Riding a bike down picturesque, country roads may now be a vacation luxury, but seventy years ago it was the only way to get to school. It was that or walking the mile from the Farm to Mineral Ridge High School as I had to do, when it rained or snowed. There was no school bus; we did not own a car. The method of self-transportation depended upon the weather. Most of the year I was able to peddle along. There were no hills. There were no houses. There were only a few farms and narrow driveways leading to others such as the Seaborn Farm where the school superintendent lived. I saw it only from a distance, even though Don Seaborn was a friend from school.
Most of what I saw was from a distance. Red and yellow trees in fall, bare boned in winter, hazy green in midsummer. Halfway between the Farm and school was a lover’s spot for parking. It was years later I learned why it had so many rubber rings lying about. Back then it was merely a place for a comfortable rest on the way home, letting the breeze take care of the sweat I’d worked up.
Often Bill Pennel, my best friend during my time in Mineral Ridge, would peddle with me a quarter of the way, along Main Street on our way from school. It was not uncommon to spend a half-hour talking at the spot where the road I would take to the Farm split off from Main Street, where he lived, in a low, white-shingled house which I saw only from a distance. Strangely, perhaps, during my entire life as a teenager, I never visited any friend in his own home
Our crossroad conversations covered all of the worldly topics attractive to teenage boys in the late 1940’s. It is said that girls are the ones who gossip. Teenage boys, as well, have a lot to share about everyone around them. The two of us met infrequently once I left Mineral Ridge; we lost contact over the years that followed. I did know that Bill had earned a law degree from Harvard and ultimately practiced in New York.
There were other journeys besides the one to and from school. If I left the Farm and biked toward Niles, I immediately went down and up the gully bordering the Farm. Coming home I could gain enough speed to coast up the dip and arrive at the Farm without being out of breath. On the other side of the gully was the Smutz Farm. Mr. Smutz raised chickens that laid brown eggs. He is the farmer who taught me how to shake hands! He said I must always have a firm grip, absolutely required for a manly handshake.
An alternative of a bike-ride into Niles, was one to Lake Meander, the local reservoir for the Niles area, that was on the other side of Mineral Ridge. However, every road that could be coasted down would, ultimately, need to be peddled up. Even then, I was averse to anything that was too physically demanding.
Especially grass cutting. But that was a requirement. The field across the road from the farmhouse had to be mowed, along with the side yards, with or without fruit trees. At the time, the only available machine was a reel-mower. I had to push it for the reel to turn over-and-over and trim the grass. Sometimes a bag was attached to the back of the mower to capture the trimmings for composting. It was a lot heavier and harder to push during composting season. Bike riding was the exercise I preferred. Fortunately, there were no other physical chores to be done on the farm.
My only chore, if the term is applied to a routine household task, was recipe reading! My grandmother Moransky worked as the cook, hardly a chef, for a local steel-mill. She readily spoke English but could not read it. To prepare for cooking the next day’s meals in the factory, she needed to be reminded of the ingredients and process for the upcoming menu. Every evening, I was assigned the responsibility of reading recipes to her from three-by-five index cards someone had made for her. She would have preferred cooking her Polish dishes from memory, but the steel-mill managers, if not the workers, themselves, wanted American meals.
Country roads and bike riding, brown eggs and handshakes, old-fashioned lawn mowing, and recipe reading may have little in common, but they are among my favorite recollections of a year living on my grandmother’s farm, even if, at the time, mowing its large fields was hardly a favorite event.