At the Tipton farm through the big corral yard to the north of the house was the hired man’s house. This is different from the Mexican migrant workers house in the east part of the yard just pasted the potato dug out. The hired man had a permanent job and worked side by side with my Dad and brother to keep up with the farm work.
I think when I was about six the family that lived there was named Bray. They were regular people raising a family and trying to make a living. You could walk north down the dirt road a quarter of a mile to their house or go through the big corral yard. The corral yard sat mostly empty as I remember that the milk cows were kept in a different corral by the big barn. The corral yard had a big fenced in area for heifers (young cows) or maybe cattle raised only to sell or be butchered for food?
My Grandpa Carl Swanson was a big cattle man more than a dairyman. Carl had a corral on his farm and the one across the street on the property he also owned filled with cattle. He fattened them up on rich grain and hay, and then took them to market in Denver to sell them. Is seems we all thought he was pretty good at that job and highly thought of in the community for his management of cattle.
In the big corral yard at Tipton’s farm was also a concrete set up that was used to wash sheep. We never raised sheep so we just played on that set up. Along the board fence was a few lesser used pieces of machinery and an old buggy that had belonged to Frank Swanson. It was quite the thing with the open bench seat that you could imagine ladies sitting on all dressed to go to town. It had the oak posts that tied onto one horse that used to pull it. My dad showed this buggy with pride to all who ventured into the big corral yard. One summer Frieda Johnson (Carl Swanson’s sister) came with her grown son and liked the wagon so much they took it for her son and hauled it to Pasadena California to display it in their front yard. My dad, mom and I did visit with second cousins and saw the buggy there. It didn’t look near as appealing in a suburban setting. I remember going to their house, but can’t remember the guys name. He was an inventor of some type and was working on the body of a small go-cart type car that he had built himself. He was working with fiberglass which was a new material for the time in the early 1950’s. This was probably the same trip I talked about before when we went to Disneyland.
Another big hay wagon rested against the fence in the big corral yard. It had oak wagon wheels and was made in the about 1909. It had some boards across the bed of the wagon, but they weren’t the boards that came with it. Dad moved this across the street when we moved to the Swanson Farms in the late 1950’s. The wagon sat for in the back yard surrounded by other discards until the 1990’s when my husband Stan and son John dismantled it and hauled it to Lakewood in our Ford van. They reassembled it and the two units of wheels are in my front lawn now. We couldn’t move the long oak bed that connected the wheels together where the bed of the wagon was due to size. Those long pieces stayed behind the milk house for years until we had to burn them while cleaning up the property to sell.
Because my parent taught us the love for old things, especially if connected to departed family I have lots of treasures that probably should be moved along. I like keeping them so I do.
At the north of the big corral yard was a gate that you could peek in and see the hired man’s house. They had a little boy named Richie Bray that was about my age. He was keep mostly to his mommy so I really didn’t play much with him. When I did visit his mom would always offer me a snack which was white bread spread with butter and sprinkled with sugar. That is still a favorite today although I might toast the bread and include some cinnamon with the sugar. Sometimes she had a left over pancake that she did the same thing. I always same one pancake when I make them to cool off, spread with butter and sprinkle with some sugar. Yum Yum.
I think back now about the Bray’s and realize they were pretty poor. They didn’t have any jelly or jam to spread on the bread so sugar was the best treat the mom could offer me.
On the first of day of May, May Day, the tradition was that you would take a bunch of little cups, decorate them with crepe paper, add a pipe cleaner handle and put nuts or small candies in the cup. You would take these to school and pass them out to your classmates. I took one of these little may baskets over to Richie Bray’s through the big corral yard to his back gate. I think maybe my brother or sister went along to tease me. There was some silliness about giving the basket to a boy and then kissing him. I think I gave Richie the basket when he opened the gate and ran like the dickens so I wouldn’t be kissed.