Long story about Maple flooring and bent nails but here goes.
In 1914, my Great-Grandpa passed away when my Grandpa was 11 1/2 years old. 10 days before his death, he stepped on a board in the yard in which a rusty nail was sticking. Blood poisoning set in, and his limb became very infected. Gramp's sister was 3 1/2 at the time and later in life wrote..."I remember Dad having his foot in the wash basin of water and how the water turned red, (it frightened me.) Also I recall the smell of the flax poultice Mother put on to draw out the infection. Aunt Gertie told me much later in life that men just didn't go to the doctor in those days until it was too late." He was being rushed to Minneapolis (from South Dakota) aboard the Columbian train in company with a trained nurse and his brother, when death overtook him as the train neared Minneapolis.
So at 11 1/2 years of age and the oldest of six children, Gramps left his childhood behind and quit school to help his mother run the farm. I'm not for sure, but I think he did finish the 8th grade. When he was 19 his Mother passed away from pneumonia and he became the head of the family and even more so, the responsibility of the Father figure to his siblings than he was before. Then there was the Dirty 30s and WW II. The fact that he was successful in farming, finances and life in general can all be traced back to hard times and frugal living to have even the basic niceties many take for granted today.
By 1948, Grandpa built himself a new house with brick siding. But he tore down two other houses and half the house he was living in to salvage enough good lumber to build the new home. The reminder of the third house was torn down after they moved into the new home and a granary was built from that lumber. Even the nails were reused. Grandpa spent many wintertime hours just straightening kegs of nails in preparation for the build. My older brother said that Grandpa would never leave a nail in a board and contributes that vigilance to his Dad stepping on that nail and loosing his life. There are still two kegs of bent nails in his old barn waiting to be straightened. Gramps passed away in 1988 so I don't think the job will get finished but to me there's nothing that sums up the man's life more than those kegs of nails. To this day I cannot lay my eyes upon them and not think of his struggles and sacrifices. His hardships and trials. I cannot lay my eyes upon them and not have a wave of love and emotion run through me as I miss him dearly. A old wooden keg of bent nails laid on his tombstone would be a tribute to him that would say more than any flowers ever could.
I told that story to tell this story. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, so.... Fast forward to the mid-late 1970s and my Dad had the same way of thinking as Gramps did about saving lumber. Only he had a bunch of boys to help with the job. LOL! The local banker was about to build a new home and was going to burn down the old house on his property. Dad thought the maple flooring should be salvaged so in we went with hammers and crowbars etc. I can't remember another time when I was so cold. December and below zero and we're salvaging lumber before the Fire Dept lit the matches. Good thing the ol' Ford Fleetside had a good heater because my fingers and toes would have froze for sure had we not let it idle outside so we could warm up once in awhile. The flooring was carried outside and piled away from the house.
Fast forward again to late June, and we loaded the pile of flooring into the back of Dads '57 Chevy grain truck. The truck delivered the load to the farm and dumped it in the front yard beside the house. We boys then got a pair of saw horses and went to work on that truck load with claw hammers, nail pullers, punches, vice grips, crow bars and flat bars and anything else we could find to pull those nails. Now, keep in mind, this is seasoned and aged maple flooring from the 19 teens or 1920s and wasn't about to let go of a nail for anything.
So first thing you have to do is straighten the nail so you can tap it out the opposite direction it went in. About 30% of the time this resulted in breaking it off. Then the busted nail had to be worked out with a punch enough to expose the head so you could get on it with a claw hammer or crowbar. This usually resulted in the head of the nail snapping off. Then you applied the nail-puller with the sliding handle to dig it out. Sometimes when that failed, you could maybe, just maybe, get on it with a vise-grip pliers and be successful that way. Leaving the nail was not an option because Dad would have been "highly agitated" to say the least if he ran a nail through his saw later on. LOL
So we worked on this truck load of flooring off and on through July as time allowed. By August the nail-less pile was bigger than the pile with nails. By September the nail pulling was done. We then spent another number of days with an electric belt sander and cleaned up every board of it's old finish and wax and dirt and grime. Next the pile was handled once again as we sorted it all into separate piles by length. Then each pile was neatly stacked into bundles small enough for two boys to carry. Each bundle was tied with twine strings salvaged from our hay and straw bales. Then all these bundles were once again loaded into the truck. We then backed the truck up to the big hip-roofed barn and we stacked it all neatly in the corner of the hay mow.
Fast forward another year and the barn caught fire, burned to the ground with all the maple flooring and other salvaged lumber. All that work...shot to he!!.
Dad tried to collect for it with the insurance company but had no way to prove the lumber was in the barn. The insurance company was already trying to weasel out of paying on other things as it was, so Dad had to threaten to get his lawyer involved to get any satisfaction. For instance, Dad claimed he lost 6 pitchforks but insurance would only pay for two because....nobody has 6 pitchforks. Dad told them he had 6 boys.....do you think only two work while the other four watch????? Besides that, We had 6 blackened pitchforks we sifted out of the rubble with burned off handles for proof. Anyway, ...the fire is another story for another day. The topic of maple flooring brought back a lot of memories and so I thought I'd share. Sorry if I took away from the original post.
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Today's Featured Article - Listening to Your Tractor - by Curtis Von Fange. Years ago there was a TV show about a talking car. Unless you are from another planet, physically or otherwise, I don’t think our internal combustion buddies will talk and tell us their problems. But, on the other hand, there is a secret language that our mechanical companions readily do speak. It is an interesting form of communication that involves all the senses of the listener. In this series we are going to investigate and learn the basic rudimentary skills of understanding this lingo.
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