Muskrats and Rapeseed

Muskrats and Rapeseed by Alan Borer

When I first read the letter from “Grandpaw” to his grandson Milan Long, I was surprised that Grandpaw described catching “rats.” Rats are a nuisance. They carry disease, they destroy grain in storage, and are hard to catch, with or without a cat. Later in the letter, Grandpaw mentions that he also hunted minks. Suddenly, it made sense. His mention of rats did not refer to a “real” rat, but to a muskrat. “Rat” was a common, country slang term for muskrat in the old days; hunters among us still use the term.

The letter reveals that Grandpaw lived in Kansas, Ohio. Kansas is a tiny hamlet on SR 635 just south of the Seneca/Sandusky county line. Another way to locate it is to find Bettsville and look about three miles west. That may or may not help if you have never heard of Bettsville, or Kansas for that matter, but in this time of GPS and satellite data, finding even the smallest place is easy. Grandpaw did not sign his last name so we cannot be sure exactly where he lived, beyond the fact that he had a Kansas mailing address. He wrote to his grandson Milan who lived in Bloomdale in Wood County, about twelve miles west, beyond Fostoria. The date was May 7, 1912. Grandpaw wrote phonetically, so his message retains a bit of his rural accent. I will correct his spelling:

I didn’t get time to catch any rats this spring. I caught 14 the forepart of the winter. There was not a mink on the prairie this winter. . . . . . how is your paw getting along with his work? Did he sow any rape? I sowed the patch below the barn. It looks nice. . . . .

Grandpaw was a dedicated hunter of muskrats, given how many he caught earlier in the winter. Muskrats are fairly common even today, although they prefer wetlands, marshes, and creeks. Two creeks flow near Kansas, Muskellunge Creek to the north and Wolf Creek to the south, both flowing northeast toward Lake Erie. The area around Kansas was heavily wooded when settlers arrived, but even in the days of the Black Swamp, there were open spaces in the forest, ideal for animals that preferred a part marshy, part open area – ideal for muskrats and the occasional mink.

The other farm news in the letter concerned “rape,” or rapeseed. Milan’s family was planting rapeseed at a historically early time. Rapeseed was planted in India ten thousand years ago, and was prized for its oily seed by farmers stretching from West Europe to China. Rape was planted in America in the nineteenth century, although there was a lull in planting rape at the time Grandpaw wrote because many new artificial oils were coming on the market. After World War 2, farm scientists in Canada hybridized the crop, the end result of which was canola oil. Rapeseed now provides canola oil for a billion dollar food industry. And the letter was correct – rape, especially when it blooms a vibrant yellow, does look nice.

As for the Long family, we only know bits and pieces. Milan Long was born in 1886, son of Frank Long and Zelora C. Inman. Frank Long started as a farmer, but eventually became a salesman. When World War 1 came to America in 1917, Milan was working for A. W. Long (a cousin?) as a farmhand. Sadly, he never made it home from the war. On September 30, 1918, “Milan Long drowned when the ship Ticonderoga was torpedoed by a German U-boat. His body was recovered and at first buried in Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, England before being removed to Weston Cemetery.” More exactly, he is buried in the New Weston Cemetery in Wood County.

It is one of the ironies of history that small people get swept into events greater than their upbringing suggests. Such was the story of Milan Long and his grandfather. The postcard message with which I started pointed to a pastoral life in the countryside before the warlike twentieth century, but ended in tragedy thousands of miles away. As a writer I was challenged to find the story of Milan Long. A century later, I can salute Mr. Long, and recall his sacrifice to readers.