When the Petersons first came to the farm there was no bedding for the animals so Swan cut a stack of marsh hay from down on the river bank. This was used to bed down the pigs. As the straw became wet more was added until by late winter or early spring t he pack became rather thick. It became the older boys' job to dig it out and take it to the field. In those days there were no manure spreaders so it was hauled in a wagon and tossed off in small piles. No small task and the boys hated it. In the sprin g the oldest boy operated the walking the plow and the next three younger brothers had to pull the piles of hog manure into the furrow so that it would be covered on he next trip of the plow. The whole project happened on a knoll south of the barn. Because the boys disliked the job it was not long before that knoll received the nickname of "pig s--t hill." It is now a hundred years later and the name "pig Sh--t hill has survived in the Peterson tradition.

       Many evenings were spent cracking nuts in the dining room. Some of the sharp shells would be left scattered around the floor. Swan Peterson being a diabetic would have to get up in the night for a nature call. If you have ever stepped on a nut shuck with bare feet you know how sharp that they can be. Swan would sound off with all of the profanity that his two languages gave him. Saying that there would be no more cracking nuts in the house. He was going to put a stop to that none sense. But the nex t night the same thing happened all over again. I guess that his bark was worse than his bite

       Swan Peterson died from complications from his sugar diabetes, at least a dozen years before I was born so I never had the chance to meet him. I have always wondered just what he was like. Some of my Aunts and Uncle's did not give him very high marks but I never heard my dad say one bad thing about him. He would say that he was a little rough around the edges and if had something to say it was said without diplomacy. In other words he said just what he thought.. There was one other thing that ever yone could agree on including many neighbors who told me countless times that Swan had the most beautiful and musical voices. Sometimes when returning from town after spending the night in the tavern he would sound off and fill the whole country side with his yodeling and song. They said that on a clear night he could be heard for miles around.

       Mooning is not a modern sport but happened way back when the Peterson boys were young. As told by my father. One of his older brothers called him to come in the other bed room. He had been exposed to the practice before so he knew what to expect. The pants would be down and a charge of gas usually accompanied the display. This one time my dad removed his two inch leather belt and had it ready as he opened the door. His guess was correct and he lashed out against the bare exposed butt. To someon e's surprise. He said that put an end to the mooning business.

       As diabetes does it began to effect the blood circulation to Swans feet and he began to have problems.. His toes began to die off and gang green set in. My grandmother Matilda removed some of his toes with a scissors.

       One time my dad brought up a bushel basket that he had put some empty burlap bags in and set on the barn floor. We had a muskrat that was trying to set up housekeeping at that time. The basket was set directly in the middle of what he want ed for a runway. So instead of going a foot to either side the muskrat cut a hole through the basket and all the bags in it. No one was going to detour him from his intended route, My dad kept a pair of knee boots in the barn to be used when raining. One day he started to put them on only to discover that something live was in them. He gave a terrific kick and the boot flew off and a big fat toad emerged from it From that t ime on the boots received a good shaking before putting them on.

       My uncle Fred was the oldest of my Uncles. he loved to tease any animal on the farm whether it be cat or dog, pig or bull. the dogs would retreat under the buildings to get away from him and he would reach under the buildings with a fork or rak e handle. My dad says that all of the handles were badly chewed on the ends where the dogs would grab them.

       Part of the Peterson livestock was a goose that they kept in a pen. My dad was real young at the time. The boys took dead flies from the fly trap to feed them to the goose. To make it more interesting they started to string the flies on a pin and let the goose pick them off the end. This stunt proceeded to holding the pin in the mouth and finally to sticking the tongue out and jerking it back as the goose struck for it. My dad was not fast enough one time and the goose got ahold of the end drawing blood. That put a stop to that game.

       When the Peterson's came to the farm there were some pig pens not to far west of the house. The pens were moved further away but a willow tree started to grow in one corner and had become a small tree by the time that the house burned. The heat w as so intense that it killed the top of the tree. Afterwards the stump sprouted out into nine branches and grew into a beautiful bushy tree. Many a party and family reunion was held under its shade. By the time that I was a small boy the branches had become large limbs and invited many a climb up the various branches for a young boy. The tree started to get scraggly so my dad cut each branch off about twenty feet up. It looked terrible for a year but soon each limb branched out and the tre e was more beautiful than ever. The trunk had reached a diameter of more that six feet. By the time of W.W. 2 while I was away one branch after the other rotted off and fell to the ground so that by the time I had returned it was necessary to do a way with the Peterson landmark.

