Pauline Harriet Witherby Geddes
Pauline working on one of the many farm tractors, while the man in background is John Breakey Geddes, her father-in-law.
Pauline Harriet Witherby Geddes. Born August 1924, died May 2005. She always said she was going to marry a farmer, and she did. Apparently she met my father, Charles William Geddes at a hunting event. She’d gotten invited to the Geddes farm and he was there hunting with his cousin. And she knew his cousin. Funny how those things happen. It’s kind of funny also because he wasn’t a farmer when she met him. He was a machinist in Detroit with no intention of becoming a farmer. But she liked him, and he apparently liked her. After a short courtship she was married at 18 years of age, and a year later their first child was born. They got right with the program.
**Back during the world wars, the family farm was paramount. You could get a deferment if you were needed on the farm, and my father’s “drafting” was back to the farm.**
The Geddes family has a genetic eye disease, Retinitis Pigmentosa, known more commonly as night blindness. Charles’ father had this disease and his eyesight was failing. There was a desperate need for the farm to be cared for. Charles’ older brother Carl was the one who wanted to farm, but he was already enrolled in the military as a medic, so he was not able to take over. Another older brother, Calvin, was a medical doctor so he wasn’t going to come and farm either. There was an older sister, Winifred, but women weren’t farmers in the 1940’s, plus she wasn’t interested either. So someone had to come home and it was up to Charles (Chuck as he was popularly known) to step into the role that he never really wanted. It’s interesting how times have changed. Mainly I suppose because the small family farm has lost it’s importance. Sadly. It’s hard to make a living with a small farm now, and ours was only 160 acres, most likely less than 100 tillable acres. A dairy farm, 100 + head of cattle and we farmed the land for what we needed to survive. Small potatoes compared to today’s world.
