Wisconsin Public Television University Place  Limping Through Life: A Farm Boy's Polio Memoir  Jerry Apps  7/9/13 UP895  cc >> Welcome to University Place Presents. I'm Norman Gilliland. Look at a dime, and you'll see the image of Franklin D Roosevelt. And there's a reason he's on the dime. Roosevelt was a sufferer of polio. He got it as a young man, and, in 1938, when he was president, he founded what would become known as the March of Dimes, a nonprofit organization to combat polio. It was a disease that was ravaging the country in the early years of the 20th century with tens of thousands of sufferers. What was it like to suffer the ravages of polio, and what is it like today for those who suffered it and still live with the vestiges of the disease? My guest today has considerable insight into that. He is Jerry Apps, Wisconsin author and professor emeritus, and most recently the author of this book, Limping Through Life, his memoirs as a sufferer of polio while living on a Wisconsin farm. Welcome to University Place Presents. 

>> I'm pleased to be here. >> How did you come to write this book? You seem to have had some reluctance if you came to it only this late in life. >> It was a struggle, I tell you, because I vowed I would never tell anybody that I had polio. When I got it in 1947, people in our rural community, lots of young people had polio at the time, there was this feeling that if you had something wrong with you physically you also were mentally incompetent. So I vowed to hide this as long as I could. And even my wife didn't know that I had polio until probably, oh, eight or ten years ago I dropped a hint to Kate Thompson, my editor at the Historical Society Press, and Kate said, you should write a book about that, you should say more. I said, I'm not going to do that. That's something that I have successfully kept hidden all these years, and I want to continue to keep that under wraps. Well, she pressed me a couple more times, and I wrote the book. It was a difficult book to write because I did not especially want to go back to those days when I couldn't do anything. 

As a 12-year-old, 12-year-old boys are very active, I was very active, especially on the farm. You're expected to do the chores and help with the milking and do all those sorts of things. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't stand up, couldn't walk. My right leg was paralyzed for the better part of six months. >> Well, let's go back to 1947 and that farm near Wild Rose. >> West of Wild Rose, yes. >> And this active life that you were leading, had you heard of polio? >> Well, we could not miss it because it was ravaging our community, and, in Wisconsin, it was almost everywhere. Right after World War II, '45, it seemed like it just began to go like wildfire, '45, '46, '47, '48, on up to 1955. Fairs were shut down, community events were closed, Fourth of July celebrations were canceled. 

It was a fearful time because people did not know how it was transmitted at that time. And there were cases turning up all over the place, and people were dying. Our next door neighbor, half a mile away, a young fellow my age died. So it's pretty hard not to be aware of it. It was around. And we tried to keep going as best we could. There's work to do on the farm. We did not go anywhere anyway because we had cows to milk and all that sort of thing. But people did not gather. They were just scared to death. 

>> Did it tend to attack younger people? >> It did. >> We hear so much about infantile paralysis and some relatively young people. >> It did. Historically, it attacked boys more than girls. It attacked lower limbs more often than arms. It occasionally would attack babies, infants, and occasionally would attack people in their 20s and 30s, but most often it was those young, pre-adolescent years where it flourished, if that's the right word to use. >> Was anything known in 1947 about how people got polio? Here you're on a farm, you're an isolated situation, relatively small family, and nobody else in your family got it. >> That's right. And we did not, no one seemed to know how it was transmitted. I've since, in reading the history of polio, discovered that probably 75%-80% of the population were carriers at the time, and only 10% or 15% really came down with the disease. 

So it was very easy to contact it because, again, most people were carriers. >> Well, let's look a little bit at your life leading up to that fateful year of 1947, beginning with a shot of you on the farm there with your wheelbarrow. >> There I am. >> Every farmer should have one. >> Yeah, exactly. And every kid should have a teddy bear. In fact, I had two of them. One of them my mother made, and I don't know where I got the other one. I'm about three years old. Those are my handsome years, by the way. 

