SINCE we had made up our minds to live in the country, we decided we had better learn something about earning our living from it. So in January, 1940, we enrolled in a short agricultural course at State College and went back to school together. The classes were a strange experience for us. Our English was still somewhat limited in this new field of scientific ideas and it was difficult to follow the lectures. At night we would read the words in the textbooks and pronounce them in our own fashion, and when we heard them in class the next day we had no notion what was being said. But eventually we fell into this new routine and began to enjoy it. Milada learned what she felt was necessary for her to know and what she wanted to know, which was chiefly horticulture. I was more ambitious and read late into the nights to get everything I could squeeze from the course. In March we graduated, along with all the earnest boys of seventeen to twenty who had taken these months from other work in order to improve their firsthand knowledge of agriculture.

Sometime during those months we reached a decision to put all our remaining capital into a chicken farm. The idea didn’t come into being whole, but simply grew out of our studies until it was there, and we accepted it without question. We had gone to the land to live, and therefore we must live from it, but we wanted something better than mere subsistence farming. We had no wish to work for someone else; we wanted to work for ourselves. Day after day we talked over the possibilities.

Truck gardening was out of the question except in the vicinity of a fair-sized city and then it would require too much hired labor. We were not attracted by the thought of raising pigs or goats or any specialized kind of farm produce that had a seasonal nature. We were not in a grain country and we had no wish to leave Pennsylvania because we hoped to stay as close as possible to our friends. Dairy farming required a large outlay and experienced help, none of which we could afford. Besides, we knew too little about cows to feel attached to the idea of caring for them. We had always preferred eggs to milk.

So we settled on chickens. They must be white ones, we decided, and we began to picture ourselves surrounded by the lovely feathered creatures . . . so clean, so cheerful, so small and dependent on our care. We could start with a small flock and make it pay, then gradually increase the size of our chicken farm until it was a sight to behold. And chickens we could manage by ourselves. No big industry, no labor-management problems, no employees to interrupt the solitude of the quiet life we had chosen to live in the country. It was a dream we felt certain we could transform into truth.

For a long time we kept our decision, not sharing it with anyone. We still had so much to learn. We thought we might even take more courses at the university in the autumn. We were far from ready to leave Shingletown, though it was a satisfaction to look ahead to a definite project when the time was ripe for it.

So it was like a voice from another world when a registered air-mail letter reached me from France, asking that I accept a position as American representative of the Sèvres china factory. I thought about it awhile and finally we decided that I should answer in the affirmative. After my letter had gone we gave it no more consideration. Long before we had come to the conclusion that we were in the hands of God. He had been good to us so far and we knew He would continue to care for us if we kept our minds open to His voice.

Our vegetable garden in Eddie Nichols’ yard was planted and growing well when France fell. Sèvres china had gone the way of our Bohemian glass. This new turn in the war brought a flood of memories of my years in Paris, and I found that my grudge against the country had disappeared. I could think only about the tragedy of the French people, rather than my dislike for their leaders. Shortly after the evacuation of Dunkirk we drove to New York and I went straight to the Czechoslovak consulate to offer my services in any military organization that might be formed as a result of this new turn of events. But once again I was told that I must wait. No military organization for Czechs was contemplated in America as yet.

We went back to Shingletown to our schoolhouse and our friends. The summer grew hot and Milada’s skin browned beautifully. She wore light, pretty summer dresses and I felt that she was more lovely than I had ever seen her in Paris gowns. She learned to preserve fruit and vegetables, she wandered into the woods to pick berries, and in other ways made a place for herself in this new life. Only the knowledge of what was going on abroad made us feel selfish in our private heaven.

Three activities which we had never known before occupied us now: work with our hands, hours of fruitful reading, and long evenings with our friends. When Eddie discovered that my first reading about contemporary America had been the New Yorker he told me that his attic was full of back numbers. So I carried them on a wheelbarrow to the schoolhouse and then I vanished behind their pages until I had read all the copies, one by one. Milada and I discussed the stories of Sally Benson, James Thurber, Irwin Shaw and the others for hours on end as we tried to figure out what they meant.

