farmers  there with pitchforks and  everything.  He was hurt pretty bad, but they  got the bull away from him.  They didn't need to tell anybody  to come, you know how today if  you call 911 they need to ask a  bunch of questions, where you're  at, how do you think he is, in  those days, they'd just ring,  and everybody would head out."  Well, I probably have read  enough.  Some comments or anything in  here ring kind of true with  lives of folks here?  Yes, ma'am?  >> I was a telephone operator  back in those days. 

 (laughter)  And I knew everybody  and everybody's telephone number  and who called who, but I didn't  rubber.  >> Did they call you and say,  "Tell my dad to bring a loaf of  bread home for dinner?"  (laughter)  >> "I can't find my mother,  do you know where she is?"  (laughter)  >> Richard Cates: Oh wow,  that's so great, what  a great experience.  Where was that?  >> Grand Marie, Minnesota,  up on Lake Superior.  >> Richard Cates: Oh, you bet.  >> Was there a particular  ethnicity to these folks out in  Arena?  Where did they come from  originally?  >> Richard Cates: Yes, good  question, and I should have  mentioned it.  It was definitely northern  European, it wasn't, German was  very minimally represented, it  was principally English,  Norwegian.  I have a great conversation  about that, but I'm gonna have  trouble finding it, maybe.  So principally Irish, English,  Norwegian, would be the big  three, yeah.  So, and it's interesting to us,  because we think, well, they're  all the same, no wonder they all  got along.  But in reality, they were really  different background-ed people. 

 Some were Catholic, some were  not.  And they had these  long-standing, as we know it,  long-standing divisions in  Europe, and so they found a way,  I have a story in here that  talks about how the Irish would  stay with the Irish and the  Norwegians would stay, and the  English would stay with the  English, but then when it came  to thrashing or cutting corn or  silo filling, everybody came  together and kind of put their  differences aside.  Let's see here...  Here's a real moving one, again,  by Alice, Alice Crook, with  eleven children, and I guess  this sort of underscores that  non-coveting life that folks  lived, but yet had found  richness in relationships.  She said, "I had a reputation  for being a pretty good farmer  myself, and before we bought my  family's farm, Virgil and I  worked with his uncle Wilbur for  about five years, 1940 to '45,  and I told Wilbur that I was the  one who milked the cows by hand  at home.  Well, he went and hid the  milking machine.  Took it up in the attic and hid  it on us.  And I had to milk the cows by  hand again for a few days.  But when we got on the home  farm, I milked 23 cows myself,  but we had a machine then.  You didn't have to sit on the  little three-legged stool  anymore. 

 And I had a big chicken house  full of chickens and a lot of  eggs to sell, and we traded eggs  for groceries at the Royal Blue  store in Spring Green and Virgil  worked in Madison, so he  couldn't do the milking.  I didn't ask the kids, we had  eleven children.  I didn't ask them to help too  much in the morning 'cause I  just didn't want them to be late  for school.  And besides, the cows knew me,  and I knew them, and I just  milked them.  Well, I loved that place.  I just did.  I just loved it.  And I've loved my life.  My dad was the best old guy, my  mother was just a sweetheart,  and I think about it sometimes,  and I think, what a wonderful  life."  Yes?  >> You grew up on a farm  yourself?  >> Richard Cates: I started in  Madison.  My father was from a farm, and  when I was 15 he purchased this  farm where I'm on now. 

 In Spring Green.  Yeah.  >> You speak of horses.  Was there actually use of horses  in your lifetime?  >> Richard Cates: There were a  number of occasions where we  used horses as work animals, not  on our farm, but on neighbor's  farms and places where I worked.  We used saddle horses, as we had  large numbers of cattle at  various times in my life.  I still have friends, actually  some of them in Arena, who,  every year they have Arena Plow  Days, and it's in September,  October.  And they attract all the folks  that have a team of horses from  around, from a big radius.  So every year that's kind of a  big deal in our neighborhood.  >> (inaudible)  >> Richard Cates: Oh, I love  Ben's book.  I have a, I use a quote in the  beginning, beginning my chapter  on land because he had a big  influence on me. 