>> Some of us peak earlier than others. [LAUGHTER] And so in some ways, well it was hard work, but in some ways, I gather, it was kind of an idyllic life too. >> Well, I wouldn't call it idyllic, but it was a pleasant place to be, on the farm. My parents, my dad had a fifth grade education. My mother had a seventh grade education. Always farmers, and farm life in those days was 365 days a year. And my dad was a great psychologist. He had us believing that we should feel sorry for those poor city folk who had vacations. [LAUGHTER] He did. >> Could have been a salesman. 

>> Wild Rose was a tourist center. People would come and fish there, and he had us believing that it was just so awful that these poor folks didn't have enough work to keep them busy the entire year. This is the farmhouse that we're looking at. I was born in that house. The nearest hospital when I was born in 1934 was 45 miles away. So there was a midwife that lived a half a mile away. I was born in July. Didn't look like this snowy picture here. My twin brothers were born in the middle of winter. It's a big house. 

It looks like a wonderful house. It wasn't. Colder than all get out. It wasn't insulated. There were no storm windows. We heated the thing with wood stoves. We had no electricity. We had no indoor plumbing. But we didn't know any different. The whole neighborhood was that way. 

The back porch, nobody ever came in the front door in a farmhouse. We always came in the back door. And you can see the skis in the picture, and, as a 12-year-old, a lot of skiing, a lot of sledding. All of this before polio, of course. So you were asking what was I doing. >> Sure. >> So I had farm chores which were a regular part of all of us. My twin brothers are in this picture. Darrell on the left and Donald on the right. >> Three years younger? >> Yeah, they're three-and-a-half years younger. 

That 1936 Plymouth we had forever, until the 1950s. >> Well, farmers are famous for fixing. >> Exactly. >> Getting the last mile out of something. What about school. We'll get into that a little bit later. >> Well, the one-room country school was a mile away from our farm. This is kind of an aside, but I don't recall in the eight years I attended it was every closed for one day for a storm. >> No snow days? >> Well, there weren't any snow days because we all walked. The teacher lived right next door, so 35 below zero in a blizzard? You might as well go to school, you can't do anything else. 

>> That's one way of looking at it. >> So we went to school. This is our barn where we spent a lot of time milking cows. By hand, by the way, because we didn't have electricity. And I have both fond memories of that and not so fond. The fond memories: the warmest place on the farm on a 20 below zero day was in the barn snuggled up under a big old Holstein cow. [LAUGHTER] It's true. >> I can see that. >> When the fires went out about midnight, the house turned into a deep freeze. And this sounds so strange, but the teakettle would freeze on the stove. 

>> Is that right? If it's 10 or 20 below outside and you don't have insulation. >> Exactly. It's just colder than thunder inside. And my father was a very interesting fellow. He is one who would say that just because you have a lot of education doesn't mean that you know anything. He reminded people of that often. [LAUGHTER] >> Well, speaking of education, we'll take you up through what would today be called junior high school, seventh and eighth grade, and at the time you came down with polio, it's obviously going to put a crimp not just in your education but in you self-concept and certainly you social life such as it would be in school. >> In everything. I came down with polio in 1947. I was in eighth grade. 

We're looking at a picture of my teacher, Faith Jenks. She was such a wonderful person in that those weeks that I was at home, not able to go to school because I couldn't walk, when I was well enough to be out of bed, and that took a little while, she would bring my lessons to me every afternoon and talk to me about the previous lessons and if I had any questions. I'm in seventh grade in this picture. We had to pass a countywide eighth grade examination, a day long set of tests in order to be admitted to a high school. And those were gruesome tests. They covered everything from mathematics to social studies to history. >> Multiple choice? >> They were not multiple choice. >> You just had to come up with the answer. >> You had to write the answer. I almost flunked because of my handwriting. 

