Years ago we had regular contact with a (distant) American relative: Mr. Arthur Dorland from Woodbine, Iowa. He himself was very interested in his American family history and -of course- its Dutch origin. On our request he sent us his autobiography, which draws a nice picture of ordinary life in earlier years.

Facts in the life of Arthur William Dorland

(born April 3rd 1917, Council Bluffs, Iowa, USA)

For the benefit of someone who may, at some time to come, wonder how things got the way they are. I shall attempt to set down some of the facts about my journey across the stage of life.
It could be said I was born under an apple tree. Dad was manger of Iowa state colleges' western Iowa experimental apple orchard. I don't know how come he lived on and farmed the adjoining acreage. I don't think it was a very big farm, I’ll guess 30 acres. Any way his main job was the orchard.

There is a picture of me at a very young age sitting in a bin of grimes golden apples.
My first memory picture is of going up the drive of our new home, in a wagon, and saying goodbye to grandpa Dorland, knowing that he was going to live in Texas. I should have been about four then.
Things must have gone quite smoothly, because nothing more comes to mind, till the day mom took me to start school. After the teacher got everyone settled down,

she asked us beginners if we could count and if we knew the alphabet. I rattled off the "a b c" s and was a little let down when she didn't want me to count to 100. Mom’s teaching instincts wanted me to stand out in school, but I just didn’t. I remember her drilling me on flash cards in both math and reading. I know now, from the things she told me, she wanted me to speed read but she just didn't have time. It is a source of embarrassment to me yet, to think how she read articles and stories from the "Saturday evening post" and whole books to all of us in the evenings and I seemed never to get it done for my kids.
Two things happened at that school that affected the rest of my life. I was no scholar, my report card was mediocre except that I always got v.g. on deportment until one day another boy and I, "out on early recess", had a disagreement. I don't remember what started it but we were one big bunch of knees and elbows till some big boy was sent out to stop the fracas. The next report card didn't have v.g. for deportment and I have never been in a fight since.
The other event was an accident. The big boys were playing baseball and the neighbor boy, who was my guide and counselor, was catcher. Either the batter ticked the ball or he just missed it. Anyway he was hit right in the mouth and lost at least two of his front teeth. I have played "chicken" with tracer bullets but when a baseball comes my way, I get out of the way.
People like to tell how tough they had it as a child but I recall one incident that shows how my folks watched out for me. Dad had helped me build my 'tractor" from a board, two wheel barrow wheels at the rear and the front wheels from his toy wagon in the front. It was basic till it came to the steering. A cog wheel and a broom stick made the steering column and a rope and two pulleys made the linkage. Mom and dad were hoeing in the garden and I was allowed to drive my tractor blissfully around the yard. For some reason I made some adjustment that required rewinding the rope on the column. I got it on back-wards. Rather than say I couldn't fix it I told dad that my tractor was different. If I turned right it went left. Dad was immediately concerned, but mom said it was just play and it wouldn't matter. Never the less dad stopped right there and showed me my mistake and how to fix it.
It is too bad it takes so many years for a person to realize and appreciate what their folks do for them. One day I was trying to make or remodel a wagon and it was not going well. My temper was already in charge when my uncle John offered to help. I refused his help and started to saw the handle off, when dad stepped in. He said "You can't act this way, just look at yourself, you just ruined what you already had, you turned down the help of an army engineer and everybody thinks you’re a jerk." I stood up, looked around, and saw everything he said was true. I have felt that bad only a few more times in my life. He didn't fix it either.
In my story about dad, the hard times loomed big, but I was young before they got here. I had a coaster wagon, an air rifle and dad's old bike for summer and a sled for winter, besides the things we built. The pasture west from the buildings was a great winter play ground. We had a home-made bobsled, a home- made toboggan, couple of sleds and barrel stave skis forgoing down hill fast. When spring came I impounded considerable amounts of water behind snow dams. In summer our dog Tippy, helped aggravate possums in the brush pile. That little dog was about the size of a possum, and like gung din he didn’t know the use of fear." I would wait worried on the top while Tippy disappeared down some unseen burrow. Growling and chewing up twigs that impeded his way. Finally the sound started coming closer and then a stub of a tail, then a black and white body would back out with an unhappy possum in tow. No safari into darkest Africa ever gave more thriller more pride in its crew.
Along about this time I was pretty good sized, but mom was still healthy, (my checkpoint in time). I was helping a round the edges as mom and dad hoed strawberries. I complained that my hoe was old and rusty. I remember it like it was yesterday, they made me a deal. If I could stick to it and use that hoe till it was bright, they would get me a new one. I don't think they really thought I was able to hang in there, but things must have been just right. I remember thinking back on any advice dad had given about handling a hoe, such as "slice, not chop, and keep it clean and sharp". I had to appeal for an extra sharpening, one day I drug it in the dust to make tracks as I brought the cows’ home. I was amazed to find the edge gone when I got home. I’m sure mom and dad were surprised how soon that hoe began to shine. When it was bright all over, they kept their word and I got my new hoe, which I still have. I put a brass tack in the end of the handle and rubbed oil into the wood. People who came to buy fruit would comment on the beautiful hoe and I would be very proud. I have never seen another one with that grade of steel... it shown like the mold-board of a plow.

