Despite the inconvenience of five kids, Mom and Dad went on the road for periodic concert tours in the early 50s. They farmed their children to various locations for a few weeks for the duration of their “Sacred Concert” road show, passing the hat at various and sundry Midwest churches.
I drew Ruby and Al Korkowski, a childless couple on a tiny farmstead between Brandon and Garfield, Minnesota. She was a schoolteacher, wise and experienced. He had “heart-trouble”, but always showed me a big heart, teaching me, at a very young age of 4, how to maneuver his red Farmall Cub tractor in low gear, while he tossed bales of hay onto a trailer.
I loved them.
Al was salt of the earth, and wise, but he could never quite explain to this curious child exactly why he kept a huge, nasty bull on the premises.
“Be careful around the bull, he can be dangerous,” he would warn.
“If he doesn’t give milk and he’s so mean, why do you keep him?’
Al always had a red-face and was non-plussed by this query anyway.
“We’re going to butcher him,” he’d say. “he’s got to get a little bigger though, ” he said sincerely.
“We’re going to butcher him,” he’d say. “he’s got to get a little bigger though, ” he said sincerely.
I was satisfied with this, not knowing it was easier to mention death to a tot, rather than the miracle of birth, or that the bull was just there to help the mother cows have calves. No matter, it was a different time.
Returning to the farmhouse one day, Ruby was in the kitchen, having coffee with a neighbor. She insisted that I go into the basement and shower off the farm dirt and dust. I balked. I hated taking showers and she knew it.
“You have to take a shower, Stanley” she admonished. “If you don’t, I am going to have to take a shower with you,” she twinkled as her friend sat silently, in on the tease.
Horrified by the prospect of getting naked with a mature woman of my mother’s age, I did not call her bluff.
I headed downstairs immediately and obediently and got scrubbed up.
