An American Dream: The autobiography of Dr. Neil E. Harl

By Dr. Neil E. Harl

Rising from humble beginnings, the life of Neil Harl shows that with hard work and perseverance anything is possible.

About the Author
Dr. Neil E. Harl is a Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor in Agriculture and Life Sciences and Emeritus Professor of Economics at Iowa State University. He received a bachelor of science degree from Iowa State in 1955, a Juris Doctor (law) from the from the University of Iowa in 1961, and a PhD in economics from Iowa State University in 1965. He served as director of the Center for International Agricultural Economics Association Foundation. He served as president of the American Agricultural Law Association, the American Agricultural Economics Association, and the American Agricultural Economics Association Foundation. He served as director of the Center for International Agricultural Finance from its founding in 1990 through 2004. He served on six federal commissions, including the task force on Farm Tax Policy (1967); the Advisory Committee to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue (1979-80) the Advisory Committee on Agricultural Biotechnology (2000-2002), and the Commission on the Application of Payment Limitations for Agriculture (2003).
Dr. Harl was named the first Farm Leader of the Year by the Des Moines Register and received the Iowa Distinguished Service Award from the State of Iowa, The Distinguished Service to State Government Award from the National Governors’ Association, and the designation of Fellow from the American Agricultural Economics Association. In 2006, Dr. Harl received the Award for Service to American and World Agriculture from the National Association of County Agricultural Agents.
Dr. Harl is the author or co-author of more than 450 publications in legal and economic journals and bulletins, and more than a thousand in various farm and financial publications. He has spoken widely on income tax, estate planning, debtor-creditor relations, and organization of the farm business, with more than 3,400 speaking appearances in forty-three states and seventeen foreign countries. He has received two national awards in retirement-one Estate planning Hall of Fame by the National Association of Estate Planners and Councils and the other National Farmers Union. This is his thirty-first published book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: May 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9781645308423

Book preview

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The contents of this work, including, but not limited to, the accuracy of events, people, and places depicted; opinions expressed; permission to use previously published materials included; and any advice given or actions advocated are solely the responsibility of the author, who assumes all liability for said work and indemnifies the publisher against any claims stemming from publication of the work.

All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2024 by Dr. Neil E. Harl

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, downloaded, distributed, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without permission in writing from the publisher.

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ISBN: 978-1-6453-0215-5

eISBN: 978-1-6453-0842-3

Charles F. Curtiss, Distinguished Professor in Agriculture

and

Emeritus Professor of Economics

Iowa State University

Ames, Iowa

Dedication

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This volume is dedicated to those who carry on their family name and blood relationship. Hopefully, succeeding generations will have the curiosity to peer into what was happening in the life of one of their ancestors in the 20th and 21st centuries. At the time of publication, for our family that included James Brent Harl and Rodney Scott Harl, our two beloved sons, and four grandsons, Michael Clayton Harl, Jack Henry Harl, sons of Brent and Allison Taylor Harl; Joseph Brently Harl, James Rhett Harl, the sons of Brent and Darcy Pritchard Harl; and Gemma Harl, our granddaughter and daughter of Rodney Scott Harl and Amy Harl.

For those yet to be born, and who are not named in this dedication, they are assured that their eventual appearance on the scene will be greeted with a continuing invitation to scan these pages for interesting anecdotes or amusing stories about their ancestors. I say ancestors inasmuch as, in our family, Darlene and I have contributed equally to their genetic makeup and we are of the belief that much the same exists with other families. Equally important is the fact that, in our family we have been a team for more than half a century.

Much of what has been accomplished in my life is attributable in large measure to Darlene’s love, caring and effort. For that and more I am grateful. I am sure that is the case with other families.

Acknowledgments

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A project of this nature, placing a capstone on a career and a life, necessarily involves assistance from several key sources. First, I am indeed grateful to the reviewers, most notably my dear sister, Merna Marie Donald; my cousin and good friend, Don Bryant; and my beloved wife, Darlene. Their suggestions and corrections have been deeply appreciated.

My debt to my teachers, a lengthy list of individuals who helped me master a small part of the great body of knowledge, is immense. That group, numbering close to 90 individuals, has been responsible for creating an environment for development that has made it possible for me to function in society and to achieve more than I ever thought was possible in this life.

Finally, I want to recognize the secretaries who have contributed so very much to my productivity over the years, the teaching assistants who have served so loyally over the four decades I was on the Iowa State University faculty and the research assistants who labored under my tutelage.

Preface

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If it were possible to line up, on a stage somewhere, all of my ancestors back to the time of Christ, some 20 centuries ago, either on the male or the female side, there would be only about 80 individuals on that stage. While we think 20 centuries is a very long span of history, viewed in generations it is a more manageable amount of time.

Several years ago, when I first became interested in genealogy, I was struck by how little we knew about even my great-grandparents, not to mention the countless generations ahead of them. That was when I resolved that, if I lived long enough, I would endeavor to leave a chronicle our lives for family members 50, 100, 500 or 1,000 years from now. Perhaps someone in the future will be sufficiently interested in what one link in their genealogical past was up to in the latter part of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st century to take the time to skim these 19 chapters.

But even if they don’t, the project has been worth the time and effort expended, as I scrolled back in time to periods that were near dormant in my memory. The richness of growing up in very difficult times in Southern Iowa has taken on new meaning and perspective. The happenstance of key decisions made that affected, profoundly, the path of my life leaves one almost breathless. One can only ponder what life would have been like had a different road been taken somewhere along the way. One can only reflect upon life growing up other than in the United States as privileged individuals. Only when one takes the long view of human existence, can one begin to sense the significance of life itself.