The cantaloupe project
The cantaloupe project was a pretty big one for us. I can't put a year to when it started but I remember it well, (mom was well). Mr. A.P. Christensen (across the road east) was raising them and doing well. Dad knew it was no use to raise them if you couldn't sell them, and he knew he couldn't sell hot coffee in a snow storm. Of course I don’t know how it was done, but dad and Axel struck a deal. We began raising melons. Dad would haul our load and then make more trips to haul whatever Christensen had over one load. That way Axel could sell continuously from 5-9 am, when the market ended. I am talking about the "vegetable" market on south 13th in Omaha. It never really closed, it just changed pace. The store owners bought their daily supplies before store hours. It was a frenzy for sure! Thousands of baskets of every size, filled with food of every kind, had to be sold and hauled away before store opening time. After that, housewives and bargain hunters roamed lazily through the skeleton crew of vendors, trying to pick up a few more sales before going home to pick and pack for the next day. Mr. Axel P. Christensen would stand amongst our combined offering of 90 to 120 odd bu. of assorted (mostly melons) fruits and hold his own with the best of them. Dad told me to watch the buyers, how they could haggle over the price of one purchase while counting out the money from the previous purchase, without even looking at it.
I went along on some days and dad and I would carry baskets this way and that to a designated truck or collection point, to add to someone’s trove of cucumbers, onions, garlic, potatoes, tomatoes and peas. By the time the sun came up the roar of business was down to a much more manageable confusion. I can’t remember how long we did that, several years anyway. It was an exciting few weeks each summer, from 4:30 am till dark made a full day.

Schooldays
One should always look for the positive side of every thing, no matter how small. It is good, in a way, that mom didn’t see my last grade school days and high school. I did not excel. We had a good teacher when I was in 6th, 7th and 8th, Mrs. Sowl. She prided herself on how well her students did in the county tests. All country students had to take county tests to show they were ready for high school. I passed (just). She was not pleased.
One of the things mom made dad promise was to send all of us kids to high school. He did just that, at no small sacrifice on his part. I know for a fact that I have benefited no end from having gone. I bristle a bit yet, when I hear how your high school days are such a happy care free high light of ones life. To me it was the pit of utter depression, confusion and despair. It never once occurred to me to give up or dropout, because I knew how much dad was putting out to keep me there.
In fairness I must say the young heart can't be kept "completely" down. There were a few successes and a smile here and there, but they were minor. For one thing, there was culture shock. My largest class in grade school was five students. The freshman class at high school was 400. I always thought it was a last low blow when graduation finally came and we got our diplomas, we didn’t get our own. They just took them off the pile as we were called up and we had to find our own afterwards. I had never heard of the person whose name was on the one I got. Someone said “thanks" and there I stood with none, till someone else said “here", and I really had a diploma and was a graduate. We all came home and it was dark and the girls went right to bed. Then in the lamplight dad brought out "his" dad's gold railroad watch and gave it to me. You could feel him saying, "see --I did it". I keep that watch carefully to this day, though I seldom carried it.

