Farm Life In Boonslick Country
An apple a day • Tidbits • Changing times on a Boonslick farm • Apple orchards/harvesting • Labor problems • Hog killing • Ice in the home • Giving or taking milk • No money, no beer • Kingsbury apple dynasty ends.
After his father’s death in 1938 Lilburn was able to devote more of his time to Fairview and the orchards. He wrote:
I have recently spent most of my time on the farm, and away from the office. The chance to work around the house has enabled me to produce for the passing public, a colorful show place. The iris and peonies along the terrace in front of the house are simply wonderful to behold. [He had set them out so they spelled out Kingsbury Orchards] Such lovely colors and such a profusion of them. I have extended my planting about double what it was last year and as the years go by and I continue to keep this up, I shall really have something quite showy. This year the spirea and syringa borders along the highway between the two places are enough to make quite a display. The whole front, south side and back yards are hand-mowed and strange to say we have the best stand of blue grass in years.
Farming gives a sense of health to me. it is refreshing to watch at dusk while a herd of cattle flows toward the barn and hogs respond to my calling.
An Apple a Day
Lilburn took active measures to promote his apple sales. To previous customers he mailed the following letter.
“An apple a day keeps the doctor away. But - don’t let anything keep you away if you want good winter apples. Come early and be SURE.
If you have bought apples from us, you will be back. This is to remind you come soon. To others we extend a cordial invitation to visit our packing shed and see how WELL the quality of our fruit matches our PRICES. We have a good many apples but the demand is brisk.
He mailed penny postcards to a list of prospects with this message:
Come to the shed with the sign BIG RED APPLE, on Highway No. 5 (a rain or shine road), 8 miles south of Fayette and 1 1/2 miles north of New Franklin.
-Lilburn Kingsbury
Fairview
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Tidbits
But all life on the farm was not refreshing as these tidbits show.
On March 11, 1946:
Dear folks:
Louis heard us talking about the recent Missouri article in the National Geographic and was anxious to read it. After he had done so, he commented at the table, “Fred’s a good writer, but it is just such things as what he wrote about you that makes a fellow lose confidence in what’s printed. Now they ain’t no apple barons in Howard County, none in Missouri though it seems to me I did read of one down in the south part of the state a few years ago. But a man with only 25 or 30 acres of orchard ain’t no baron.”
I think I mentioned Bettie, the cow, gave birth to a calf without a tail - not even a bob or a stub. I think I have a museum piece. What will the poor thing do when the flies get bad? Someone has just sent me a clipping of “Believe It or Not,” showing a picture of such a calf. Sorry I didn’t make a dollar by sending mine in first....And, to make you envious of me and my farm life, last week I was trying to drive big sows into the chute to put rings in their noses. I had one headed that way when she turned quick as a flash and darted between my legs. She was so big she just carried me backward for quite a distance. I don’t know how I managed to stay on, but it was quite an exciting ride before she stopped in a corner. I am thinking since I did so well, I am taking up rodeo as soon as I have time.
I also got a box of buttons from Bessie Cragle, the widow in Rolla, in exchange for ear bobs which I bought and sent her for her collection, but they were not worth a “Hoot.” That last word makes me think of Buck who works with Russell, who is disposed to get drunk. Russell’s father is ill and may go at any time. Buck told me he said to Russell, “What is you goin’ to do if word comes your Pa has done died and you is half-hooted?”
Buck is the pillar and bolster of the Negro Methodist church here in town and no longer takes a drink. He also quit smoking because he said, “If I smokes, I’s got to buy smokes fo’ the boys, (Juny and Tommy) an’ I just ain’t got the money.”
The pigging season has been a nightmare. It didn’t start according to schedule and for several days and nights I was on alert but nothing happened. Finally I found some pigs on the coldest night of the year and that was Friday night. From that time on, every night until Wednesday morning, I was on the alert, going to the barn every two hours, and on the last night spent most of my time midwifing three separate sows. I got terribly fed up with wiping off slimy things that become pigs with the first gasp. You can have this life; its too exciting for me.