I learned something about myself that I did not know—that as I focused intently on periods long since past and mostly forgotten, one’s mind has the capacity to unearth memories, even minor details, that had long ago seemingly slipped into oblivion. As an example, in Chapter Three, I discuss my parents’ purchase of a new Chevrolet in the spring of 1948. A year ago, had I been asked what the license plate number was on that vehicle, I would have been at a loss to recall what it was. But as I progressed, step by step, through that era, the license plate number —4-4774—came to my mind as clearly as our current Iowa license plate number.

Whether or not a copy of this modest volume survives into the next millennium—or even into the 22nd century—my best wishes are extended to those who follow. I would only hope that everyone who scans this book will be gripped with a renewed sense of purpose and will feel a sense of familial tie to those who preceded them down life’s path.

Chapter 1

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The Pre-School Years

It was mid-morning in July of 1936. And it was hot, hot, hot. No air conditioning, no refrigerator—not even an ice box—and no electric fans. Just sweltering heat. My mother said later it had been that way for weeks with no relief in sight. I can vaguely recall her offering to fan me to sleep at bedtime, and also vaguely remembering that I asserted that I was a big boy now, and I could survive.

But on that July morning, I was standing on a box, peering out the front window of our tenant-farmer house, in rural Appanoose County, Iowa. I was not quite three years old at the time. My third birthday was to be the following October 9.

I can clearly recall gazing eastward across the neighbor’s half-section—a flat expanse of crop land. One could see the full mile across the neighbor’s farm, even though some of the fields were in corn. The summer had been so hot and dry that the corn plants had not grown to normal height. That farm, too, was rented, as were so many farms in the 1930s.

The farm where we lived had been owned by my Great Uncle Albert Nathan Harl. He had given a mortgage to the First Trust Land Bank of Chicago on November 27, 1926, on the quarter section of land he owned. My great uncle couldn’t make the mortgage payments in 1933. So Uncle Bert moved off, into forced retirement, and we moved on the place on March 1, 1934. The title to the farm was formally conveyed by A.N. Harl and his wife, Anna, to the First Trust Land Bank of Chicago on June 26, 1936, in satisfaction of the outstanding mortgage.¹

It had been a step up for my dad—my family moved one mile south from an 80-acre rented farm where I was born, to the quarter section being taken over by First Trust Land Bank of Chicago. But 1934 was also hot and dry with very poor crops. And 1935 had been incredibly wet, again with very low yields. The year 1936 was basically a replay of 1934, only drier and hotter. My parents’ financial situation had become more and more dire with each passing year.

My birthplace

As noted, on March 1, 1934, my parents, my older brother, Richard, and I moved a mile south to a larger farm. The farm from which we moved was where I was born on October 9, 1933. That farm was known then as the Stevenson Place.

In the late 20th century, historians supervised the erection of markers showing the route of the Mormon Trail, beginning with the first wave of Mormons on their trek from Nauvoo, Illinois, to Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1846. The southern branch of that trail went over the southern part of the Stevenson Place. Indeed, it appears that the house in which I was born was later built right on the Mormon Trail. In my growing up years, in the 1930s and 1940s, ruts were still in evidence at creek crossings showing the location of the trail in the wet spring of 1846.

According to my mother, I was born without a medical doctor present, but one was soon summoned and arrived after the delivery. As my mother stated many times, it was a good thing the doctor did arrive inasmuch as the umbilical cord was wrapped tightly around my throat and I was gasping for breath when he arrived. The laypersons present were all reluctant to cut the cord for fear it might spell the end for the baby. The chubby little guy, at 9 ½ pounds, did survive the ordeal.

The WPA crew

But back to the window—while the ever-changing scene was exciting, even though vehicles rarely passed by our farm in those days, the commanding feature of the landscape in the summer of 1936 was what was going on right in front of our house. A crew of workmen, my parents referred to them as WPA workers, were slowly widening the north-south county road past our house. Later, I learned the abbreviation stood for Works Progress Administration, a Depression-era employment program.

The workers, numbering perhaps 20 in total, were equipped with only round-point shovels and wheelbarrows. Later that summer, someone showed up with a team of horses and a slip scraper to speed up the task. That was the extent of the power assigned to the job that year. Even with 20 at work, a day’s effort with roundpoint shovels didn’t produce much progress on the road-widening project.

But for a two-year-old, going on three, it was fascinating just to watch them work, take a break, and work some more. Their lunchtime (or dinner, as we referred to the meal in our home) came just before mine, so it was interesting to see the group dart (at least it was in sharp contrast to the languid pace working to widen the road) for the little shade there was along the road from trees in the fence row.

It was to be a shale road, covered with a thin covering of shale from the huge slag heaps produced by the coal mines in the county. The shale was available for the hauling.

Working off the Poll Tax

Later that year, I can recall riding with my dad grading that road with a team of four horses and a small grader owned, I understood, by the township. In those days, the township was an important subdivision of government and was responsible for the maintenance of local roads. Interestingly, my dad (and others who did the same thing throughout Franklin Township) were not paid directly for their work. For many years, a road poll tax of $3 per year was imposed on …every male person…over the age of twenty-one and under forty-five years who [were] residents of the county outside the corporate limits of cities and towns.² A voter could pay the tax, as the affluent apparently did, or the poll tax could be worked off in various ways including working to grade the roads. Until held unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court,³ a poll tax was levied for the right to vote.

The Iowa poll tax statute specified that for two days’ labor without a team, or for one day’s labor with a team, such person so subject to said tax shall be given credit for the full amount thereof….⁴ The Iowa road poll tax was repealed on March 24, 1937.⁵ That meant that my dad’s work in 1936, with me sitting on the axle of the grader, was the last year the poll tax was imposed in rural Iowa. A similar tax continued to be imposed in cities and towns in Iowa for several years.