 In fact, I went to his farm just  a month ago, this spring, and he  had given, he had given a  conservation easement, yeah.  Yes, he just did that this  spring, didn't he?  So, yeah, Ben chose a different  life.  He spent his life, as you know,  probably know, in the city.  Yeah, a very long ways away, and  he wrote about the land because  he never really left it.  He says, "Once you have lived on  the land, you've been a partner  with its moods, secrets, and  seasons.  You cannot leave.  The living land remembers,  touching you in unguarded  moments, saying, 'I am here, you  are part of me.'"  And that had a great meaning  for me.  I care very deeply for him, and  he finally, I finally got to be  with him where he could sign a  copy of my "Land Remembers"  book, which I got when it first  came out many years ago.  >> Did people out there have a  lot of interaction with the most  famous citizen of that  neighborhood, Frank Lloyd  Wright?  >> Richard Cates: Yes.  Although, the relationships were  stronger in my township, town of  Wyoming, than they were in  Arena, but yes, there was very  much, Frank Lloyd Wright, as you  know, his legacy runs deep, it  meanders through really almost  every relationship out there,  and I purposely stayed away from  that, because it's very  complicated. 

 I'm hearing a laugh already.  He was a great American  architect, and not always the  nicest, best neighbor.  And so I have dear friends who  were raised in his family and  his school, and so I have the  greatest respect for him.  But yeah, the community is  divided over the Frank Lloyd  Wright legacy and the stories,  so I really tried to stay away  from that.  There's so much written on that,  that I felt I would be rehashing  old territory.  But good question.  Yes?  >> I'm impressed that a  15-year-old boy would take to  the land the way you did, about  the time you'd be more drawn to  the pleasures of the city.  (laughter)  It's kind of remarkable to me.  >> Richard Cates: Well, yeah, of  the four boys in my family I'm  the one who stuck with it.  One of my other brothers really  loves it. 

 But yeah, my dad loved it, and  he came from a farm background,  he wasn't a farmer.  Older folks in here probably  know my father, Richard Cates  the attorney, Lawton and Cates,  and so he was well-known in  Madison and Wisconsin, but he  never got the farm out of his  blood.  And so I guess part of what I  liked about it was working with  him.  Listening to him.  Which I think is one of the  great values of any kind of, any  kind of work where you can work  with the intergenerational.  But farming certainly allows  that.  Yeah?  >> (inaudible)  Does that bring a  different degree of authenticity  to what you write, versus maybe  what he's written as far as,  maybe re-creation of fleeting  memories?  >> Richard Cates: Yeah, yeah.  It's hard to know whether his  stories are accurate, or whether  they're his, the best he can  remember.  But boy, he's a great  storyteller, isn't he?  I think the essence is the  story, but yeah, in my case, I  had so much more material than I  used, and I tried to use what I  could believe, number one, and  number two, what I thought had  an essence of clarity in it.  >> Your father was an attorney?  How did he have time to farm,  then?  >> Richard Cates: He had four  boys. 

 I'm the oldest of the four.  I wouldn't say he farmed very  well.  I wouldn't, he did not farm very  well, and he would be the first  to admit that.  He loved physical work, he loved  being on the farm, but he was  not a very good farmer.  He hadn't honed his powers of  observation, and he kind of, he  did it because he enjoyed the  movement and kind of the history  of when he was a boy, being on  farms in Maine, his whole family  farmed.  But he would be, he would have  no problem with me saying he  wasn't very good, because in  fact, he'd say, "I stunk."  And ma'am, you had a question.  >> I want to make a comment.  The love of the land goes  generations deep.  History tells us that the  Europeans loved the land because  it was something that couldn't  be taken away from them,  because, over there, with  Napoleon and all that, they were  taking away everything of the  peasants and so forth, but they  had the land.  And it was the land that brought  them over here. 

