Ol' Ephraim's Stories
Ol' Ephraim is a modest, humble man--a gentle soul--and a dear friend of mine. When I asked him if I could videotape him—that his voice was as soft as a horse’s nose—he just chuckled and retorted, “More like a horse’s you-know-what,” and kindly declined. We decided together that when writing for us, he’d use the pen name “Ol’ Ephraim.”
Using A Ferret To Hunt
By Ol’ Ephraim
Being brought up on a farm early in the 1900’s had some real advantages, and one was hunting for small game. My Dad and Uncle Dave were avid bird and rabbit hunters, and the game they shot supplanted other food for the farm table. Accordingly, they had the approval of my grandparents.
My grandfather was a mild, quiet man, a good farm man of the soil. In his background in Europe in the 1800’s, hunting was not normally done by common folks, just by the nobility, so he had no inclinations for shooting game animals. But he enjoyed the hunt nonetheless.
The hunting laws in those days were less stringent than now, and you could drive game animals out of their holes with smoke, sticks, etc. legally, and the use of a ferret was quite common. On their rabbit hunts, Dad and Uncle Dave would carry their shotguns, and each person would watch one of the usual two exit holes. Although my grandfather never hunted per se, he carried the ferret on the hunts. When they found a likely place, the ferret would be placed in the hole, and pretty soon the rabbit would come popping out of cover and be shot for the bag.
However, if the ferret caught the rabbit in the hole, he would stay there and eat the rabbit, and the folks would have to come back the next day to retrieve him.
The Benefits of Skunk Hunting
By Ol’ Ephraim
My Dad was brought up on a farm near Royal Oak, Michigan around the turn of the century. He attended a one-room country school when farming tasks did not demand his time, and there were only seven or eight other children in the class, all different ages being taught at the same time in the same room by one school teacher. The boys got the opportunity to split the firewood for the wood-burning stove, and shoveled the snow around the schoolhouse and out to the outhouse. For the most part, the children walked long distances through whatever weather to and from school, although some rode their own horses. The roads were dirt or muddy and not suited for bicycles, had they been available. And the boys amused themselves throwing horse apples at one another on the walks to and from school along the roads.
To earn extra money, my Dad ran a trap line for furs and also dug up and killed skunks for the hides. Contrary to popular belief, holding up a skunk by the tail does not prevent the skunk from squirting the holder, and in the digging up process Dad was also often fragrantly anointed. The tomato juice cure was not known in those early days, nor was bottled tomato juice available, so a scrubbing with soap and water was the only solution, and then not very successful. If my Dad was too smelly, the teacher would sometimes send him home, with no regrets from Dad whatever.
If farming tasks permitted, my grandfather would sometimes play hooky with my Dad on those trapping or digging excursions.
The skunk hides were often used to make full-length coats. The hide buyers would pay less for a hide with white streaks or spots, as the coat-makers wanted solid black coats.
Imagining My Grandparents
By Ol’ Ephraim
I never knew my paternal grandparents, as they died before I was born. However, my parents had a photo album kept by my grandparents, and my sister currently has possession of it at her home up north. The album is filled with those old faded sepia-style pictures, showing people in period dress at gatherings or picnics or excursions. Unfortunately, the captions are all written in Danish, so we never have been able to identify the people or the activities.
There are pictures of my grandparents included. My grandfather was a man of less than medium height, mild-looking with a placid expression, clad in a loose-fitting (and probably comfortable) grey suit, a little baggy in the knees, with farmer shoes. His affable nature seems to fit the picture perfectly.
My grandmother, by comparison, was a taller person, stern and formidable-looking, always in a black full-length, long-sleeved dress that went from her chin to the ground. She looked like nobody to mess around with!
Recalling them today in my mind, they seem to resemble Ma and Pa Kettle of movie fame in the mid-1900’s.
The Old Log Cabin
By Ol’ Ephraim
My father, born in 1899, was raised with two brothers on my grandfather’s farm in Royal Oak, Michigan. Uncle Bill, Dad’s oldest brother, was 19 years older than Dad and lived in a small hamlet 120 miles north of Saginaw around the turn of the century, running the local bank out of the front parlor of his house. The family used to visit Uncle Bill, leaving the farm in Grandfather’s Model T Ford, staying in Standish overnight, and then completing the trip over corduroy log roads. It was a long and bumpy trip!
