Always October. C. E. Edmonson

why not? The war years were heady times. The federals guaranteed two dollars a bushel for wheat, which many of Bear County’s farmers grew as a cash crop. But even when the government didn’t subsidize commodities, food prices, including milk, butter, and cheese, went through the roof. Most farmers were driving cars by the time the war ended. Model T Fords were the most popular, and farm families took considerable pride in their flivvers, which is what we called Model Ts back then. Mind you, these same farmers still had no electricity, and they drew their water from wells and got along with outhouses. But in this way at least, they were part of the modern world.

      They modernized their farms, too, buying hay rakes and side mowers and slings. The more ambitious purchased hay loaders to lift their hay from the ground to the wagons, and hay carriers to lift hay from the wagons into the barns. And they rebuilt their barns or expanded the old ones, and added more cows wherever they had enough land to sustain the animals. A single milk cow eats two tons of hay during the winter months, so a farmer with twenty cows and four horses had a lot of hay to grow and harvest. If he failed, he had to purchase hay from his neighbors.

      Looking back, I believe Bear County’s farmers thought the good times would last forever, even after the flu descended on them like an Old Testament plague. All those new machines were bought on credit—the new barns, too. The investment was supposed to pay for itself; that was the general calculation. This was a fantasy, of course, a delusion they brought on themselves by denying common sense. What the government gives the government can take away. And that was exactly what happened a few years after the war ended and the troops came home. I tell you, some of my neighbors were perfect fools when it came to spending.