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Waterworks & TV. Beneath this vast, smothering blanket is the American farmer—still an individualist. He remains rooted to the earth, bound for good or ill to the wind and the rain, the snow and the sun. He is still conservative, somewhat distrustful of the outsider, does much of his buying by mail, and throws his nickels around as if they were manhole covers. He complains endlessly about his lot, but he would not trade with anyone. He is likely to own a "waterworks" (indoor plumbing), a Deepfreeze, a piano, television and hi-fi sets, and a bank account for his children's education. He hooks a radio onto his tractor to keep up with the news as he plows, joins the P.T.A. and the Chamber of Commerce.
A couple of cases in point:
Les England, his wife Helen and their son and daughter-in-law farm a 520-acre place near Centralia, Mo. (see third color page), and rent another 180 acres near by. Son Frank, 24, and his wife Jane live in a modern pink-and-gray clapboard house built from architect's plans in a farm magazine. The elder Englands occupy a white frame eight-room house just a quarter of a mile away. The Englands raise soybeans, corn, wheat, have 60 head of Herefords, 150 hogs and 41 Appaloosa horses. They have a heavy investment in machinery and rolling stock, including a $9,000 combine, two pickup trucks, a 2½-ton truck and three tractors. Helen England raises German shepherd dogs, earned $2,300 last year, and used part of the money to buy new bedroom furniture. They have an automatic washer and dryer, wall-to-wall carpeting in the living room, vinyl tile in the dining room-kitchen, and a TV set. In the busy spring planting time, Frank often rises at 2 a.m. to get a head start in the fields. A hired hand helps out in the spring, and in summer they take on three high school boys part time. A sign of the times: they buy their milk at the store, because, says Mrs. England, Les "hates to milk cows."
Durum & Ducks. Far away in North Dakota, where the land is flat as a flapjack and rich as Fort Knox, lives the Crockett family, descendants of Davy and just as tough. Bill Crockett and his two married sons Claude and Willard farm 5,000 acres of durum wheat, oats and barley in Cavalier County, just south of the Canadian border. Bill served as North Dakota's speaker of the house in 1935, still takes a lively interest in politics. But his real love, and that of his sons, is the land. Last year alone the three Crockett men spent more than $80,000 for new equipment—but sometimes, just out of sentiment, Bill runs an old-fashioned steam-driven thresher.