This morning when dawn came there were three new baby calves as black as crows cavorting around as many proud moms. Their papa was on the other side of the fence looking very nonchalant, I thought, considering these were his first born. At the end of a few days we should have 11 new calves. Last fall ten came to bless our farm - eleven really, but the spirit of one took its flight. We nursed them along and sold them the other day, short yearlings and they averaged $75.00 per head. If expenses were not so great, labor and feed, etc., I could throw a big spree or something, ride a streamliner or fly somewhere with TWA. Instead, I just order more coal for the furnace. I am debating whether I can have a new suit and overcoat out of these deals.
Changing Times on a Boonslick Farm
In a talk Lilburn gave in 1952, he tells of some of the changes which had come about in farm life since the house was first built. In a letter to me, he wrote:
I gave the enclosed talk to the Boonslick Writers’ Guild last week, a very appreciative group. This Thursday night I gave the talk before the Boonslick Historical Society here in New Franklin. They seemed to enjoy the changes of farm life as depicted by me.
The talk mentioned above probably presented much of the information in his article, “Changing Times on a Boonslick Farm,” which appeared in the July, 1952 issue of the Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society (St. Louis). The article follows:
Apple Orchards
The house in which I was born, reared and still live, is one hundred and twenty years old. For the last eighty years it has been flanked by apple orchards, gorgeous with bloom in the spring and rich with ripe fruit in the fall. It is in the southern part of historic Howard County, in the Boonslick Country which U.S. Highway No. 40 crosses 150 miles west of St. Louis.
Slaves laid its rock foundation and raised its homemade brick walls to the then skyscraper height of two stories. Within short distances are the sites of the old log forts, Hempstead, Kincaid, and Cole, which the early settlers built during the War of 1812 for protection against the Indians. Within a stone throw of the house stood a log chuch, Mt. Pleasant, the first Baptist outpost in the Boonslick Country. A little farther away was another one, Clark’s Chapel, in which the Methodists shouted their praises.
Our old house has withstood the years which have marked the passing of most of the early landmarks in the interest of progress. The old house itself has been changed in the interest of comfortable living. Its parlor was once a duplicate of the Missouri room now in the St. Louis Art Museum, but in the late 70’s my father and mother, with a brood of young children, grew tired of reaching up for soothing syrup, paregoric and castor oil, so they lowered the mantel shelf twelve inches. Through later years, other features of the house were altered to accord with the requirements of modern heating, lighting and plumbing.
When Charles van Ravenswaay comes to see us now, we know he silently despises the desecration which he feels has been committed. We try to divert his attention to other attributes of the home which seem to be pleasing to us.
And so the old house has changed. The orchards beside the house are always changing. The general order on the farm is different. But we should not be surprised at anything. One of my grandfathers, who was a close-communing Baptist and an ardent Whig in 1840, was a shouting Methodist and a loyal Democrat when he died in 1882.
Among my first memories are those of my father’s first apple orchard he planted in 1872 - the first commercial apple orchard of Howard County. It was then in its decline. There were scattered trees of several varieties, which without the help of a spray program still bore beautiful apples with distinctive flavor: Bellflower, Red Astrakhan, Greening, Rambo, and Jeneton, none of which are grown in Missouri orchards today. Finally, as a succeeding orchard came into bearing, the old one was cleared out and that land was for several years used for general farming before it was, for the second time, set to orchard along with considerable new acreage.
Horticulturists had propagated new varieties, among them, Ben Davis, Gano, Winter May, Clayton, Missouri Pippin, Huntsman Favorite, Roman Beauty, Early Harvest and Maiden’s Blush, most of which enjoyed seasons of popularity after they came into bearing some ten or twelve years later. But most of these have faded from the orchard picture of today. Ben Davis and Gano, steady prolific producers and best income providers, long known commercially as the “pie apples” are almost impossible of sale in Missouri now. We must look for a market in states where apples do not grow, and where the public palate is not so conditioned to highly flavored varieties. Golden Delicious and Red Stark are prime favorites while the luscious red Jonathan lords it over all.