       Our cow pasture extended east of the house and through a lane on the far side of the farm to the other side of the back fields so the cows could go to the back marsh and hills now known as the thornbush hills. It was my job to get the cows home i n time for them to be there when the men came from the fields. I started doing this while my age was still in the single digits. Sometimes it seemed like a long way but it was not more than a mile even with the cows taking their own path. When the weathe r was hot and my mouth became dry it seemed like it was twenty. A little flavor was added one year when the water was high all summer and the cows stayed out in the black brush marsh. I would have to wade out into the water almost to my hips. I think tha t the cows done it on purpose.

       My dad asked and received permission to prospect for gravel on the Spoon farm. He found a promising spot way back near the mouth of Crockery Creek along the bank. One winter several loads of gravel were taken from this spot and hauled to t he Peterson farm. In the spring my dad along with his brothers Andy, George, and Martin made cement blocks for both the House that Philip is living in and for the silo. It was all done by hand with a mortar box made like a trough 36 inches wide an d about six feet long. Block frames were obtained for both projects. The gravel was counted by the shovel as it was added to the mortar box and an proportional amount of cement was added on top. This was thoroughly mixed by hand with the use of a hoe and only enough water was added so that it could be tamped into forms. After allowing it to set for awhile the forms were removed and the formed block was lowered into a tub of water only long enough to wet it through then the block s itting on its own platform was set out to dry. I can only guess how many platforms were needed to make the project operate. I heard my uncles say one time that they were limited to about twenty five blocks a day. Looking at the silo and the hou se it appears that many a day was spent to accomplish both jobs. Cement in those days cured in days instead of hours as it does now days, but the quality of the blocks is outstanding as I have tried to do some remodeling and have found them to be ex tremely hard.

       My dads open gravel pit was soon exploited by others and the owner of the farm had to close it to the public. The hole is still there and is not to far from the area that the College archaeologists have worked in the past few years.

       Over the years the wooden culvert that was built under the defunct Chicago West Michigan Shoreline Rail Road rotted out in the gully north of Arthur road allowing the water to back up to several feet deep. The Peterson children went to Sunday scho ol in the Spoonville chapel, on the way home they took a short cut across the fields passing the pond of water. It looked inviting so there shoes and clothing came off for a quick swim. As they seldom wore shoes except on Sunday they forgot to put th em back on when they left. A sudden thundershower that afternoon added more water to the backup, completely covering the shoes. More rains that summer and fall added to the depth behind the rail road trestle, until one day the pressure became to great an d the entire overpass was completely washed out. Going over to inspect the damage the row of shoes was found just as they were left on that Sunday afternoon. They were completely ruined , Father Swan was not very happy.

       There was a board fence from Spoonville all the way up the Spoonville road , as it was called in those days {now 120th Ave}. It went north as far as Arthur street then east to the Peterson Homestead. The fence was about three and a half feet high with a two by eight plank laid flat on the top. My dad and his brothers had a ball running down the top of the fence to see who could go the furtherest without falling off. This soon became to tame a sport so the next step was to see who could do it on stilts. Dad says that Uncle John made the whole distance of over a mile and a quarter without falling off. I don't know what became of the fence as it was all gone long before my time, but my dad told me that the last big red oak tree that stands on the west end of the row of trees going west and just before coming to the railroad cut was a little sapling starting out next to one of the posts. It is now a tree of more than three feet in diameter.

       One of the oldest buildings left on the Peterson Homestead is the Granary. It has been a fixture there for more than a hundred years. It was built at Spoonville during the logging days as a house for the help who operated the sawmill. We have b een told that one of the Rollenhagan boys was born in it while it was still in spoonville. I have been told that it was moved from Spoonville to the Peterson farm by Swan but I have not found a date that this was done. I would have to guess that it must h ave been sometime at about the turn of the century. It still shows the signs of the white wash and wallpaper made from German newspapers that had been pasted on the walls. In one corner there still is a triangular shelf that might have been used for nickn acs. I have never been told where it was located when first built at Spoonville. Grandfather Swan moved it to the Peterson farm on logging sleighs and set it on large boulders about where the power pole is now. A door of plain boards was added that fasten ed with a simple hook and eye set up so that it could be opened from the outside only. A cat hole had been cut in so that the cats could keep the mouse population down. It is said that one of my aunts when she was a small girl became locked inside and af ter several hours of captivity managed to squeeze out the cat hole. Bins were added to hold grain and strips of tin tacked on the cracks in the boards, Every year the bins were filled with wheat oats and sometimes barley. A fanning mill h ad its place just inside the door where I spent countless hours turning the crank to clean seed grain. When my father built the new addition to the barn and threshed the straw in that section it meant that the granary was to far away from the thres hing machine and forced the carriers to travel to far. My dad moved the building to the location that it now stands. I can remember them using the threshing tractor to pull it but somehow I can't remember what it was rolled on. He added cables, rods and pipes across the building to hold the pressure of the grain on the outside walls.