Nobody could read what I had to say. So it was, well, it was a difficult time, and Faith Jenks helped me through it and I passed my eighth grade exams. This little bull calf, Stormy, my 4-H project that year, helped me beyond belief in recovering. That little calf was as strong-minded as was I. We were both miserable, independent, ornery people. Well, a calf wasn't a person. And he would drag me around the yard, and I would try and drag him around the yard. And, well, we suffered together that summer as I was trying to teach him how to lead. >> How about your first experience with polio? The symptoms, the misdiagnosis. >> Yeah, the symptoms were very similar to a bad cold. 

>> Was this in the winter? >> This was in the winter, January 1947. I had been skiing, sledding all day at the country school, came home that afternoon, very, very tired. By suppertime I had a sore throat and a headache that wouldn't stop. And my mother said, well, it seems like you're coming down with a cold. It was not uncommon. Go to bed earlier tonight, tomorrow morning you'll feel better. The next morning was worse, and my right knee began to ache something fierce, and then it froze at a 45-degree angle. And it was that way for a long, long time. And for whatever reason we didn't have crutches or anything. When I was able to be up, which probably took three or four weeks or longer, I walked with a chair which is terrible. 

But back to the symptoms and what folks did about it. Farm people did not go to a doctor. You had to be near death to go to a doctor. That was not what we did. My dad was so proud to be able to treat the cows and the horses and the family with home remedies. And he said to my mother, well, just wait a couple days and he'll be better by Friday or Wednesday or whatever it was. And I wasn't. It was worse. So he took me town. They hauled me, carried me to the old 1936 Plymouth, took me town, took me into see Dr. Hadden. 

>> Into Wild Rose. >> Into Wild Rose. Wild Rose had a little hospital that started in 1941. A Chicago doctor had vacationed out there and he liked the area and he moved out there with his family and built this little hospital. And he took one look at me and said, I think you have polio. And I said, what does that mean? He said, well, you're so lucky. Yeah, lucky. I couldn't stand up. >> The new normal. >> Well, what he meant was that you're still alive because kids were dying left and right in those days. 

And when he said to my dad that Jerry has polio, my dad had a look on his face that I've never forgotten. It's a look, farm people understand this very well, it's a look that you have when one of your best cows dies. >> How did the doctor know that you were lucky; ie, how did he know that you weren't going to die? >> Because the ones that were most likely to die were the ones with bulbar polio where the virus, and it was indeed a virus, affected the respiratory system and prevented breathing. And these young people, and most of them were young people, were in iron lungs to try and keep them alive. >> These big, cumbersome devices. >> Oh, it's a great, big tube, metal tube, and most of them did die. And the hospital was filled, the halls were filled with these iron lungs. It was a terrible, can you imagine what it would have been like to be an MD during that time, and every day you're losing a kid or two and to face their parents. And with my paralysis, he was pretty much certain that it wasn't going to kill me, but his prognosis was that I'd never walk again. >> But as far as, obviously there's not a cure at this point or let alone prevention, but what about a course of treatment? >> His course of treatment was as simple as could be. 

Take him home, give him lots of fluids, and keep him warm. Come back in a month or so and we'll see how he's doing. [LAUGHTER] >> Well, easy to follow those rules. >> I don't know if people in Wild Rose had heard of physical therapy. He never mentioned it. And I don't think there was such an occupation, certainly not in Wild Rose. >> And how would that apply to polio, and in particular to your knee, which you said your right leg was frozen at a 45-degree angle? >> Yeah. >> Was it possible then to, would physical therapy worked for that? >> Physical therapy could have helped that because the disease does not affect the joint itself, the knee joint. It affects the muscles surrounding it. And with physical therapy, it would have been possible to at least get me walking again. 

Now, my dad had his own kind of physical therapy, as you will note from reading the book. I was an ornery, miserable, full of self-pity kid. >> So, what? He's just said, let's work through it? >> He put me on the tractor, and he said, your arms work, don't they? And I said, yes. >> You can see, can't you? >> He said, your head mostly works. I said, well, yes. And so, well, I couldn't, the tractor required the use of a brake to turn and this leg had to use the break and it couldn't. And after two weeks, it began to work the brake because if you didn't, you crashed into the fence, which I did once and destroyed a whole bunch of the fence. He also, every afternoon when we finished work in the field, he would rub the knee, it sounds so awful, with horse liniment because his thing was that horse liniment is good for everything. It's good for horses, it's good for cows, it's good for people. That's exactly what it needed, though. 