My role, in the grading process, was to ride on the axle of the small grader, legs dangling, and try to keep from falling off as the grader lurched when it hit potholes or a rough patch in the road. If I fell off, I was summarily dispatched back to the house on foot. Interestingly, there was seemingly little concern about falling off and being run over by the grader, although I never tested the response if that were to have occurred. Dad was all business, whether he was working for himself or for the township. But I loved to be out and working, as I termed it, with the adults.

Township control over road maintenance soon passed to the county and, before many years had passed, the county had purchased giant (or so they seemed) motorized graders to keep up the roads. It was considered the highpoint of the day to see the big yellow grader cruising down the shale roads at a brisk clip. The old horse-drawn township graders were left in the fencerows to rust. Decades later, Dad somehow acquired the one we had used in the summer of 1936 and we still have it in one of our farm sheds.

Sleeping sickness

When a farmer’s power comes from horses, nothing strikes terror in the heart of the farmer more than news that their horses are afflicted by a serious malady. That was the case in the summer of 1936 with sleeping sickness, a serious disease of horses. It could be fatal and often was, although it could also be a debilitating malady.

In the summer of 1936, the disease reached serious proportions in many areas, with the farmers forced to use scarce funds to vaccinate against the disease. Fortunately none of our horses succumbed to the disease, but it was a daily lunch topic for weeks. Several neighbors lost valuable horses to the disease as did my Uncle Reo Bryant who lost Pat, a white mare, to the malady. My dad had earlier loaned a horse named Noodle to Uncle Reo. Noodle was a small, iron-grey, gelded Mustang.

The concern over the disease was especially high because of the close relationship farmers and farm families typically had with their horses. The animals were almost viewed, and treated, as members of the family. That was certainly the case with our horses. Mike and Bell, our lead team at that time, were as beloved as any animal could have been.

The car accident

In the late summer of 1936, for reasons I cannot now recall, Dad and I were driving in the 1928 Chevrolet just south of our farmhouse. I suspect that we had been visiting one of my uncles who lived off to the south (Reo and Bessie Bryant or Addis and Edna Staggs). In any event, we were headed home and were within a few hundred feet of our driveway when a chicken decided to cross the road right in front of the Chevy. My dad slammed on the brakes, trying to avoid the loss of an old hen. I was standing up in the back seat, as I liked to do, so I could see better. The sudden deceleration pitched me forward into the back of the seat on the off-driver side. Unfortunately, the venerable old Chevy had seen better times and the upholstery on the off-driver side seat had worn completely away, leaving a steel strap for a frame. I connected with the steel frame just below the lower lip. To this day, I bear a scar just below the lower lip from that chance encounter with the car seat. It’s no wonder that state law now requires car seats for youngsters.

We had that old car around for about two more years, but we treated it with respect. And no more standing up in the back seat.

Chinch bugs

The reason I remember the particular day in July of 1936 was that when Dad came in for the noon meal, he announced that we had a terrible problem—chinch bugs. He had mentioned them before, but not with the urgency he was voicing over lunch that day. He had found them about to cross the road into our cornfield south of the house. It was like an army, he said, and we have to move fast. He had called an office in Centerville, the county seat, late that morning (I understood it was a federally funded program) about applying something to stop the bugs from invading the cornfield. The little creatures were seeking whatever was green and the shriveled corn crop was still about the greenest thing around.

So after a short lunch, we (my dad, my older brother Richard and I) set out with a team of horses and a wagon with a walking plow tossed in the wagon. We were to meet the guy with the creosote at the east edge of the cornfield just over a quarter of a mile to the south. We arrived a little early, and greeted my Uncle Reo, who lived a mile to the south on another rented farm, this one owned by Bankers Life Company. Uncle Reo had heard of the invasion.

This was real excitement for a two-year-old, going on three. Reo was married to Aunt Bessie, my oldest aunt, who was one of my close childhood friends—particularly because of her rare ability to bake a marvelous chocolate pie, my favorite. As noted, Uncle Reo and Bessie Bryant lived on a farm owned by Bankers Life Company of Des Moines, Iowa. In a move that surely must be ranked as the greatest public relations gaffe of all time, Bankers Life painted the buildings on all of its foreclosed farms a trademark yellow. Anyone driving through the country could instantly spot a farm that had been foreclosed upon by Bankers Life Company. Buildings on the Bryants’ farm, like all of the others, were painted yellow.

Returning to the chinch bugs, the reddish bugs were crossing the road from the pasture to the east, and were preparing to enter the cornfield on the west side of the road in hordes that afternoon in July of 1936. The group huddled there repeatedly assessed the urgency of the invasion, with the forward march of the invaders slowed by the greenery on both sides of the road that hadn’t been disturbed by the WPA workers.

Just about 2:00 P.M. a small truck with a barrel of creosote in the back came down the road from the east in a cloud of dust and turned north to where our group was assembled. The guy in the truck, who seemed to know what to do, took charge and decreed that, first, a furrow needed to be plowed along the edge of the cornfield. My dad unhitched the team from the wagon, hooked them up to the walking plow, tied the lines in a knot so the lines would go over his shoulders, leaving both arms free to guide the plow, and off he went at a brisk clip toward the north. He guided the team with an occasional jerk on the lines, signaling the team to go right or left. He also was good at delivering the commands verbally as gee and haw. If I ever knew which was which, I have long since forgotten.

The guy with the small truck pulled in right behind him, straddling the freshly plowed furrow. My Uncle Reo climbed aboard the back of the truck and, as the truck driver started moving, opened the spigot on the barrel. A stream of creosote oozed out of the barrel and fell neatly in the furrow. I can yet see those hapless bugs, cascading over the edge of the furrow, encountering the creosote and ending their life without an audible whimper. Within a few minutes, the black creosote in the furrow had turned a reddish brown, providing a bridge for the later invaders to enter the cornfield. So after laying a quarter-mile barrier of creosote, we (I say we because my older brother and I were monitoring the process closely and providing constant commentary on what was happening) turned around and laid another stream of creosote just to the west of the first one. Actually, before the day was out, my dad had plowed a second furrow closer to the cornfield, again with a stream of creosote providing a trap for the unwelcome little creatures.

