UP THE HAYLOFT LADDER
An Autobiography
by
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CHAPTER 1 BOY ON THE FARM It was late summer in 1955, when the corn tassels have stopped being erect and the impregnated ears are heavy with milk. My parents, my recent bride Joyce and I had threaded our way on paved and graveled roads through a labyrinth of these cornfields, crossing the state line from Hardwick in southwest Minnesota into northwest Iowa. Aunt Tillie and Uncle Datus were anxious to meet my new wife. We came to their farm near Boyden in order to enjoy Sunday dinner with them: stuffed chicken with all the trimmings and lemon meringue pie for dessert. Their only daughter, Marilyn, now in her twenties, was off living her own life. However, I still felt her presence everywhere on the farmstead. In the parlor stood the baby grand piano to which her mother used to press her, pouting, to play a piece for us after dinner was completed and the dishes were washed and dried. It was like a scene from a Jane Austin novel--a command performance followed by polite applause. As a child Marilyn had been an adventurous daredevil. Once she led my brothers and me up the hayloft ladder, which was attached to one side of a chute in the middle of the barn’s interior. It led upward into the hay floor above. She challenged us to jump to the farmyard outside from the small door opening outward from the hayloft floor. When we declined, she leaped, Icarus-like, with arms extended, hitting the ground with skeleton shaken but bones intact. She ran to the house, weeping. Her mother’s first words were “Who pushed you?” Can electricity travel up a poured stream of water? Marilyn dared us to find out by peeing on the horizontal electric fence eight inches from the ground in the barnyard. The wire was meant to shock the pigs into knowing the boundary of their territory. It was very effective, and was supported by insulators nailed to wooden slats extending parallel to the ground from fenceposts. We boys were reluctant, knowing the sharp jolt delivered to your forefinger and thumb if you touched the fence with only a thin blade of green grass. She boldly lifted her skirt (most girls didn’t wear jeans then) and squatted to settle the experiment, but we were still afraid to try.
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About the Book
In this work spanning eight decades, the author portrays in concrete detail the joys and rigors of his boyhood on a midwest farm in a bygone era, followed by ten professional years as a pastor which begin with enthusiasm and end in disillusionment. He gets a second chance at life when he and his family move to a Vermont hill farm and he becomes a professor of philosophy at Lyndon State College. A significant part of this renewal is the resolution of a midlife crisis, which the author casts into a Jungian framework replete with numerous dreams and climaxing in a kind of psychological and spiritual redemption. No narrow scholar, Dr. Vos shares his personal philosophy and interest in the history of ideas as well as his passion for activities which include maple sugaring, hunting, softball and collecting early American antiques.
About the Author
Kenneth D. Vos was born in 1930 into a Dutch Calvinist environment and spent his youth as a Minnesota farm boy during the Great Depression. During the last 32 years of his professional life he taught Philosophy at Lyndon State College in Vermont. After his retirement in 1999 he was awarded the honor of Professor Emeritus. Like his favorite philosopher, William James, he is interested in the inner life of psychology and states of consciousness. He balances that introspective tendency with numerous physical activities and concerns about the external world of nature, politics, social justice and the history of ideas. He got his elementary education in two-room country schools and earned his PhD in Philosophy from Columbia University. Dr. Vos lives with his wife, Frances, in an 1830 farmhouse in New England.