My Small World

Publisher Marketing: A land of wonder and mystery, that is how I remember MY SMALL WORLD. Rolling hills on 240 acres north of Maquoketa Caves State Park, Jackson County Iowa. This book is dedicated in honor of my brothers Gerald and Milton and in memory of my brother Ronald Owen. All proceeds from this book will be donated to (LSI) Lutheran Services in Iowa; a 150 year-old, non-profit social service agency. Partners with children, youth and families, people with disabilities, elderly and people of refugee status; helping people in times of need, strengthening families and advocating dignity and social justice for our neighbors in the community. This memoir is a collection of my daydreams and Owen family history shared by family members and friends as noted. Please know you will be reading words complied by several writers; phrases and spelling in personal letters are presented with styles, spelling and punctuation as originally written. I believe the originality reflects the realism of daily life during my childhood. My childhood was not concerned with matters of style or perfection; I always felt the urgency to get the work done each day "and make do." Come with me back to 1939 when I and my parents moved to the Rutenbeck farm. Constant work each day except Sunday, even then cows had to be milked and other livestock fed and taken care of. Arrival of hot summer days brought a promise of hard work, and we knew it was time to get ready to cut and shock oats. During the final week of June, Dad hitched our tractor to the grain binder and pulled the rusty old binder out of the east cattle shed. After storage for a year in the cattle shed, the binder was covered with dust and bird droppings. A grain binder was an ingenious mechanical invention, advertised and sold as a machine to save time and labor. The first binder was manufactured, in 1881, to cut the grain and form bundles tied with twine. A grain binder was an iron and tin marvel, full of gears, pulleys, chains and few slats of wood and a few yards of heavy canvas. Power was supplied from a ground-driven 'bull wheel' as the binder was pulled forward. The machine was noisy but never needed much maintenance, just a little oil for what seemed a hundred gears of all sizes... Our fun also came in all sizes in... MY SMALL WORLD.