Time” to allow trains to run “on time.” People commonly went to railroad stations after that to get the exact time when the signal came over the telegraph.
Life on the Casey farm was running on its own schedule, and the patterns of religious practice and faith were unchanging. The weekly Sunday trip to Mass was now a bit farther than it was from the Trimbelle property. St. Patrick Church at Hudson, Wisconsin, was nine miles from the Casey home. Each Sunday, some members of the Casey family started out for church a full two hours before the scheduled Mass. And, as the family settled into its new home during the winter of 1882–83, the tradition of evening prayer continued. As soon as dinner was over, Bernard Sr. called for quiet and began the prayers, including the Rosary.
At age twelve, young Barney was starting to grow much faster. Even though the bout with diphtheria had left his voice weakened and wispy, and he did not seem as strong as his brothers, he was strong enough to love the outdoor life. Outwardly, he looked much like the other Casey boys, but there was something a bit gentler about his face and behavior. Barney played baseball aggressively, especially as a catcher, but refused to take part in the boxing matches the other Casey boys set up near the barn. His coolness to the sport mystified his brothers. This was, after all, the era of the great prizefighter John L. Sullivan! Barney wouldn’t touch the gloves that his brothers had pooled their money to buy. He gave no reasons for his distaste, and after a while his brothers did not pressure him.
In the spring of 1883, the Caseys saw Maurice leave home to enter St. Francis Seminary in Milwaukee. At the same time, Barney eagerly traveled to Hudson to spend two weeks in preparation for his first holy Communion. (Twelve was the customary age for first communicants in this era.) Fr. Thomas A. Kelley, the pastor of St. Patrick at Hudson, wanted to make sure that his communicants were well-drilled in the faith before they received the sacrament.
Barney also “took the pledge,” agreeing to abstain from alcohol until he was twenty-one years of age. It was the custom then in Irish communities to ask young boys to make that promise before receiving first Communion. In 1840, the Fourth Provincial Council of Baltimore had recommended the establishment of “temperance” societies in all parishes to curb alcohol use, and the first statewide Wisconsin meeting of the Catholic Total Abstinence Society was held in 1871. But the enthusiasm to spread the “pledge” was primarily an Irish interest. German Catholics didn’t participate, and one German priest offered a somewhat slanted explanation for their attitude. The “pledge” movement was a good idea for the English and Irish, he said, because “as everybody knows, they drink solely to get drunk,” while Germans knew how to drink with moderation.
At the time of his first Communion, Barney had a powerful experience of the Blessed Virgin. Thus, during the summer and autumn following his first Communion, he began to say his own Rosary each night, in addition to the family’s recitation. He would kneel by the side of his bed and pray it quietly.
After one particularly exhausting day, Barney, aching with muscle strain and fatigue, headed toward bed with the thought that he might skip his Rosary just for that night. The Casey house was growing quiet. His brothers were already in bed and the teenage Barney wanted only to go to sleep. Instead, he dropped to his knees. He knelt upright, not leaning on the bed. He had seen his mother and sister Ellen pray that way as long as he could remember.
Wishing to keep the commitment to this prayer, Barney had determined to recite at least one decade of the Rosary. To his surprise the weariness left him, and he completed the full five decades. Later that night, he dreamed that he was hanging over a huge pit with flames licking up toward him. Desperately, he looked around to see a way out. Finally, he realized that a large rosary was dangling just above his head. In the shadowy reality of dreams, he grabbed onto it and suddenly felt secure. The dream impressed the boy greatly.
This Casey farm at Hudson was much larger than the Trimbelle property had been. Barney’s older brothers, Jim and John, began to share the heavier farming jobs with their father. In turn, Barney “inherited” some of the chores his older brothers had always done. Some, he relished. He was constantly devising ingenious ways to snare prairie chickens or rabbits. It was also Barney who knew right where the wild berries were and where to get the wild hops his mother needed for yeast.
When eighteen-year-old Jim got a new rifle, Barney began to shadow him and showed a keen interest in hunting. Since small game and even an occasional deer helped to feed the large Casey clan, hunting was serious business, not merely sport. Eventually, Jim turned his rifle over more and more to Barney who went hunting regularly with a friend, Chris Adams. He became a good shot and could typically be counted upon to bag rabbits, wild ducks, geese, or prairie chickens. With perhaps a bit less enthusiasm, he also chopped wood, weeded the garden, looked for eggs the chickens laid, and fed and watered the stock.
By the time he was fourteen, Barney was slender, strong, and wiry. He had not yet completed his elementary schooling. That was not unusual in agricultural communities where schooling had to follow a different sort of schedule. Fields had to be planted in the spring and crops harvested when the time was right. Children, especially the boys, were needed to help. Schooling had to conform around the needs of agriculture.
Until the 1880s, wheat was the principal crop for Wisconsin farmers such as Bernard Casey Sr. Within that decade, however, the soil on many farms was becoming depleted through the continual use of fields for wheat. Plagues of chinch bugs began to threaten wheat’s prominence. Farm prices were falling and had been falling for some time. To add to the farmers’ grief, their hard times were arriving at a time when American industry was booming and manufactured goods were becoming more expensive.
Barney Jr. gradually became aware that the usual family petitions for good crops carried a tone of greater and greater need. Clearly, his father was increasingly concerned about the situation. During the later months of 1882, a special petition was added to the Caseys’ night prayer, asking the Lord to spare the crops from total disaster.
Although these months were difficult, a day would occasionally come along to provide Barney with excitement and fun. That compensated for his heavy load of responsibilities.
On one particular day, while out in the fields with three of their younger brothers, fifteen-year-old Barney and fourteen-year-old Pat suddenly froze in their tracks. Rover, the family dog, bounded into view, excited and bleeding from a slash down his shoulder. Barney and Pat understood what all the fuss was about when they heard a wildcat snarling from a tree not far from where they stood. Brave Rover had tangled with the cat and been cut up for his efforts.
Barney knew that there was no way to keep Rover from going at it again. Having a wildcat so close to the house and smaller children was dangerous. Without his rifle, he’d have to bag the cat some other way. “Go on up to the top of the bank and stay up there,” Barney warned his two little brothers. He and Pat would handle the cat with Rover’s help.
Immediately, Rover returned to snap at the cat. The cat leapt down on him, and dog and wildcat tumbled over and over. Pat picked up a big stick with which to hit the cat, while Barney circled to within two feet of the scrapping animals and cautiously lifted a large rock. Holding it poised, he waited for Rover to move away from the cat. At just the right moment, Barney heaved the rock and hit the cat squarely on the head. The wildcat dropped dead where it was. The little boys whooped from the top of the bank and came running down to their brave brothers.
The two older Casey boys found some vines and a tree branch and strung the dead animal from it. Thinking perhaps of Natty Bumppo, the frontier woodsman they had “met” in the books of James Fenimore Cooper, the bigger boys proudly carried the cat home. There was a bounty on wildcats, so Barney and Pat knew that the carcass would bring a needed ten dollars into family coffers. But on the way home, Barney thought of a way to also get some fun out of the dead cat.
A little later, a ferocious wildcat was “ready to spring”