I do not remember when the worm first ate of the apple, but the first work I ever did in the orchard to combat one was turning the crank of a little machine with a bellows, mounted on a horse drawn sled, which blew a fog of lime and arsenate of lead through a long tin pipe to cover the fruit on the trees. When we became discouraged with this method, discovering the worms grew fat on the poisoned dust, a liquid spray was recommended. We bought a power sprayer run by a gasoline engine which pumped the liquid poison through a long hose and a nozzle which vaporized it. This method is still in general use. But with the latest invention there is no hose. The “Air Blast” blows the vaporized liquid through the trees with such power and speed that it sounds like a cyclone and does its work almost as quickly. Here, a tractor and the sprayer, coordinated, are designed to meet the shortage of labor and one man does it all.
The manner of harvesting and marketing apples has changed radically. Buyers used to contract for apples still on the trees in late summer to be packed in the fall under their personal supervision. This pleased the grower, as his responsibility for the quality of the apples ended when the apples graded by hand, rolled into the barrel by which the inspector stood. They were graded and barreled right in the orchard among the trees which were being stripped of fruit.
Today, all grading is done in a central shed and the apples are packed in bushel baskets or in the newer Friday pack cartons, where they are handled in the manner of eggs. While most of the grading is now done mechanically, there are still some phases which tax the mind and hand of the worker, who continually watches the apples roll by and must make instantaneous decisions. It is hard work.
We always reserved apples to supply the home trade within a radius of fifty miles. There were few orchards in the county then. Farmers from a distance used to come in groups, in a string of horse drawn wagons. They would arrive shortly before sundown. After watering and feeding their teams, they set up camp in the lane and cooked their supper over an open fire. The evening air was redolent with the aroma of frying bacon and boiling coffee. It was good to go down after supper to hear them talk about their homes miles away. At bed time, they took their blankets inside the barn and slept on the hay.
Early the next morning, after padding their apple boxes with blankets and straw, they loaded them full of apples. They bought not only for themselves but for neighbors. Loaded, they turned their teams homeward in a procession for the all day journey, waving goodbye and calling, “See you this time next year.” What a contrast to the speedy transportation of today!
Everybody used to handle apples very carefully, loading them on old comforts or straw to prevent bruising. Some still do, but many customers are in a great hurry. They dump the fruit into containers or pour it loose in their car and are gone. For customers who now buy in large quantities, we load, with their approval, 700 more bushels into a trailer with a bare floor, and pile them six feet deep. Upon arrival of the truck at its destination, the apples are scooped into pick-ups that move in many directions, and the apples are manhandled again when peddled at the cabins of tenant farmers on cotton plantations. Perhaps they buy them for the bruises.
Most new houses are built without fruit cellars. Burying apples is no longer popular, though some still do it to have apples “with that earthy flavor.” Apples are sold at the grocery stores the year around, where many people prefer to buy for their daily needs. Time was when the apple was king of fruits in Missouri and oranges were seldom seen except at Christmas time, but the latter fruit, along with grapefruit and bananas, share the honor now, in spite of the adage which claims for the apple only, that one a day will keep the doctor away.
Labor Problems
The labor problem has often plagued us, and with young men going to service and the older ones into defense plants or on old age assistance rolls, the prospect is darker than ever. But each time the problem seems to resolve itself, though some times it means getting on by the skin of our teeth. One year tramps were common. Every one of them who came to our house begging for food was invited to remain to help with the apple harvest. A sufficient number did. Unknown to me was a college graduate from New England, bumming around in search of material for a book. When it was published, it gave a splendid picture of the apple harvest activities on the farm. He eulogized my mother’s hot biscuits which she, pinch-hitting for the cook who was ill, baked by the dozens three times a day to feed the crew. Today they would get light bread, which in those days had not attained the position it enjoys today. It is a bread described by an old gentleman in my neighborhood as “very popular, but little thought of,” an opinion in which many Howard Countians concur.
A few years ago with the biggest crop of apples I had ever grown, we looked forward to the harvest with desperation. No local help was in sight. As a last resort and with many misgivings, we ordered some Jamaican Negroes, thousands of whom had been imported by the Government and were scattered over the United States to relieve the war time labor shortage. Many preliminaries were involved. Uncle Sam had to be assured everything would be lovely for the Guest Workers. Since living quarters had to conform to definite specifications which would have been expensive to provide elsewhere, we decided with some qualms to house them in a small cottage in the corner of the yard. We need not have felt concern for nothing objectionable occurred.
