I believe Steve King was the first to take the trail north in search of fortune. Other folk from Mt. Moriah soon followed, including many from my own family. Of course, the trail was actually Rt. 69, and the search wasn’t really much of a search. A help-wanted ad in the Bethany Republican Clipper clearly pointed the way.
The ad promised good jobs at good wages for hardworking farm hands at Clyde Black & Sons, Hybrid Seed Corn Farms – located just south of Ames, IA. That was more promise than Mt. Moriah had to offer at the time. It was just after the close of World War II. A whole lot of soldiers had come home all at once only to discover that after saving the world for democracy they were out of a job – all at once.
There was another force at work, too. Family farms were going out of business at a rate that was ever increasing, ever since the depression. They couldn’t compete with the mega-sized corporate outfits, like Clyde Black & Sons. All over America young people left their hometowns and the land their families had farmed for generations to search for jobs. Most went to the cities, but even those who stuck with farm work had to do it on someone else’s farm. Now they harvested paychecks. I don’t think they knew how much they were losing. Maybe that was just as well, they didn’t have much choice in the matter anyway.
So Steve King headed north in search of fortune, and he found it.
Along with the seed corn, Clyde Black & Sons also had a sideline in hogs. Steve was hired on as Master of the Swine, or some such thing. He brought his wife, Grace, and his daughter Jo Ann up to join him. He got a salary, a house, and steady work. That was what Black’s offered to everyone they hired.
Old Man Clyde, as he was affectionately called, had apparently built up his empire by buying the surrounding farms whenever he had the opportunity. He left the farmhouses standing, and these he assigned to his employees as living quarters. It wasn’t quite the same as giving them a home, but it was a house. The houses cost him nothing extra, and because of them he could get away with paying smaller salaries than might have had to pay otherwise.
It was a great system for him, though it wasn’t altogether original. The Lords of medieval Europe had a similar operation. Only in those days the farmhands were called serfs – and they didn’t get an allowance.
Nevertheless, it looked pretty good next to no job at all. After the news got back to Mt. Moriah the exodus began.
I think my Dad might have been the next to go. Dad and Mom were friends with Steve King and his wife, so they probably had the earliest report on the find. (Also, I remember playing with Jo Ann at Black’s when we were both very young. That couldn’t have happened if we hadn’t moved to Iowa soon after Steve King had been hired.) After that it was Uncle Bud, Aunt Arlene, and my cousin Dwain. I rode with them when they made the trip in their Model-A Ford, towing their Jersey milk cow behind them in a trailer. Then Uncle Roscoe, Aunt Maxine, and cousin Donna went. So did Aunt Fay and my cousins Dale and Ronnie, along with their Dad, “Dusty” Spencer (Aunt Fay’s first husband.) Some others from Dusty’s family came, too. Sometime later still, Uncle Gordon made the trip. Even Grandad Bill moved to Iowa for a while. Not all of them ended up working for Black’s, but the job opportunity at Black’s was the catalyst that set the whole migration in motion.
After a year or so Steve King quit. He got a job as a butcher in Des Moines, and Uncle Roscoe replaced him as Master of the Swine. For years afterward Uncle Roscoe got pig knick-knacks as birthday presents from various, thoughtful well-wishers: ceramic pigs, plastic pigs, rubber pigs that squealed when squeezed, and so on. He received each one as though a pig knick-knack was just the thing he’d been hoping to get on his birthday.
Pig knick-knacks aside, being manager of the hogs was a better position than it might have seemed to outsiders. Most of Black’s employees got daily assignments that took them hither and yon all over the breadth and length of the empire. Foremen scheduled and supervised their every move, but the Pig Master worked by himself, in his own good time.
I guess Uncle Roscoe was happy enough with that arrangement; he worked at that job for 20-some years. Uncle Bud worked for Black’s even longer than that, maybe 30 years or more.
Everybody else in the family moved on. It wasn’t quite “The Promised Land” after all.
At least not for them.
Maybe it wasn’t for the Black’s either. My Uncle Roscoe told me recently that the Black family no longer owns the seed corn farm. After old Man Clyde passed away his son, Julius, assumed the crown. As expected, Julius ruled for many years and when he died, he passed the reins of empire on to his oldest son, Duane – also as expected. Then the course of the dynasty took a turn that wasn’t expected. Duane had dabbled a bit in grain speculation and had made some easy money. This success had convinced him that his talents and time were being wasted. Why settle for a modest fortune as King of a seed corn farm when you could be a Master-of-the-Universe, tapping the bottomless well of the futures market at will? So he abdicated, for cash – which he promptly lost. This left Larry, the second oldest, Regent, or was it the youngest brother, Gene? In any case, neither of them did well, and neither was satisfied. Finally, like biblical Esau they bartered their birthright for pottage. They sold the farm and retired... to obscurity.
Whether we trade or pioneer, life is a tricky business. Who hasn’t succumbed to that glamour in the grass that makes it seem so much greener when it’s on the other side of the fence – or state line?
The enchantment of “more green” pulls some to fortune and others to ruin. But most failure isn’t final, and no success is permanent. The “Promised Land” forever recedes before us. The Israelites may have finally made it to the “Promised Land” but most of us here on Earth just keep searching. Eventually we wear ourselves out, settle for “close enough”, and pass the torch of “next time, further on” to a new generation of pilgrims. I think that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
Finding doesn’t profit the soul – but searching does.
Uncle Bud (second from left), Dad (sixth from left) and Steve King (second from right)