When I was about two years old, Mom, John and I spent several weeks each summer on a farm near Locktown with Michael Antislko family. We continued this practice after Michael was a baby of about one year old. We looked forward to the time on the farm and the livestock there. When the doctor advised Pop to move into the country, he contacted the nearby Realtor Jacob Keller to be on the lookout for a small farm. After some time Mr. Keller told Mom that he had several places he wanted to show to my parents. Mother told Mr. Keller that the next time Pop came to Locktown they would go with him to see the properties.
When they saw the place on the Idell-Federal Twist road, they liked it very much so they bought it. The house was half stone and part frame, built in the 1700’s and 1860’s. There was a cow, about twenty-five chickens, a pig and a model T Ford touring car. There was 23 acres of land and a small orchard, all this for sixteen hundred dollars. We moved from the city to the farm soon after. I remember the day the mover brought our belongings to the farm. I ran around the house and was surprised that I returned to the place from which I started. In Brooklyn it was impossible to run around the house.
My father still worked in Brooklyn for a small ship yard and came to the farm on weekends. He came home by train to Raven Rock. At that time there were eight trains each day traveling between Trenton and Phillipsburg. He then had to walk from the station to the farm up the hill, which was about two miles.
Mom fed the chickens, milked the cow; we had a collie dog which understood commands. Mom would say, “Collie, go get the cow.” In several minutes he would bring the cow to the barn[1].
When I was three years old, Pop came home on Good Friday and began to cut corn fodder for the cow. We had a hand operated fodder cutter which he used. I watched the fodder being cut which intrigued me, so as Pop was reaching for the uncut fodder, I reached for a stalk and when Pop was putting the stalks into the cutter, I pushed the stalk I held. When the knife came down, I had my hand too far into the cutter and cut off the first joint on my right forefinger. Fortunately my hand was not in any further or else I would have lost more fingers or even my hand. My father called for Mom and she came running with a bath towel while Pop ran to our neighbor Mr. Raines, where they quickly hitched the horses to the wagon and took me to Dr. Walter in Pt. Pleasant, PA. The horses ran all the way. We crossed the Byram Pt. Pleasant bridge. Doc Walter disinfected the wound, removed the piece of bone and stitched the finger. Pt. Pleasant was about three miles from our house. He came to attend to my finger twice and walked each time and charged but 50 cents and even gave Mom pills for her high blood pressure[2]. The doctor’s son still lives in Pt Pleasant. He is owner of Walter’s Nursery.
[1] Editor’s Note: There was also a especially ornery goose on the farm. At some point, each child had the job of feeding the chickens and collecting the eggs. This goose would chase and nip Stephen every time he set foot into the barn-yard. His solution was to take a wooden barrel which had neither top nor bottom and to walk to and from the chicken coops with this barrel around him.
[2] Editor’s Note: Stephen had two other notable encounters with the medical profession. Stephen was very nearsighted even as a young boy. His father took him to the eye doctor in Lambertville. After a week, they returned to pick up his first pair of glasses. He often told of being in awe of the world on his trip home. The first thing he saw was a sign on the hillside, advertising Camel cigarettes, with the word Lambertville below it. Until this point he didn’t know that normal people could actually see the individual leaves on trees, or blades of grass, or birds and bees. One eye was much worse then the other, so for a week he walked by picking up one leg much higher then the other until he learned to trust his new improved depth perception where the boundary between corrected and uncorrected vision meets at the bottom of the eyeglass lens.
When Stephen was older he got an excruciating ear-ache. He had fluid building up behind his ear-drum. The doctor punctured his ear-drum and the fluid drained rapidly away. It was not uncommon for this condition to lead to an extremely high fever and even death. Stephen had a lasting effect of reduced hearing in this one ear.
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