In the evenings by a hot fire, they lounged and strummed stringed instruments, and sang far into the night. At a distance the serenade was delightful and I used to fall asleep reminded of what I had heard my parents tell of their childhood pleasures in listening to the slaves singing in their cabins.
But there were times when I wished for the prerogatives of Simon Legree. While they were provoking at times, generally they were useful and certainly they helped save the apple crop. Perhaps provocations were the consequences of misunderstandings of speech. Hailing from this British mandated Jamaica, they spoke English but not in the vernacular of Missouri’s Little Dixie. Their a’s were so broad, the syllables of longer words so elided, and their diction so rapid, that my Missouri ear could not cope with it.
They were such a loquacious group around the grading table I had to ban conversation. Perversely they decided to sing. This was not displeasing as it did not interfere with their manual performance. Rather it seemed to improve it, just as the rhythm of music aids stevedores in loading river steamboats. Their repertoire seemed unlimited, but again and again they repeated that grand old hymn “St. Anne” and “God Save the King.” One man with a fine baritone voice carried the air and the words, while the others stimulated a harmonic orchestral accompaniment of wind instruments. The tuba was exceptionally fine.
They also spoke at times, especially after I had reproved one or all of them, a jargon which seemed to have no resemblance to English. With it they shut me out conversationally, as effectively as if they had placed a wall between us. When working in the orchard, they sounded like a pack of monkeys gibbering in the trees. Once I remarked to my only native Negro helper that we should invent an “unknown tongue” and spring it on them, so that they would know how we felt at being excluded from their conversation. With seeming pride and satisfaction, he exclaimed:
“But Mr. Kingsberr, mostly I understands what they says.” I knew he did not but I inquired, “Well, what are they talking about?” “Well, boss,” he replied, “mostly makin’ fun of you.”
These Jamaican Negroes in their homeland never dreamed of the prosperity they enjoyed in the States. They bought gay sport clothes, stringed musical instruments, expensive shoes and luggage. They delighted especially in wrist watches, but reserved their wear for Saturday night jaunts to neighboring towns where they walked alone, the native Negroes eying them with suspicion. Being from a hot country, our fall mornings pinched them. Each bought himself a cap with fur-lined ear muffs, which he buttoned down securely whenever the temperature dropped as low as 60 degrees.
Hog Killing
No farm operation has undergone a more complete revolution than “hog killing.” Under the old system, plans were made days ahead and care was used to choose a time “when the sign was right.” No housewife who fried meat wanted to see a big cake of sausage in the skillet shrink to a mere pat, or a slice of bacon melt away until little was left but the rind. Nothing was allowed to interfere on the day set aside for the butchering. There were many phases of it and everybody in the household had a part. Extra help was hired. Often neighbors came in to trade work and bones.
On the days before the killing, the hogs were penned up for overnight. A ditch was dug and a large vat, later to be filled with water, was set in place over it. Firewood was laid under the vat to bring the water to a boil. A work table was set up close to the vat, and a long heavy beam was trussed up horizontally from which to hang the butchered hogs.
When all hands were assembled and the water in the vat was scalding hot, a rifle shot in the head laid the first hog low. Haste was used to thrust a knife accurately into its jugular vein. After it had bled sufficiently, the hog was lifted into the scalding vat to loosen its hair. Soon it was drawn out on the table, steaming hot, and men with sharp knives worked feverishly to scrape off all dirt and hair. After this close shave, the clean white carcass was suspended by the hind legs from the beam, drawn, rinsed, and left hanging the rest of the day to “cool out.” A lighted lantern, suspended from the beam, was left to police these prepared carcasses, warding off dogs and varmints.
The evening days were busy ones. The carcasses were cut up, the joints trimmed, the sausage meat made ready and ground. The fat was prepared and rendered over an outdoor fire. The women made link sausage. They fried down some or cool-packed it along with the tenderloin. They boiled the heads to make head-pudding and souse. They pickled the feet. Each year they reached a state of desperation which caused them to declare that they hoped they would never see another piece of pork! Presents of backbone, ribs and sausage were sent to neighbors, some of whom would return the favor when they butchered. The men sugar-cured the hams, shoulders and bacon. The Negro helpers greedily appropriated the small intestines or chitlins, which they fry and enjoy as the greatest delicacy in the world. Livers and ears, given them by the boss, were great boons. They were also thankful for the pigtails, knowing full well the sweetness of these tidbits. You who love chicken neck will never settle for another, after you have tasted pigtail.
