Dayton Daily News from Dayton, Ohio • 3

THE DAYTON DAILY NEWS PAGE THREE NEWS; AND. PERSONS IF COUNTRY UF 20 SATURDAY, JULY 18, 1936 ROAMING THE RURAL ROUTES WITH A CAMERA AND NOTE PAD Valley Farmers, With Crops Nearly Destroyed hy Drouth, Still Patient, Undismayed GREENE COUNTY AGENT TO SPEAK OVER WNIO Miss Ruth Radford, home demonstration agent for Greene will be the speaker on the "Home-Making With Home' Demonstration Agents," over WHIO at 1:45 p. m. Monday. Her subject will be "Your Canning Budget" and will explain the canning contests in the county.

nSMTfe IV I 4 Z' Ji" I. Ll ml I -Jr4 1 r- mJ I It -I July is on its burning throne and ''burning:" in this instance is the right word to use, It is indeed discouraging to witness the havoc be-ins: wrought by the dearth of rain and there is a feeling- akin to despair at the plight of the fields slowly succumbing to the power of the sun. What man with heart so craven who would not feel pity for the farmer thus hampered in his hard struggle to wrest an honest living from the good earth. Our every wish is a prayer to the Master of the harvests, that the reviving rains may goon descend on this valley He has never yet entirely forsaken, though we perhaps too soon have forgotten the burgeoning fields even of the glad year just passed. Frecious, refresh-ing showers to recompense the valley's gentry who have toiled long and are worthy the Giver's bounty in the most abundant harvests that ever lifted from the soil, Master, we ask! What a contrast as compared with last season! At one time such a wealth of strawberries that there was even fear of a glutted market; this year a painful dearth of this (Rightful, red-cheeked fruit.

This time last year, some of the corn crop already "made," and a wheat harvest that was exceeding all expectations. Alfalfa had responded to the lure of sun and shower, pastures were lush, stock waxed fat and orchards hung ripe with a crop that bent limbs to the ground. But it seems that into the valley some ill must fall, some years be lean and even lacking in the most common things on which existence depends. But to date we have failed to meet a farmer, grower or stockman utterly discouraged. Always the patient smile and age-old assurance that the Master of the crops has promised a seed time and harvest even unto the end of the world.

They have endured the "seed time" one of the most trying in many years. Too much rain at its setout, then a dearth of moisture to hamper the making of feed beds and planting; then a score of other difficulties known only to the husbandman, but seed and plants are in the ground, resetting and replanting have been indeed trying and now no rain in sight hut still the most of them smilingly hopeful. Here's hoping and even praying with them, that ere this letter is in print, a big, soaking rain of long duration has helped to strengthen their belief that always in some way the Lord will provide. iVs HARVEST TIME IN THE VALLEY And from the welter of news come stories heartening. On the R.

M. Stormont farm south of Deavertown, an Allis Chalmers all-crop binder, or combine, was the "robot" that was doing the complete job of cutting to threshing all in one as it careened like a great bird up and down the burgeoning field. The very last word in harvesting machinery and one wonders what will be the nexto amaze. The first wheat to reach the Greene co. marts 11 days ahead of last year and the price and quality both to suit the growers.

The first wheat at the mills in Fayette two bits higher on the bushel than last year; 55 cents higher than the depression of four years ago and meaning $150,000 in cool cash in the pockets of the citizens who justly deserve the boon. Some "rust" reported from the lower section of the valley, but not enough to cause serious damage; a pre-Fourth of July celebration caused the burning of one farmer's crop in Montgomery co. Wheat on average tests 57 pounds to the 6 9 hammer and rasp in the smith's hands, so has the automobile driven out the footpath, for nobody walks to make winding paths through the fields in this roaring age of motors. Remember the old path that skirted the blackberry field to enter the woodland, then dipped down the hill to the branch where you tremblingly crossed the high foot log Wild pink roses reached out to pluck your calico dress with their clinging fingers; spiders built gossamer tents in which the dew-drops glowed silver in the moon's rays; whippoorwill complained from the aspens that shivered between the path and the front gate and you told your first sweetheart it was time for him to turn back as mother was setting up waiting for you. Yes, old country footpaths stir memories.

