The Second Sign on Our Farm

Hilda’s Hand

The 1926 book was in a heavy, upright hand with long tails on the letters. On the inside cover someone had written, Hilda Kroll, Her Book, in the same ink.

It was all there. The purchase price. The note at the bank in Mankato.

Two horses, a cream separator, a wagon bought at a sale, chickens by the dozen, seed wheat by the bushel.

I turned to 1931, because 1931 was the year the bottom fell out. The wheat column was almost empty. One load, sold in August, for a sum so small I read it three times.

But the cream column ran down the whole page. Every week, sometimes twice a week, the same entry in the same upright hand.

“Cream, $3.12. Interest paid.”

“Cream, $2.80. Eggs, 60 cents. Interest paid.”

Week after week. Year after year. 1932, 1933, 1934. The cream and the eggs kept the interest paid on the note, and the note being paid kept the bank from taking the farm.

That was the whole story of how the Krolls survived the thirties, and it was written down in a woman’s handwriting. Not told. Written. With dates and dollars.

In the margin of 1934 she had written a single line in smaller letters.

“Otto ill again. Did the milking myself.” And a week later, “Did the milking myself.” And a week after that.

I counted. She wrote that line nineteen times that spring.

Ida’s War

I went through the books in order after that, because I couldn’t stop. My flashlight started to go yellow and I didn’t care.

Ida’s hand started in 1941. It was smaller than Hilda’s and slanted hard to the right, like she was always in a hurry, which I suppose she was.

The winter Walter died, there was a black line drawn across the page under his last entry. Then a blank space.

Then Ida’s handwriting picking up the very next week, as if somebody had handed her a pen and she just kept going.

She sold fourteen steers in October of 1942. She bought seed wheat.

She hired a boy from town at harvest and paid him two dollars a day, and she wrote his name down, Elmer, and what he ate.

She paid off the note at the bank in 1943. I found the entry.

“Note paid in full.” She underlined it twice. It was the only thing in forty-one books anyone underlined.

And then I turned to the spring of 1945.

The page for May was mostly empty. A few small entries at the top. Seed oats, a calf sold. And then, across the middle of the page, in big letters that slanted even harder than usual, two words.

“Harold safe.”

That was all. No date beside it, no explanation. Just those two words, written by a woman who had been waiting three years to write them, taking up half a page in a ledger meant for money.

I sat on that attic floor with the book open on my knees and cried into the sleeve of my work shirt.

I don’t cry easily. I cried for a woman I never met.