Actually, the emergency measure seemed to do little to save the corn crop. Hot, dry weather simply cut the yield, quite apart from the pesky chinch bugs. That autumn, my dad cut and shocked that cornfield for cattle and horse feed. Shocking standing corn in those days involved laying out an area of 12 rows by 12 rows (corn in those days was check-planted to enable the corn to be cross-cultivated, so it was simple to count 12 rows each way). In the center of the square, four stalks were bent over and tied to form the interior framework for the corn shock. Then, using a long, sharp corn knife, the rest of the stalks in the 12-by-12 block were cut and stacked against the interior framework. We called the framework gallusers—the framework reminded some of the straps on overalls that crisscrossed to hold the overalls up. Those were called galluses, derived from gallows. Apparently, the straps holding up the overalls reminded individuals of the rope used in gallows.

In mid-winter, now this is the 1936-37 winter, I can recall going with my dad in a bobsled drawn by the same trusty team of horses to pick up the shocks of corn to bring to the barn for livestock feed. My dad, who was slightly over five feet tall, would simply drive the team up to a corn shock, reach over, and with one hand wrench the shock free (remember the four stalks forming the interior framework were still attached to the ground) and toss the shock into the sled. The drought-stunted stalks were roughly four feet tall.

The resident schoolteacher

The school system in Franklin Township for many years had involved nine school districts; each district was usually comprised of four sections of land, each section containing 640 acres. The one-room country school was located at the center of the district. That meant one-room country schools were located two miles apart. In our case, it was the Hays School District with the school located diagonally across the intersection from the northwest corner of my grandparents’ farm, which was just over a half-mile north of where we lived in 1936.

The placement of the schools in the district meant that no students would have to travel more than two miles each way to school.

Two miles to the north of the Hays School was the Brush College School and two miles south was Fairview School. Two and one-half miles east of Hays was Livingston School (it was an extra half-mile because the road system did not run along the mile marker a mile east of the Hays School). The road was one and one-half miles east of the Hays School with the Livingston School one mile farther east of the north-south road, which is now 125th Avenue. That road ran through sections four and nine, rather than along the westerly edge of sections four and nine.

The director of the school district was responsible for school operations, including the hiring of the schoolteacher. Charles Burkhiser Sr., who lived on the Stevenson Place, from whence we had moved in 1934, was director of the school district in 1936-37. My dad was director of the Hays District for many years after that. The school closed in December of 1949 because of resignation of the teacher, Thelma Darrah, when the Darrahs moved to Corydon, Iowa. That left only five students in the school—Don Bryant, Arthur Bryant, Marjorie Harl, Marie Harl and Gary Wampler. The students were bussed to the Seymour Schools. In 1957, the school districts in Franklin Township merged with the Seymour School District to form the Seymour Community School District.

In the autumn of 1936, the teacher at the Hays School was Dorothy Highbarger. She stayed at our home and walked to the school early each morning and returned around 5:00 P.M. each afternoon. The teacher was responsible for all of the janitorial work at the school except for what the students were assigned to do. Later, when I was a student there, the students were responsible for carrying water from my grandparents’ well 200 yards to the south.

I do not recall what Ms. Highbarger paid as rent, but I do recall that she did make a rent payment. My Aunt Ruth (Ruth Harl Cook), who died in 2008, had taught at Hays School in 1937-39, and did her practice teaching at Hays School with Dorothy Highbarger in 1936-37. We believe that Ms. Highbarger was paid $50 per month by the school district and paid $5 per week or $20 per month as rent to my folks. While that seems like a modest amount by 21st-century standards, it was likely viewed as a significant amount in 1936.

The 1936 election campaign stop in Seymour

Selling a load of hogs. In October of 1936, I rode with my dad to the nearby town of Seymour, Iowa, to sell a load of hogs. We lived 6 ½ miles southeast of the town of about 1500 population at that time. A load of hogs meant a wagon load. Seymour was astride two railroad lines, the Milwaukee and the Rock Island, and the Milwaukee had a hog-buying station near the passenger depot. The sale of hogs was a big deal in those days. Hog sales were one of the larger contributors of revenue to the family, even though the price per hundredweight then was very low. I frankly do not recall just how much my dad got that day per hundred pounds, but it produced some grousing about the low prices.

The Landon whistle-stop. After we had unloaded the hogs, and picked up the check, Dad announced that we just might stay in town for the expected appearance of Alf Landon, the Republican candidate for the Presidency of the United States. Landon was scheduled to make a brief whistle-stop on the Milwaukee line (after all, a town of 1500 didn’t merit much attention then, and it merits even less attention today). So we tied up the team, deposited the check at the bank and proceeded to wait for the train. It was a few minutes late, but it came chugging in from the west, probably from Kansas City. The last car came to a stop just west of the passenger depot. The crowd surged toward the railroad tracks, my dad and I with a group that probably numbered four or five hundred. At least that number was tossed about—a not-quite-three-year-old didn’t have much interest in numbers, at that point. After a few minutes, a distinguished-looking gentleman, looking slightly rumpled, appeared in the door of the last car and proceeded to address the group. By that time, I was perched on Dad’s shoulders which, despite his short stature, gave me a good view of the event.

In all honesty, I recall little of what Landon was saying except to say that it was fairly obvious that my dad agreed with almost everything he had to say. I do recall hearing the name Roosevelt mentioned—I had heard that name around home enough times to pick up on that part of his speech.

