View From The Front Porch-Stan Hitchcock-September 24, 2012

This painting I did a few years ago illustrates an important shift in American farming. I did this piece while thinking about my boyhood, in the 40's, on our farm in the Ozarks, and the way we took care of our crops. We moved to our farm in 1944-45, toward the end of the Second World War, and I was just turning 9 years old. The first couple of years we used large Draft horses, called work horses in those days, and the old rusty horse drawn mowing machine speaks of this period. I remember riding on the big horse drawn wagon, as we loaded up hay in the fields, putting it up loose with the aid of a hay hook, swinging from a rail at the top of the barn ceiling and running out the big barn doors of the loft to drop down to the hay in the wagon and pull it up to drop it in the loft. The big old horses, with hooves as big around as saucers, would work in the fields all day, with great patience and strength, looking forward to the end of the day with the rub down and oats and care shown by a family that loved them. By 1945 we had added an old Minneapolis- Moline tractor and a 1936 Chevy flatbed truck. The horses were shifted to my Mom's dad, Grandfather Johnson, he and Grandma liviing across the road from our house on the farm, as he used them to plow his garden. Grandad never moved to the mechanical age, he loved working his horses and stuck with it as my Dad moved on to Tractors and Trucks. At 10 I was steering the old Chevy flatbed down the rows of baled hay, (it didn't take my dad long to get tired of handling hay loose, either) as the growed folks would buck the bales up on the back of the truck, at the end of the field my dad would jump into the cab of the truck, push me out of the way, turn the truck around, put the floor mounted gear shift in "granny gear", and start down the next row of bales, turn it back over to me and jump out to start loading. I have retained the love of the smell of fresh cut hay as a memory maker to this day, and the smell of the old truck, hot in the summer sun, only a fragment here and there of the original paint bordering the overall colorless patina of the body, old leather seats as hard as sitting on rocks while the burning gas and oil of the engine wafted in the open windows and up from the holes in the floor boards. The sense of smell is a powerful memory key....all of it mixed with the clean smell of sweat from a hard working man and the smell of the wet burlap that was wrapped around the water jar as you took a drink. When we would all take a break for lunch, washing up on the back porch in a metal wash basin, with lifebuoy soap and one of Grandma's older towels, trooping into the kitchen of her old lap sided house, covering the log walls that were under the siding, sitting down to friend chicken, mashed taters, gravy, green beans from Grandpa's garden, along with his fresh tomatoes, fresh baked bread, farm churned butter and all the sweet tea you could drink. Grandma usually made a Pineapple Creme pie with meringue about 4 inches high cause she knew that was my favorite. About 45 minutes later, after a short stay in the shady grass under the apple tree in the back yard, it was back to the fields. After a meal like that I don't know how we managed to work all afternoon in the hot sun, but that's probably why there wasn't a spare pound on any one of the workers, throwing hay bales that weigh 60 to 70 pounds up on the top tiers when the truck was almost loaded would not leave any excess fat. After the hay was put up, the equipment put in it's proper place, the livestock fed and watered, it was off to the creek to clean off all the hay chaff and sweat bees that covered us. That evening, after supper, we would gather in the living room, where we would have what we called "Family Alter" time. Mom or Dad would read some Scripture, Dad would pray for our needs and we might sing a couple of songs with Mom at the piano. After that it was time for "prime time" radio. We had a big console radio, phonograph, which played AM radio (the only kind there was) and 78, 45 and 33 1/3 speed records. The radio was the focus of the family evening, with us sitting around the living room, on the couch and chairs, with dad sitting at his desk writing in his expense journal, facing the blond wood console, listening to every sound that came out of it. We watched the radio just like you watch tv today, as Lum and Abner, Amos and Andy (my dad's favorite), Bob Hope, Fibber McGee and Molly (my mom's favorite), Jack Benny, Gildersleeve, Life of Riley, Kraft Music Hall, Suspense, Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, Gene Autry and of course, on Saturday Night, The Grand Ole Opry, kept us all entranced. Radio had something that television has never captured, it's called imagination. The entire time a favorite show was on, you were living and seeing the action in your mind, and the mind is a great producer of entertainment, much better than today's tired old sitcoms. Thus, another day of farm life, lived to the fullest, came to a close. Farmers start early and go to bed early, but it's a life to build a strong foundation on, and the lessons learned will carry you about as far as you want to go. So today,at the downslope of my life journey, I still need the comfort of horses around me, and the smell and sounds of my old '57 Chevy Truck. I still love the smell of hay fresh mowed, the feel of a good bar of soap on honest dirty hands at the end of a work day, the rough texture of a clean towel, my favorite food is still friend chicken, mashed taters and gravy, green beans from the garden, sliced garden tomatoes, fresh baked bread....and Pineapple Creme Pie with meringue about 4 inches high.   -Stan