After the tanning business played out, my father went into the threshing business, with a horse-drawn small engine, going from farm to farm after the crops were cut. Later he was in the huckstering business to Pittsburgh for thirteen years. He would start out on Monday morning and travel until Tuesday evening, gathering up eggs, butter, chickens and calves. To help sustain the calves we would break up a half dozen eggs into their mouths. The wagon was built like a prairie schooner and was drawn by four horses. In the front where he sat was a box filled with coffee, sugar, spices and thread, which he traded for commodities off the farms. The next box was a butter box, then a box that he packed the eggs in a layer of oats and then a layer of eggs. Then at the back was a chicken coop with compartments that fit the back of the wagon and formed a pen for the calves. One morning when starting for Pittsburgh, the chicken coop door came open and he scattered chickens along the road before he knew it. He never got any of the chickens, but the farmers had some good chicken dinners at his expense. Once I remember one of the calves got loose and started for the creek, swam the creek, and took off on the other side. Brother Roy and I got on a horse and followed it for two miles and I can see Roy riding after the calf and lassoing it. That was the only time I ever saw him play cowboy. We had to come home and get a buggy to haul the calf home. It was a hard, exacting life, as Father left home early Wednesday morning and didn't get home until Saturday, in the afternoon if roads were good, late at night if the roads were bad. Helen and I used to climb the "Knob," as we called the highest elevation of our place, and watch for him summer afternoons. As soon as we sighted him we started to meet him, as he always had some bananas, peanuts, a ring of bologna, etc., that seemed a treat to us. He had to spend parts of Thursday and Friday dickering with the grocers and butcher shop owners to dispose of his load. If things were in good supply, this was often hard to do, but sometimes if calves and chickens were scarce the butchers would drive out with a horse and buggy to the edge of the city to meet him and get ahead of a competitor. (This is an interesting passage because I never knew before what a huckster was, although I've seen it before in census data. Also, the picture of Oscar and his sister waiting on the hill above South Bend to spot their father returning from a trip brought a tear to my eye when I first read it.)