Vandemarks Folly | Page 4

cap and the
fact that my heart swelled and I was proud of myself. I do not believe
that I was more than three years old. All this may be partly a dream; but
I think not.
John Rucker was no dream. He was my mother's second husband; and
by the time I was five years old, and had begun to go to one little
school after another as we moved about, John Rucker had become the
dark cloud in my life. He paid little attention to me, but I recollect that
by the time we had settled ourselves at Tempe I was afraid of him. Two
or three times he whipped me, but no more severely than was the
custom among parents. Other little boys were whipped just as hard, and
still were not afraid of their fathers. I think now that I was afraid of him
because my mother was. I can not tell how he looked then, except that
he was a tall stooped man with a yellowish beard all over his face and
talked in a sort of whine to others, and in a sharp domineering way to
my mother. To me he scarcely ever spoke at all. At Tempe he had some
sort of a shop in which he put up a dark-colored liquid--a patent
medicine--which he sold by traveling about the country. I remember
that he used to complain of lack of money and of the expense of
keeping me; and that my mother made clothes for people in the village.
Tempe was a little village near the Erie Canal somewhere between
Rome and Syracuse. There was a dam and water-power in Tempe or
near there, which, I think, was the overflow from a reservoir built as a
water-supply for the Erie Canal--but I am not sure. I can not find
Tempe on the map; but many names have been changed since those
days. I think it was farther west than Canastota, but I am not sure--it
was a long time ago.

2
Once, for some reason of his own, and when he had got some money in

an unexpected way, Rucker took my mother and me to Oneida for an
outing. My mother and I camped by the roadside while Rucker went
somewhere to a place where a lot of strangers were starting a colony of
Free Lovers. After he returned he told my mother that we had been
invited to join the colony, and argued that it would be a good thing for
us all; but my mother got very mad at him, and started to walk home
leading me by the hand. She sobbed and cried as we walked along,
especially after it grew late in the afternoon and Rucker had not
overtaken us with the horse and democrat wagon. She seemed insulted,
and broken-hearted; and was angry for the only time I remember. When
we at last heard the wagon clattering along behind us in the woods, we
sat down on a big rock by the side of the road, and Rucker meanly
pretended not to see us until he had driven on almost out of sight. My
mother would not let me call out to him; and I stood shaking my fist at
the wagon as it went on past us, and feeling for the first time that I
should like to kill John Rucker. Finally he stopped and made us follow
on until we overtook him, my mother crying and Rucker sneering at
both of us. This must have been when I was nine or ten years old. The
books say that the Oneida Community was established there in 1847,
when I was nine.
Long before this I had been put out by John Rucker to work in a factory
in Tempe. It was a cotton mill run, I think, by the water-power I have
mentioned. We lived in a log house on a side-hill across the road and
above the cotton mill. We had no laws in those days against child labor
or long hours. In the winter I worked by candle-light for two hours
before breakfast. We went to work at five--I did this when I was six
years old--and worked until seven, when we had half an hour for
breakfast. As I lived farther from the mill than most of the children who
were enslaved there, my breakfast-time was very short. At half past
seven we began again and worked until noon, when we had an hour for
dinner. At one o'clock we took up work once more and quit at half past
five for supper. At six we began our last trick and worked until
eight--thirteen hours of actual labor.
I began this so young and did so much of it that I feel