When the confusion of butchering was over, everybody, through necessity, entered a pork-eating marathon. We exercised the strength of our combined appetites to keep the pork from going strong. Taking part in the marathon, we had sessions with boiled backbone, baked ribs, cold or fried hog-head pudding, sausage tenderloin, vinegared souse and pigsfeet. If life on the farm had been mounted on ballbearings, it couldn’t have rolled smoother. My memories are lubricated forever.
I think most people agree with me that the best part of the hog is ham. I am reminded of Mandy Brown, a Negro woman who was a great leader in her church but a failure in the art of remembering names. Rev. Hamm came to hold a meeting in her church. When she wished to introduce him, she could never remember his name. He prompted her patiently several times, and finally said, “Sistah Brown, maybe I kin hep you remembah mah name. Whenever you wants to remembah mah name, jus think of the best paht of de hog!” “Oh! Sho! Sho!” replied Mandy Brown appreciatively, and turning to her friend said, “Sis Fluke, I wants you to meet Bro. Chitlins.”
Ice in the Home
And what a change has come about in serving the home with ice! Father used to watch the deep pond, down the hill from the big barn, for ice thick enough to harvest. That was before we became painfully sanitary. A hard freeze was supposed to purify the water. And it did, so far as our experience with ill effects from pond ice is concerned. Today nobody would use pond water ice without first boiling it. We had as an ice house, a hole in the ground about fourteen feet square and sixteen feet deep, with a roof like an inverted V, walled up originally with logs, but later with brick. When the ice was thick enough, a man went out on the pond with an axe and hacked a mall hole. Through this hole, he inserted the end of a cross cut saw. The man with a saw hewed a straight line for 30 or 40 feet, then repeated the operation in another line parallel to and about three feet from the first one. Then he sawed across the ends of the lines and with his axe, broke the long slab into large rectangular blocks. Other men with hooks pulled these blocks deftly out of the water and scooted them to the edge of the pond. Usually this process took place during weather so cold even handling the ice was a dry-gloved operation. Men with teams and wagons filled the wagons with blocks of ice, then drove toward the ice house, wheels crunching in the cold snow and frosted breath pouring from the nostrils of men and beasts as if they were propelled by steam.
The ice was slid down a chute into the ice house. When the space was filled, the ice was covered deeply with straw packed closely in the corners. Then it was forgotten until warm weather.
Getting out ice was for many years one of the burdens of my youth. Being the youngest of five sons, when I inherited a chore, I reigned for a long time. The pack of ice had to be uncovered and a supply hacked loose from the mass with the axe, which had a way of getting lost in the straw. The ice had to be hoisted out, loaded on the wheelbarrow, wheeled to the cistern, rinsed off, and then put into the big ice box on the porch without disturbing a single jar of milk or cream. and woe to me if I forgot to empty the drip pan under the box! How simple by comparison, is the modern method of refrigeration.
Giving or Taking Milk?
I was, as I have said, the youngest of five sons. An older brother, realizing I knew the spending value of a nickel, but little else, paid me to “pail the cow” for him until I became adept at it. He then persuaded my father to bestow upon me the Kingdom of Squeeze and Squirt. I reigned for more years than I like to remember. There are two schools of thought about milking. One contends that the cow gives milk. The other holds that you have to take it. I belong to the latter.
It is strange to find something on the farm that has not changed. There are no dairies or milking machines in our community. Milk is taken in the primitive way. It was my good fortune to renounce my kingdom years ago, but I sometimes have to pinch hit. I have often resolved that I would resort to store milk and patches of oleo an inch square and paper thin, before I would again associate with a cow regularly, to milk her twice a day. But fresh golden butter is beautiful, and luscious to the taste. And there is something about skimming from a gallon jar cream a half inch thick to put on your cereal, your sliced fresh peaches, and increase your waistline. It was thick enough to spread like butter on your toast. There is something about putting a lump of cream in your coffee and watching the contents change from black to that subtle shade of brown. It makes you respect and remember the farm cow fondly.