I have known them since I was knee-high to a duck. Cows follow them at dawn and at dark; swains walk in their cool dust to the village store, the post-office, the school and to prayer meeting at the little grey church; birds furnish their music enchanting, the delightful quivering smell of the good earth follows their windings; the honey-colored moon and the white stars love them and through thfir overarching maples and elms splash silver on the heads of the lovers who loiter in their cool dust. BARN FIRES Albert Francis Wilson, contem- porary poet, discourses thus re barn fires: "It is strange how a barn that no one pays any attention to for 50 years except to patch the roof and stuff hay into it a dead shell with a cow stall or two and a bed for the horses can scorch itself into the night so that every living thing stirs and wakes and turns its wide eyes. A flaming black hulk there on its little hill, with the red light through its roof and its doors and its windows, crushing, expanding, tearing, whirling the dead hulk into a chaos of energy; conscious of its the Floods Mean to bushel, the lowness of its moisture content due to the drouth and its quality considered better than last season, According to many growers the drouth that at first menaced the wheat crop, was a blessing in disguise that caused it to ripen some two weeks early and there is general satisfaction over the opening price of 80 cents the bushel. On the many farms where the "combine" has put an end to custom threshing, this once dusty, trying farm operation ends with tbe last round of the great machine.

But there are still plenty of farms depending on threshers and their crews and this will be in full swing the present week. Wheat is no longer stacked, but threshed from the shock. Another old custom that is dying slow but sure, the serving of farm dinners to threshers. Most of the hands now go to nearby restaurants. MAKING A NATIONAL HOLIDAY The day was capriciously changing from dazzling sunshine to gloom and blackness and to sunlight again, without a drop of rain to relieve the desert-like dust that greeted the Roamer on his way to Germantown Dam park.

Here's a tip: Who goes to the park should remember that this spot where beauty bides is still in an unfinished condition and sometimes when the winding roads are in the pink of condition; bridle paths built that lead into the very heart of the park's green bowl, lake enlarged and deepened and the weeds and other wild growth have given away to velvet turf; the interest of visitors will be held by a scene Yellowstone Park like in beauty. The park in its wild condition already attracts hundreds; camps snuggle in picturesque ingle nooks; fireplaces at every turn provided by the native stones of the hillsides, nearby Twin creek abounding in fish and the bathing that is different in the dam spillway. It was the day after we celebrate, that caught us visiting this latest of valley pleasure resorts and everywhere were evidences of America making a national holiday The wrecks of roman randies, pin wheels and what-not, left midst the emptied cans that once held beer, caused us to soliloquize, picking our way through this exhibit of a good time had by all "the old saw of 'chasing the can' has at last come into its own." FOOTPATH A footpath winding away from a footbridge, leading across fields and its white trace showing as it twisted out of sight, in the direction of a farm home that capped a German tp. hill, set our heart singing. Footpaths you know are going out of style.

With the building of good roads, the disappearance of the one-room schoolhouse in some lonely corner and its accompanying wayside church, the old paths that used to lead to these youthful sanctuaries are out. As the jack and spanner have taken the place of Storms and i'rlf of hv f'hnrln Niirninn. with dint tomin, their rautn and pools of dust the southwvst knows them as "dust devils." By noon the fields are stirring; the wind swishes along the dusty ground. Soon dust is everywhere, rushing across fields, sweeping over high- ways, blowing into towns. It smothers the young crop, "blows out" the planted field, piles ENEMIES of mighty moment.

Radiant by a coal lit by the first torch, the grey barn that nobody noticed making men run and curse and pray and wonder about the hand of the Lord God." Barn. fires never fail to incite terror, not only in the hearts of their owners, but to the countryside in which these staunch grey piles haye their place in the epic of the Miami valley, lift from some commanding hill. Not in pity but surely in wralh, the fire terror has recently visited two of the valley's most famous old landmarks, the big structures on the Burd farm near Gratis, and the Lincoln barn near West Alexandria. The loss to each of their owners is keen, filled as the structures were with all it takes to conduct a farm. Aside from the staggering amount it will cost to replace them, is the sentiment that clings to their lines weathered and old and eloquent of a happier past.

Old barns like old houses, represent the very essence of real farm sentiment. TRI STORIES OF FIELD AND CROP The most "forward" looking tobacco in the week's drive, along No. road in Clay tp. Montgomery on l.ester Mine larm. (Jut and ahead in spite of late setting and searing drouth.

Making a neighborhood holiday, W. M. Brown and some half dozen farmwives, picking tobacco plants from the big beds on George Lightner's farm along County Line id. All jolly and Qmilinor in onito rf fliA sun nlmnct pnmlp, to tum the green plants they pulled, but all hopeful of the rainsx bound to come. Pete Hangen and Russel Brown, Verona laughed and talked as they pulled the plants from the beds on the Hangen farm, Dodson rd.

