Death on the Farm - 1953

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Philip, the manager of the Curry Senior Tech Prose Story by C W Buntjer Center att 520 Turk Street decided in 2024 to start a poetry and prose class.

Philip has a history of working with poetry and prose and has written around 8 or more theatrical play scripts.

In the class we have people who have had their poetry published and Philip thought I would be a good choice to write a theatrical script for a ten minute play. He said there are groups that put on short ten page or so scripts at various theatrical venuses. I was astounded, I might have a play produced and acted on an actual stage!

He also suggested I might write some prose and creat a story about my life growing up on a farm in Illinois.

I am almost finished with a script about two women and problems with their husbands that Phillip things might be performed on the Sutter Street Theatre.

Note: In March of 2025 I have started to write a short story about my first four years of living on a farm in Illinois and the first big trauma in my life.

I also started to write about my wonderful life until 1951 when my mother was diagnosed with cancer, heart breaking of course.

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Book 2 - Charles Walter Buntjer's Life

Death on the Farm - 1953

Ken Yvonne Edna Walter

by

Charles Walter Buntjer

Chapter 1 - A Wonderful Life - 1950

I was so lucky the first ten years of my life on the farm. We were renting a 500 acre farm near Pecatonica. Most of the money we earned went to pay off the mortgage of the 160 acre farm we were buying near Polo and then starting to build all new buildings including a fantastic house with all the frills, running water and a bathroom in the house.

I had my dog Buster, my favorite cats and a pony that my sister and I learned to ride before the big horses! Dandy was a piece or work, only wanted to do what he wanted. We had 200 acres of forest with an Indian Mound on top of the highest hill. Below the hill was a swamp and in the spring we went there to gather Tiger Lillies, beautiful flowers. We were told the swamp was there because the Indians had dug up the soil and piled it on top of the hill to make a place to perform rituals.

A river ran along side the farm and in the spring, it flooded and covered the land with a rich black soil that made the corn almost sound like you could hear it as it inched toward the sky. We also had train tracks running through the middle of the farm. Trains would run by everyday or so bringing products to the local towns. In the spring the family would walk the tracks because the wild strawberries would bear sweet fruit. We were suppose to pick them for desert after dinner, maybe in ice cream. We had to laugh, usually we ended up eating all of them so no desert after dinner.

Every spring my father would take me to the back 40. It was a forest by the river and the trees were very thick and under them were plants, I believe Blue Bonnets. There were acres of plants, so green and the tops covered with blue blossoms. When the wind blew it looked like the ocean as if they were waves. Such memories. We also found flowers with three green leaves and in the middle, a red flower, we called them Bloody Noses!

When I was six and started to walk two miles to a one room school, I walked past a hill on our farm that had been sliced in half from a glacier thousands of years ago. The side of the hill was very steep and in the spring there was still ten or more inches of snow on the ground but inbetween the rocks, small areas would be melted and flowers like the ones in Switzerland would pop up, fuzzy leaves and small purple flowers that looked like tulips. I would pick them to take to school for Miss Myers, our teacher. What could possible go wrong Charles asked himself.

Chapter 2 - A Trip to Dixon - 1951

It was 1951 and Charles was kept out of the loop. Nothing was said to him. Everyone got in the car and off to Dixon. The family parked in a hospital parking lot. Then went into the hospital. The doctors came out and talked to everyone but me. Finally my sister told me our mother had to have a slight operation but not to worry. She would stay over a few days to recover like I did when I had my surgery at four years old.

Now that I think about it, how strange things one remembers. Yvonne took me on a walk around a park by the hospital. The locust come out of the ground after 16 or more years, climb up into the trees and the males vibrate their wings to attrack the females. There was a loud humming all over the town. Little did I know what was happening. I did hear my sister talking to our father, she said the doctor came out to talk to them and had blood and fat on their shoes. I had no idea what they were talking about.

Chapter 3 - The Wedding and Life after Surgery

My sister met a man just out of the Navy, very handsome and very nice, quite and hard working. They decided to get married in November of 1952. Of course, our mother was so happy for this to happen. What a beautiful wedding.

Now I didn't know what was happening to my mother. We moved to the new house in 1950 and after all that hard work my mother did for all of her life, did a fantastic job decorating the house. Home and Gardens wanted to showcase it in their magazine but my parents decided the neighbors might be envious. Well they didn't ask me of course!

My mother stopped working outside and she joined some womens clubs and church groups and would dress up and go out and about. I was so happy she was enjoying the house and able to get out.

I was still out of the loop so I was traumatized when I realized what was happening.

Chapter 4 - A Night to Remember

BBC TV Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II: Westminster Abbey … June 2, 1953.

My mother and I were excited as it was the first time we got to see a TV program almost in real time from another country. BBC filmed the coronation and processed the film in the evening, then flew the films to New York over night and within 24 hours, we were able to view the coronation. What a thrill.

For some reason we still had the two farms, the 160 acre farm with all the new buildings, the wonderful house and so on near Polo Illinois and the 500 acre farm near Pecatonica Illinois. My father worked both farms for several years after we moved back to Polo. I never knew why we still rented the farm near Pecatonic but that is the next story I will have to tell.

We were alone after viewing the coronation and I was so happy, so close to my mother. She was wearing a silk pajama top and suddenly she looked at me and showed me a small tin of salve. I thought this was very strange. She said she needed someone to help her put on the salve. I, of course, said certainly.

She opened the top of her pajamas and there was a scab around her entire left side and around to her back. A full mastectomy, the entire breast and the limph nodes under her arm and back. The entire area was black and had slivers of skin from the radiation. I was devastated, I was in shock and almost fell off the couch. I froze like a deer caught in the head lights.

My mother must have been in pain as she would pass away within five months. She realized I was traumatized and said she was sorry and closed her pajama top. She was sorry, for years after I had a guilt complex I didn't help her put the salve onto the wound. She apologized to me, I still feel guilty about the situation.

Chapter 5 - Passing

I felt even more guilty as time went by. Mother ended up in the hospital and finally the doctors said she could come home for the end of life situation. We put her in the television room next to the kitchen. She was unconcious the last three weeks.

I don't know what happened to my father but he then turned extremely mean to me. I was helping him get ready to milk the cows around four p.m. and had to go to the house for something. I was about 25 feet from the barn and I heard the door to the barn open. I kept walking. My father yelled out to me:

"You know your mother is going to die."

I was so mad, I just kept walking. For the next few years he was very nasty to me and I never figured out why.

Our mother passed away on Thanksgiving morning. I was in bed and my sister Yvonne, came to the bedroom and sat on the bed and told me mother had passed away. We fell into each others arms and cried. Then we said we were glad she passed away as she was so ill. Then we cried even more because we said that.

And at the funneral, I guess families always did the same things. My aunts told me as I walked into the church, how wonderful Edna looked, almost better than in life. Then my aunts said if I loved my mother I would give her a hug and a nice kiss. I said I didn't think so. I guess they thought I didn't love her that much if I wouldn't kiss a dead person. I said I wanted to remember her when she lived.

The funeral was over and of course there was a big party in the basement of the church and lots of food. A good reason for a family reunion. I was ready for the next installment of my life. Little did I know of the traumas I would endure and eventually the ability to grow and come out of the sad situation I was in. That will be in Book 3 - Life and Times of Charles Walter Buntjer.

Created on 2025.03.30    Chuck Buntjer's Home Page    Updated on 2025.03.31