grew near that town. He was to dig these trees with as much of the root
system included as possible and ship them to my farm. But the winter
season came before this had been accomplished and both Mr. Miller and I,
deciding the idea was not as practical as we had hoped it would be,
abandoned it. Later that same autumn I found that a nursery just outside
of St. Paul had several rows of overgrown black walnut trees which they
would sell me quite reasonably. I bought them and sent instructions to
the tenant at my farm to dig twenty-eight large holes in which to plant
them. Packed in straw and burlap, the trees weighed about 500 pounds, I
found. This was much too heavy and cumbersome to pack in my old touring
car, so I hunted around for some sort of vehicle I could attach to my
car as a trailer. In an old blacksmith shop, I came upon an antiquated
pair of buggy wheels. They looked as though they were ready to fall
apart but I decided that with repairs and by cautious driving, they
might last out the trip of thirty-five miles. So I paid the blacksmith
his asking price--twenty-five cents. The spokes rattled and the steel
tires were ready to roll off their wooden rims but the axles were
strong. My father-in-law and I puttered and pounded, strengthened and
tightened, until we felt our semi-trailer was in good-enough order. It
might have been, too, if the roads in the country hadn't been rough and
frozen so hard that they hammered on the solid, unresisting tires and
spokes until, almost within sight of the farm, one wheel dismally
collapsed. As the wheel broke, the trailer slid off the road into a
ditch, so that it was necessary to send on to the farm for the plow
horses to haul out the car, the trailer and the trees. The horses
finished hauling the trees to that part of the farm where holes had been
dug for them. I had told my tenant to dig large holes and large holes he
had certainly dug! Most of them were big enough to bury one of the
horses in. Such was my amateurish first endeavor.