Moxie: A Way Of Life

My dad, uncle, and grandfather.

You don't hear the term 'Moxie' much nowadays. In the not too distant past, everyone had to grow a pretty tough hide to get by in the world, and if you didn't have Moxie, you didn't survive. Growing up as a Baby Boomer, I had it a lot easier than my ancestors, and I did not always appreciate the hard times that preceeded me. I often ponder my dad and his brother, and wonder about their experiences as they were growing up. Their father, Ray, was a lathe operator at Republic Steel in Moline, IL. (Ray and his siblings lost their mother, their step-mother, and their father to tuberculosis when they were all very young.) Ray was in poor health for years before he died from a perforated ulcer at age 45 in 1940. Ray had to walk a mile to a bus stop to go to work, and toward the end he wasn’t able to walk that mile. The boys became stepchildren in 1942 when their widowed mother remarried. I remember their stepfather, who died when I was in grade school. I liked the man, and when I was a kid I never thought about the implications to my dad and uncle of having a stepfather. Life had been hard during the 1930’s in Moline, IL, with their father in poor health, and living in a tarpaper shack. The stepfather was a farmer with a solid house, and he provided enough food for the first time in their lives. Dad and his brother never voiced any complaints to me about their upbringing.

A few days before Dad went into the hospital for the last time, we saw this field of shocked oats. I knew from past conversations that Dad had threshed, and that he knew how to build a shock of oats from the bundles, but this sight stimulated him to tell me about his transition from city boy to farm boy.

On moving day, the family possessions were loaded into the new father’s Ford car for the trip from Moline, Illinois to Washington, Iowa; everything but Dad’s bicycle. The stepfather would not allow the bicycle to be tied onto his car for fear of scratching the paint. If Dad wanted to keep his bike, he would have to ride it, and not just to Washington, but all the way to Wellman where he would be put to work for a farmer that the stepfather knew. That bicycle was the only set of wheels the family had had up until this time. Dad had earned the money for it by setting pins in a bowling alley, and it was pretty important to him. This was a tough choice for a fourteen year old kid, but Dad chose to ride his bicycle rather than give it up. The Ford left with his mother, brother and new father. Dad started his long bike ride. He rode west from Moline, crossed the Mississippi at Muscatine, and continued west. By the time he reached Washington he had ridden sixty miles. He stopped at his grandmother’s house for a snack and water, then headed west again. When he reached the farm north of Wellman he had ridden over eighty miles in one day.

The next day he was put to work shocking oats. It being August, he wore a short sleeved shirt. The farmer could have told him to wear long sleeves, but he didn’t bother. Dad’s arms were a painful scratched up mess in short order, and he knew to wear long sleeves the next day. His brother, only ten years old at the time, drew lighter duty around the farm.

They survived this transition in their lives, and it made both of them even tougher than they had been as starving city kids. Dad got a job driving heavy equipment when he was seventeen, was drafted into the Army when he turned eighteen, and took up farming after he got out of the Army. His brother joined the Air Force and made a career out of it. They both did pretty well for a couple of depression era kids who started out in a tarpaper shack. Today would have been Dad's 81st birthday, and I sure do miss him. He was teaching me how to live right up to the end. He wasn't just a good father and a great guy, he had Moxie.