Four

            Things went along kind of quiet for a while, mostly helping to plant the corn we had to put four kernels in each hill by hand and over it with a hoe (a big field of cow corn).  Then I helped to plant the potatoes.  We always planted more than we need and Father sold some.  Then I helped Mother in the garden.  We had a big garden as Mother done a lot of canning.  I went along in the wagon to the store once or twice a month.  There never was much to buy to eat as we grew everything on the farm.  The trip was mostly to the feed store for grain for the horses and cows.  I went along mostly so I could drive the horses.

            I used to help make the bread and the butter.  We put the cream in a glass jug sometimes and I just kept shacking it sometimes.  I worked the butter churn.  It was a round wooden like pail with a cover and a long handle that stuck up thru the center of the cover.  I had to keep going up and down with it.  It had paddles on the bottom end.

            I used to like milking time.  The cat we had always came to me when I was milking.  I used to keep squirting milk at him.  He’d get up on his back feet and keep drinking it.  I liked it myself and took my turn at drinking the warm milk. 

            I lost my friend, the old cat, as Father got some rabbits later on and raised them so sell.  He had a five foot chicken wire fence around the yard to keep the foxes and skunks from getting at the rabbits but the old cat used to jump up and sit on a post and wait till the small rabbits came out of there then jump down and kill them.  I chased him away quite a few times but in a couple of weeks he must have killed ten or fifteen so one day my Father seen him on a post so he went into the house and got his shot gun.  When it hit him the old cat flew five feet in the air and my old cat was gone.  I missed him for quite a while at milking time but I was plenty busy and slowly got over it.

            I got my first pair of skies at Christmas.  There was no Christmas Tree, I just received the skis from Mother and Father.  None of us knowed how to ski.  It was something different and all I knew was I was supposed to strap them on and slide down the hill.  It took me seven or eight tries but soon I was able to stay up but as always I thought I was a big shot and one day I spent about three hours piling snow up and made a jump.  I got way up in the field and got a good run at it.  Boy I was happy that I was going to make my first jump then show Mother and Father how I could do it, but when I stared up that jump I really got scared because I just seen the fence at the bottom of the hill that I had forgotten all about.  I didn’t know how to stop.  I couldn’t turn.  All I knew was to slide down the hill. 

            B the time I thought of sitting down to stop I had hit the barbwire fence and a post.  I thought my leg was broke.  Father had to help me to the house.  One ski was broke.  I had a real bad bruise just above the knee and the other leg as all skinned up.  It was a couple of days till I could walk good again.  So, that was the end of my skies and I watched my ski jump melt in the spring but I still slide down the same hill on the shovel a lot of times.

            I used to help put the pickles in brine in a big crock when they were the right size from the garden.  We had two five-gallon crocks.  We put a board on the pickles and a stone to hold them down.  I sued to like to get one out now and then during the winter.  They tasted good.  They were always crisp and cool in the cellar.  We had the apples in the cellar too. They kept about half the winter if they didn’t have any bumps or bruises on the.  In the Fall the ones that were bumped or marked and couldn’t keep we took some to a cider mill and had some cider made.  Then I used to peel a lot of apples and slice them, put them on a board that fit in the oven.  Mother would dry them and keep them in a pillowslip.  She’d cook them during the winter.  They kept like that the whole year.  She put up two or three pillowslips every year.