Baden's First 100 YearsPage Fifteen
I have heard by father tell of his mother relating to him how, as she sat by the window on the upper side of the house spinning yarn or knitting, she could look out over the cleared fields between our home and the Old Stone House, and would see the deer as they left the shelter of the woods back about as far as where Mrs. Coffey lives, as they passed across State Street, which was then a 33-foot road, and continued down to the river and would swim across the river and climb the opposite bank and disappear into the woods on the other side. That was several years before Aliquippa was built. I must tell you a little story about my father. When the railroad was being built, several of the men employed in its construction-superintendents and surveyors, boarded with my grandparents, and they liked to play cards. Grandfather was not opposed to cards, but he did not permit them to gamble. One night after grandfather had gone to the barn to do the evening chores, the men began playing "Penny Ante." Father was quite a small boy, and was sitting on the edge of the table alongside of his friend, Mr. Hyde, watching the play when they heard grandfather returning from the barn, they pushed the pennies to the center of the table and set the candlestick over them. When grandfather came in everything looked serene, and as he stopped for a minute to watch the play, my father reached over and lifted the candlestick, exposing the pennies, and said: "See the chips, pap?" My grandfather employed a half-breed Indian as a farm hand, who was single and lived in a little hut or tepee in the woods near the house, but took his meals at the farm. One morning there was a heavy fall of snow, he had just come in and sat down to breakfast (I suppose it was buckwheat cakes, sausage and honey). Where the farm hand sat he could look out of a back window, and right on the top of the hill, between his vision and the sky, he saw a wild turkey wandering through the snow. Grandfather got the gun from back of the door and giving it to Grafty, torld him to go out to the corner of the house and shoot it. He shot at it and the turkey arose almost wertically in the air, and then sailed across the ravine towards what is called "Pine Hill," on the Moore farm. The Indian thought he had hit it, contrary to the belief of my grandfather. But, when breakfast was over, he asked permission to look for it. After about three hours, he returned with the turkey. It had set its wings and sailed like an aeroplane until it dove head first into the snow-dead. When dressed, the slug with which it was killed was found imbedded in its heart. This Indian was called "Grafty" on account of his efficiency. In those days the grain was harvested by hand, and men in the harvest fields would run races to see who could cut and tie the most grain in a day. They worked in pairs, a cradler and tier. The same pair always working together. When you hired a man to cradle your wheat, you
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