Around 1924, my Dad and Grandfather built a cottage on a lake next to the hamlet and our family used it for vacations. My Uncle Dave, only three years older than Dad, used to visit the cottage and became interested in joining a nearby hunting club when it was formed in 1926, but not firming up his plans until 1930 during the Depression. He found from Uncle Bill that the bank had foreclosed on a small log hunting cabin on private property about 20 miles away for nonpayment of taxes, and bought it from the bank. Dad and Uncle Dave hired a local farmer with two big, strapping sons to pull all the rolled roofing nails, unroll and save the roofing, number all the roofing boards and cedar roof joists and wall logs and to disassemble the cabin. While they were doing that, Dad and Uncle Dave dug a trench and made forms for a strip foundation on Uncle Dave’s lot in the hunt club and, mixing the cement in a wheelbarrow, poured the foundation.
In due time, the farmer and sons rolled in with the first load of many on their Model T Ford flatbed truck and they subsequently reassembled the cabin, by the numbers, minus the chinking between the logs, finally nailing the original rolled roofing back down on the roof, finishing the job.
My Dad thanked them for a job well done and asked what the final cost would be. The farmer answered “$45.00” (which was a fair amount of money during the Depression). My Dad, recognizing how many trips it had taken to bring all the logs to the site and all the labor to disassemble and reassemble the cabin, was pleasantly surprised and replied “What?!” And the farmer said, “OK, then $35.00,” and that was what they agreed upon!
Dad and Uncle Dave subsequently chinked the logs with cement and Uncle Dave’s family used it thereafter for a few years. His daughters loved the place but my Aunt was rather dainty and upset by spiders and ants and snakes and Uncle Dave either sold or gave the cabin to my Dad. Our family used it all the years since, and it was regularly used also during all the small game, fishing and deer hunting seasons. It has always been a very special place.
The photo shows the cabin as it was back in the mid-thirties, with my Mother, sister, and Dad’s Model A Ford in the foreground.
Test-Driving An Oakland Motor Car
By Ol’ Ephraim
About the author: “Ol’ Ephraim” is a modest, humble man, and a dear friend of mine. When I asked him if I could videotape him—that his voice was as soft as a horse’s nose—he just chuckled and retorted, “More like a horse’s you-know-what,” and kindly declined. We decided together that when writing for us, he’d use the pen name “Ol’ Ephraim.” Here is his first submission:
My father graduated from college around 1922 and his first job was at the Oakland Motor Car Company in Pontiac, Michigan. This was an era of big, fine open cars in a highly competitive auto market and as the years passed, many of the fine old car companies and names fell by the wayside.
At the Oakland Motor Car Company plant, the cars were assembled on an assembly line much like that created by Henry Ford. After the wheels, steering and suspension were fitted to the chassis, the engine and transmission and drive line and differential were added and the unit exited the plant to a circular dirt track. My Dad and other men, one to a car, would attach a temporary gas tank to the carburetor, add a battery, and set the timing, spark advance or retard roughly, set a nail keg where the driver’s seat would be, crank the engine to start it, and then drive it around the track, stopping periodically to fine tune the engine adjustments. When they felt it was running properly, they’d remove all the temporary stuff and the unit would go back into the factory to have the body installed and everything finished up. The cars were subsequently painted and hand rubbed out and, finally, considered finished.
From time to time, when enough completed cars had been finished, my Dad and others would drive the cars in a convoy to Detroit for sale.
In the years to follow, the Oakland Motor Car Company would become the Pontiac Motor Division of the General Motors Corporation.
In the attic of my garage there is a black wooden trunk with a big lock hasp on it, and with a big railroad lock through the hasp. Inside are the tools that my Dad used to use at the Oakland Motor Car Company, and no amount of money will ever induce me to part with them. They are for his grandchildren, one of whom presently operates his own automobile service garage in northern Lower Michigan, a fitting final place for them.
"His Dad's Old Tool Trunk"
To Kill A Sparrow
By Ol’ Ephraim
Back around the turn of the century, sparrows caused a great deal of damage to crops. The Department of Agriculture attempted to solve this problem by reducing the number of the birds, and to make this happen, they put a bounty on the sparrows, a penny or two per bird.
My Dad and Uncle Dave were good shots with the little .22 rifle they had, and they would shoot sparrows out of trees or off the top of the barn. They would then twist off the heads and toss the heads into a big old milk pail from the farm, keeping the count on a piece of paper taped to the side of the pail. However long it took to fill up the pail, they would then take it to the local Agriculture Dept. agent for payment. The agent, understandably, never wanted to confirm the count by actually counting the heads, considering their ripe condition, and always accepted Dad and Uncle Dave’s count.
The brothers would then use the money to buy more .22 ammunition, and if there was money left over, they would buy shotgun shells for bird hunting in the Fall. In those days, you could buy shotgun shells singly, so many cents per shell, not in a box.
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