The tractor, physical therapy, using the brake, and rubbing every night with liniment. And by April I was able to stand up and I was learning how to walk again. >> Unassisted? >> Yeah. I was. In fact, I was walking to school again, a mile. And I said, I can't do that. I cannot walk a mile to school. He said, well, start out a little early. [LAUGHTER] >> So sympathetic. >> Not at all. 

I was so angry with him. Well, then, we're looking at a picture now of Wild Rose High School newspaper staff. And one of my teachers, he pointed me toward the typewriting class, and I said, I do not want to take typewriting. Typewriting is for girls. And it was in those days. And so here I am in this class, all girls, manual typewriters, LC Smith manual typewriters. >> Clunky. >> And the girls have all these long, slender fingers. I thought, this is impossible for me to do this. Except I had one thing going for me that I didn't realize. 

When we started taking the typewriting tests, of which there was one every week, I was noticing that I was smoking the girls. I was at 45 words per minute. They couldn't. Why was that? The pinky. They had no strength in their little finger. I was milking cows by hand. [LAUGHTER] This little finger was as strong as the rest, and so I was doing, A is a very important letter in writing. >> Yes, it comes up often. >> Nobody didn't know what to do with the semicolon in those days so that one didn't make much difference. >> Right. 

>> So, anyway, I soon was editing The Rose Bud, which was the name of the high school newspaper. And that's where I got started writing because I wrote all the editorials, I wrote most of the news articles. I could type. And I was having more fun. I did not know what plagiarism meant in those days. I borrowed stuff from Reader's Digest, from the farm journal, Successful Farming, Wisconsin Agriculture, put all of that in the high school newspaper. >> And all this time, by the time you're in high school, there's not physical vestige of the polio? >> A limp. I always had a limp. >> So how many people knew that you had polio? >> Not hardly anyone. The teacher who pushed me into typewriting knew because I couldn't play baseball. 

He was the coach also. My folks knew but most people did not know. >> So by the time you were in high school, you had a limp for some reason unexplained. Could be any number of possibilities if you work on a farm. >> Exactly. This same teacher that pushed me into typewriting, we're looking at a picture now of our public speaking, the forensics group, he encouraged me to do that. In those days you memorized stuff. >> Oh, yes. >> You remember that, how that worked? >> Oh, yeah. >> Well, Paul Wright said to me, you're not going to memorize any of this stuff, you are going to write original orations. 

I thought, I don't know how to do that. But that's what I did. It was wonderful. Another thing he did, he said to me one day, he said, we need somebody, I don't think we did, we need somebody to announce the basketball games. And so at age 14, I have a microphone and it's two points by Allen Walters. [LAUGHTER] >> And, at this point, you're obviously already, in one sense, very interested in agriculture. >> Sure. >> And agriculture reporting then becomes, or analysis, becomes a natural outgrowth of that. >> That's true. In fact, we're looking at a page from, I'm a keeper. 

I mostly work as a historian these days. But we're looking at a page, the actual speech that I wrote for that original oration, and I call it The Hole in Uncle Sam's Pocket. It's a story about soil conservation and why we are losing. It would be as applicable today as it was in 1946. >> This would have been, yeah, right. >> Or whenever I wrote it. >> The '40s were still very much, not just soil conservation or soil depletion, but farm depletion. >> Exactly. Exactly. >> You were also involved in theater? >> I had the lead in a play. 

I loved it. [LAUGHTER] >> A man of many parts. How did that come about? >> Because we didn't have enough students. [LAUGHTER] >> Okay. >> Well, it's true. It's true. The entire Wild Rose High School had 100 students, and my class, I think we had 16, something like that. And the play, we're looking at the cast of characters, if you add it all up, we needed somebody to take care of the curtains and somebody to fiddle with the lights and all that kind of stuff, we just were out of folks. [LAUGHTER] So it was, Apps, you've got a big mouth, you don't have anything else to do, why don't you be the lead. It was sort of like that. 

