Iowa in a time ago

Spring is but a few weeks away. I keep waiting for the warm, warm days of the desert. A blog by a friend and fellow writer stirred my memories of spring in Iowa. Here is one more blog about my Iowa days.

Every year Papa and Mama would make a trip into town to order corn, wheat, and oat seeds for planting. They would also go to the “nursery” part and order two hundred or more baby chickens. Every little town in our rural community had the feed stores. One little town near the last farm we lived on had a population of forty, but they had a feed store. Of course, it also had a working blacksmith. The other business was the trucking firm.

Some of these stores were called Nursery, but those were usually in larger communities as they were the ones that incubated the eggs and culled the baby chicks for sex. A certain percent of the roosters would be destroyed. It was hens the farmers wanted, not roosters at least not more than one or two. The nurseries like the feed stores, would stock seeds, hog, chicken, and other livestock food, and a smattering of farm tools.

Then the telephone spread throughout the countryside. The farmer could sit at home, work out his order and call it in. He would receive a call back about cost and delivery and then go in and pay the bill or send his check. This eliminated wasted time from the fields and the store usually needed one less clerk. Farms gradually diminished in number as the land holders became larger and specialized. Instead of three farmers from either side of a mile of road calling in, it would be one. Wives went to work in town rather than garden or tend chickens. The need for the old fashion center of ordering and socializing became less and less. These stores evolved into places that carried hay and developed a connection with a veterinary. Most of the stores just disappeared. Technology had struck a blow, but it went unnoticed.

The feed stores were still in existence when my brothers with their wives and my daughter and I visited our retired parents in 1976. They had sold their small farm to a larger farmer and bought a small home in a nearby town. Relatives and friends kept dropping by for a visit.

One day a woman of about forty-five came to visit my parents and brothers. Her family had been neighbors thirty years before. She had returned from California and was complaining about how she always hated chickens. She used about twenty minutes recounting horror tales of caring for chickens that could develop a disease, acquire fleas, escape from the pen, etc. She then told how she still ordered two hundred chickens every spring.

My uncle looked at her, and I saw the corner of his mouth twitching. “You hate chickens that much?”

“Yes,” and she shuddered. “They are such nasty creatures.”

“I don’t believe you,” said my uncle and started to laugh.

She sat there a minute. “You know, you’re right, but they do make a great story.”