The King Edward nickel cigar. After the train pulled out, eastbound, my dad and I untied the team and headed out of town. However, as we passed through the town square, my dad decided to splurge on a cigar. He was an occasional smoker, mostly cigars, but even a nickel cigar was viewed as an extravagance in those days. We stopped at Bateman’s Drug Store, on the corner of the square, for a King Edward cigar. It cost all of five cents. Then we left for home.

The trip home took most of the rest of the afternoon so it was nearly dark when we arrived at our farmstead. We unharnessed the team, checked to see that the chores had been done by my older brother after school, and they had, and went in the house. My mother was busily engaged in preparing supper, but she stopped long enough to hear how the day had gone. My dad pulled out the cigar, which drew a disapproving stare from my mother, but no comment, carefully removed the colorful band around the cigar and handed the band to me, all the while asking my mother, What do you think I heard today? She professed to having no idea what he might have heard, so he responded, in a hushed tone, "I heard today that Reo⁶ is going to vote for Roosevelt!"

That name again. I still did not know who this guy Roosevelt was, but I concluded that he must be some sort of scoundrel to produce that tone of voice from my father. Most of my attention was focused on the colorful King Edward cigar band. In those days, toys were scarce and were mostly hand-me-downs from older siblings and even another generation.

Whether it was the excitement of the political whistle-stop or the news about how my Uncle Reo was going to vote or some other reason, someone that evening bumped a valued dish of my mother’s, breaking one of the three legs of the treasured dish that had come from her father, a druggist in Seymour, Samuel Bonner, who by then was deceased. That was cause for real tears.

The new radio

Times were tough, economically, in 1936, for my family. Shortly after the Landon visit, I overheard my father tell my mother that we had about $100 to get through the winter and put in a crop. At the time, I had little understanding of how much $100 was, but I surmised that it wasn’t much in light of all the expenses likely to be incurred.

Despite that, somehow, my folks decided to buy a radio. It was a first for them. Of course there was no radio in their 1928 Chevrolet, and they had never owned one, but radio was coming to be a big deal. What seemed to tip the scales in favor of buying the radio was the argument that Dad needed it for weather reports and for markets. The radio was a Philco with a 100-hour battery pack inasmuch as we did not have electricity.

The radio was acquired in the late autumn of 1936, to the warning that the battery pack would be expensive to replace, so we had to limit the times it could be turned on. That meant that listening for pleasure was really out of the question. It was tuned mostly to KFNF, the Henry Field station in Shenandoah; KMA, the Earl May station in Shenandoah; and WHO in Des Moines. My parents had honeymooned in Shenandoah after their marriage in 1928, traveling in a green 1927 Chevrolet (which was later wrecked in Kansas, as discussed below) and later talked fondly of visiting the studios in Shenandoah.

By late 1937, times had improved marginally and we were allowed to listen to the Barn Dance on WHO and to Jerry Smith and the Blackwood Brothers on WHO, along with Jack Shelley and the noon news.

The 1936 general election

After hearing Alf Landon at the whistle-stop in Seymour, political talk increased around our house with frequent mention of the upcoming election. Of course, my mother and father voted on election day. That evening the radio was on—briefly—for election news. The news was not good. Landon was losing, or so it appeared.

The next morning, it was more bad news. It was hopeless. Roosevelt had won. The first thing that morning was to harness up the team to take my older brother to Hays School, a half-mile away (normally he would have walked, but Dad wanted to talk to his father, my grandfather). His name was Dick Harl (or, more formally, Elza Ernest). He and his wife, Winifred, or Winnie, my grandmother, lived just south of Hays, the one-room country school.

After my brother, Richard, hopped out of the wagon to walk the last 100 yards to school, we turned in to my grandfather’s farm. That farm had been in the family since November 13, 1863, purchased by my great-grandfather and great-grandmother, John Thomas and Christina Harl, from Augustin Hays, for whom the school was named and who had homesteaded the tract in 1856.

The land had passed to my grandfather in 1900 after John Thomas Harl’s death. My grandparents had barely managed to hang onto the farm through the Great Depression. Purchase of an additional 160 acres in 1914 had almost proved to be their undoing, however, with the six children literally pooling their nickels and dimes, especially those of my aunts, who were then teaching in one-room country schools, to make the mortgage payments in the 1930s.

But back to the day-after-election in 1936—when my grandfather saw us coming, he threw up his arm in his trademark greeting and called out to us. My dad, still fuming over the election results, was going a mile-a-minute, I don’t think this country can stand four more years of this! My grandfather, conservative but less so than my dad, countered, Pete, Pete, you might as well calm down. I will lay you even money the sun will set tonight and rise tomorrow morning and will repeat the cycle for the next four years. That scarcely placated my father. We stayed around until mid-morning, joined by my Uncle John, who lived on a rented farm a half-mile farther north. Astoundingly, all three faced serious financial difficulties and were unable or unwilling to see that the Roosevelt policies just might make a difference.

Serving on the jury

In late autumn of 1936, my dad learned that he had been called to serve on the district court jury in Centerville, the county seat, for the term beginning in January 1937. The winter of 1936-37 proved to be an extremely icy one with hazardous roads much of the time he needed to drive the 36 miles to Centerville and back. We lived in the southwest corner of Appanoose County.

My recollection of the jury duty was two-fold—(1) I recall shining Dad’s dress shoes (I had rarely seen him wearing dress shoes until January of 1937), (2) the small stipend paid for jury duty and (3) the modest mileage allowance helped the family budget. Interestingly, he talked little about the experience although he must have found it intriguing.

The automobile accident in Kansas

In December of 1936, Grandmother and Grandfather Harl and their daughter, Ruth, who was my aunt, traveled to Oklahoma to visit Grandfather Harl’s older brother, Roll Harl, who had lived in Oklahoma for several years. They were traveling in the same 1927 green Chevrolet used by my parents to travel to Shenandoah on their honeymoon eight years earlier.

