When I was young, my mother, Leota Walker Brumm, didn't talk a whole lot about her own experiences as a youngster. I didn't ever hear much about growing up on the farm owned by her father, Samuel Nathaniel Walker, except that it was a hard life and I know the more convenient life of the 1950s or 1960s was something she would never have traded to return to the days of her youth.
One story I do remember her telling me was from the days of World War I. During the war her mother, Hattie Mae, died, and I imagine for a while the household was just very strange and hard to live in like any home where a mother is suddenly taken might be.
During World War I evidently the Walker children heard sounds in the basement of their farmhouse some evenings. At the time the entire country was suffering some paranoia from the War and there was a backlash against German-Americans who had emigrated to the U.S. in more recent times. Evidently there was also intrigue and rumors of spies and German infiltration (even in far off Iowa) for somebody in the family decided those noises they heard during the night in their basement were Germans tunneling under the house!
As a kid I always thought my mom meant the Germans had tunneled under that house all the way from Germany, which really would have been an engineering feat. Marge Kimble told me that as she heard this tale, there were German spies residing in some caves near Morning Sun; they were tunneling underground from those caves.
I wish I knew where these Germans were supposed to be tunneling, or what state secrets they hoped to find in that depths of that black, rich, Iowa farmland. But I don't.
| Next yarn: | Arnie and George Edgar Come to Lunch |
| Author: | Dennis William Brumm |
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