I have highlighted only a few of the changes which have occurred on the farm. I haven’t mentioned the synthetic feed which we give the cow in winter which fools her into producing milk as if she were eating the luscious grass of springtime.
Master minds are working constantly to invent machines to save time for men and women. Undoubtedly they succeed. But since there are still certain farm operations which cannot be accomplished mechanically, and the farm labor shortage has become so acute, the farmer has more to do and is busier than ever before in his life. He may wear a white collar, but he has a calloused palm. It used to be commonly said the farmer leads an independent life, that he is his own boss. Today it may be said he is his own hired hand.
Of course we welcome all the labor-saving and pleasant devices which tempt us to spend our money. But changes, improvements in these gadgets come in such rapid succession that they present a problem. The farmer hestitates to buy a garbage disposal unit, a television set, or an electric organ today lest before an installation can be effected tomorrow, the chosen model may have become obsolete. And he is not satisfied with anything except the latest. I think if a theme song were chosen for the farmer, it might be, “You haven’t got anything I haven’t got.”
Meeting oncoming changes in farm life is like facing an incoming tide on the beach. Most of the breakers we take in stride. Sometimes a big one may swamp us a bit. But all in all they are exhilarating, and pleasant.
In his letter he wrote:
Preparing this talk reminded me I have wanted to do a story on things about which I never hear any more, much less see. Buzzards, Bed-bugs and Tumblebugs. I can remember how cautious mother was every time the house was cleaned, in the days when we had the laundry done by some Negro woman in her own home. Mother always examined the clothes when she got them home before she put them away. I don’t remember ever seeing a bed-bug except once in my life. But each spring the beds were taken apart and the joints were all rubbed with coal oil. Of course we see no buzzards any more because when a farmer loses a head of stock he phones for the “dead wagon” from the fertilizer plant up on the Lamine river and no animal is left to feed the birds. One would never know there had been a livestock death unless he should fall in behind the dead wagon on the highway and be unable to get ahead of it.
As for the the tumblebugs which I used to love to watch rolling their balls of dung in the lane out home, since I no longer have any stock, they have gone elsewhere to work. I tried to get information on that type of scarab from Washington, but was referred to Mexico City and they sent me a 312 page volume about tumblebugs, their love life and everything, printed in English. To think that entomologists would spend all the time they have on the tumblebug’s life amazes me. How they push and pull the ball and sometimes the mama rides while papa pushes, how papa walks on his front legs and pushes with his hind ones, etc. I must do more research on buzzards.
No Money Ð No Beer
Louis Williams was the principal farm hand taking over the cottage in the yard when the boys left home. He was wonderful to all the grandchildren and we called him Uncle Louis. He was a masterful craftsman, who could do anything which needed to be done on the farm. In later years he became addicted to alchohol and created problems for Lilburn as reported in these letter excerpts.
In early May, 1943:
Louis has been haywire since Saturday, when he went to Columbia. He said he was going over to see if he could rent a cabin to live in, but was advised it would be impossible. I sure wish he could. Anyhow, he got back bad drunk. Monday he went to town and got him a bottle, and people down there had him picked up, put in a taxi and sent him out to me. He could not get in the house and Rosie heard a thud and went in to find him sprawled on the floor. She helped him to the bed, and later went back and found him prostrate on the floor again, and decided she wouldn’t strain her guts again. Tuesday, he repented a little, but this morning came down town and got another bottle. I went in just as Louis was hiding the bottle under the cushions of a chair. I took off the cap and enjoyed pouring the whiskey on his head and down his back. I thought maybe it would do him good outside as well as in. Such a problem. I guess I shall have to take over his pension money and dole it out to him. The beer parlor woman cooperates with me by refusing to sell him beer. Guess I shall have to request cooperation from the liquor store.
December 26, 1945:
Dear folks,
Charlie Chipley worked for us so long, and his mother has worked at Rob’s apple shed for so many years, and seemingly has been so near death’s door so often without having it swing open to let her in, it seemed a somewhat momentous occasion when she actually died. Her funeral was held last Saturday afternoon at the undertaking parlor here in town. Even Louis, who prides himself on never having attended a funeral, felt called upon to go. I suppose it was somewhat of a strain upon his emotions and only natural, when somebody invited him to step into one of the back rooms to have a drink from a bottle, to accept it.
