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American History
A Scotch Farmer


A SERIES OF DRAMATIZATIONS OF BETTER LAND USE.
No. 1?8 "SCOTCH FARMER" September 20, 1941

ORGAN THEME: DEEP RIVER

VOICE

We took it; for granted that land was everlasting; We said ownership of the land insured security, Tools would wear outs men would die — But the land would remain.

ORGAN: ABRUPT DISCORD

ANNOUNCER (cold)

Fortunes Washed Away!

ORGAN; FLURRY AND OUT

PETER (cold)

And you really think we should go to AmericaP ISABELLE?

Yes, Peter.

PETER

But Isabell! America, it is so far from bonnie Scotland.

ISABELLE (gently)

I know, Peter, But think of the chance we1!! have - the chance to own a farm of our own.

PETER

I haven’t done so bad, gude wife. Head foreman on the Duke of Hamilton’s estate is something to be proud of.

ISABELLE

Of course. And I am proud, but you deserve something better. You know what my brothers John and Neil say in their letters.

PETER

I know -- you can easily have land of your own in America.

ISABELLE

America.

(PRODUCTION NOTE: Pause for about five seconds,)

SOUND: Steamship whistle*

PETER (gasping)

The Statue of Liberty!

ISABELLE

America.

ORGAN: DEEP RIVER, fading behind...

ANNOUNCER

Famed for summer resorts is the west coast of Northern Michigan, Here is the Grand Traverse Region, sprawled out from Grand Traverse Bay, famed as Cherryland. But general farming is also practiced in this section of the Wolverine State, for many fine, well-managed farms dot the countryside. One of these farms is a tribute to a Scotsman, Peter Morrison, who migrated from Scotland to the Grand Traverse Region 58 years ago. This farm is the scene of the 178th consecutive episode of "Fortunes Washed Away”.

ORGAN: UP AND OUT

ANNOUNCER (on cue)

His son, Neil Morrison, operates that farm, now. And Neil Morrison tells the story... a true story...(FADE)

ORGAN: Sneak in BLUEBELLS OF SCOTLAND behind...

NARRATOR

I wish you could have known my father, Peter Morrison. He was a small, wiry Scotsman, the most honest and hardest working man that I ever knew. As head foreman on the Duke of Hamilton1s estate in Scotland, not so far from Glasgow, my father had reached what there was the pinnacle of success. There was little opportunity for him to become a landowner. Most of the land in Scotland is in large estates. Well, my father, mostly at the insistence of my mother I guess, finally decided to come to America, where even the humblest had an equal chance. My sisters and my brothers were along and...

(FADE SOUND; Train whistles occasionally through following...

ISABELLE

AH, Peter, it's been such a long trip!

PETER (groaning)

And me still sick from that turrible boats

ISABELLE

Look at the countryside, Peter, and you’ll forget how you feel.

PETER

That only makes it worse. Snow everywhere, and trees. What kind of land is this for a man to farm?

ISABELLE

Brother Neil said you can almost pick up money in the streets here in America.

PETER (interrupting)

A plague on Neil and his letters. They’re what brought us here to this forsaken land! Oh, if we but had the money, Isabelle, we’d go right back to Scotland,’

ISABELLE

We haven’t much money left have we?

PETER

Only a little. And we’d have more but for these crooks. That man who changed our money into American money, back there in New York, he cheated me plenty,

ISABELLE

’When you’re feeling well, Peter, I know you’ll like it better here.

PETER

But look at all those trees! And me with never an axe in my hand. The land’s all been cleared in Scotland the farm land that is ~~ long before my time. And how can you buy land without money?

ISABELLE

Well, maybe we’ll have to work for awhile, and save, and wait. But we will have a farm of our own before long, I know it!

PETER

Wish I had your confidence, my gude wife. I say, I still can’t see why you and the children didn’t get sick on that boat

ISABELLE
That is strange. The sea was mighty rough. But the children seemed to enjoy it, even little Duncan. I did too, except for one thing

PETER

I know! having to give up so many of your treasures. Well, we just b couldn't pay dooty on all that bedding, and the other things.