There were still so many new things to learn in America. The unpleasant effect of skunks and poison ivy and copperheads, for instance. None of those three was known to us in Czechoslovakia. But there was the sweet sound of birds in the early morning, robins following me along a garden row as I hoed the earth and turned up worms for them, and the sense of enormous space in the clear air of a summer night in the country. Day after day the pool of rain water that stayed in a sunken place on the side road between our house and Eddie’s turned the sky upside down for me to peer into and learn some more. The size of its mirrored surface changed now and then, but there was always enough rain to keep the hole at least partially filled. And on that patch of water was reflected all the moods of Shingletown, from dawn through the singing of cicadas on a hot noon to the bath of moonlight that poured down on us. And all the moods were good.

I came to discover that what I wore was completely unimportant. All the clothes we had brought from home hung useless in our cupboards, for my daily garment now was a pair of denim overalls, and Milada preferred light cotton frocks. Eddie had offered me a good-sized patch of his yard for my vegetable garden, since the land around the schoolhouse had never been cultivated, so I walked back and forth between the two houses several times a day, carrying my tools with me. And on these walks it became obvious that the “good mornings” called to me from the gardens I passed had nothing to do with silk shirts and custom-made suits. These neighbors were talking to me, not to my dirty overalls and moccasined feet.

Once we spoke about getting old. Milada said, “I would like to look just as old Mrs. Kline does. She has preserved her dignity and a fine contentment. I don’t want anything more than that. She has lived here all her life, and she’s never needed anything else.” And having said it, she put a basket over her arm and went off to pick berries. She had no fear of skunks, copperheads or poison ivy. If any of the three appeared in her path she merely laughed and stepped out of their way.

By the end of the summer we decided to hunt for a farm. We were in no great hurry, for we knew what we wanted and we felt sure we could find it if we made no quick decisions. And after awhile we did find it, halfway between Allentown and Philadelphia in Montgomery County. It was not far from our friends, Hansell and Jean French, who had helped in our search, and it was only a few miles from the home of Bill Hickling, one of Eddie’s pupils and friends. It was for rent, not for sale, but we were offered an option to buy.

The country was rolling and the house stood on the slope of a gentle hill, facing across a long valley. It was part of the extensive estate of Paul Fisher who bred blond-maned Palominos horses. The house was whitewashed stone, three stories high, with walls eighteen inches thick, and it was surrounded by five acres which included a thirty-tree orchard of apples and peaches. It stood at the end of a large meadow which was divided by a fast-running creek. At the edge of the meadow was a stand of hardwood trees, and the fields on two sides of the house were planted with clover and oats. In front of the house were small pine trees and one huge oak, edging the lawn, and the orchard was behind the house.

The house had been empty for some years. Some way behind it were a two-story barn, a chicken house, a workshop, and a brooder house filled with a great quantity of metal chicken feeders, water fountains, stoves and what not else. There was also a shed which could be used as a garage, and a row of summer houses for chickens near the belt of hardwoods. Water was supplied from a well by electric pump.

Inside the house we found two large living rooms on the first floor which opened into each other, and behind them a handsome kitchen. One of the living rooms had a huge Washington hearth of field stones, and the other had a red brick fireplace. The ceilings were heavy oak beams, the floors were hardwood, and the walls were papered. Upstairs there were three bedrooms, one with a fireplace, and one ample bathroom. These rooms also had beamed ceilings. On the third floor was a fine attic.

It was all we had ever dreamed of finding in a home of our own. On the day we made our final inspection and signed the lease, we met John Bergey and his wife, our nearest neighbors who lived two miles away and managed the estate for Paul Fisher. They were about seventy-five years old, and because they were Mennonites they wore nothing but black, even to his hat and her bonnet. They were a fine-looking couple, proud and upright. We learned from them that the whole section was Mennonite country.

We left Shingletown in December, 1940. It would have been a bitter wrench had we not known that the friends we had found there were not the kind to forget us once we were out of sight. One of the last parties I remember was what Eddie called a jam session at his house. He loved jazz and understood it. A group of students brought their instruments and while they played, Eddie gave us a commentary on the spontaneous nature of their performance. It was a common sight to us by now to see students in Eddie’s house. At first the conduct between teacher and pupils had seemed incredible. They were never treated as youngsters, but as equals with their teachers in matters both gay and serious. The conviction was born in upon me that the new generation growing up in America would be straightforward, honest men and women because they had gained friendship and inspiration from such men as Eddie Nichols, Barney Graves and Jack Bowman. It was a good thought to take away with us.