UP ONE LEVEL

Clarence had been farming north of town on rented land. He wanted a place of his own, so he bought what became known as the Heater House and 80 acres. Then it was known as the Sam Wilson place. Sam had purchased it from his father, Lawn (Lloyd) Wilson. Part of the deal was another 80 acres, one and one half miles northeast.

 To acquire the down payment, he sold most of his livestock, including a team of mules. He financed the rest with the Federal Land Bank. They moved onto the place in 1926.

The Wilsons left many out buildings, including pig pens, chicken sheds, the barn, the outhouse, and an ice house. The screened porch wrapped the first floor of the frame house on a stone and cement foundation. The house didn’t have many windows. The stairs were enclosed, and the basement unfinished. A spring northeast of the house had been channeled to pass under the first floor kitchen. A dumb waiter ferried butter, milk and, occasionally, Jell-O to the waters of the cool, running spring.  Clarice said it wasn’t handy. Fighting the crank and the weight of the platform and food, it was hard not to spill the Jell-O. Merle Shribroun remembers exploring the spring by dumb waiter with his brother, Darrell. A tamer route was through a basement crawl door.

 The Wilsons had planted a large orchard north of the house. The varieties aren’t common today...big Wolf Rivers and Greening apples, which tasted like a banana. There were also pears and plums. The road of that day ran parallel to, but west of today’s road. It cut much closer to the house, bending sharply to find the bridge. The river also divided the farm.

Clarence and Agnes raised nearly everything they consumed, and were self-sufficient compared to today. But by the late 1920’s, complete self-sufficiency was disappearing. A neighbor, Tom Herron, was still hauling corn to the Panora mill to get it ground. It took him several days to make the trip with oxen and wagon. Most people including the Heaters, brought their corn meal in Coon Rapids.

Clarence and Agnes raised five children and lost two more, one to measles and the other as an infant. The surviving children - Ada (Vaughan), Evelyn (Tolliver), Clarence Jr., Claude and Clarice (Shirbroun) - helped with the chores. The younger children attended the Whiterock school, with Herrons, Betts and Brutsches. The Heaters didn’t need much from town. The parents went in every two or three weeks, and the children even less often. Town celebrations, especially the Fourth of July, were big events for the Heater children.

 The vegetable garden was large and sustaining. It lay across the road. Most of the produce was canned or stored. Clarence made alfalfa hay on the bluff south of the house and across the river (now known as Gatling Gun Point), and had patches of corn and pasture tucked into the woods. they milked cows, pastured cattle, tended bees, fed pigs, and raised chickens. Agnes made soap and churned butter. The children gathered walnuts and gooseberries in the woods. Thanks to the river, fence fixing was an endless project. In an early year on the farm, the river rose, trapping cows in the basement. Clarence consulted Earl McGuire, the neighborhood expert on most problems. Earl trapezed across the top of the stalls to untie the cows. The cows swam out and were washed down the river, but none drowned.

They used the old ice house as a slaughter house, and canned their meat. In the mid thirties, they started to salt some of the meat, especially pork.

The chickens were Agnes’ domain. Clarice remembers the addition of a second hen house. To stock the house, her mother bought 50 Buff Orfington hens from a neighborhood bachelor, Jim Hutton, who named every hen.

They cut wood from the timber for heating and cooking. In the early years, they used crosscut saws and axes. Clarence cut what he needed and didn’t clear much land. He liked the woods. Other people did too. Picnickers...families, girl scouts or kids...visited on the weekends and sometimes weren’t careful with gates and fences.

Clarence wasn’t selfish with his land. For two years in the late 1930’s, Clarence let Indians from the Tama Reservation spend the summer on his land. About 50 of them would arrive in Buicks and other large touring cars of the day. They set up teepees on Gatling Gun Point, and used wood smudge pots to ward off the insects. They spent the summer drying and curing herbs, then returned to the reservation in the fall. Clarice remembers giving bananas to the Indian kids, who ate them---peel and all. They claimed the peel was the best part.

Clarice also remembers a wandering drover with a good looking herd of cattle. The man asked to pen his stock in one of Clarence’s pastures for the night. He told the family he had been to Texas, and back, grazing road ditches the entire way.

Across the river to the west, the Heaters kept sheep. They hauled water to them, across the bridge, on a “stone boat”, a horse-drawn wooden skid fitted with 10 gallon water barrels. They penned the sheep every night in the shed of that pasture, to protect them from fox and coyote. The spring wool and fall lamb sales, supplemented by the income from a few fat hogs, provided the cash for their semiannual farm payment.

Cash was always tight. They sold all their surplus milk, butter, eggs, meat and honey. The orchard brought in some cash. Clarence, a local expert in cement and brick masonry and carpentry, picked up odd jobs.  Their neighbors were also hurting financially. Clarice remembers Elsie Herron making sunbonnets for a little extra cash.

Clarence and Agnes weren't afraid to experiment (we would have called them entrepreneurs today) and they both worked hard. For a few summers in the early 1930’s, they converted their barn to a dance hall. They charged 25¢ at the door for the regular Saturday night dance, with Earl Garnes on guitar, Don Bowman on sax, Frank Brutsche on banjo, Evelyn (Clarice’s sister) on piano and Clarence on fiddle. The dances drew a big crowd, and many people arrived on horseback. Earl McGuire had a Model-T truck, known locally as “The Whiterock Special”. He used it to collect and return the locals to the Heater barn dances and all the regular neighborhood parties. Although no drinks were served, the dances started getting bigger and rowdier, so the Heaters stopped giving them.

It must have been a hard decision. By 1933 in the worst of the depression, cash was desperately tight. Clarence had owned a car, but put it up on blocks to avoid the expense of gasoline. He returned to horse and wagon for his trips to town. Agnes had dental problems. Teeth were pulled rather than repaired when they acted up. Dr. Whistler charged 50¢ for a simple extraction, or a dollar with pain killer. Agnes lost a lot of her teeth in these years, without pain killer. The kids didn’t have many dental problems. Sugar was a luxury, although they did get sorghum molasses from the neighbor, Earl McGuire.

 In the late 1930’s, the Heaters grew strawberries on the pasture between the house and the river. They plowed up four acres, and bought plants from Bob Handy, a neighbor to the south who had been in the strawberry business for years. Bob was retiring. Clarice helped her dad set them. The second year the river behaved and they got a bumper crop. Clarence cultivated them with horses and everyone pulled weeds. They irrigated the strawberries with a one cylinder gasoline engine, pulling water from the river. The same engine ran the family washing machine. The strawberries were picked either on commission, or “on shares”, half to the picker and half to the Heaters. Agnes consulted Louis Frohlich to determine the “going rate”, and sold her berries not only to neighbors, but also to Beider Meat Market in Carroll, to Springer’s in Jefferson and sometimes to a store in Denison. John Betts and Henry Shirbroun trucked them. Local people canned the berries with honey or white corn syrup. Even in the ate 1930’s, sugar was expensive. In the third year of production, the river rose again. The Heaters gave up, and Clarice was thankful. Setting strawberries was miserable work.

Although life was hard, Clarence enjoyed his life...the farming and animals, the woods, the family, the neighbors, and the whippoorwills which live in the wooded bottom land. Clarence retired in 1948, moved to town and died a year later. He had sold the farm to his son June (Clarence Jr.) who sold it to Steve Garst in 1964. Agnes Heater died in 1983, her last 34 years in town.

The barn still stands and can be rented for dances. Information is available on the Garst Farm Resort web site.

Reprinted from the Coon Rapids Enterprise - the best darn paper in town!