THE FARMER’S WIFE
BARTON WEDDING, DECEMBER 27, 1946
Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens
— ALEX KRAMER & JOAN WHITNEY, 1946
Like many young women, Melba Jeanne Yates fantasized about the man she’d one day marry. He’d be handsome of course, and a Christian, but one thing he would not be was a farmer. Her ideas about the life of a farmer’s wife made her shudder. “Feeding chickens and milking cows—none of that stuff appealed to me,” she said.
But a blind date with Don Barton in December of 1945 changed everything. Don had just gotten out of the service and returned to the family farm on Half Moon Prairie. His brother played the saxophone in a local band and was dating Melba Jeanne’s cousin. Her cousin wanted Melba Jeanne to attend a Grange dance with them, but her mother insisted Melba Jeanne had to be home by midnight. The problem? Grange dances didn’t end until 1 AM.
Don’s brother gave him a call and said, “We’ll bring her, if you take her home.” So Don agreed, and when he got to the Grange, Melba Jeanne was on the dance floor. “Somebody pointed her out to me,” he recalled. “She looked like a cute little bobby socks girl!” The fact that she was dancing at all was something of a miracle. “I grew up in a family where dancing wasn’t allowed,” said Melba Jeanne. “My younger brother and I finally talked our parents into letting us learn how. They didn’t know we were already practicing in the study hall at school during the noon hour!”
However, it wasn’t her skills on the dance floor that won Don’s heart. “She wasn’t a very good dancer at that time,” he said with a grin. But during the long drive from the Grange to her home, the two got better acquainted.
The attack on Pearl Harbor had prompted Don, 21, to drop out of college and enlist in the Air Force in 1942. His eyes lit up when he recalled the 60 hours he’d spent training in a Stearman biplane. “It was a fun airplane!” He was less enthusiastic about another training aircraft, the BT-13. “It was a two-seater with a canopy,” he recalled. “I didn’t care for it. About eight percent of our class was killed in the stupid plane during training.” Don said that when the pilots initiated 1–1/2 spirals, often the plane tightened up and they were unable to pull out of the spiral. “I didn’t take any chances,” he said.
After earning his wings in 1943, he flew B-24s and was sent to instructor pilot school. He spent over a year training new pilots. “It was a good job,” he said. But, he added, as the war went on and the need for pilots intensified, “They were scraping the bottom of the barrel. I got some real jugheads.”
While he enjoyed flying and teaching, what he wanted more than anything was to experience combat. “I felt like I was being cheated,” he said. “I didn’t know the good Lord had his hand on my shoulder.” When the military launched the B-29 program, Don volunteered, and spent five months learning to fly the aircraft. Since it was a new plane, it didn’t have all the kinks worked out. Don experienced 13 engine failures during his 80 hours of training.
DON BARTON, JULY 1943.
Finally he was assigned a crew, and in March of 1945 they flew to Guam. He had some close calls during his 25 missions over the Pacific, but one in particular he will never forget. “We made it to our target, but then got hit by a fighter. We got shot up pretty bad,” he said. “I lost my navigator. He sat right behind me. He was the youngest one on the crew.”
The memory haunts him. Don’s eyes filled and his voice broke. “He was a nice kid—a real nice kid.” While his crew grappled with the death of the young navigator, Don grappled with a plane that was falling apart. They couldn’t land on Iwo Jima because it was socked in with fog, so the crew jettisoned everything they could as the plane sputtered and shook.
Don said, “I suggested we bail out over Iwo Jima, but the boys put up a fuss.” They didn’t want to abandon the body of their friend. He decided to try to land on Tinian, and did so with only two engines functioning and virtually no fuel. Don shook his head. “We shouldn’t have made it.”
He’d had his taste of combat and all he could think about was getting home to the farm. His final mission was flying over the USS Missouri as a show of force, while the Japanese formally tendered their surrender.
Two months after receiving his separation papers, he met Melba Jeanne, who was immediately smitten with her dance partner. After that initial date, Don put a lot of miles on his truck driving from his family farm to her home. When they couldn’t see each other, they spoke on the phone. “At night I’d sit in the stairway and talk for hours to Don until someone on the party line would break in and want to make a call,” Melba Jeanne said.
Soon they announced their engagement. “It didn’t bother me that she said she’d never marry a farmer,” said Don. Then he chuckled and looked across the room at his bride. “Love is blind.” Even so, Melba Jeanne admitted, “I had to do a lot of thinking—even after we were engaged.” But Don’s patient persistence won her hand and her heart.
Their wedding on December 27, 1946 was tinged with sadness. Don’s brother had been killed in a logging accident five days earlier. “My folks insisted we go ahead with the wedding. They said Jack would have wanted it.” Don sighed. “He would have been my best man.”
After a Canadian honeymoon, the coupled settled into married life. Don had promised his bride that she’d never have to do those farm chores she’d worried about, and he was true to his word. “No feeding chickens. No milking cows,” she said, smiling.
In 1948, they welcomed their first daughter. Two years later, a second daughter joined them following a difficult birth—her identical twin was stillborn—and within a few months they knew something was wrong with the new baby. Melba Jeanne folded her hands and looked down. “We couldn’t get the doctor to tell us.” Finally they were told their daughter, Beverly, had cerebral palsy and the doctor advised them to place her in an institution. Don said, “They told us she can’t hear, she’ll never talk and she won’t be able to see. We knew they were wrong.” Beverly lived with them at home until she was 43 and is now happily living in a group home. “She has fantastic hearing,” Melba Jeanne added.
A third daughter completed their family in 1952 and they raised their girls on the family farm. While Melba Jeanne didn’t do farm chores, she certainly did her share of work, especially during harvest. “Her biggest job was cooking for the crews,” Don said. “One year she cooked for 22 men!” She also drove truck during harvest. “Not because I had to. I enjoyed it!”
The Barton’s had hoped to live on the farm until they died, but several years ago, Don said his wife started hinting that the fellow she’d married was pretty old and she didn’t want to get stuck out there, so they sold the farm and moved into town. The challenges of caring for a disabled daughter and the constant struggle of farm life served to draw the couple closer. Melba Jeanne said, “Don has the most patience of anybody I’ve ever known.”
And she discovered a wonderful benefit to being a farmer’s wife. “On the farm your husband is never far away. We’ve always done everything together.”
DON AND MELBA JEANNE BARTON, 2010.
Don Barton died December 6, 2013