DRIFTING THROUGH THE DAKOTAS
by: Joe Helle

Introduction by Sheldon Helle


I am going to break tradition and write an introduction to brother Joe's story. I read this story about 20 years ago and asked him to rewrite it for our book. It's just great! I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. But Joe left out descriptions of a few things which I have put in so this new generation will understand it better.
You see, Joe is handicapped - he did not have any daughters. I had two, but there are times I thought that was my handicap. They keep asking questions.
There are endless stories on bringing up father, all of them are in regards to daughters. Our sons will accept us, but daughters always attempt to reform and perfect us. Success is generally elusive, but I must say, they do help.
About 25 years ago, I told my daughter, Lorraine, 9-years-old, and three or four of her 8-or-10-year-old friends a story. It goes like this: "Did you girls hear about the rattle snake that bit the wagon tongue?" Some said no. I said, "We had to cut the tongue of f to save the wagon." None of them thought it was funny. It had always been funny before and brought many a laugh.
Lorraine told me, "Dad, wagons don't have tongues. They have handles." I decided I had to revise my way of telling stories. We have nearly 150,000,000 people calling wagon tongues "handles".
When Joe told of pulling into the little town of Hurclsrieta,and it's 4 elevators. Lorraine had a picture of 4 tall buildings with elevators running up to the top floor like hospitals or hotels. Now Joe, I apologize for having such a dumb kid, but that is the way it is these days.
For the rest of this generation a wagon tongue is the twelve foot long, square, tapered piece of wood fastened to the end of the wagon between the horses. It is used to guide the wagon and hold the wagon back on a hill. It is also held up by the harness on the horses. The wagon also had a wheel brake.
Now in Joe's story, I will enlist the help of my daughter Lorraine, now 34. This old woman has about 140,000,000 Americans younger than she is. If she and my other daughter Louise do not understand some parts, we will clarify so you younger generation will know what we are talking about (I hope).
Back in 1928, all farm work was done with man power and horses. There were some crude gasoline or oil-powered tractors, and some coal fired steam engines to power the grain separators, also called a threshing machine.
The midwest farm boys would get the grain and hay crops out, then follow the harvest fields north to Canada. After the grain was out in the north, the northern boys would come to Illinois and Iowa to help pick our corn (this was done by hand - one ear at a time), toss it in the wagons, haul it to corn cribs and scoop it into the corn crib (one scoop shovel at a time). These boys, called drifters back then, would be called migrants today. They would follow the fields according to the seasons in this great country of ours. Today, it is mostly fruit and vegetables for the migrants. In the great fields of wheat and corn, it is done by large corn pickers and combines with very few men.
We cut the grain with a four horse team on a grain binder. The binder would cut the grain, then tie the grain into bundles of about forty to sixty pounds, two or three feet high, and dump them on the ground.
They then shocked the grain by standing them all back up again, (by hand) eight or ten bundles leaning together with the heads of the gain up and covered them with one or two bundles to keep them as dry as possible. It would be up to a month or two later when the threshing crew got together.
The threshing crew consisted of twenty or so farmers getting together when the big engine and separators arrived. They loaded the bundles, one bundle at a time, on hay racks eight feet wide - fourteen feet long, and hauled them to the thresher. The big separators were about 30 or 40 feet long and 8 feet wide and could handle all the bundles of grain two men could pitch in them. Sometimes four men would be pitching.
A big farm in Illinois would take two days. An average farm took one day. The women always fixed great meals for the threshing crews. This, of course, made it more of a picnic atmosphere except for the hard work.
When I was young they used coal-fired steam engines, but I saw them go to gasoline-powered tractors. By the 1940's a grain separator was very rare in our area. It was the end of an era.
About sixty or eighty years before our time, they cut and threshed grain by hand, so back in the 1920's we really thought we lived in the "Golden Age of Power."
The very small grain combines came in the early 1930's. These combines cut, threshed, and dumped into trucks or wagons all in one operation. One or two men or a husband and wife team could handle it.
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DRIFTING THROUGH THE DAKOTAS