If the hopeful are the gladdest, these two seasoned tobacco growers of Clay tp. deserve to be rewarded with the best tobacco that ever sprung from the soil. Along Nigger pike it was threshing day on the Sam Strauser farm. The hands waiting a bit for the "threshing dinner" to settle, America venience of the dust storm with a shrug of his broad shoulders. He has his joke about it calls it "getting his Vitamin What he cannot stand is to have his own land the rich topsoil that yields his crops and pays his hills and sends his children to school whipping away from his farm, leaving it "blown out," desolate, sterile.

The "dust bowl" is a small area as Americans figure areas. Its problem is not small in the same proportion. Those who have de- voted lifetimes to the study of American soil contend that what has happened in the "dust bowl" is indicative of what may happen elsewhere; that remedial steps being developed there may save other sections as yet less gravely affected. Next: Blow? Why Does The Dust ARTH I lilt mm.t return to It; remove the eggs with a long-handled spoon and she will continue laying the nest. Even hogs will not eat tomatoes.

Roosters crow for rain; if a rooster looks in the doorway and crws, put an extra helping in the pot for visitors; likewise if the housewife drops her dishrag, or a knife or fork the fork meaning a man caller and the knife a lady caller. Things that the majority of valley citizens have learned through the years, which are not "super-stition1' by a darn sight: The chicken selected for the roast is the hardest to catch. The first cockcrow at night on the farm is answered by an ever-widening circle and diminishing notes. If one sheep shys at some imaginary object, the entire flock follows suit. Guineas and peafowls are quicker to sound the alarm of strangers approaching than the watch dog especially in the night season.

Sheep once harassed by dogs never thrive again. Black colts seldom make black horses. Hen turkeys say "kyouck" and the Tom does the "gobbling." Too much water at the first stage of a duckling's life means sure death. Cows get up hind legs first, horses fore legs first. Cows stand belly-deep in water to escape flies, their breakneck speed through low-hanging bushes, at the risk of knocking off a horn, is to rake off the flies that gather along their backbone.

Theii "cow dance" pulled off in some sandy spot and in which the animals go through grotesque gyrations while throwing sand upnr their backs with their dancing hooves, is for the purpose of routing flies. A mule can get you with its rear foot, even if you hold his bit; the bite of a horse pains worst as the animal lets go; the ugliest "scarecrow" ever fashioned never kept crows out of a cornfield and they are far from being "black" as they are so often painted; young buzzards at birth arg white and two to a brood; the hardest task for a farm boy is to find the new calf a fresh cow has secreted some place in a woods pasture. No difference how quiet the night, there is a "dawn wind" that stirs just before daybreak. Hogs are the cleanest of animals if given a chance and select the most unlittered part of their pen in which to eat and lie down. Yellow nits on the legs of horses are laid by the bot fly and enter the animai's stomach through the mouth when it bites at its legs to relieve the pain caused by the fly's maddening sting.

Horses even if not tied too short to lie down, sleep for hours standing up. The so-called "mottled cat" is one of more than two colors, is invariably a female. Bogs green up, waters rise in wells and almost dried-up spring branches start flowing, some 10 hours before a rain, especially if there has been a long period of dry weather. it iw nt wrapped about the white swelling limb. Live frogs are bound on stone-bruised feet, as are the entrails of chickens and other small birds and farm animals.

The "hollow horn" and "hollow tail" that are supposed to attack milch cows, are cured by splitting the animal's tail and filling the supposed hollow section with salt and pepper. Tbe first dews of spring will eradicate freckles and face pimples. jlf a baby afflicted with "flesh de-cay'' is measured by some old granny with a blue, woolen yarn string and the string tied on the hinges of the door most used in the household "as the string wears out, the babe grows stout." If a posthumous person blow their breath into the mouth of a child suffering with "thrash" the cure is certain and sure. If one steps on a nail, do nothing to the wound, but get the nail, grease it thoroughly and throw it backwards towards a graveyard, over the left shoulder. A stolen dishrag applied to warts will make them disappear.

A pinch of sulphur kept in the shoe helps to relieve whooping cough; asafoetida and Jobe's tears charms suspended from a string about the neck, ward off most diseases peculiar to children; chronic headache yields if the person takes, a wisp of hair, put it in an auger hole bored in an oak tree and the hole tightly plugged up. If one shivers or shudders, someone is standing on the spot where their future tomb is going to be. Walking about with one shoe or stocking on brings ill luck; to start on a trip and have to return for something forgotten, is considered the worst of luck; but this can in a manner be overcome by carrying some object picked up along the way and leaving it in the house. If a black cat crosses one's path at the start of a journey, put off the trip until some future date. The tingling sound in the ear is a "death bell" and one is going to hear of the passing of a friend within the week.

