Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest (5 page)

Both Steve and Todd had maintained close ties with the rural communities of their childhood in ways that suited the idiosyncrasies and exigencies of their own lives. Todd’s approach hinged on his attraction to farming as a way of life, and his stated belief that “Where I came from is as important as what I am.” Steve’s credo seemed to be a transposition of that, the sense that what I am is as important as where I came from. Above all, Steve said, “My life is going to be what I want.” In contrast, Todd had decided it was important that he go along with appearing to be what his family and home community wanted him to be—for the sake of family
and community relations, investments, inheritance, and his future in ranching. For Todd, at age twenty-five, fitting into the rural community that he still thought of as home was more important than living openly as a gay man according to the model defined by urban gay culture.

As their surnames reveal, more than half of the men whose stories are presented here are of at least partial German heritage. This is consistent with the ethnic composition of the rural Midwest, which was settled during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by two main groups, Yankees and Germans. For well over a century now, the ethnic mosaic of this region has been dominated by these two groups.

The Yankees were native-born Americans who had British Protestant ancestry. Following the frontier, they migrated to the Midwest from their homelands in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic states. Close on their heels were the Germans, new immigrants to the U.S. from Catholic and Protestant areas in Germany. Scandinavian immigrants from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden also established themselves as midwestern farmers during this era, with cultures that tended to be more Germanic than Yankee in character.

The distinct differences between Yankee and German farming cultures have been described by Sonya Salamon in her book,
Prairie Patrimony.
I have drawn on Salamon’s work in the characterizations presented here, and illustrate her generalities with quotes from the life stories presented in this volume.

Compared to the Yankees, German farmers were strongly communalistic. They maintained a strong ethnic identity and very tight, kin-oriented social networks that were closed to outsiders. “We were very insular,” Martin Scherz said of his German farm community in Nebraska. “A lot of the people were from the same villages in Germany and were all related for the most part.... Most of the community was Lutheran.” Church and community were synonymous in German culture; the social and religious functions of the church were equally important. Children were raised to be obedient. Everyone tended to know everyone else’s business and a steady stream of gossip and criticism helped to maintain conformity. There was little tolerance for diversity or nonconformity.

“There was prejudice and bigotry all over the place,” said James Heckman of his German farm community in Indiana.

German farmers tended to be industrious, earnest, frugal, conservative, and slow to change their traditional farming practices. It was common for all family members, male and female, to be intensively involved in the farming operation. In Dennis Lindholm’s view, “We very rarely did anything other than work. . . . [ Dad] never slept beyond 4:00, and was up and gone by the time we got up, so we had to go out and help.” Because family identity was very closely tied to the land, German parents did what they could to ensure that their farm would grow and prosper in succeeding generations. To this end, they reared their children—sons in particular—for commitment to farming.

Many a successful German patriarch “colonized” his rural neighborhood by acquiring adjacent farms for his sons to operate once they were married and raising families. Salamon tells of an eighty-five-year-old farmer who recalled, “I went into the service for four years and when I came back, I really wasn’t so sure I wanted to be a farmer. But my dad told me that he’d raised me to be a farmer and that’s what he wanted me to do. German fathers have a real influence on their sons. What else could I do?” (Salamon, p. 101).

Unlike the Germans, for whom the perpetuation of their farms and farming methods represented cultural continuity, the Yankees tended to take a more entrepreneurial and capitalistic approach. They saw farming as a business and land as a commodity; they farmed in order to make a profit and to increase the value of the farm. In comparison to the more traditional Germans, Yankees valued innovation in farming methods and equipment.

Yankee farmers were strongly individualistic and their communities more loosely organized. Their ethnicity was not so central to their identity. Households belonged to individualized social networks that were not necessarily kinship-based, and one’s kin were often divided among different churches. The religious function of church was far more important than the social. Yankee children were raised to be more individualistic and autonomous, and the loose-knit community enhanced tolerance of diversity and unconventional behavior. Gossip and criticism were less important than among Germans as agents of conformity. Upon reaching adulthood, Yankee children were expected to distance themselves from their parents’
authority, leave their childhood homes, and find their own way in the world. Consequently, the Yankee farmer was less likely than the German to pressure a son to take over the family farm.

The sharpness of this Yankee/German contrast has been eroded during this century, as various factors have led to a blending of these cultures. Nonetheless, it seems likely that these differences in farming culture would lead to different experiences for gay farm boys growing up in families dominated by Yankee or German values. Considering the German culture’s greater emphasis on shaping oneself to conform to the expectations of others, it seems reasonable to assume that growing up in a German family would have been particularly problematic for a gay male. First, being gay would not satisfy rigorous family and community standards. In addition, since sons generally succeed fathers in taking over farms, fitting into the rural community and assuring the continuity of the family farm depends on marrying and having children. This could only intensify marital and reproductive imperatives in the coming-of-age experience of farm boys, especially those who have no brothers.

