Blue Shadows Farm: A Novel

51. Living High on the Hog—Summer 1922

297 Summer 1922 Two years passed. Money from Abe’s “purified corn water” project poured in, making him and Faith even more money than they made selling gravel. Bernardo had made it clear to Abe, though, that he shouldn’t tell anybody what he was doing. Bernardo said some people wouldn’t understand the importance of purified corn water, especially certain people in authority, and more especially federal of- ficers who prowled the countryside looking for operations like Abe’s. Even with no marketing whatever, Abe had a rather steady supply of customers who came to the farm, always at night. Abe would plead ignorance to anyone stopping by in the daytime. He’d tell them they must be mistaken and should look elsewhere for what they wanted. Abe’s neighbors suspected what he was doing, but they weren’t about to tell anyone. Abe had turned most of his cultivated acres over to corn growing. He added a few hogs to his livestock collection . If someone passing by asked about the acres of corn he grew, he told them he fed it to his pigs. He did. But most of it found its way to the little room in the back of the potato cellar where smoke came from the stovepipe nearly all hours of the day and night. 51 Living High on the Hog Anyone who didn’t suspect Abe and Faith had an outside source of money thought this young couple had become exemplary farmers . Everything was neat and tidy around the place. The house was painted, the grass kept clipped. They also had a full-time hired man who milked and cared for the cows and did the field work, the plowing and planting, and the corn harvesting. No other farmer in this rather poor community could afford a hired man. Even with the extra help, Abe insisted on building and repairing fences by himself, something that made no sense to anyone, especially to the hired man, who was happy to do the work. Abe also walked the fields after plowing and soil preparation, with his head down and his hands behind his back. This made even less sense, but it was a reminder of what his father had done until the very end of his life. Besides the hired man, Faith also employed a full-time maid who took care of the housework, cooked meals for Abe and Faith, did the washing and ironing, and generally kept the house in order. She had a room upstairs in the house. Unlike any of the other neighbors, the Starkweathers hooked up to electricity. The village of Link Lake got electricity in the early 1900s, when the miller installed a water-powered generator. Abe personally paid for setting electric light posts and stringing wire from the village to his farm. Faith ironed with an electric iron. She washed clothes with a washing machine powered by an electric motor. Electric light bulbs illuminated every room in the house and in the barn and all the other outbuildings, including the potato cellar. A light fixture high up on a post lighted the farmstead and was kept on all night. Abe had become quite concerned about those who might try to steal some purified corn water. Word of the high quality of his product had gotten around, and everyone, it seemed, wanted some of it, whether they had money to buy it or not. Faith dressed in the finest clothing she could buy. Each fall she took the train to Chicago to buy new clothes. She stayed overnight 298 Living High on the Hog—Summer 1922 299 Living High on the Hog—Summer 1922 at the Palmer House and spent a couple of days shopping at Marshall Field’s for the most stylish and up-to-date clothing available. Where once folks around Link Lake had seen Faith Starkweather as a young, energetic farm woman, they now thought she’d begun putting on the dog a good deal more than she ought. One day when she and Abe were eating breakfast, Faith said, “We need a new barn. This old barn we have just won’t do anymore . We need something new, something more modern, something up-to-date.” “Well, I guess we can afford it,” Abe said, smiling. He had just returned from one of his weekly trips to Chicago, where he had delivered a...