Late that night, a taxi driver accompanied Louis home, through the snow into his room and turned the light on for him. It was so cold I went out to start the fire, and found him very contrite. He knew he should not have taken that first drink at the funeral - that one drink for him always called for one more. He lamented, “Why is it people drink more at Christmas than any other time...why I never went to a toilet in Franklin or Boonville that it wasn’t crowded with people taking a drink - sitch down and viseth a little.”
Having eaten more candy that evening than I knew was good for me, I was inclined to be very lenient. I was almost kind. I offered, as I have done frequently before, to get him some liquor to use at home, if he needed it, and he was horrified at the suggestion. I offered to get him some good straight rye whiskey with that rich robust taste of the grain, so highly prized by men of rare discrimination. Its taste always stands out - Old Overholt, or some Old Forester, whose elegance is solely due to original fineness developed with great care - or some Schlitz, brewed with just the kiss of the hops, no harsh bitterness - or Budweiser, which is something more than beer, a tradition! But, did I get anywhere? I was eager that he remain on the waterwagon for he has been so sick I was a little afraid for him to even go to the undertaking parlor. But he seems none the worse for his spreeing in the privies of Howard and Cooper Counties.
Soon afterwards Louis’s health failed so badly he had to be placed in the County home for the aged. Lilburn arranged for his care, visited him frequently, and upon his death, had him buried in the Mount Pleasant Cemetery.
Buck took over much of the work Louis once did. Before he got religion, Buck also hit the bottle. Lilburn wrote of this in January 1952:
Dearest folks,
Am still feeling the effects of a shock I had this morning. Buck went away last night and left word he would be back in time to do the morning feeding. But when he was not here by 7 a.m., I went ahead with it. I was about finished when the bus stopped and Buck got off. He seemed to be feeling fine, none the worse for wear except for bloodshot eyes. I thought to myself, this is the first time he has ever stayed all night in Boonville and been able to come back early in the morning. Congratulations! He said he would go down home and get his breakfast before attending to some errands at the barn.
I had been back at the house only a few minutes, when Juny knocked on the door and when I opened it, he said, “Mr. Kingsbury, Daddy’s dead.” Like Margaret when she asked Mr. Elliott if he was sure he was dying, I asked Juny and he told me how Buck had been in the middle of a sentence and just fell back stiff! It didn’t seem possible he could be dead. I didn’t know whether to call the doctor or the undertaker but did call the doctor and he said he couldn’t come, that if Buck was that sick, the undertaker would have to take him to the hospital, or if dead, the same to his shop.
With that conversation ended, I rushed down to Buck’s and Cora met me at the door saying, “I sure thought Buck was dead, but finally I made out he was still alive.”
I went in and Buck was sitting on the new davenport, head back and legs stretched out into the room. He was limp as a wet dishrag. I said to Cora, “We’ve got to get him turned around and lying on the davenport.” Cora said, “Wait a minute Mr. Kingsbury till I can get some papers to put under his feet. I don’t want him dirtyin’ up my new sofa.” When we got him squared away, I felt his pulse and then I felt mine, and I couldn’t tell much difference. He seemed to be doing all right. I guess he must have had some rot-gut which poisoned him and brought on this spell. He passed out this way in Fayette once, after imbibing something. After two or three days he was able to navigate again, but after that excitement my stomach was upset all week.
Kingsbury Apple Dynasty Ends
A big change took place at Fairview and in Lilburn’s life in 1959. He wrote his niece, Julia Sikes:
I am having the orchards bulldozed out, putting the trees into the hollows where they look utterly crushed. It is quite a break with tradition, or at least with the Kingsbury apple dynasty, established in 1872...and I feel more than if I were having some teeth, a very part of me, drawn. The apple orchards have always been a part of my life. But the expense of putting on a crop, with the old trees bearing small apples, not to mention the wear and tear on me, does not promise income to justify it. Certainly an untended orchard with wild sprouts shooting up is a liability. And so it is goodby to the orchards. The land where cleared looks good though. I shall put the land into corn (rental). Would keep it in pasture were it not for the young trees trying to get established.
So ended Lilburn’s Apple Baronetcy.
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