Never watch a person "out of sight." Eating sauerkraut and fat meat on New Year's Day brings good luck for the coming year; cut off the tip of the tail of the dog prone to run away from home, bury it under the doorstone and the animal will never again leave the premises. A whippoorwill resting on the roof-tree of a house brings lurk; in refutation to this saying "if a whippoorwill lights on your home, someone, there will die within the year. Mirrors turned to the wall in a home where death has come, prevent another demise within the year; heavy thunder cause milk to sour; a dime dropped into the churn will cause the butter to rise quicker; the tangle in the manes and tails of horses was caused by them being ridden by witches some time in the night as they grazed in the pasture. If you put your hand into the nest of a guina fowl she will not Shown above are some of the interesting spots photographed hy the Roamer on his jaunt through the Miami valley, No. 1 Ipi the heart of Germantown' conservancy park.

No. 2 Where the highway runs a smooth ribbon of Joy, between Xenia and Wilmington. No. 3 W. M.

Brown and farmwives making a "neighborhood holiday" picking tobacco plants from the big beds on the George Lightner farm, County Line rd. No. 4 "Bright Eyes of Vsn-dalia" (left) and "Buttercup" (right) to of blue-brood Brown Swiss on Charles Wampler farm, Johnsville rd. No. 5 Junior' Hangen, Dodson with big mule team all harnessed up and ready to go threshing.

No. 6 Threshing on the Sam Strauser farm, Nigger pike. No. 7 Earl Busch (right) thresherman in charge, tells Dick Reed, Dayton News man (left) some of the things threshing crews are up against this dry season. No.

8 Ire cold watermelon in the coolest of spots, the way the two Barton farm youths of Kellhrook had of forgetting an especially tough threshing joh. the Miami valley do with a united front and petty religious lines forgotten Forget to pray thus: ''Lord send rain on me and my wife's farm; my son John and his wife's farm; us four and no more, and Anjen." But pray not only for showers of rain to save everybody's crops, but for showers of blessing to work a leavening in hearts that have grown just as hard as the devil desires them to be. There shall be showers of blessing, This is the promise to all; There shall be seasons refreshing, that on us they may fall! Showers of blessing, showers of blessing we need; Mercy drops round us are falling, but for the showers we plead. SUPERSTITIOUS? YES! Three years of roaming about the Great Miami valley, mingling in the spirit of the most wholesome camaraderie extant with "rich man, poor man, merchant, chief" shows there's just a little bit of superstition in the most of us. Here, 'tis: To cure whooping cough, cut a lock of hair from the nape of the neck of the child afflicted; place it between a sandwich of bread and butter and throw it to a dog.

The minute the dog gulps it down, the whooping cough sufferer is on the way to recovery; but should the dog refuse the sandwich, all the doctor's medicine in the world could not effect a cure. Carrying a consumptive person at daybreak amongst a flock of sheep, is recommended by some as a certain cure for this malady. A buckeye carried in the pocket keeps rheumatism away. A live mouse placed in an oven and burned into ash and the ash fed to a child afflicted with a certain weakness of the kidney, works a rapid cure. Persons whose kidneys cease to function, if carried to the vicinity of a running stream, recover rapidly.

The droppings secured from a pig sty and bound about the throat, are considered infallible for the worst case of diphtheria. A condition of the limbs, known locally as "white swelling" can be reduced thus: A dog is knocked in the head with a club and while its flesh still quivers, the skin is removed and i 1 talked in the shadow of the "hew" barn of when the old one went up in smoke, how the farmhouse burned later and when the barn that stood just across the pike burned to the ground. F.arl Busch was the thresherman doing the good job of turning out the Strauser crop with his down-to-the minute outfit the same Earl Busch whose farm at the corner of Blank rd. and Arlington pike is as completely run by motorized power as any in the valley. It is a fact that there is only one horse on the Busch farm and it is enjoying a life of ease out in the big pastures.

Mrs. Orville Rhoades laughingly told of attending a ball game at nearby Pyrmont village, being rained out and hurrying back to their farm almost in sight of the village expecting to find things soaking wet, but instead in the same old tinder-like condition but still she smiled and her good nature was contageous. Unfriendly weather conditions are taking their toll at the W. Meyer fruit farms along National near Arlington. Quite different from last year when this hustling orchardist and small fruit grower trucked load after load of his products directly into Detroit.