>> You know, if it works, it works. Getting in is the hard part. >> Yeah, it was fun. >> So you got all the way through high school having gone through these various experiences. >> This is my graduation picture. One of the most interesting things that happened, and I just couldn't believe it, in those days nobody paid, this sounds strange, but nobody paid any attention to grades. You tried to keep going and not flunk out. And one day the principal called me into his office, and he said, Jerry, I have news for you. Well, nobody wanted to go to the principal's office, and I thought I'd written an editorial that really ticked off somebody and he was going to chew me out for that but he didn't. He said, you have a scholarship to go to the University of Wisconsin in Madison if you choose to accept it. 

>> Should I ask how much? >> Well, you can because I went home and I said to my dad, I've got this offer to go to the University of Wisconsin with a scholarship, and he said, how much is that? And I said, it's $63.50. He hesitated for a moment, and he said that's a lot of money. It was. You'd better do down to Madison, and this sounds so strange, you just might learn something down there. Meaning I'll learn something in agriculture that I could bring back to the farm. >> Right. Very unusual, though, for a Wild Rose graduate, 1951, to go to college. >> I was the only one in my class to go to college. We just didn't do that. We're looking at Rennebohm. 

>> Popular hangout. >> Where I would eat breakfast once in a while. We absolutely had no money for me to go to college. We'd lost our entire dairy herd to brucellosis. >> Oh, that's rough. >> The year previous. And we had nothing. So the whole family pitched in. We grew an extra acre of cucumbers and we had more string beans, that's cash crops in that area. So I'm down here at the university just completely lost. 

We didn't have enough money for me to stay in a dorm, so my mother came down here with me, my dad would never come to Madison. >> Really? Why would that be? >> He hates the city. >> The big city. >> He doesn't like cities. Never did. Anyway, my mother, we looked for a place, the most inexpensive place I could stay, and we found a room on North Orchard Street for $5 a week. And my mother said, now, is that firm? [LAUGHTER] >> Even in 1951 that sounds like a pretty good deal. >> It was a good deal. About the best we could do. And it had an outlet so that I prepared most of my meals in my room. 

>> The old hotplate kind of thing. >> Yeah. And as soon as it got cold, I could keep things between the storm window. A great thing to have a storm window. I didn't know what a storm window was. Storm window and a regular kept milk, a quart of milk and some orange juice. Those were tough times. >> Now, what are your brothers doing at this point? >> Well, interestingly enough, my brother Darrell has a PhD as well in horticulture, and he just moved back to Wild Rose from 40 years on the east coast being a professor at one time and doing plant breeding at another time. His twin brother, just the opposite interest. Was and still is a barber. 

>> Oh, really? >> Yeah. >> So, other than you, no farmers out of the family? >> No. Although, we are all farming. I still have a farm. I'm still farming. >> Right. And my brother, the barber, he still farms. Now, albeit, not for making any money but just to do it. >> There seems to be a lot of that too. >> Yeah. 

>> This is probably the building more than any other associated with the University of Wisconsin Madison. >> We're looking at Bascom. And I have, coming from a high school with a hundred students, and I think the student population was 13,000-14,000 then. It had gone down a little bit because right after the war, '45, '46, '47, there's a horrendous boost in GI bill students that were here. And there were a few of those still here at the time. But '51, it had gone down some. We still had a lot of the temporary buildings around. And they stayed around for a very long time. But it was a great experience to come to a university. I was just overwhelmed with it all. 

