Grandpa's Contraption-Part 2

Now, a contraption is usually something no one has ever seen anything quite like before. It is usually, but not always, something you can't buy ready made. If you could buy something, it would be either way to expensive or wouldn't work quite the way you wanted it to work. It is created for some special use, a figment of imagination made material, a dream made real. Grandpa was wonderful at drawing. From the tip of his pencil flowed drawings of parts that somehow might fit together into some useful contraption. He could see the finished item in his mind, along with exactly how to get it put together.

Between 1909 and 1916, a very small automobile manufacturing company operated out of Detroit, Michigan. Kenneth Crittendon designed a car and provided financial backing for the company to manufacture it. The car was named the KRIT. It was a small, four cylinder car and its symbol was a white swastika on a blue background, (not related to the red swastika used by Germany). The accompanying photograph is of a KRIT car.

At some time Grandpa acquired one of these cars. He drove it as a family car for a number of years. At some time, probably in the late '20s or early '30s his oldest son, my Uncle Mike, inherited it. Uncle Mike thought it was a little too stodgy for a young man about town, so he made some modifications to it. After Uncle Mike stopped driving it, the KRIT wound up on the farm, housed in a large equipment barn with the tractors. It wasn't used for transportation any longer and the body was beginning to rust from disuse. Now, if there is anything anathema to a frugal person it is something that isn't being used. So, Grandpa got out his pencil and sketch paper and went to work. He dreamed and he sketched, and he dreamed some more and he sketched some more.

One day he called Grandma. "Dora, I think I have an idea for a contraption for the garden. What do you think of this?" And he showed her his sketches. Shortly afterward he got out his pipe, put it unlit into his mouth, and went out to the equipment barn. He hauled pieces of this and that to the machine shop, and then he closed the door. Grinding, banging, and pounding noises, interspersed with intervals of silence, came from inside the shop.

Later, he got my Uncle and together they brought out the old KRIT and got it down to the shop. Periodically, Grandpa would appear outside. He would have a drawing in one hand, and he'd look from the paper to that old car as if he was sizing things up. Then he would disappear inside and more banging and grinding ensued. This went on for several weeks, as he had time between other chores.

One day, at the end of summer, he told Grandma and all the children to go into the house and not come out, nor to look out the windows until he called them. Soon they heard the putt-putt of an engine coming up the road from the machine shop. In a bit they heard Grandpa call out, "O.K., come and see!"

There, in the middle of the remains of the summer garden, was Grandpa proudly seated on his latest contraption - the dandiest garden tractor anyone in the family had ever seen.

A new frame surrounded the body of what used to be the old KRIT car. There was only one front wheel, which he had scavenged from an old tractor.He had fastened a fuel tank to the back. Underneath the tractor was bolted a set of cultivating tines. Grandpa had added a tractor seat with levers for raising and lowering the tines, and a hitch on back for hooking up a cart or other equipment. He had replaced the floor board with a metal foot rest, and made the foot controls larger for booted feet to manage.

That fall the garden was duly manured and plowed. In the spring, Uncle Mike tilled the garden. Through the next spring and summer, Grandma and her daughters planted, weeded, dusted for bugs, and picked the produce.The cycle of growing, harvesting and putting up began anew.

In the 1940s, as a little girl, I spent some summers on the farm. Grandpa's contraption was still running. He had replaced some parts as they wore out, but the last time I saw it, it looked much the same as it does in this photo. Grandpa passed away in 1952, but the stories of his contraptions, and especially of that old KRIT car that he transformed into a garden tractor, are still repeated in our family.

Grandpa's Contraption

I come from a long line of "Contraption Makers". In fact, one of the most enjoyable and satisfying activities my Gardening Buddy and I engage in is contraption inventing and building. As we stand back and admire our work, we congratulate each other on our ability to make something useful from bits and pieces of this and that. Sometimes we buy bits and pieces. Mostly though, we look around for the odd pieces of wood cut from some other project, a bit of fencing wire, or some leftover piece of conduit.

My Grandfather was a maker of contraptions. Born in the late 1800s, he originally had a career as a pharmacist. Later, he became a Lincoln motor car dealer. But then, fate intervened. My Grandmother inherited a quarter section of farm land when her parents died. Her brother, my Uncle Charlie, inherited the adjoining quarter section.

