Looking back on the 1940s: Fred Mesman tells all

Farmer, rockhound, horseshoe club founder, birder, hunter, carver, husband, dad and granddad, Fred Mesman will be 95 in August. The patriarch of the Mesman Dairy at Chilberg and Dodge Valley Roads came to LaConner in 1942 when Dutch farmers on Whidbey Island were displaced by Ault Field. The Mesmans were the only family that came to LaConner.

We moved from a Dutch community into a Swede community, with Oles and Svens and so forth. I had never heard those names before. But the Swedes were good guys. I planted a lot of cabbage with them and we got along fine.

We introduced ourselves to the community through hard work. I was a sack sewer on the threshing machines. The sacks would fill with oats and I would sew them shut. Every threshing machine had someone doing that. People would come from town and the reservation to shock the oats.

It was harvest time when we moved. Jim Hulbert had been sewing sacks and admitted that he wasn’t very good at it. I didn’t tell him that I was. Jim said, “Come on over tomorrow, we’re gonna thresh and I’ll teach you how to sew sacks.” After I sewed one as fast as I could, he said, “You’ve been pulling my leg!”

In the 1940s oats were still grown to feed the dray teams that moved people and freight around Seattle. My mother had been a cook for a dray company, and that’s where she learned to cook. There were still big noon dinners on the farm. We never had any trouble getting people to come in and eat!

In those days people made friends by visiting. Later we heard about a place for sale in Lynden, but by then my mother had good friends like Mrs. Hulbert. “I’m staying here!” she said.

We milked by hand for quite a while, then bought a milking machine, probably 1946 or so. Lots of dairy men were switching to milking machines. Salesmen, you know! Besides working on the dairy, I helped farmers like the Hulberts.

I would run the Hulberts’ mules to harrow and what not. Kate was a smart mule. Judy was just a plain good mule. Kate and Judy hauled hay and did harrowing and discing. Then the Hulberts bought a little Ford tractor and that was the end of the mules. A logger by Concrete bought them. They were nice mules and I miss them.

One day Jim Hulbert senior couldn’t find his heifers. During the night they must have crossed the bridge. Some Swinomish spotted them on the reservation. I saddled up my horse and the neighbor saddled up his and we went scouting and found them. We had trouble getting them across the bridge. The Swinomish surrounded them and forced them across.

I was as an old bird when I transferred to LaConner High School, a senior. A lot of fights went on, but I held my own. In hunting season, we had our shotguns at school or in our cars. After school we’d go duck hunting for an hour or two, before we had to do chores.

Once I went out the Legion Hall door and ended up in the street standing on top of a guy. He said he didn’t like me and was going to give me a licking. It didn’t work out that way. He said, “Can’t we settle this over the phone?” He started it, I didn’t! And he was older than me!

I was a member of the LaConner Rifle Club. Men and some women of all ages met in Legion Hall. We had indoor bullet traps. We shot 50 feet, right in the hall, and the trap caught the bullet. There were teams in LaConner, Anacortes, Mount Vernon, Newhalem and Bellingham. One thing I could do was shoot. I was always in the top four.

The hunting and fishing was good in those days. Al Thulen (father of Gail Thulen) caught a 54 pounder off Hope Island. I came in off the baler and he was there with that fish. My mother took our picture with her brownie camera. Al sold the fish to my mother, who canned it.

The road to LaConner was gravel in the 1940s. In the winter I had the tractor set and ready with a chain to pull people through the mud. I pulled a lot of cars out between town and Pleasant Ridge. People would knock on the door and ask for help. Once I pulled the school bus through. I was 18 or 20 then. They paved the road not long after. No more mud! But mud is part of your life as a farmer.