And this is Agriculture Hall. People ask me, how long did you spend at the university? My quick answer is, well, I came to the university in 1951, I left in 1994. And they look at me and they say I'm a very slow learner. [LAUGHTER] But this is Ag Hall. I had an office in that building for 25 years. >> University of Wisconsin, actually in a way you were well located because University of Wisconsin had this progressive idea about agriculture. >> It was a wonderful, wonderful time to be at the university. We're looking at a picture of, I think that's my tuition for the second, $75 for my sophomore year. I don't know why I kept that, but I did. >> Well, it has a certain charm today, doesn't it? >> It does. 

>> The picture's changed a little bit there. And now, like, I gather, a lot of students at federal grant universities, you were involved in ROTC. >> Yeah. Land-grant universities required, in those days everybody took a mandatory two years of ROTC. >> Into the '60s in some places. >> Unless you had some physical problem, which I did and I never told anybody. >> Yeah. So you were in an interesting position there. A lot of people, a lot of men would just as soon have skipped ROTC for one reason or another. >> But not then. 

That was Korea. The Korean War. >> Right. >> It was never called that. It started in June of 1950. And it was still raging until, I think, '53 is when there was an armistice or everybody stopped anyway. >> Yeah. >> And this is a very common scene that we're looking at because we had many parades, and there were literally hundreds of us in ROTC in those days. >> Yeah, virtually the whole class, the whole male class. >> Then I continued on for two more years and became a second lieutenant, and then I stayed in the military for 10 years, which is unheard of. 

I didn't need to. I was eventually a captain in the army. >> We'll get a couple of those images too. >> But I was still limping. [LAUGHTER] I was still limping. We're looking at Music Hall. One of my wonderful jobs I had. Fifty cents an hour. I was in charge of the practice rooms for the music students. Just across this Park Street from Music Hall was a big old apartment building that you probably remember that as a big practice building. 

And ST Burns was the chair of the music department, and he said we'll hire you, I don't know why he did, later I found out, we'll hire you if you will take care of the practice rooms, I'll say in a moment about that, but you also have to set up the orchestra. I didn't know the difference between a bassoon from a mouth organ. [LAUGHTER] He said, somebody will show you. It was a wonderful education. So I set up the orchestra at least once a week. All the chairs and the music stands and all that stuff. And then I was in charge of smoking and smooching at the Music Hall. And what does that mean? >> Yeah, what does that mean? >> What does that mean? They had a very strict rule: no smoking in this building. So I would, once an hour, students could practice for an hour, I would walk the halls, there were three floors, and I'd smell by each door. I smell smoke, tap on the door, put out the cigarette. 

[LAUGHTER] Or I would listen carefully. If there was no noise... >> That was bad too. >> That was awful. I'd knock on the door and I would remind the young couple there that they would supposed to be practicing something different than what they are practicing. >> Did that happen fairly often? >> More often than you would want to know. But I never busted anybody. I told them just cut that out now or you're going to get in trouble. So I had the tremendous support of all these music students, and I just had a wonderful time sitting under the stairway in that hold hall with a piano. They weren't soundproof. 

A piano in this room, a violin, a vocalist in another. It just was the darnedest sound, and I learned how to tune all that stuff out. This is when I'm in the army. >> Yeah. >> That picture. >> Now, how did you pass the physical? You got this limp from polio, how did you pass? >> In those days, if you could stand up. [LAUGHTER] This is a little, I did flunk the Air Force test. I thought what fun it would be to be a jet jockey, a jet pilot. That would be really fun. But I flunked the eye test. 

These things I didn't know I needed them at the time, but I found out then. But the transportation corps, they were very pleased to have me, and that's a good place to be. If you've got a gimpy leg, you want to be in the transportation corps because you get to ride. >> You don't have to... >> You really do. You're on a truck or on a bus or something or another. I ended up graduating with honors. Can you believe it? >> Yeah. [LAUGHTER] >> That's my graduation picture. >> So, did your parents comes down for graduation? >> Well, they did not. 

There were three ceremonies. There was an honors ceremony, and my parents could not come for that because they had chores to do. There was a commissioning ceremony where we were commissioned as second lieutenants. >> Sure. >> And then there was graduation, and they did make it to graduation. That's one of the few times my dad ever got to Madison. >> And particularly influential people at UW Madison? >> There were a lot of influential people. People were bending over backwards to help me. ST Burns in the music school bent over backwards. He had no business hiring a stupid farm kid who didn't know a bassoon from a violin but he did. 

