Songs of My Father, As He Spoke

A conversation with
Charles Russell Hoffer (1892–1977)
on his 84th, and last, birthday, October 17, 1976

On Birthdays

Well, the first one that I can remember about birthdays
Was that I was 12 years old and my mother and I had been
out milking the cows. And we were carrying the milk
up to the granary there where they had a separator.
And she said, “Do you know what day this is?”
I said, “No, I don’t know what it is.”
“Well,” she said, “this is your birthday.”
And that was that.

On Butchering Hogs

Then you see you’d have to take care of the meat,
dress them, hang them up. Then you have to cut them.
And you cut them up into hams, bacon, and there’s a
certain amount of meat that goes into sausage.
You’d usually make the sausage at night.
Kind of a semi party, you know.

A Day With a Cart

Once, for a while, for some reason
I had a cart. You know what a cart is?
A two-wheeled thing with a seat on it.
And somehow you didn’t have anything for your feet
And I couldn’t put my books anywhere.
So I, one Sunday afternoon, I got busy
and thought I’d nail some burlap
there and make a kind of a basket on the cart.
And I got that nailed and I thought,
“Well, I’ll get in there and see how it is.”
I had the shafts that go by the horse, I had
them up on a wagon about the same height.
And I came and got in there and sat down
And, UP! went the shafts!

On Automobiles

I know I can remember the first car I ever saw.
And the first one that went by our house.
And the first one we ever got.
It was a 1912 Flanders car, made by Studebaker.
And then the Model T Ford came out.
There’s all kinds of jokes about the Ford.
A kind of dirty joke in a way, but the radiators used to leak,
And if you’d drive a Ford car up to stop it,
maybe there’d be some water there, you know.
So the joke got around, “Well, the little fellows
don’t know any better than that.”

On The Future

Somewhere about the time I was in sixth grade
at the one-room public school one mile west of our home,
the idea emerged in my mind
that it would be advantageous to go to the
Agricultural College at Purdue University.
I am unable to locate the sources of this desire.
When I got to considering occupations
I was a senior in high school or something.
There were three things that played in my mind.
One was farming, I liked that.
The second was school teaching.
Third was the ministry.
But the ministry didn’t quite pull enough.
So that left teaching, school teaching.

On Heating the Farmhouse
The winters were really bad
and we didn’t have anything like automatic heat.
The most they could get would be a hard coal burner.
And then you could get hard coal or soft coal.
Hard coal burners were covered on the outside
with what you used to call isinglass,
something you could see through.
It would look like there was a nice big fire there.
But what we had for heat mostly was wood.
I’d go to school on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday
and on Saturday you cut wood.
I could be so dead tired Saturday night from cutting wood.
You know, enough to last for the week, for the stove, kitchen.
Has to be pretty good. Sticks that would go into the stove.
Many a time when you’re going to cook a meal
you’d have to start the fire.
That’s the only way you’re going to get it.
Start it with corn cobs.

On Farm Horses
When they got too old or you didn’t want them,
you’d sell them and get something else.
Or there would be some colts coming along.
When my grandparents were on a farm they had a sale –
they were going to move into Plymouth
and they had two colts up for sale, for auction.
And my father bid 25 dollars apiece and he got them.
Nobody else put a bid in.
Well we had those, they grew up. One of them we kept,
was a very, very dependable horse.
He got to be almost a member of the family.
I don’t know how long we had him.
A long time. And – good horse.
We used to drive him to school and things like that.

On Storing Food
Well, you could bury potatoes.
You’d put them into a pile, put straw or hay on them
and cover them with dirt.
At least six inches or so.
So it wouldn’t freeze through.
If it got so you had to have some potatoes,
sometimes you’d dig a little hole
and stuff it back up after you got your potatoes.
And I guess you could bury cabbage, too.
We never did that.
The main thing you had in those days to provide
something resembling fresh vegetables
would be sauerkraut.
And we used to make a barrel of sauerkraut.
That’s just cut up cabbage with a lot of salt in it.
I guess it just keeps.
But the great thing is, you got along.

On Courtship and Marriage

I think what was the biggest year in my life,
I didn’t realize it then, was 1925.
Because then I was able to finish up the degree,*
the thesis, took the examination,
was awarded the degree.
And also the previous summer I’d met Luella.
And then soon after that, about that same time,
I got the offer to come to Michigan State.
The day I got the letter I was in Windom
where Luella was a county nurse.
Southern part of the state. *PhD. Univ. Minnesota
And we decided to, to, ah, become engaged.
And so you see all that happened in about six months.
I didn’t realize it then,
But it sure was going high, wide and handsome!
Of course it was the culmination of a lot of things.
First I wanted someone that had farm experience.
And I wanted somebody who could
make up their mind and know why they made it up.
I’d had some experience with one young lady
that couldn’t do that. Never did make up her mind.
And then I wanted somebody who had an orientation towards science.
Like a nurse would have.
And I didn’t want somebody who was off
on a flight of something or other, you know.
And then I was also interested in
somebody who had an interest in homemaking.
She filled the bill! So what the heck!
I didn’t figure all that out at the time.
I said. “Well now I can think about
maybe taking on the responsibility of a home.”
I never was quite ready to do that before,
before I finished the degree.
I’d seen too many fellows who were
married with family responsibilities
who were trying to get degrees.
And one fellow told me in Minnesota,
who was married and trying to get a degree.
He said, “Believe me, under those circumstances
you sweat blood when you get your degree.”

On Researching the Medical Needs of Michigan Farm Families, House to House

I went to one place and wanted to get something to eat.
It was noon and I was three or four miles out of town.
And this woman, I said, could I get something to eat.
I wanted to interview the man.
He was out in the field
and he’d be coming up pretty soon for lunch.
“No” she said, I couldn’t do that.
We don’t have very much. Just for us.”
So I said, “I’ll go down to the next house and then I’ll come back.”
I went to the next house and there was a
youngish type woman there
and I told her I wanted to see if I could get something to eat.
She said “I don’t have any bread.
I’ve got some dough here. I could fry it for you.”
“Well,” I said, “If you can fry it, I can eat it.”
And I got enough to get along.
And I went back to the first house.
And I went in and they were at the table.
There was enough there for four people.
So I got started with my questions,
you know, how much land they had,
this, that and the other thing.
Pretty soon I looked up, and she was
just red in the face and as mad as could be.
She said,” You know that isn’t right,
I’m going to have money for the time
I paid while I was away . . . ”
I said, “I don’t care anything about that.”
The husband said “No. He doesn’t care about that.”
I figured out that they’d had
some domestic difficulties.
She’d left, and she couldn’t get a settlement,
So she had to come back.
Just think of living in a hell like that!
Gosh!