Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest (3 page)

• What are your best memories of growing up on a farm? What are your worst?
  
• How would you describe the influence that your farm upbringing has had on the character and quality of your life?
  
• How would you describe your current feelings about being a gay man?
  
• How do you feel about the life choices you have made in light of being gay?
  

The fact that all interviews were based on the same range of questions contributes to a similarity in the topical range of these narratives. However, interview subjects differed greatly in how they responded to the interview process. Some subjects seemed to be most comfortable with a very clearly delineated question-and-answer format, and tended not to go off on their own. Others were more self-directed in what they had to say; I would ask a question to get things going, ask questions for follow-up or refocusing as I was inclined, move things along occasionally with a new line of questioning, and the subject would take it from there. These were generally the best interviews, driven less by my questions than by the force of the subject’s narrative spontaneity.

Earnestness abounds in these stories. While the reader will find moments of humor and light-heartedness throughout this collection, many of these stories are largely serious in tone. I believe this results from several conditions. First, it seems likely that the more serious-minded would choose to participate in an in-depth autobiographical interview as part of a cultural research project, especially when they know that portions of what they say may be published. In addition, many of those who chose to tell their stories had some distinctly serious things to talk about. There is also the editorial reality that humorous exchanges in conversation do not always translate effectively in print. More fundamentally, though, I believe
that many of these men were less interested in entertaining me and my potential readers than in telling about their lives and being heard.

It was fascinating to experience the various ways in which these men approached telling me—a stranger in most cases—about themselves. Some men seemed to be quite comfortable talking frankly about intimate matters; others seemed nervous or embarrassed. Some were inclined to take an orderly, linear, chronological approach in recounting the events of their lives. (One man in his early seventies reported the exact dates of several events of his personal development during the 1930s, including that of his pubescence.) Other men seemed to prefer a looser, more thematic approach to talking about their lives, which was more compatible with my style of questioning.

Some men were quite inclined to reflect on and analyze their experiences, and to talk about the emotional and psychological aspects of things. Others were more disposed to talk about specific people, places, and events. Most gratifying to me were those occasions when rich surface details came accompanied by insightful analysis and reflection. The questions that seemed to be most challenging for many subjects were two that I asked in tandem toward the end of the interview: How would you describe your current feelings about being a gay man? How do you feel about the life choices you have made in light of being gay?

Somewhat less than half of the men represented in this collection used pseudonyms, including Henry Bauer, Dennis Lindholm, James Heckman, Norm Reed, Ronald Schoen, David Foster, Doug Edwards, Bill Troxell, Martin Scherz, Heinz Koenig, Dale Hesterman, Everett Cooper, David Campbell, Richard Hopkins, Lon Mickelsen, Steven Preston, and Connie Sanders. All prospective interview subjects were informed that their names and other identifying details would be changed if they so desired. At the time of the interview, each subject was asked to specify the extent to which he wished to have these things changed. Some subjects stated that a simple change of their own names would be sufficient, while others desired a more thorough masking of identities by giving pseudonyms to other individuals mentioned by name in their interviews. If the subject desired geographical anonymity as well, the locale of his childhood was obscured by describing it in terms of a county or general region of a state, with no specific place name. Thus, the only names that have been replaced by pseudonyms are those of persons, not places.

I generally did not ask any interview subject to explain either his desire to have his identity concealed or his willingness to have it revealed. We simply came to an understanding on the matter and left it at that. I took this approach because I did not want the issue to get in the way of their talking comfortably with me about their lives. It was apparent from the
interviews that the desire to conceal was generally rooted in considerations of personal and family privacy, as well as privacy for other individuals whose lives were touched on during the interviews. Also of concern to some subjects were their employment security, personal safety, and the sensitive nature of some of the things they talked about.

While I liked the idea of using real names, obtaining a candid, uncensored account of these men’s lives was much more important to me. In some cases it seemed that a desire or willingness to be identified by real name, however daring or courageous, was accompanied by a disinclination to be fully candid. Moreover, the desire or willingness to be identified by a real name did not seem to be consistent with an overall openness about being gay in day-to-day life. Some of the men who elected to have their stories presented pseudonymously seemed to be quite open about being gay. Conversely, some of the men who chose to be identified by their real names did not seem to be especially open about being gay in their daily lives; in these cases, electing to be identified by a real name may have been motivated by a desire to take advantage of the opportunity to come out, in print, once and for all.

Of the seventy-five audio-taped interviews, I selected the fifty most substantive and representative to be professionally transcribed. I then selected approximately half of these fifty to shape into full-length narrative chapters. Each of these interview subjects was then invited to review a draft of his chapter, with the following instructions.

Keep in mind, however, that I am not looking for you to update your story. I want it to reflect your life as you saw it at the time of your interview. With that in mind, you are welcome to expand on anything, to add new material, or to delete material. Simply cross out any text to be changed or deleted and write in the new text, if any. You may write anywhere on these pages or on separate sheets of paper. Using a pencil is probably a good idea. It’s likely that in most cases I will agree on the re-

visions that you specify, but I reserve the right to leave anything unchanged if that seems most appropriate to me.