 >> Richard Cates: Yes, yes.  And my father, I have a quote  from my father on that, he said,  "So one of the reasons democracy  worked in this country," in  America, "was the fact that so  many people came over here in  the first time in their lives,  or again in their lives, able to  own land, and they were able to  be in control of their own  lives."  So the point was that for some  folks in Europe, when the land  was taken from them, then  America opened up opportunity,  because in the 1860s, we had the  Homesteader Act, and those kinds  of land giveaways, if you will.  >> (inaudible)  >> Richard Cates: My wife  is there today.  Yeah, and by the way, I've been  to Craves' a number of times.  He's asking about, he's talking  about, every year Wisconsin has  a Farm Technology Days, and it  used to be called Farm Progress,  and it used to be called the  Plowing Days, and Conservation  Days, different names through  the ages, but the Craves are  four brother's who've built a  very large farm, but it's a  beautiful, beautiful place.  And they care so much for their  resources, and they've built  their own cheese factory, so  they're kind of going back to  the concept of adding value to  their commodity, and they're  just wonderful people.  Yes?  >> Did you interview anyone from  that early church in Wyoming  Valley, that little church that  was a farmer's church?  >> Richard Cates: Oh, and that  just sold, it just closed.  Yeah, that's the  Wyoming Valley... Methodist?  Methodist church, and I didn't.  The closest is Warren Hoyer,  Warren Hoyer is the only member  of the town of Wyoming that I  interviewed, and Warren went to  that church.  But on the small churches, I  have to read you this here. 

 That was an amazing place.  Church proceedings, here.  Okay, this is back, I thought  you were going to ask me about  the little church, St.  John the Baptist church in  Arena.  Steve Harrington says, "Our  little Catholic church, St.  John the Baptist," I've got a  picture of it, "There was one  thing in that little Catholic  church that was very awkward.  The confessional was only three  feet behind the last pew.  So before church on Sunday  mornings, if anyone had a real  hot sin, you could confess  before church started.  You tried to whisper, but the  priest would go, 'What?'  And so you had to speak  louder, and then the people in  the back rows would try to  listen.  And our dad, our dad Jack was in  the confessional, and they had  one of those 'trainee' priests. 

 So Harold Harrington, our dad's  cousin, heard the priest say,  incredulously, 'No!'  To which our dad's reply was,  'If you think that's bad, wait  till you hear the next one.'  (laughter)  Every family sat in  the same place, week after week,  you would come in and count on  it.  The Hogans would come in, go to  the front on the right-hand  side, Harold and Cathleen  Harrington would sit in the same  place, the Crooks on the  left-hand side, the John Roberts  family were on the right,  Petersons were behind us, Lloyds  on the left, Pailings in front,  everybody had their place."  Yes?  >> You mentioned the chivaree.  In the rural area of Michigan  where I grew up, they were known  as "hornings."  >> Richard Cates: Really?  >> Hornings.  (laughter)  >> (inaudible)  Has a nice European sound to it,  doesn't it?  >> Richard Cates: Well, that's  interesting, because the funny  thing about the word "chivaree"  is it's not spelled at all like  it sounds.  And I didn't know that.  So I kept asking people how you  spell it, nobody knew, so I  wrote "S-H-I-V-E-E-R-I-N-G."  Editor, none of my editors,  publisher, nobody changed it.  But it actually is "C-H"...  (audience spelling)  Yeah, it's quite different.  It's French, did I hear that,  it's French.  So I wonder where that...?  >> I have no idea how "horning"  is spelled, but I remember that. 

 >> Richard Cates: That's great.  >> (inaudible)  >> Richard Cates: That would be,  yeah, that sounds like  a German iteration.  Cool.  Well, I probably should, thank  you very much for being here.  (applause)