ISABELLE

My good silver, though, I’m happy to have kept it.

PETER

Yes, ’tis about the only gude thing we have to start our life anew in this strange country<, Say, shouldn’t we be nearly there?

ISABELLE

Brother Nell said we get off the train in Traverse City -- strange name for a town — and then go overland by stage coach to Elk Rapids,

VOICE

Next stop, Traverse City!

PETER

You’d best wake the children, Isabelle

ISABELLE

The little darlings, sleepin’ so sweetly after their lunch.

PETER

That was a gude lunch you packed, but not like the meals you cooked back home! Well, I’d best get the baggage ready.

SOUND; Train slows down, comes to stop.

VOICE

All out for Traverse City!

SOUND; Vestibule door clangs. Engine bell rings. Station noises,.,

ISABELLE
Where’s the lunch box, Peter?

PETER

Why I thought it was all gone. I throw it out the window a few miles back.

ISABELLE (wallingJ

0h Peter! My silverware was in the box

ORGAN: BLUEBELLS OF SCOTLAND, fading behind

NARRATOR

Thus my father and his little brood came to northern Michigan that cold December day 53 years ago. At Elk Rapids Uncle Dancan Corbett, who was a lake boat captain, persuaded his mother-in-law to rent her Elk Lake farm to my father. One day... SOUND: Door opens, closes...

ISABELLE

Yes, Peter?

PETER

Ach I’m tired. Two years we've been here now and all we have is a roof over our heads and food.

ISABELLE

That’s more than many have, Peter.

PETER

True, but it’s not enough for me. And this isn’t such a gude farm, Isabelle. It takes hard work to make a poor livin’.


ISABELLE

Maybe you’d like to move, Peter?

PETER

Yes. You know the Nelson Peek place, with the log house and the small barn?

ISABELLE

Yes.

PETER

Peek wants to go to California. He’ll sell for $J,000.

ISABELLE
But Peter, we don’t even have $300.

PETER

He only asks $700 down, and an honest Scot can borrow that. What say, gude wife?

ISABELLE

Whatever you want to do, Peter, I’m by your side, always.

ORGAN; BLUEBELLS OF SCOTLAND, fading behind...

NARRATOR

The Peek farm had 80 acres, a little more than half of it cleared. My father rented an additional 160 acres nearby. We lived in the little log house 12 years, That’s where I was born. Father finally bought the 160 acres he had rented, and built a new house, on the hill across the road overlooking the east arm of Grand Traverse Bay. It 5s the same house I live in now, I can still see father on the way to Elk Rapids with his one-horse wagon and a load of vegetables or corn. And always he brought back a load of manure from the livery stables, and spread it out on the thin spots to refresh and enliven the land, I remember many a conversation with my father....fade....

SOUND; Axes slashing at heavy timber.etc.

PETER

Whew! That’s hard work, son. What would my old friends in Scotland think if they saw me swingin’ an axe and me that never cut a tree before?

NEIL

But you do a good job of it father.

PETER
There's few jobs that can’t be done, if you’ve a mind to.

NEIL

Shall we tackle the big pine with the saw now?

PETER

Might as well, son, But I think it’s too much for us.

SOUND: Six-foot hand saw makes few cuts...

PETER

That’s enough, son, We'll have to hire some Indians to bring this one down.

NEIL

Gee, that’s the biggest tree I ever saw!

PETER

Enough timber in that one for a 12-room house, Let’s rest a bit, Neil. You know, you're a lucky boy?

NEIL

That I am, father, with parents like mine, and a good home.

PETER

I’m not meanin’ that particularly. In Scotland now, you’d have to serve an apprenticeship to be a farmer.

NEIL

You mean, just like a printer has to here?

PETER

Exactly. And. then you wouldn’t have more than one chance in a million to ever own much of a farm. The land, doesn’t change hands there, Neil. And there’s no new land to clear, like we have here, Here you have opportunity, the thing I came here to find — and found.

NEIL

I don’t see how you’ve done so much, father.