       Now in this modern age when everything has to be moved by augur or elevator the old granary has become obsolete. It stands there as a relic of the past. Philip the fourth generation of Peterson to work with the old building has no more us e for it and is planning to tear it down, So the old has to make way for the new.

       I was only about nine or ten years old when this episode happened It was before the granary was moved to its present location, My dad had stored some dynamite caps in a small container and put them on one of the nicknacks shelves way back in the corner of the grain bin. My dad thought that they would be safe there but he had not figured on the inquisitive nature of a ten year old . I crawled back in the oats to explore what was on the shelf and had opened the container and spilled some of the caps in the grain. At the time there was a custom feed grinder who would come with his truck mounted grinder about every two weeks . You can guess that one of the caps found its way into the hammer mill. A terrific explosion with fire shooting out al l over, one of the men was hooking a bag to the machine and had jumped at the explosion and ripped his hand open on the bag hook. An examination revealed no damage to the machine. My dad soon guessed what had happened. He knew how many c aps were in the container so a count revealed that two were missing , They had found one but there was another hidden somewhere in the oats. They found that one also but were ready for it and no damage was done. My dad took the remaining caps out and placed them in another building up under the eve's . They still may be there to this day.

       When my Grandmother Matilda Peterson left the farm she moved to Nunica to a house right next to the interurban tracks. The cars were a big thing for us kids to see go by. We soon referred to them as grandma's cars.

       The interurban trolley cars were powered by a "third rail" that carried a strong electrical current . Many a wild animal and some cats and dogs met their fate when coming into contact with it at the wrong time. One time our mother had re turned from some trip and was crossing the tracks with Gordon who was about three years old and she was carrying me in her arms as I was only a few months old at the time.. Somehow Gordon stumbled and fell across the third rail . A disaster was av oided as the weather was cold and he had plenty of cloths on to act as insulation. I can remember stories told about this incident for years afterward. Another time grandma Peterson and my mother went to the Berlin fair traveling on the interurban. As th ey were ready to return it started to rain . My grandmother along with Gordon and me got on the car but my mother returned to the station for some reason and in doing so the train pulled out without her. Grandma had two little boys that were scared for th e safety of there mother being left behind. Grandmother assured us that she would be on the next car to arrive in Nunica. She was right.

       Wilma was our only sister who grew up in a family of boys. She soon found out that it was necessary to fight for her position in the family. She turned into a real good ball player and any other athletic endeavor she made up her mind to do. To me she was the perfect person to tease, after all what are sisters for. I look back on it now and think how obnoxious I must have been but somehow I think that in a way she enjoyed the attention and some of the teasing. I always thought that I tried to make the teasing the fun kind and not the cruel. Maybe she didn't think so at the time. One time after some episode where I'd been particularly obnoxious she picked up a croqay ball and threw it in my general direction, it caught me in the temple and put me down. She must have thought that she had rid herself of one tease but I survived to do it some more. In 1926 dad was building the barn and by late summer it had been completed to the point of putting on shingles. The roof boards were nailed on with cracks of an inch or more between boards making the roof a sort of ladder to climb on before the sh ingles covered them up. I was about eight years old and was climbing all over the top of the barn. One time "Baldy Meinel" the head carpenter on the job sent me over the top of the barn and down the other side to get some special cut shingles th at were laid out. Coming over the top I found Wilma who could have not been three years old yet climbing up the ladder to the barn eves and was about to start up the roof. It was a scary situation for awhile / Wilma was undaunted by the whole t hing , She was a tom boy and could do it herself. Wilma tells me of this story many years after it happened. I had made a long bow while working with the boy scouts. It was available so one time when I was gone she got it out. She shot an arrow straight up in the air and it came down on the barn roof , sticking up out of the metal roof like a statue for all to see. This would never do so Wilma being about thirteen or fourteen at the time crawled up through the barn out the window on the west end and onto the slippery metal roof and down the side until she could retrieve the arrow. I never had nerve enough to venture on that slippery metal, but she accomplished it. I always wondered how that hole got into the roof. It was only a few years ago that she told me the true story.

