By Harvey Wike
When we moved onto our farm outside Fredericksburg, PA, the road past our house was an old dirt road.
I guess at times we could be called Hucksters, as we would load up our produce from the farm, take it to the town of Lebanon, PA, in a Dodge panel truck and sell the produce door to door.
The first winter we lived there, we were snowed in for three weeks. To go to town, which was three miles away, we either had to walk or use our old car, a Model A Ford sedan. Seeing as it had spoke wheels, we would place log chains through the spokes, then we could drive it cross-country to get where we wanted to go. We also had a horse and sleigh that we would use.
Our farm was close to a state game land, so we were never without seeing game animals crossing our fields. We could sit at our dining room table and look out the window and see deer grazing in the garden. November, being small game season, many of our relatives would come out to our farm, especially, on Thanksgiving Day. Come rain or shine, we would all go out hunting. Even our sister Myra. If it was raining, we would all go in the house, change clothes, eat dinner, then go back out hunting.
The same thing for December and big game hunting. Included was Granddad Frank Wike, Uncle George, cousin Sonny Wike, brother Frank, our dad, Charles Wike and myself. One day we were in a large open field and a lot of deer ran between all of us with everyone shooting. Needless to say, we all missed every one of them.
The relatives would also come together when it came time to butcher for the winter. My sister, Myra (Teen), was my buddy. She would help me run a trap line and let me use her expensive bicycle whenever I wanted to. My brother, Frank, left for the Army in WWII and was wounded.
While on the farm, there was a wooded area that had areas like bunkers in it. My brother, William and I would go there and play Army, not realizing that later he and I both would make the Army a career. He was in WWII, Korea and Viet Nam. And I was in Korea and Viet Nam.
I could go on and on about all of our memories, as they appear as if it all taken place just yesterday. One great thing about the Wike family was that there wasn’t a holiday that went by we didn’t go all out for. Even though we didn’t have the finances, we really had a loving, Christian family. Every Christmas we would go into out woods, pick out the Christmas tree we wanted and drag it back to the house. We always had a train under it. In our back yard we had a big dinner bell on a pole. At the end of WWII, we couldn’t ring it enough. We didn’t have running water or electricity until much later. We cooked and heated our house with wood.
Published in U S Legacies Magazine December 2004
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