PETER

In Scotland you'd have to be an expert before they’d even let you plow, son. Over there they plow deeper and narrower furrows. When first I came here they used to come for miles around to watch me plow. Must have been because I did it so different. At that, I used to be a prize winner at the plowing contests we had in Scotland,...fade..

NARRATOR

My father died in 1918. He left a fifty thousand dollar estate to be divided among nine children, 520 acres of land, all free of debt. All of this he had wrestled from the soil of a strange land. In 1934 after the death of my youngest brother, I came back home to run the farm. After being away for so long, except for short visits, it was easy for me to see that many changes had taken place. I noticed erosion had taken its toll in topsoil and fertility. I took steps to conserve the land my father had worked so hard to buy. One day recently...

fade..

SOUND: Car comes to stop, horn toots

ROSENCRANS

Hi there, Mr. Director!

SOUND: Car door opens, closes.

NEIL

Hello, Lee Rosenerans! Where do you get that director stuff?

ROSENCRANS

Well sir, Neil. I have the honor to inform you that you have been elected a director of the Grand Traverse Soil Conservation District. You led the ticket, believe it or not.

NEIL

Now a'nt that sumpin. Say, you know after I found out there’d be a lot of work connected with that job — and no pay -- I sort of didn't care whether I was elected (BOTH MEN LAUGH}

ROSENCRANS

You know darned well that you want to see conservation farming practices spread all over the county — just like you have it here.

NEIL

You’ve got me there, Lee, I do want to see this soil of ours saved. It’s still getting away too fast on too many farms.

ROSENCRANS

You said a mouthful. Say, that strip cropping sure looks nice.

NEIL

Never a day goes by that I don’t admire those strips, You’d never guess, if you didn’t know, that those strips are three-quarters of a mile long,

ROSENCRANS

Bedded waterways holding up and the sod dams in the old gullies?

NEIL

Couldn’t be doing any better, Lee, Say, this new job as a director of the soil conservation district, will it take a lot of time? You know I’m on the county Triple +A. committee and the county land use planning committee.

ROSENCRANS

That’s one of the penalties for being a successful conservation farmer, Neil, Offhand. I'd say this new job will take some of your time but not too much. We’ve got over 25 requests for assistance from farmers already.

NEIL

Whew! Looks like the directors will be busy.

ROSENCRANS

Haven’t seen the boy around this summer, Didn’t he graduate from Northwestern in June?

NEIL

Yup and he finished in the top ten in a class of 2200, too! Jim’s got a job, Lee, a good one too.

ROSENCRANS

That’s fine! Well, guess I’d better be running along.

NEIL

What’s your hurry?

ROSENCRANS

Have to notify the other directors who were elected.

ORGAN: Sneak in AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL...

NEIL

You know> if my father were here he’d approve of all these things. He’d be a conservation farmer, because he was long before others thought of erosion, or keeping up fertility. Somehow I know that if he were alive he’d have the same great curving strips around these slopes, and he’d be an active supporter of the soil conservation district. My father would see in it a great opportunity for farmers to work together to pool their interests, to save this soil, to defend this land we love.

ORGAN: UP AND OUT.

ANNOUNCER

That is the true story of Peter Morrison, a Scotsman who built up an American farm that today is one of the conservation showplaces of northern Michigan, This, the 178th consecutive episode of Fortunes Washed Away, has been a presentation of the nation’s station in cooperation with the Soil Conservation Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, And now, friends, the eleventh commandment

ORGAN: Sneak in DEEP RIVER

ANNOUNCER

"Thou shalt inherit the holy earth as a faithful steward, conserving its resources and productivity from generation to generation. Thou shalt safeguard thy fields from soil erosion, thy living waters from drying up, thy forests from desolation, and protect thy hills from overgrazing by thy herds so that thy descendants may have abundance forever. If any shall fail in this stewardship of the land thy fruitful fields shall become sterile stony ground and wasting gullies, and thy descendants shall decrease and live in poverty or be destroyed from off the face of the earth."

ORGAN up and out.


 


 


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