       I was always happy to be in the woods with the mosquitoes and the trees, but Gordon spent his time in the farm shop engineering some contraption, and he was good at it. He built electro magnets and developed his own electric motor, building the whole thing from scarp that he found . One time he acquired an old one cylinder gas engine that would no longer run. He soon had it going so he mounted it on an old mowing machine that had been retired . The result was he had a small tractor. I t was slow but extremely powerful. Every evening he spent doing something in the shop staying until darkness forced him to stop. This was before electricity had come to the farm. In school Gordon studied very hard , it wasn't easy for him but when he le arned something it stayed with him.

       A vegetable garden has always been a part of the Peterson activities, it was never an important function. There was always to many things for my father to do so the job of tending the garden fell on my mother and us children. Gordon always had a green thumb and did a fairly good job of putting the garden together, but his main interest was the farm shop where he could build some kind of contraption or experiment with some invention he had dreamed up. To me the garden was a lot of hoeing th at a boy my age didn't exactly relish. After high school and Gordon had left for greener pastures , I thought an old chicken run would be an ideal place to try a small vegetable garden. It supported weeds that almost took over. Some hard work sav ed the day and the garden turned out to be a fair success. Somehow I must have got the bug as the next year more effort and considerable sweat produced a garden that I was proud of. My dad kept it going after I left for the service, but he found that his back and a hoe didn't get along very well together so as soon as I returned the job was mine again. After moving to the Viebrock place Etta and I had a garden in several different places with varying degrees of success. It probably would have been a total disaster without the long hours Etta put in keeping it in shape . We alway s wanted a special place for it, instead of being scattered all over and moving it from here to there we decided to develop our own plot. There was a dip in the yard that had been filed with top soil . We chose this location.. Our barnyard had bee n filled with blow sand that we received from a neighbor when he built his house. After a few years this was well saturated with cow droppings . I removed the barnyard fence and scraped about three or four inches of this sand into the area that we wanted to garden making the black dirt over three feet deep in some spots. The first year we found that the sand could not hold moisture and we nearly had a disaster. Some clay top soil was being removed from the other farm so we had several truckl oads dumped on top of the sand and then worked in. This gave it more body and water holding ability. For a few years mulch was added under the tomato plants and between rows of potatoes. This added mulch also added to the water ho lding capacity of the soil. As a result the garden has been getting better every year and has now become our pride and joy. It still dries out faster than we would like but a water line has been added with an outlet in the middle where a hose can be attac hed. Thousands of angle worms and night crawlers now call our garden their home.

       What is tradition? Is it something that started out by necessity and progressed to habit and eventually has become tradition. A case in point - years ago, sometime in the middle nineteen twenties a gallon of oysters could be purchased for only a dollar or two. We would have them for one of the holidays. It was fast to prepare and covered most of the meal so my mother chose New Years day to have them. My dad loved them but I had a few misgivings about them and had to learn to like them. Maybe it was because one tome the local Odd Fellows lodge was going to put on a oyster supper. Chancey Westover donated the oysters and my dad donated the milk. an old bachelor from north of Nunica volunteered to do the cooking. A copper wash b oiler would be the kettle. and a coal fired cook stove provided the heat. The fire got away from the cook and scorched the milk on the oysters so bad that the flavor was turned to scorched milk. They couldn't use the mess so Chancey and my dad quickly vo lunteered more ingredients. The stew went off and the supper was a success, but what to do with the scorched batch? They gave them to my dad who brought them home and we as kids had to eat them for a week. They were not really th at bad but I had a little more than a kid of seven or eight years could take so I looked on oyster with a critical eye for some years after that. Eventually I learned to like them again and now conceder them a delicacy. At the price that you would pay for oysters at the time of the great depression was cheaper than having chicken and was a lot less work to prepare. It became a habit to have them every New years day. Now we are in the second and third generation of Petersons to indulge on New Years it has become tradition. At first all my bothers and sister and there families got together for stew and an afternoon of football but eventually our houses were no longer large enough to hold every one so we broke up . into two gatherings, But o ysters are still the main menu. January 1 1996 was no different. We had over thirty present, the house was full and the oysters tasted as good as ever.