Something to think about! Eating strawberries in Detroit for dinner that were picked the same morning in Montgomery co. Vernon Dull's unique hog shelter is one of the pleasant sights along Arlington rd. E. K. Luttrell's five generations of mares down in Clinton are getting in the big news and their pictures in the metropolitan dailies.

Black Percheron "Trophy" is 32, her daughter "Clyde" 25, her granddaughter "Cola" 11, great-granddaughter "Fanny" 3 and great-great granddaughter "Lut re-bell" 3 months old. H.E WHO LAUGHS LAST, ETC. In a recent article commending the cultipacker and the service it was doing in saving drouth-stricken corn in the Miami valley, mention was made of the Navajo Indians who sometimes pray for rain, dancing and shaking rattles and waving eagle feathers in the face of Chindi, the rain god. The article ended up by declaring almost sneeringly we preferred the cultipacker. Now as the rains come not to the valley, the fields are whited sepulchers and the leaves of the corn roll into mummy-like fingers, news comes from the southwest, from the land of the Navajos, who worship the all powerful Najadal-tinth.

that their recent dance brought reviving rains to their parched corn lands. "The gods retreat as the thunder drums grow small and sweet. The dancer's feet echo the sound, as the drums grow faint and the rains come down." Alice Corbin, contemporary poet, who witnessed one of those Indians supplications for rain, was at her best when she penned these lines, and somehow as we again read the entire poem, we cease to scoff. Perhaps after all it was the faith of these Indians that really brought the rain; a- quality sadly lacking among the of us. The more we see of the things that vex and are apparently beyond the ken of all, the more we turn to, the declaration of President Roosevelt: "What this country needs is a revival of religion." If a band of Indians that many prefer to call heathens, with the faith of their fathers ran cause the Master of the harvests to send them rain for their crops what couldn't What Dust iKDITOIO NO I Thl ill nur nf Ptwlal A.MiM-liitfd rrps wrKer, dertllnj methodi ol prevention.) What thinks the farmer who plods across his land in the teeth of a dust storm; sees his crop "blown out," only tumble-weeds remaining? Will he reconquer the soil; make it "stay put," make it productive again? BV CHAKI.KH NORMAN J1UST storms concern the farmer whose land blows, the merchant and banker and manufacturer who depend on the farmer's income, the housewives who scrub unceasingly, the less sturdy whose lungs are affected, the stockmen whose animals perish in the storm or starve because the pastures are dust-covered.

servation service marked down "America's record dust storm," when choking yellow clouds were whirled out of the drouth area of the southwest as far as the Atlantic. The storm darkened I many cities and towns; lights 'burned all day in homes and office buildings; traffic was blocked. I On the Mississippi, riverboats slowed down or snuggled close to I the land; on highways, automobiles icrep along with headlights burn- ing. Before the clouds of dust in frantic flight go hundreds of birds; below, livestock bellow and bleat, jack rabbits scurry to cover. That is the dust storm at its worst.

The dust does not always blow, and the soilthwesterner resents, quickly and justly, any exaggeration of his plight. The farmer of the "dust bowl" loves his land and he can take the personal discomfort and incon Dust storms originating in they midwest have blown In black or yellow clouds as far east as the Atlantic coast. The problem is gravest in an area of the southwest called the "dust bowl." Included in that area are southeastern Colorado, northeastern New Mexico, western Kansas, western Oklahoma and northwestern Texas. In the midwest they know from the color of Jie dust where it comes from red from Oklahoma and Texas, wndy from Kansas, black from Dakotas. Spring is season tit worst dust storms.

Men who know the "dust country" can tell early in the morning, windless and splendid though the day may be, when dust will blow. On the horizon there are whirl- Attention, Farmers! Dairymen! We Carry a Complete Line of Supplies Including: DeLaval Cream Separators and Milkers Barn-Poultry Equipment Insulation Ventilation Milk Bottles Caps Coolers Cans Sterilizers For Prompt Service, Parts, or Supplies, Phone DAYTON DAIRY SUPPLY CO. 10 Mcdonough st. ruiton 1621 up where it is unwanted. Tumble-weed the ghostly, awkward Russian thistle rolls across the fields, spreading its myriad seeds.

Hated by farmers, the Russian thistle was cut green in bil drouth years and stored for winter fodder. In big and little towns the dust blows grimy and gritty, enters eyes, nose, ears, lungs. In bad storms, "dust masks" are worn. On May 11, 1934, the soil con.