Aunt Ruth was driving, near Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, when a motorist coming off a side road failed to stop for a stop sign and plowed into the 1927 Chevy. The injuries were extensive and serious. Ruth had a broken leg and was on crutches until March 1, 1937. Grandmother Harl suffered rib damage, later contracted pneumonia and came near death. Fortunately, all survived and returned to Iowa several days later.

The new farm

Around the first of the year I learned, through a chance conversation between my parents, that we were moving on March 1, 1937. The farm where we were living had sold and Dad had managed to rent the 320-acre farm across the road. It not only was twice the acreage; it was also a better farm. The long-time tenant on the new farm, Ed Bradshaw, was going to move to a smaller farm and begin a transition into retirement (although few talked about retirement in those days and even fewer could afford to retire).

Talk about the poor farm. In the conversation overheard between my parents, in which they talked about moving, my father concluded the conversation with the statement, Well, if this does not work out, the next move is to the poor farm. At that point, I did not know what the poor farm was or where it was located, but I could tell that it was not a nice place to be. Several months later, we happened to be driving past the Appanoose County Poor Farm (as it was commonly known) and I asked if this was where we were moving next. That produced a faint smile from my mother and a chuckle from my dad.

In order to understand fully the mindset of people like my dad when it came to economic risks, it was important to know what they had been through during the early 1930s and survived. From my earliest days of recollection of anything, it was of Dad warning against the use of debt. I had heard that message several times so one day I asked him why he felt so strongly. He responded that, in the late winter of 1932, he had sold a load of hogs because he had a payment due the following week. He arrived at the bank in Seymour with his check for the hogs just after the bank closed for the day. Dad rapped on the door and a clerk came to the door and let him in so he could deposit the check in his account. The bank never opened again for business. It failed overnight and was one of several that did not reopen. That was well before the enactment of legislation creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which provided insurance coverage for bank deposits. There was no recovery from the failed bank. A few days later, Dad had to sell some cows to make the payment—which he really did not want to do. He was able to make the payment, but he vowed that he would never again be vulnerable. He vowed that he would never again borrow money—and he didn’t. He paid cash for everything—machinery purchases, livestock purchases, even land.

Butting and tipping corn ears. Shortly after I learned we were moving on March 1, and before my dad started his jury duty, he announced that he had a job for me. He pointed out that Richard was in school and couldn’t help much if at all, and he (my dad) was tied up for some time with jury service, so it was up to me. He said that he had sorted through the 1936 corn crop and selected out the best ears, such as they were, and tossed them into an empty section of the old corn crib. He said, Your job is to butt and tip each ear. That meant shelling the irregular kernels off each end of the ear. The irregular kernels did not go through the planter plates evenly—or at all. The ears, once butted and tipped, were then run through a hand corn sheller. The resulting shelled corn was the seed corn for the new crop year. This was when the corn seed planted was open pollinated. Hybrid seed was beginning to appear, but was not in widespread use in that part of Southern Iowa.

The task appeared to be awesome to a three-year-old. Although the stack of ears must have been modest, it looked huge. I recall thinking it would take me a very long time to work through all of that. But I did. And Dad had his 1937 seed supply.

The corn yield, on the new farm, was about 40 bushels per acre in 1937, up sharply from the drought-diminished yield from 1936, but still below the yields from hybrids. All that year, I can yet recall my dad saying, You cannot afford to pay the outrageous prices for hybrid seed. It’s a fad, just wait and see. But as the better yields became known from the 1937 harvest, Dad was convinced. The next year, 1938, he went to hybrid seed. There was no more butting and tipping of ears. Within less than a mile from where I sat in January and February of 1937, butting and tipping ears of corn, in 2004 we produced corn yielding 220 bushels per acre and in later years even higher yields than that. The technology of seed and genetics (and the technology of power) transformed the agricultural sector over the intervening years.

The big move. By mid-February of 1937, the urgency could be felt all day every day—every ton of hay, every bushel of corn, every cow, every pig and every horse had to be moved to the new farm, not to mention farm equipment (of which we had relatively little) and all of the household goods. And it was all done with teams and wagons. Fortunately, Ed Bradshaw did not mind having us begin moving in grain and hay before March 1 and was willing to have us park our machinery in his barnyard.

March 1 was like a giant game of musical chairs. March 1 was set as the date for all farm tenants to move to their new farm, so the morning of March 1 was the time set for getting out of the old house and clearing out the barns and other outbuildings with arrival at the new farm occurring sometime in the afternoon.

Bad news for Neil. What excitement was in prospect! I looked forward for days to the expected whirlwind of activity as uncles and aunts and grandparents descended on our place to lend a hand.

But the day before the great move, I got the bad news. My dad said I was too young to play a part. I would be in the way and there weren’t enough adult family members to look after me. It was a matter of safety. I was absolutely crestfallen. I was completely convinced that I could be helpful. I could carry at least the smaller items. And I would look after myself. But it was to no avail. Early on the morning of March 1, in fact before daybreak, I was dispatched to my Aunt Edna’s farm for the day. She and her husband, Addis Staggs, lived a mile south of us and almost within view of the new farm. All day long, I peered out their windows, trying to get a glimpse of the excitement going on up the road and a half-mile east.

I should add that my Aunt Edna was also a very special aunt. They had a herd of Jersey cows that gave rich milk and she could make wonderful homemade ice cream. I can recall yet the hum of the mechanical separator at their farm, running on into the night after milking, at a time when we had only a gravity separator, much lower on the technology totem pole.

One poignant memory of Aunt Edna’s luscious ice cream was that I tended to eat it too rapidly. And that always produced a splitting headache, which usually subsided rapidly. Apparently, my system did not like the cold ice cream ingested as rapidly as I would consume it and was revolting in the only way it could—with pain. One way to lessen the pain, I learned, was to pinch my nose at the base for a few moments. That must have reduced the flow of cooler blood to the brain.

