My grandmother on my father’s side was the oldest of 13 kids. The family had a farm just outside Zeeland, MI - maybe a 15 minute drive from where I live in Holland, MI. The family continues - albeit with numbers dwindling - to get together at Christmas time. At this year’s Christmas party my uncle brought the auction poster that I’ve scanned and posted here.
1955 brought a large change to the family, as the farmhouse and land were sold and the family moved into town. This auction is for all the livestock and equipment not included with the house. 28 cows, 285 chickens, 2 tractors, a pickup truck, two 40’ silos full of grain, 600 bales of hay, 3000 baskets of corn - certainly not a huge farm even by 1955 standards, but reading through everything being sold off (right down to the 2 year old “boarded (sic) collie” farm dog) even now I get a sense of the loss. These are animals they’ve birthed and cared for. Machinery and equipment that was purchased and maintained. The phrase “measure of a man” comes to mind - I wonder how many times my great-grandfather was asked what he did for a living, and when he replied “farmer” he also ticked off some of these numbers as a way of communicating how big his farm was.
Looking at the timeline helps fill in some of the context here. My father was born in 1938 - which would make him 17 years old when this auction was held. He has an older sister - who would have been approximately 20, which means my grandmother had been out of the house for at least 20 years. So my great-grandfather, at this point in his life, is a 50-something grandfather of adult grandchildren. However—with a family of 13 comes a large age spread. Of the 8 or 9 kids at home yet the youngest of would be around 13 or 14—which I know because my father has uncles that are younger than he is.
Another interesting tidbit - my great-grandfathers name was “Wynard”, not “Wynand” as the poster has it spelled. Here is a milestone day - a drastic life-change coming, most of his earthy possessions being put up for sale, and they can’t even get his name right. But in true Dutch fashion - rather than paying the expense of getting the poster re-typeset and run off again he just lived with it. He probably figured anyone who’d come to the auction would know his name anyway.
As I was discussing the poster with a few of my great-uncles I asked what Wynard had done for a living once the auction was over. The answer?
“He got a job filling tar buckets for a roofing company.”
Now - just think about that. Here it is in 1955 - smack dab in the middle of the post WW2 boom. Tailfins are just starting to pop up on cars. Bobby socks and home perms are just into vogue. “Only You” by The Platters is the current hit, “Rock around the Clock” by Bill Hailey and the Comets having peaked a few months earlier. The Polio virus was discovered a week earlier. Disneyland has just opened. McDonalds has just been started. This is a magical, happy, healthy, prosperous era in American history.
And yet - in the middle of all that prosperity a 50 year old man with a large family to feed sells the farm where he worked for himself, set his own schedule and probably didn’t answer to anyone—to move into town and take a job literally at the bottom of the ladder, slopping hot, smelly, sticky roofing tar into buckets and passing them up to guys on the roof.
It gives me pause.
Actually - it does a lot more than that.
I can no longer sit here, in my comfy chair, in my warm basement, listening to high-quality music, sipping my freshly-brewed coffee, making a living doing work that’s relatively easy on the body, and be a sniveling kvetch when IE6 issues crop up or some piece of software doesn’t work like it should. Because if I do that, I do a disservice to Wynard and my other ancestors - who were willing to do stinky, sticky, and physically demanding work to keep their families fed.
And as I read the gloom and doom about the current economy I have to ask myself - am I ready, am I willing, am I man enough to do what Wynard did in order to support my family?
Lord, I hope so.
Wynard.
Great grandpa.
Thank you.
May I be half the man you were.
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