In a Pickle: A Family Farm Story

5 Grist Mill

37 The same day the pickle factory opened, several farmers gathered a half-mile away at the Link Lake Grist Mill. The mill, a substantial three-story building, stood next to the concrete dam that stopped up the stream that poured out of Link Lake and held back enough water to provide the mill with power. City folks passing through town often stopped to photograph the mill and the water spilling over the dam. They claimed it was one of the most restful scenes in the area and that one look at the tumbling water had a kind of quieting affect on people and made them sleep better at night. Out here the locals figured a day picking cucumbers, or making hay, or shocking grain would do as much for a good night’s rest as about anything that someone might think of, including watching water pour over a dam. Water powered the dam, turned the big millstones, and had enough energy left to generate electricity, which the miller sold to the Wisconsin Power and Light Company. The mill’s exterior had once been painted a bright red, but now had declined to something less than pink. A porch was strung across the front of the building, and it was here that farmers 5 Grist Mill hoisted their gunnysacks of cob corn and oats from their pickups, or from the back seats and trunks of their cars if they couldn’t afford pickups. Once they had the gunnysacks on the porch, they dragged them into the mill proper. Three or four farmers always stood around, waiting to unload, waiting for the grinding, or waiting to load the sweet-smelling and still warm ground meal— now mixed ground oats and cob corn that the farmers would feed to their cows. The mill had once ground wheat into flour, but since farmers stopped growing wheat fifty years ago and shifted to milking cows, the mill switched to grinding cow feed. The miller, Ole Olson, was a big Norwegian fellow whose father had come from the old country and taken up milling. Olson sported a big handlebar mustache; you couldn’t tell its color—in fact, you couldn’t tell much about the color of anything concerning Ole, because he was white from head to toe, covered with grain dust. A city kid viewing him on Halloween night would surely think he had seen a ghost. Ole howdied everybody who pulled up to the mill, asked them about their families, and inquired about their cows and their crops. He was that kind of friendly fellow who made coming to the grist mill, a nearly weekly event for most farmers, a newsy experience. On this Tuesday morning, Isaac Meyer had just unloaded several sacks of cob corn and oats from his Ford pickup and was dragging them to the square holes in the mill floor. He untied a gunnysack full of cob corn and dumped it in one of the holes, then a sack of oats, and then another bag of corn. The corn rattled down the metal tube on its way to the millstones for grinding, a few stray kernels flying about. 38 Grist Mill 39 Grist Mill Ole Olson never talked about his chickens, but he had a small flock of White Rock roasters in a chicken house in back of the mill, just behind the little red brick building that housed the electrical generator. Everyone figured that Ole had never bought a pound of feed in his life but depended on farmers’ spilled grain to keep his chickens fed. In the fall he sold the live chickens to whoever wanted a good roaster for their oven. Nobody complained about Ole’s chicken project because they knew he didn’t earn much money grinding farmers’ cow feed and selling a little electricity to the power company. Oscar Wilson, a skinny little man from east of Link Lake, was waiting to unload, and Thomas John Jones, the fiddler—most everyone called him T.J.—waited for Ole Olson to weigh his grist so he could settle up and load his ground feed. “How’s the old man today?” T.J. said to Isaac with a smile, for he was recalling Isaac’s sixty-fifth birthday party at the school. “Able to get around,” Isaac answered. “Able to get around.” “How the cows doin’?” T.J. asked. “Purty good. Purty darn good...