And he saw something, well, I mentioned before why he did. He did because I worked there every night, every day, Saturday, every Sunday. I had no social life because I had no money. So I worked 40 hours a week at $.50 an hour, and I saved enough money by the time I was a senior I bought a car. >> Oh, really? >> Three hundred dollars for my first car. >> What did you get? >> A 1949 Ford, V8. Wonderful car. Drove it to Yellowstone Park one time. Fifty miles an hour, after that everything shook. I couldn't drive it any faster. 

>> Don't press you luck. [LAUGHTER] Now, this is Robert Gard, isn't it? >> Bob Gard. Bob Gard, for whatever reason, was another one of those people who took me under his wing and said, I had begun writing weekly columns when I was in graduate school working on my PhD. I was so bored writing a dissertation that I started writing short stories and weekly columns. And Bob helped me turn out my very first book which was published in 1970 by Wisconsin House, a little publishing company that he organized. >> And so by the time you get out of the military, and that I gather was a positive experience for you. >> It was. It was. I stayed in too long, according to my wife, because Vietnam was just cranking up. I was a captain. 

The army said, Jerry, you stay in one more year and you'll be a major. One more year and I'd been in Vietnam. And so I resigned my commission after 10 years. I was hoping to stay 20 and get some retirement out of it. But it was okay. I got to see a lot. I never got out of the United States, but I got to see a lot of this country. >> And how did you make that transition from 10 years in the military back to civilian life. >> This was in reserve. I wasn't on active duty. 

I was two weeks in the summer. >> Gradual withdrawal >> Exactly. It was easy to leave it. Sure. >> And so at what point did you get back into farming? >> Well, in 1966 we bought our farm. In fact, my dad bought it. It's a very interesting story. He was at the courthouse in Wautoma. His cousin was a clerk, and his cousin said, Herman, you need another farm. My dad said, he was 65 then, I don't need another farm. 

He said, you can have this farm for back taxes, it's your neighbor that's gone bankrupt. And so my dad bought this hundred acres for $15 an acre. >> How do farmers feel about that? In effect, you're benefiting from the misfortune of a neighbor. >> I think most people thought that that's a good thing that somebody is back on that land. >> The neighbor wasn't going to get it anyway. >> No. They had just come on bad luck. Their house had burned. It was a very poor old farm. They never had electricity ever on their farm, and they always farmed with horses. 

It was a poor old farm. My dad then sold it to my two brothers and me. So I paid thirty-three and a third cents for my farm. This was in 1966. >> And so were you thinking then of full-time farm work? >> No, I knew better than that. I was a professor in the College of Ag at that time, and, in fact, that farm was, this sounds corny and other people have said it, but that was really my psychologist because during that time we were having all of the disruption on the campus with Civil Rights and Vietnam protests. I was teargassed twice in my office in one day. And to escape to my farm, and I was a part of that in my own quiet little way, which is another story, but I enjoyed retreating with, we had little kids at the time. We stayed in a ratty old tent because the house had burned of course, and we escaped to the farm regularly during those mid-'60s. It was a quiet place. 

A very nice place for the kids to be away from all of the hoopty-do in Madison. >> There was another controversy going on, at UW in particular, as we get into the late '60s, early '70s. That's the whole Silent Spring/DDT controversy. >> Yes. >> How did you experience that? >> The first job that I had, the first five years of my career with the College of Ag was as a county extension agent. I worked in Green Lake County starting in 1957, and then I moved to Green Bay in 1960 where I was a livestock agent for two and a half years. It was at that time that Silent Spring, Rachel Carson's book, came out. And we, this is a terrible thing to say about my university and the College of Ag, but at that time, we received talking points, and that's what they called them, how to refute Rachel Carson's research. >> Wow. >> And I said to the person here in Madison, whose name I will not repeat, that I'm not going to do that because she happens to be right. 