I learn to cook
The drought was still on and there were still five of us to feed, so there wasn’t much change in the routine. Put up whatever "no good" hay we could find. Pick whatever fruit would grow and muddle through. Fall came and Lois started to high school, so I did what she didn't have time for, in the house. She wasn't to thrilled that I learned to make pie crust as good or better than hers.

Winter of 1935-1936
The winter of 35-36 is remembered vet for its ferocity. I think I am right that there were 20 days of below zero temps, day and night. Dad had traded off his perfectly good 1923 model-T car, for a worthless old nash, because it had glass windows. The neighbors couldn't under stand how he could start that old car every morning to take Lois to school. It was that old "touch" he had with machines, and an old dishpan full of coked corn cobs.
Finally the bitter cold was over and then it snowed. There wasn't actually a huge amount of snow, but the wind blew, every night and hard, packing the snow into every depression in the landscape. One thing that caused a lot of work was that the milk supply came from hundreds of small herds of dairy cows. The milk had to be gathered or delivered daily, so the whole country spent days on end scooping out the roads they had scooped the day before. Boys who would scoop for the railroad were excused from school. Many rail lines were closed and the supply of coal on hand was becoming critical, the country literally ran on coal. No train used anything else, nor was any building heated any other way. We burned wood and cobs but we had a coal bin and used about one ton a year.
People thought "boy oh boy" with all this snow the drought is surely over, because this was in March, and we all figured the moisture from the snow would soak everything up. However 1936 was the worst of all. That is the year I walked straddle of a corn shock.
That was the year a fellow up the road, bought a field of corn down on the Missouri river bottom, to fill his silo for his milk cows. Of course transportation was a problem, so he hired two trucks and about four young men to load them. I was one of the crew. I didn't have a decent shirt, and since I was now employed, I bought a new one. I paid 80 cents for it. It was made so cheap that under the rigors of a days work, (it was real work and I sweat a lot), it almost fell apart. I thought oh well, I’ll get paid and I will gain a little anyway. At the end of the day, we all gathered round to be paid and he gave me 75 cents! I got a good dinner but I lost 5 cents.
When 1937 started we didn't look far ahead. It did rain and some hay grew but like I say, we took things a day at a time now. By the rarest of chances I went to Mr. Ted Baschs' house on an errand. As I was leaving he asked if I could help put up hay the next day. When someone asks a favor, the thing to do is agree, so I said, “sure I suppose I can if dad says so". Right there began one of the major epochs of my life. The chance I could not have dreamed up to be tailor made. I had had it in mind for years to get out of the fruit business and here I was on a 318 acre farm. Many folks looked on it as a misfortune, but to me it was perfect. Mr. Basch had a good many innovative and controversial ideas and methods. Experienced men would argue with him and quit. He learned that boys and young men would be more apt to do the things his way, and he also took a genuine pleasure from teaching. I suppose dad could see I was happy, so he offered no resistance to my working away for a day, a week and finally five years.
The work was interesting and the $30 a month was a fortune. I had no use for money so I took it to dad, to whom it was a god send. It was raining and things were growing but that doesn't translate to income till the end of the season.
If I were one to talk politics, here is where I would mention the virtues of our American system. Europe was devastated ten years before we were. We both squabbled and haggled, but we came up for air and stayed together, while Europe gave rise to the likes of Hitler. And bad things were brewing.