A close-knit family

Actually, all of my uncles and aunts were special people as were my cousins, their children. The descendants of E.E. and Winnie Harl (my grandparents) were one of the most closely knit families around. All six of the children lived with their families within roughly two miles of the old homestead where E.E. and Winnie lived for many years. On several occasions, my grandmother remarked about how comforting it was to be able to climb to the second story of their old, two-story farmhouse, built in 1900, and be able to see at least the rooftops of each of their children’s homes. That has scarcely been the case with the next generation, my generation. They scattered to the four winds and may not even be on the same continent on any given day.

In our growing-up years, from the mid-1930s through my grandfather’s death in 1950, the extended family assembled three times each year—(1) for a family reunion in late August with other, more distant, relatives; (2) on Thanksgiving Day to feast on turkey, goose and all manner of other delights; and (3) on Christmas night for a special dinner planned around oyster soup. All of the gatherings were at the family homestead, with Harl ownership dating back to 1863. For reasons noted below, my grandfather’s death led to family tensions that ended the gatherings until 1963.

The Cover Farm

The move to the new farm, on March 1, 1937, marked the beginning of a new, much more prosperous era for the family. That was attributable, in part, to the fact that the farm was larger and was one of the most productive farms in the area. It was also attributable to the fact that U.S. agriculture, in general, entered a more prosperous era in the late 1930s. Certainly, more favorable weather patterns than had characterized the area in 1934, 1935 and 1936 played a part, also. My dad was a very good farmer, but the adverse conditions of the mid-1930s almost derailed his farming career.

Dad’s faith in horsepower. Unlike many farmers who, by early 1937 had acquired their first tractor, including several neighbors, Dad was staunchly supportive of horsepower and honestly believed that tractors would never take over from horses. He was proficient in working with horses and maintained a very good group of work horses. In 1937, he managed to farm 320 acres with horses. That was expanded to 400 acres in 1943 before acquiring his first tractor, under heavy lobbying from his two sons, in 1946. He sold his last team in the 1960s.

History of the Cover Farm. A word should be said about the ownership of the half-section (320 acres) to which we moved in 1937. The farm had been owned since 1856 by the Llewellyn and Cover families. William S. Llewellyn came to southeast Iowa (Lee County and environs) in 1847 from Ohio and worked as a builder of barns and other farm buildings. He managed to ride with a wagon train to Salt Lake City in 1850 and moved on to California as part of the California Gold Rush. Apparently, he did well in California and returned by way of Nicaragua; Havana, Cuba; and New Orleans, to mention just a few of the steps, to settle in Franklin Township. Llewellyn continued as a builder until 1862 and then served three years in the Union Army. He homesteaded the south one-half of Section 8 (the farm we moved to in 1937) in 1856. Although some parts were sold and repurchased, much of the 320 acres was never sold from the time it was homesteaded until March 1, 2003, when it was sold to Darlene and me, owners of Harl Farms, LLC.

Llewellyn managed to acquire 1,280 acres of land, mostly along what is now 600th Street, plus about 640 acres in Adams County, Iowa. The Section 8 property and the farm in Adams County, Iowa, were the last tracts sold, by the Cover heirs, and they were both disposed of in 2003.

At W.S. Llewellyn’s death in 1905, his daughter, Jessie, ended up with the Cover farm. Her two brothers, Frank and Billy, acquired other assets and later moved to California. Jessie married Dr. O.A. Cover, who practiced medicine in Seymour. In 1915, having decided to move to California, also, Jessie Cover and her young son, William L. Cover, took the train to San Bernardino, California, leaving Dr. Cover behind to close up his practice and join them in San Bernardino. In the meantime, he was staying at the Windsor Hotel in Seymour, just south of the Rock Island tracks and less than a block from the passenger depot. In February of 1915, Dr. Cover walked across the tracks in a blinding snowstorm and was killed by an oncoming train. Jessie, with young Bill, decided to remain in California. Management of the Iowa farms fell to Billy, Jessie’s brother, until the return of William L. Cover, Young Bill, after World War II service in the U.S. Navy. By that time, Young Bill, as he was affectionately known, had acquired a medical degree from Harvard Medical School and assumed management of the Iowa farms. Jessie, his mother, died in 1947. To my knowledge, Jessie never returned to Iowa after her departure in 1915.

Annual visit by Billy Llewellyn. From the beginning of our tenancy on the 320-acre farm in Franklin Township, one of the highlights of the year was the visit by Billy Llewellyn, generally on an annual basis, to see how things were going in Iowa with the farms. He left the management almost totally to my dad, knowing that he (Billy) was not familiar with Iowa agricultural practices. On every visit, he would take the entire family out to dinner (or supper as we then called the evening meal). Usually, we went to Taylor’s Café in Seymour. Until 1937, we never ate out and it continued to be a rarity for many years—except for the annual treat, courtesy of the Cover and Llewellyn Families. My siblings would marvel at the fact that we were actually going to be served a meal prepared by someone else, on real china, with real napkins, and with dessert and iced tea! That was really the first glimpse of the world outside our family and extended family events. Some of us had reached the conclusion that we were not among the well-to-do of the world, but this provided real affirmation of that fact. It is not at all a stretch to say that those dinners out provided more impetus than we were then willing to admit that there was a long climb ahead of us if we wanted to reduce the level of economic vulnerability in life.

The end of Harl tenancy on the Cover Farm. Dad continued to farm the 320 acres until March 1, 1962. He and my mother had built a new home on the old Harl homestead in 1960. Actually, Dad had kept the Cover Farm, as we called it, for several years, hoping that I would reconsider my career plans and return to Franklin Township to farm. Such was not to be the case.