by Joe Helle

This started out as my own reminiscing of drifting through the harvest fields in the Dakotas with my good friend and neighbor, Frank Rock. Sheldon asked for a rewrite of this story, so will fit him in as he too has a part.
Someone had to take over the work after Frank and I left. Blessed with a whole passel of younger brothers, that was no problem. Delbert and Don were stretching their wings, about to fly the coop. Down a couple of notches were Walter and Sheldon, fifteen and thirteen-years-years-old. Walt and Sheldon, could milk cows, hook up a four horse team, you name it; then at night, they would raid any watermelon patch within miles.
We will back up to 1927. That was the wet year. Spoon River was out every month that year. We worked the high ground between floods. At the sawmill we cut bridge pilings, railroad ties, and grade lumber. We kept busy, but the farming was a shambles. One rainy spell and the boys would scatter like quail.
They did get the crops planted and then came the harvest. All the corn was picked by hand. A good man could pick one-hundred bushels a day, but the boys much less. It did finally get picked. The next year we left the farming to Joe. The younger boys went to the sawmill with Dad riding herd on them. Sheldon was in his element there. With all of the problems that go with a sawmill, he was a "master mechanic"
Frank was the proud owner of a Harley Davidson motorcycle. After the 1928
harvest, we pooled our resources and left for the harvest fields of N. Dakota, with Walt and Sheldon looking after things at home.
The first night we bedded down in a park in a small town in Iowa. The next day it rained. A motorcycle with a side car is not much protection in a rain. We pulled in at a farmstead and took shelter in a shed.
The farm crew was friendly. We told them of our destination. One of them had spent years in the harvest fields. This guy could not stand chickens; told us quite a tale about them. Later we were to remember what he told us and also much of his advice. The boss man had three crews; one working, one coming and one going.
We slept in an empty grainery in Iowa that night. We wound up at a friend's the next day. We went fishing with them in the Des Moines River. We had a seine (fishing net). First we threw out the turtles, then we caught fish aplenty. Many times we fished this way in the Spoon River, but never did we run into turtles like those in the Des Moines.
Next we headed north to my uncle's in Minnesota. We were on the road five days. Today we can drive it in a day. We saw our last pavement in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. From then on it was gravel and dirt. We dodged Model T Fords and horses. Our top speed was 35 M.P.H. The side car slowed us down.
We stayed at my Uncle Charlie Kaler's. There were some girls my cousin Howard knew. Later he married one of them (Tress). Seems she had some sisters, but we had no time for girls, so went on our way.
We made it to Fargo, N. Dakota and camped along the Red River. We had blankets and a canvas to sleep on. Did all right. 'til it got dark and the mosquitoes came out. Never understood how they found that inch between my pant legs and shoes.
We continued on westward. We still had gasoline money, At Jamestown, we had cycle trouble. Traveling at that time in history, you check in at every cycle shop along the way and spotted the next one ahead. We were repaired and on our way.
Here we goofed! They were threshing in the Red River Valley, but further west they had just started cutting grain. We wound up shocking grain - twenty five cents per acre. We should have stayed in the Red River Valley.
We were old hands at farming back in Illinois wheat fields. A bundle of wheat back then would weigh about 60 pounds - 16 to 20 inches in diameter. We would stack them up, eight or ten bundles in a shock, then carefully cap the shock to turn water.
In Dakota, we just piled the bundles to get the heads off the ground. We shocked 20 acres per day. We got on a big field but finished before moving on. Here we were reminded of our old friend back in Iowa. Did you ever eat old roosters, boiled with their toes sticking up out of thc soup, looking right at you (no salt for flavoring.?) We liked these people but not their roosters.
We would go in to town at night to get something to settle our stomachs and hold the roosters down. Frank had troubles, (diarrhea). We didn't know if it was the water or the roosters in a hurry to get out.
Next, we went on a threshing job - much better pay, 5O cents per hour. Back then (1928), that was big money.
Back to the east and the north, the threshing machines were running, but the Harley conked out and we were stranded. A friendly farmer came along and pulled us on to Hurdsfield, N. Dakota, a small town but with four grain elevators.
We were a long way from home. We had a crippled cycle and were low on money. While waiting for parts, we went out to the Knudson farm and started shocking grain again, this time with pitch forks. You pitched your bundle and never looked back, just on to the next.
We slept in the barn, which leaned to the south. One night Frank said, "Way that barn leans to the south, I don't think it's safe." One of the natives said, "No, it leans to the north." This started an argument. Sure enough, the wind had shifted and so had the barn! We got used to the barn. However, we ate at the house. At mealtime the meat platter would start out, but never get to you. The cooks would go for more. Frank and I learned to get our share eventually.
Cullum's wife and daughter, Adelaide, were good cooks. Adelaide was easy on the eyes. She had only two faults: her dad and her brother. She was a very nice young girl - the kind you never forget.
We finished at Cullum's, then moved to Wing, N. Dakota, some 30 miles southwest. We had 5 teams of horses and wagons. We tied the teams together and rode the first we took a lot of the road and got a few dirty looks from cars wanting around us. I would go back and steer the rear teams around the corners.
The next job was late September. It was cool at night and we slept in a loft. We had twelve horses under us which put out a lot of heat.
We had a Norwegian boy with us on the job. Monrad Bjorge would crawl under a pile of hay with a thin blanket. When excited, he would go back to his native tongue.

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