In the service
A co-worker once criticized me for having spent four years going to high school. I am absolutely sure that three items on my questionnaire made a profound difference on the next years of my life. (1) I had 12 years of schooling, (2) I made Sgt. in R.O.T.C. and (3) the aptitude test was right down my alley. I must have looked good on paper, because for the next fourteen months I went from school to school.
First of course was basic training. I walked right through the soles of my first army boots, in six weeks. That aptitude test must have kicked in because a bunch of us were never given rifles. After the boots we started going to class, then there was a big interview. A Sgt. gave us some tips on how to act and they asked some questions I happened to know the answers to. Next it was off to fort Sill, Oklahoma. In thirteen weeks I was an artillery Lt, "a 90 day wonder".
I helped the 75th div. get ready to go and then back to school... Now I had become a forward observer. About as lowly a job as a new Lt. could get. You crawl around with the front line infantry, but you don’t get a gun, only a radio. I knew one Lt. who spent one day calling in fire on the enemy, who were 20 yards away.
They needed more guys to fly their little observer planes, the same job, only up in the air with no rocks or bushes. That school was in Denton Texas, where I learned to fly the way the air force said. That was about nine weeks. Then we went back to fort Sill, where we learned to fly the artillery way, which was quite different. With that under my belt I joined the 14th armored div. with whom I was to see my combat duty.
(Ref) for anyone interested there is a book, with many pictures, stories and maps, telling the story of the div. There is just one thing I would like to say myself.
the 500th f.a.b, of which I was a member, had the reputation of being the sharp shooters of the div. We had only seven months of combat till it ended in Europe. There were rumors of sending us to the pacific, but they didn’t come true. There is quite a story how the whole division went home, but I didn’t have points enough to go, so I had to stay eleven more months in the “occupation" army.

Home again
I landed back in the states on Easter of 1946 and the months slipped by till it was spring of 1947, when I was back at the Basch farm. I wasn't a boy anymore. I was restless to get started on my own. One day a neighbor, while sitting on a hayrack, said “how would you like to rent my brothers-and my farm?". There it was again, the opportunity I had dreamed of, being handed to me. They each had 160 acres. They each stayed in their houses but I raised some hogs in one barn. Dad helped me fix an old trailer house, which we parked under an apple tree and I became a farmer.

Hazel
Even I could figure out that there is no such thing as a one man farm. There were several considerations involved in my desire for a helper of the female per-suasion. all my attempts at recruiting a partner had left me empty handed and I was very serious about going back to the army as life-time carrier, when Martha (my sister), introduced me to Hazel F. Hull r.n. It was only a matter of weeks till I was full of ambition and plans. She seemed to think they were workable plans and agreed to take a part in them. To date (1992), we have been making plans and solving problems together for 42 years.
Our first farm, 160 a., we rented for four years, till it sold. I was disappointed that we didn't get a chance to buy it, but now I am glad. It would have held us back.
From there we bought 160 a. east of Underwood, Iowa and lived there 12 years. The first two years were dry and not much crop grew. Hazel worked nights at Jennie Edmundson hospital for a while and I tried custom work. As time wore on it became clear, even to me, that 160 a. was a small farm now. So---in 1966 we moved north to Woodbine, on 3/4 of a section, 400 a. (377 crop a.) I had learned to raise hogs while working for Mr. Basch and I continued to pursue that tac right to the end. We got up to 700 market hogs per year, plus a small herd of stock cows. I was never able to "feed" cattle but I could "back-ground" calves pretty well. Although our Woodbine farm wasn't huge, it could accommodate a tiny wood lot, a beaver dam and a permanent pasture. I spent some very happy times on that collection of hills and I feel sure they were better for my having been there.
All three of our kids grew up and got married during the years on the Woodbine farm. I feel the support and the environment that the farm supplied us, made the effort it required, to be worth it.

Retired
In the winter of 1983 we sold the old place and moved into the town of Woodbine, 905 Ely. It was a cold nasty march day 1984. In the summer of 1981, we had discovered volunteering. From then till 1990, we helped in several places, namely, Alaska (a favorite), Washington, California, New Mexico, Mississippi and Omaha, Nebraska. A most enjoyable period of time.

Hazel F. Dorland unfortunately deceased, on Saturday, February 7th 1998