After terminating the relationship with the Cover Family on March 1, 1962, Dad proceeded to reduce his operations to the 200 acres he then owned. At that point, little did any of us know that, 41 years later to the day, Darlene and I would assume ownership of the 320-acre Cover Farm.

A quick tour of the farm

But back to 1937—even though the entire family knew there was a risk of another bad crop year, the mood was one of optimism as the family settled in to a daily routine on the Cover Farm. As was true of many tenant farms, it was not heavily improved, but the outbuildings were in better shape than the house. As time wore on I had growing sympathy for my dear mother, who never complained about the austere conditions on the new farm.

The house. The house was a story-and-a-half frame structure with no basement, no insulation, no electricity and no indoor plumbing. There were four rooms on the lower floor and two bedrooms in the upper level above the west two rooms downstairs, with a lean-to roof covering the east two downstairs rooms. The structure was painted white.

Not only was there no insulation, there was no shelter from trees or anything else between that house and the Arctic. On cold winter days (and even more so on cold winter nights) the wind would rattle the windows and snow would sift in around the windows. Dad made a genuine effort to place coverings over the windows and the effects were notable, but it was still a cold place, especially in early morning when someone had to hop out of bed and start the fire.

Fire meant a wood-burning cook stove in the kitchen and a wood and coal-burning stove in the living room. On Saturday nights, summer and winter, it was a regular ritual for everyone to have a bath. In the wintertime, the bath was behind the living room stove, a sturdy, black Round Oak model, with each of the children taking their turn in the tub that was brought in from the wash house for the occasion. I can recall listening to The Barn Dance on WHO Radio during many of those Saturday night events.

In the spring, the Round Oak stove was moved to the wash house near the house, the pipe was cleaned and stored and the decorative cover that had been carefully stored was reinstalled in the wall opening where the stove pipe had entered the chimney structure. The next task was to clean the wallpaper that had been darkened by smoke from the stove that had escaped into the room and soot from the Aladdin Lamp that had periodically sooted up when all of us had dozed off or gone to bed and left the prized Aladdin Lamp unattended. Eventually, the flame would move higher and higher, smoking up the tall chimney and eventually consuming the fragile mantle. Don’t misunderstand, the Aladdin Lamp could be used only on special occasions, notably when we were relaxing in the living room on Saturday nights after our serial baths.

If the wallpaper was beyond redemption by cleaning, a plea was made to Billy Llewellyn, the manager in California (or Dr. Bill Cover, later), to pick up the cost to repaper the living room and, possibly, the dining room. Rarely were the other rooms repapered, although I can recall a couple of occasions when my parents’ bedroom downstairs and the kitchen were repapered. The Covers were always willing to bear the cost for home improvement. In fact, I cannot recall an instance when they refused a reasonable request, but my parents were always reluctant to push for too many expenditures on the house. It was a great privilege to be tenants on that farm and they didn’t want to push the owners too far.

When one or more rooms were to be repapered, it was usually done by Harvey and Ruth Bettis. They were an older couple, congenial, folksy, full of stories and always with an intense interest in what we children were doing. It was one of the high social events of the year to have the Bettis couple in the house for a day, or possibly two days. I do not recall what they charged; it is my vague recollection that they charged so much for each bolt of paper used, but it must have been little more than a pittance.

With no indoor plumbing, that meant the family wash was done in the kitchen. For the first three years on the Cover farm, clothes were washed on a scrub board. That meant a great deal of hard work, week after week. There was no dryer so washed clothes were either hung on the clotheslines out-of-doors, if the weather permitted, or on makeshift lines in the house if it did not. I can recall, vividly, when my mother would hang out the clothes in the wintertime and bring them in frozen and stiff like so many boards. In 1939, the folks purchased a Montgomery-Ward & Co. washing machine powered by a small gasoline engine. But it was much, much later that my mother had a clothes dryer.

No indoor plumbing also meant regular trips to the privy behind and west of the house. That was not a joyful way to start a day, particularly in a blizzard when there were a couple of huge snow drifts between the house and the privy.

Cooking was done on a cook stove, as noted above. My mother produced results that were little short of astounding, particularly considering the facilities at her disposal. One feature of life in the Harl household—there was always plenty of food. We had two huge gardens on that place and the folks set out several fruit trees the very first spring we were on the Cover Farm. We always butchered at least two hogs and a steer during the winter. Much of the meat, like the fruits and vegetables, was canned for use later. One preservation technique my mother used, and did so expertly, was to fry the fresh pork and place the generous slices in a tall crock with the fat poured over the meat to seal the slices from the atmosphere. That pork (and the cubes of canned beef) were a rare treat the following summer. Mother was a wonderful cook. One of the most enduring memories was to come home to a house filled with the delicious aromas of meat being fried down as it was called and with freshly baked bread waiting on the stove warmer for an absolutely delicious sandwich.

The other buildings. Mention has already been made of the wash house, just a few feet north and east of the corner of the house. That was the place where the gravity cream separator was located, and where the Round Oak stove spent the summer. In the autumn, a ton or so of coal was emptied into the rear of the wash house. Stove-length pieces of wood for fuel (mostly Osage Orange or hedge) were also stacked there. As explained below, the Cover farm had nearly a mile of hedge fence (that included our portion of the three-fourths of a mile of partition fence formed by the tall-growing hedge). More about the hedge fences below.

Just to the east of the wash house, and across the wire fence that kept the livestock confined, was a water tank for livestock use which was filled by manually pumping water out of the shallow well a few feet from the house. That well also served as the source of water for the house. In that part of Iowa, there were no deep, water-rich aquifers underlying the land, as was the case in much of the state. In southern and southwest Iowa, wells were shallow, often no more than 20 feet in depth. That well by the house was just about 20 feet deep. There was another well, slightly deeper, a couple of hundred feet to the northeast, which was solely for livestock use.

About 100 feet to the east of the