I was very active with the Audubon Society in Green Bay at the time, and one day when they were spraying elm trees for Dutch elm disease in Green Bay one of my Audubon friends came in with a quarter basket full of dead robins and she said, this is what your university is doing. It was a very contentious time. Finally people got straightened out, with the help of Gaylord Nelson and others, to realize that we did have a terrible problem with DDT and we continue. I still write about those things, in my novels especially, where I can do that without getting into more trouble than I am most of the time. >> Let's take you back full circle for just a minute. >> This is my country school, by the way. >> Seventh grade, Chain of Lakes School. >> There we are. That's a wonderful picture. There we all are. 

And in that picture, people say kids that go to these country schools, they are going to be a bunch of social misfits. They're never going to amount to anything. There were three PhDs in that room. >> Oh, is that right? [LAUGHTER] Well, future PhDs. >> Isn't that something? >> Yeah. That is. So, was this not the one-room schoolhouse experience but something not far removed from it in terms of people's various abilities all mixed in together? >> Well, Maxine Thompson was the teacher then, you see in the front of the room, but we had, in our community, and I didn't realize it at the time, my PhD minor is in rural sociology, I did not realize that I grew up with such a diverse sociology in our neighborhood because we had Germans, Norwegians, we had Poles, we had Bohemian people, we had Catholics, we had Lutherans, we had Methodists and Baptists, and we had a whole bunch of nothing, and we all got along beautifully. It was such a wonderful experience. And we teased each other no end. The Catholics were teased. 

They teased us back. But we all got along, and we had to because that is what community meant and that, in a country school, was a microcosm of the rural community in those days. Here we've got kids, first grade through eighth grade, all getting along. Sure we had bullies. We took care of our bully problem. >> That sounds ominous. >> It does. I'll share. Earlier I probably wouldn't have. But we had this bully, and I was in probably second grade, he took my cap. 

And he was probably in fifth grade. And you don't take a cap. It was the only cap I had. I loved my cap. And we were hauling wood into the house, and I picked up a kindling wood and whopped him over the head and he fell down in a heap. He never troubled me again. [LAUGHTER] >> Simple solution. >> But let's not go there. >> We won't use that as a recommendation. [LAUGHTER] >> Here I am walking on my farm. 

That's where this picture is about. It's a tree farm. I have 120 acres now. I bought the adjacent property a few years ago. And I have a wonderful time. I was there most of this past week. We've got a small logging project coming up, and I've got to oversee that a bit. I have about an 8- to 10-acre prairie that I'm restoring, trying to bring it back to what it was in 1867. >> That's fun, isn't it. >> When it was first settled. 

So I'm dealing with Indian grass and big bluestem and little bluestem and all the wildflowers that were around in those days. >> It will grow up to six feet tall. >> I've been doing this, '66 to now is a long time, but my whole thing is to give nature an opportunity and it's going to do some marvelous things. Just stay out of the way, help it a little bit, I could keep the brush out, but these seeds are in the ground in my farm and every year I see some new grass, some new wildflowers. >> So did you actually do plantings? >> No, I never planted a thing. >> Oh, you didn't plant anything. >> That's my point. >> You just got the stuff out of the way. >> Exactly. I never planted a thing. 

It takes a lot of patience. It takes good health. It takes a long time for it to happen, but it happens. You don't need to go in there and kill everything with RoundUp and dig it all up and replant something or another. You can and I'm not really opposed to people doing that because you'll see results a lot more quickly, but I'm surprised every year to something new is happening. It's amazing. >> Well, Jerry Apps, it's been a pleasure. >> Well, I've enjoyed every minute of it. >> Thank you for sharing your experiences with us. The name of the book is Limping Through Life. 

It's a farm boy's polio memoir. It's the work of Jerry Apps, Wisconsin writer and professor emeritus and my guest today. I'm Norman Gilliland, and I hope you'll join me next time around for University Place Presents.