On Wings of the Morning Read Online Free PDF Page A

when they went to town each Saturday for their shopping trip.
    “I’ll pay you a quarter a day to pick up nails and get things for the carpenters.”
    “That would be great, sir. I can only work about four hours a day since I have to do chores on our farm.”
    “Well, make that fifteen cents a day, then. Fair?” he stuck out his hand.
    Otto shook it. “Yessir, very fair.” He would be money ahead at that rate.
    “Well, get to work—what’s your name?”
    “Otto, sir, Otto Kerchner.”
    “Oh, yes. I’m Mr. Wilson. Your father is Hans Kerchner, isn’t he?”
    Otto nodded.
    “I hear he has a fine dairy operation. I guess that’s what you help with.”
    “Yessir.”
    “Well, Otto Kerchner, get to work for me!” He turned and walked back to his car, crammed himself in, started it up and drove off. Otto was already pacing the perimeter of the barn, looking for dropped nails. He found quite a few.
    He had an idea. He had a magnet at home. He would bring it, tie a string around it and drag it through the grass. That would collect the nails better, some of which were hidden in clumps of grass.
    The carpenter he had seen talking with Mr. Wilson climbed down, went over to the base of the front wall, took a small paper bag and handed it to Otto. “Here you go, kid. Put the nails in here. When you’ve picked up as many as you can, go over to the lumber pile—“ he pointed to a stack of lumber covered with tar paper—“get a few of the timbers and bring them here and lean them against the wall so we can grab them without coming all the way down the ladder. Watch your head when you’re near the ladders. We have been known to drop a hammer or two.”
    “Yessir, I will!” Otto exclaimed.
    “Wilson will be back and pay you about four. What are you getting?”
    “Fifteen cents a day.”
    The carpenter pushed his hat back. “There are men in the city who would love to have that. Do a good job, kid, and we’ll see what happens.”
    Otto circled the building, stopping occasionally to pick up a nail from the grass and dropping it in the bag. He knew there were more he couldn’t see. He thought he should bring a rake tomorrow to do a more thorough job. That and the magnet.
    He got up all the nails he could see and set the bag at the bottom of one of the ladders. Then he went to the lumber pile and started carrying two by fours over to the building, propping them against the side so the carpenters could reach them. They leaned over and pulled the lumber up to where they nailed it in place, about as fast as Otto could bring it over.
    He worked like this until the head carpenter called, “Lunch time!” He had been working so hard he hadn’t noticed that the sun was at its zenith. He was used to hard work on the farm, but glad for the chance to sit down. He went over to his bike, took his lunch sack and reached down in it to retrieve the sausage and bread. The rest of the milk wasn’t real cold, but it still tasted good. He sat down to eat.
    “Hey, kid!” the head carpenter called. “Come eat with us!” The carpenters were sitting in the shade created by the wall of the office.
    Otto picked up his lunch and walked over to where the men were pulling out their lunches. He sat at the edge of the small group.
    “You got a name, kid?”
    “Yessir. It’s Otto. Otto Kerchner.”
    “What you got there for lunch, Otto?”
    “I have sausage and black bread and some milk.”
    “Looks good.”
    “We eat a lot of sausage. And potatoes. We make the sausage ourselves and grow the potatoes.”
    “So you live on a farm.”
    “Yessir. My papa runs about a hundred head of Holsteins. We’re a dairy farm.”
    “So how do you like being a farmer?”
    “I don’t care for it, but we all have to help. I want to be a pilot.”
    The men had finished eating. The head carpenter pulled out a small metal flask, took a pull on it, and passed it around the circle of the other carpenters. Otto wondered what was in the flask. They