Grandpa called a family council, including his five children, and spoke about what it would mean for them to leave the city and move to the farm Grandma had inherited. The family conferred on what work would be needed, who might take on what responsibilities, how life would change from living in a city brick home, to a small, frame house in the country. The family voted to move. They would raise cows, pigs, poultry, corn, milo...and have a garden. These activities would have to feed the family and provide income. Each of the children, of whom Mom was the third oldest at age 14, would have tasks. The boys would tend the larger animals and do the field work, the girls would take care of the poultry and the garden. To help with income, the girls would sell eggs, poultry and butter. With their plans laid, they moved to their farm in 1923.

The photo to the left is Mom with part of the flock of poultry. There were ducks and geese. and chickens of several breeds, such as Barred Rocks, White Leghorns, and Rhode Island Reds.

My Mom liked the Reds the best. She had several pets from among the Reds.

In this picture she was about 15 or 16 years old. She was always very tiny for her age. When she was full grown, she was all of 4 feet 9 inches tall.

A quarter section of land is 160 acres. In addition to fields and pastures, there would be a garden. It would have to be large enough to feed a family of seven during the season, and yield enough produce to put up for the rest of the year. Equipment - tractor, cultivator, planter, harvester - would be needed for plowing, planting and harvesting in the fields. Grandpa and Uncle Charlie decided that they could share larger equipment and help each other with field work. But a garden of the size needed would be very hard for my Grandma and her three daughters to handle alone. The hardest work would be turning under the manure and garden waste in the fall, and loosening the soil in the spring.

When you turned off the main road onto my Grandparent's farm road, you went over a wooden bridge that crossed "The Branch", a creek that ran into a small, local river. On the right side of the road, past the bridge, was Grandpa's machine shop. I still recall the smells of oil, gas, and metal inside. Next to the machine shop was the windmill. In addition to the tools inside the machine shop, there was a bank of batteries. The windmill charged the batteries, which provided electricity before the county came through with power lines.

The machine shop was a magical place. I was never allowed inside without Grandpa or one of my Uncles. Most of the equipment Grandpa had was purchased used. Tractors needed repairs, parts needed welding - something was always needing maintenance and fixing up. Out of Grandpa's shop also came "contraptions".

To be continued...

A Country Life

I come from a farming, gardening family going back generations. My great-great grandparents farmed in Nebraska, as did my great-grandparents . My grandparents had their little 40 acre farm in the Ozarks, the setting of some of my fondest childhood memories.

My grandfather had degrees in journalism and horticulture. Like so many college-educated women of her generation, Grandma studied home economics. Grandma had grown up on the family farm, Grandpa was the son of immigrants and grew up in New York City. He dreamed his whole life of being a farmer. Finally as their children were becoming young adults and economics allowed, they made that dream come true with the purchase of the little farm and orchard in the beautiful Ozark Mountains.

My mom and stepfather live partially off their own land on 68 acres with woods, meadows, wildlife, fruit trees, berry bushes and brambles, perennial gardens, and huge vegetable gardens where they grow and preserve a bounty that sees them through each year from harvest to harvest.

Although they own enough acreage for livestock, they limit their production to fruits and vegetables. They buy most of their meat, dairy, and eggs from Amish and organic farmers in their community, and other staples through local co-ops and buying clubs. In doing so they help support and sustain the local farming economy.

Because so much of it is undeveloped and unfarmed, their small piece of heaven on earth is mostly a wild and beautiful flora and fauna preserve existing unmolested and unharmed much as it would have long before Columbus.

They participate in an ecologically-sound forestry management program. They re-use, recycle, or compost most of the little bit of waste they generate. They are shining examples of organic gardening, buying local, supporting this country's endangered family farming culture, and sustainable, energy-conscious, environmentally sound living, and they get to live here:



This is a bit of my heritage which may serve to illuminate my recently recurring fantasy of a country life. My kids, at least for now, live reasonably close. Two of them are in the city about an hour away, and one is closer about 30 minutes away in the suburbs. Two of my three girls have started families. I have one grandchild and counting. In part because it's hard to imagine living any further away from my daughters and my grandchildren, it's hard to think about pursuing that country life fantasy.

Yet there's a deep part of me dreaming of a country life. Is it nature or nurture? I guess it's a bit of both. And it seems it's something I've passed on to at least one of my daughters, who like me and generations before us, long for country life.

My mom and stepfather, and grandparents weren't much older than me, and like me, their kids were grown and mostly on their own, when they took the plunge and made their country-life dreams come true.

For now and for the foreseeable future my country dreams will remain dreams. Sometimes though, a familiar yearning takes hold. . . And on February days like this, when it's too cold to work it out in my suburban back yard garden, it can be palpable.