All twenty-six subjects of these full-length chapters agreed to participate in the review process, which improved the narratives in important ways. Most helpful was the addition of text that clarified or elaborated on various topics that had not been covered adequately in the interview Also helpful were suggestions for rearranging portions of the text to enhance flow and coherence. Some subjects made changes in wording that were intended to soften their expressions of anger or other strong emotions or opinions. In one narrative, for example, “It was a big, hot bitch of a day,” got whittled down to, “It was a hot day.” I believe this impulse was largely the result of these subjects being struck by the sometimes startling force of spoken words put down on paper. Some expressed misgivings about including text that they decided was too intimately revealing. Since all of the men who made these problematic revisions had elected to use pseudonyms, I felt comfortable disregarding any of their requested revisions that appeared to diminish the character and substance of their narratives.

I excerpted material from many of the transcribed interviews that were not used as the basis of full-length chapters. The most substantive of these excerpts were also made available for review by the interview subjects, with instructions similar to those detailed above. These excerpt narratives are shorter than the full-length autobiographical chapters, and they typically address a single topic or theme. While they lack the larger context of the longer chapters, they provide concise and engaging illustrations of important themes that emerge in the longer chapters.

Selected quotes for use in the introductory text were excerpted from several of the interviews that were not fully transcribed. In addition, I invited all interview subjects to share with me any materials they had written that were relevant to the focus of the project. In the cases of five individuals, portions of these autobiographical writings were woven into their transcript-based narratives.

I have chosen to arrange these life stories according to the subject’s year of birth. This arrangement appeals to me because it acknowledges the primacy of time and fate. Moreover, it takes advantage of the historical perspective on American culture which many readers will bring to their understanding of these stories. It also allows the reader to perceive more readily the ways in which the experience of growing up gay in the rural Midwest has and has not changed through the century.

I have divided the narratives of these men, born from 1909 to 1967, into three groups based on the calendar years during which they came of age (by my judgement, the period between their fifteenth and twentieth
birthdays). The oldest of these three groups includes those who came of age anywhere between the mid-1920s and the mid-1960s. The middle period comprises those who came of age from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. The youngest group includes those who had their fifteenth and twentieth birthdays anywhere between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s. This chronological framework delineates three quite distinct eras in American mass culture with regard to the kind and amount of information about homosexuality and gay identity accessible to midwestern farm boys. Each of these three groups of life stories is preceded by a description of the era.

Farming has its own terminology, some of which may be unfamiliar. This glossary explains the meanings of potentially unfamiliar words used in these life stories.

Farming
involves raising crops and/or livestock, and relying largely on the use of harvested crops to feed such livestock as dairy cattle, hogs, or poultry. By contrast,
ranching
involves raising livestock—such as beef cattle, sheep, or horses—by grazing them on large acreages of herbage, with little or no use of harvested crops. Thus, crop production is the major activity that distinguishes farming from ranching. Except for picking rock and walking beans, all of the crop-growing processes described here are done with tractor-pulled implements on most midwestern farms.

Farmers prepare fields for planting by
plowing
to turn over the soil and then
harrowing
to pulverize and smooth the soil for planting. If the harrowing implement uses disk-shaped metal blades it is called
disk harrowing
, or simply
disking.
If it uses metal spikes, it is called
spike harrowing
, or
dragging.
Once the soil in a field has been prepared, the crop is planted using a
drill
or
planter.
This implement makes holes or furrows, deposits the seed and sometimes fertilizer and other chemicals, and covers them with soil. To minimize damage to equipment used in plowing, harrowing, and planting, farmers with rocky fields sometimes have to do
rock-picking
beforehand. This manual removal of rocks needs to be done from season to season, as plowing and frost-heave bring more rocks to the surface.

Corn and soybeans have become the predominant crops in midwestern farming. Many farmers rotate their planting of these two crops, growing soybeans in a particular field one year, corn the next year, and so on. An advantage of this rotation is that soybeans improve growing conditions for the following year’s corn crop by adding nitrogen to the soil. A disadvantage of this rotation is that soybean fields are often infested with
volunteer corn,
those plants that grow from the residue of the previous year’s corn crop. Many farmers deal with this by
walking beans
—enlisting all available hands to walk through soybean fields to pull volunteer corn and weeds. In a corn field, this weeding process can be done mechanically. Once a corn crop has begun to grow, but is still young enough for a tractor to drive over it, the field is
cultivated
to loosen the soil and uproot weeds between the corn rows.

Summertime, while corn and soybean crops are growing, is time for
making hay.
This dry fodder for cattle, sheep, and horses is usually a mix of alfalfa, clover, and grasses such as timothy, orchard, or brome. First, the hay field is cut, often with an implement called a
haybine
or
windrower,
which leaves the cut hay in
windrows.
These are rows of herbage which can be easily picked up by a baling machine after they have dried in the sun. Use of a
hay rake
helps to turn the windrows over for better drying and easier pick-up by the baling machine. Once baled, hay is often stored in a
haymow
or
hayloft
above the level of the barn where livestock are housed and fed.