City boys on the farm

Living in Evansville didn’t offer me much to do in the summer except chores like putting in screens, painting the fence or cutting the lawn. My Aunt Mad was a close friend of Anna Julian, she and her husband Percy the famous chemist had a farm in Greencastle, In. So one summer, they invited me along with two other boys to spend some time on their farm. I was to stay at the farm for about 3 weeks and then go up to Maywood, Il so I could experience Chicago.
The Julian’s farm was mostly a retreat for him though he had “Mr. Jim” his "walk around man" who farmed some of the land and grew a garden for him
All of us were city boys, Charles was from Maywood and Leonard was from Glencoe.
Charles and I immediately hit it off, but Leonard was a prick, very spoiled and obnoxious. So we pretty much excluded him from every thing. We all arrived on a Friday and Dr Julian made a list of chores for us to do for the week. He would go back to Maywood on Sunday night returning every weekend.
The house was built like a log cabin and we boys were in a loft and at night Leonard would ask Mrs Julian to make him a glass of hot milk so he could sleep. You can imagine how that went over with us who thought he was a sissy.
One of our chores was to cut the lawn and he would seldom finish his portion making us have to get it done.
They had a cook and she showed us how to wring a chicken’s neck which we took delight in doing. Leonard was scared of the chicken and ended up strangling we ended up fighting with me trying to grab it from him.
The farm was situated on some beautiful land and one of the things Charles and I wanted to do was ride a horse around the farm. There were three old horses that kind of stayed in a pasture but had no real function.
One day Charles and I put a halter on one of them and bareback we rode him out to the woods. While trying to make him go down a ravine and he kept shying and fell. Luckily he didn’t crush us. He lay there so we ran to get Mr .Jim. He came and saw that the horses’ leg was broken and asked what had we done, we told him that he wouldn’t go down the slope. He said “damn he’s blind in his right eye “. So he had to call the Vet who put him down. When Dr Julian came on the weekend we were in deep trouble. He laid down the law to us, Leonard grinning at our punishment since he was not a party to the accident. “ GodDamn it, no more messing with the horses, they’re old and you boys stay away from the other two”.
He left Sunday for Chicago, giving us his list of chores. One was to sweep out the barn. While out there we found a machine that you put ears of corn through and it would shuck the kernels. It was so neat to do, we filled a wash tub full of kernels. Thinking that a horse, that was in the barn wanted some, we dragged the tub into his stall. He ate the whole tub full of corn and the next day his stomach was hanging almost to the ground. Mr Jim had to call the Vet and he said the horse had “bloat” and after doing something with a hose in the horse rectum that didn't work he put the horse down.
When Dr Julian came that weekend he was livid and I believe if we had been his kids and his wife hadn’t been there we would have been put down too.
We had one more week to stay and things were pretty uneventful but we still hadn’t ridden a horse. So Charles and I prevailed on Mr. Jim to let us ride the remaining horse who was actually an old work horse who had pulled wagons. We were to ride him slowly across the pasture and back. We mounted up and after walking him out a ways shouted “ YAHOO ” and slapped him on his butt. He ran about three steps and started foaming from the nose and mouth then pitched forward and dropped dead.
When Dr Julian returned for that weekend there was only silence in the house even Mrs Julian didn’t dare say a word. I was ready to go home not on to Chicago for another week.
Dr Julian was a man of precision and habit and when he came to the farm he brought a brief case filled with work and when he would leave he always put the briefcase beside his left leg in the car.
We were all packed to leave at about 5 pm and his routine was to drive to Kentland, IN about 2hours away have dinner at the Greyhound bus station then proceed to Chicago. He hadn’t said a word to us boys but that night we had heard him cussing to his wife something fierce.
We zoomed off, he had a big black Packard, with us lined up on the back seat like the see no, hear no, speak no evil monkeys saying NOTHING. He flew down the highway at 80 miles an hour reaching Kentland about a 2 hr drive in no time. As we all piled out of the car, he said “ Anna where is my briefcase?” she replied “Percy you ALWAYS put it in the car yourself”. He had forgotten the briefcase and he was livid and yelled “GOD DAMN IT, GET BACK IN THE CAR” We took off back to Greencastle being driven even faster. Once he retrieved it we sped back, flying past Kentland having wasted about 5 hrs.
Now here is where this get’s good. No one has had a rest stop from Greencastle to Kentland back to Greencastle pass Kentland on to Chicago. So on this race towards Chicago we smell a terrible odor and it’s coming from Leonard. He had been afraid to tell Dr Julian he had to go and had shit his pants. So Dr Julian pulled over, made him throw away his drawers wipe with some weeds and we had to ride with him all the way to Chicago with the window rolled down. It’s a good thing it was summer. Guess what? Later in life, Dr Percy Julian wrote letters of recommendation for me when I applied to medical school. I guess I turned into something of value he could attest to.
My stay in Maywood had some interesting twists that Charles and I experienced; more of that a little later.