James Heckman became an only son as the result of his older brother’s death as a child. With the collaboration of his parents and extended family, James did his best to fill his dead brother’s shoes throughout childhood and well into adulthood. He sought to pattern his own identity after that of his idealized brother. At age twenty-seven, assured by a Catholic priest that he would grow into it, James married a woman because “she seemed to be the type of woman [my brother] might have married. And because my brother would have had children, I had children. There was a time when I thought of my own children as my brother’s children.” James’s attempted suicide, psychiatric hospitalization, and coming out in his mid-thirties helped to end that role-playing era of his life.

In a less traumatic way, Joe Shulka’s experience also exemplifies the pressure exerted by traditional farming parents on their sons. As an only son, Joe’s decision not to go into farming created much disappointment and strife with his parents.

Yankee parents were less likely to pressure a son to take over the family farm, even if they would have liked to see him do so. My own
experience illustrates this dynamic, though, unlike James Heckman and Joe Shulka, I am not an only son. As a child I was very involved in the work of the farm, but much less than my brother, who has since taken over the homestead. Although my brother and I knew that we had the option of farming for a living, we were not raised to be farmers in the characteristic German fashion. It was always evident to us that our parents encouraged us to find our own paths in life. Finding out that being gay was part of my path has not been easy for my parents, but their disappointment over my not marrying and fathering children has not been accompanied by distress about the family farm’s continuity.

My own upbringing was consistent with the Yankee profile in other ways as well. My extended family was large, but kinship connections were not tight; each nuclear family functioned as a discrete entity, with their own church affiliations and social networks. This is in marked contrast to the experience of Todd Ruhter, who grew up with a younger brother in a German Lutheran family in Nebraska. “My uncles and grandparents could discipline us just like my mother and father could. Everybody and everything was community property.” Also, although I grew up in a community that included families of varied European heritage, I was essentially oblivious to ethnicity throughout childhood. Only as an adult did I come to realize that many of the surnames of my home community were of English, Irish, German, and Norwegian origin. Until then, they had been simply American.

In most cases, growing up on a farm presented these boys with two quite distinct, gender-based spheres of work activity—farmwork and housework. Farmwork was largely the male’s domain. It extended from the livestock in the barns and pastures to the crops in the fields, and to the maintenance and repair of farm machinery and vehicles. Housework was largely the female’s domain, typically extending from the house to the garden. On some farms, caring for the chickens and milk cows was also seen as women’s work, most often when these were relatively small operations. Until the 1950s, the sale of cream, eggs, and poultry by farm women was often an important supplement to farm income. As boys, several of the men I interviewed had been involved in raising and caring for chickens, with a particular interest in exotic breeds.

Any overlap or flexibility of male and female duties tended to occur most often in the gardens and barns, and least often in the houses, fields,
and machine shops. But what was considered appropriate work for males and females varied by region, community, and family. In Todd Ruhter’s experience, “There was the wife’s role and the husband’s role, and the only time they mixed was when the wife was helping the husband.”

With few exceptions, the boys whose stories are presented here fit a common profile with regard to their involvement in farmwork. They generally sought to avoid fieldwork and the repair and maintenance of farm machinery and vehicles. This was typically attributed to an inherent “mechanical disability” and to the dusty, dirty, boring nature of driving machinery back and forth in the fields. Martin Scherz fit this profile, and felt deficient as a result.

Dean Gray, born in 1962, grew up on a small dairy farm in central Wisconsin. Even in his preschool years, his attraction to animal husbandry was strong.

To the extent that these boys were attracted to any aspect of farmwork, it was generally the care, feeding, and breeding of livestock and the cleaning and maintenance of these animals’ shelters that they found most appealing and satisfying. This sort of work is essentially the “housework” of the farm. After a housekeeping apprenticeship with his mother in his early years, David Foster was expected to join his father and older brothers in doing some of the farm chores. “What I did, I did very well. I’ve always been a very thorough person, very organized and clean. I did farmwork that way too, cleaning the barn and sweeping the feed into the cribs. . . . My mother would say, ‘David’s the only one that sweeps it that clean.’” The degree of rigidity with which the boundaries of gender-based work roles were enforced varied greatly among the families represented here. In most cases, enforcement tended to be especially strong for males. For
females, things were more ambiguous and fluid. It was far more common for wives and daughters to do work related to livestock and crops, when their help was needed, than for husbands and sons to do housework, no matter how badly their help was needed. But it was common for everyone in the family, regardless of gender, to be involved in certain seasonal tasks requiring a large number of hands, such as “walking beans”—walking between rows of soybeans and pulling out weeds and unwanted “volunteer” corn sprouting from the residue of the previous year’s crop.