Seven

            One day Father let me help shoe the horse.  My first time.  Boy, I was scared.  He showed me how to pat the horse, talk to him and slide my hand down the leg toward the foot.  But I was too much afraid that first time.  It seemed every time I put my hand on him I could see that horse kick at me and something must of told me I just didn’t want to die yet. 

            Anyways, it wasn’t long after that I did manage to pick the front foot up.  I was pulled back and forth, dropped his foot time and time again.  At one point he jerked his foot and picked me off the ground.  Boy, I soon worked just to hold it up and get my own feet out of the way every time I dropped his, but it was a while before I had enough nerve to go near them back feet.  Father said I had to know more about it so the nail would go only in the hoof and not the tender part of the foot.  So it was a couple more years before I done it myself.

            We used to raise some cauliflower and I used to tie the leaves up on each one so the white head would be covered from the sun.  The sun would cause it to turn a dark color.  We put it in crates and shipped it on the train.  Father told me if I saw a big white worm on any of the heads before I tied them I should knock them off but I wasn’t about to touch them things.  I used to tie them right inside and let them keep on eating their way to Market.

            I used to go out in the hay field at night with a glass jar and catch fire flies.  Sometimes I caught seventy to seventy-five of them.  Then I’d find a dark place and dump them all out at once and watch them light up the place enough so I would almost see my hands. 

            I used to have fun with the old rooster we used to have.  He was a mean one.  He would chase any one and fly on to their backs.  I used to let him chase me.  I’d run towards the house or barn and just as he’d jump and fly at me I’d jump to one side and watch him slam into the building.  A couple of times I thought he’d broken his neck because h fell to the ground and flopped around a while.  I though he was kind of stupid because he never did stop doing it until one day he landed on the back of my Father’s neck and we had chicken for dinner the next day.  What a mistake he made that time and I lost my fun too. 

            We had to cut and split a lot of fence parts every spring to replace the bad ones.  I used to hold the wedges and drive the staples while my Father stretched the wire tight with the hammer.  I was glad we didn’t have any rail fences.  We had a lot of stonewalls and that’s where we put the stones that we picked off the fields.  Boy, I never see so many jobs as was on a farm.

            One summer three or four of the farmers went together and bought a second hand threshing machine so we could all use it to thresh the grains we grew like wheat, oats, barley and buck wheat.  It would be fed to the cows, horses, pigs, chickens or whatever animals the farmers had.  I used to watch them try to move the threshing machine around.  It was so big and heavy they had to hitch the second team of horses ahead of the first one to pull it.  Sometimes the other men would get hold of the wheels and try to help turn them.  I used to try to help but I was too small and not strong enough.  I got caught on the wheel one time and went half way around.  Boy, did I holler for them to stop.  One of the men got me loose and straightened out.  Then they wouldn’t let me help any more.  They told me to grow up first before I died.

            We had to cut the corn by hand.  It was hard work to chuck it up until we could take the ears off and husk it and put it in the corncrib for fall and winter.  I used to take about six ears and go sit down, start shelling it, and I’d soon have all the chickens around me, then the ducks, and three geese.  There used to be two squirrels but they’d come only so close.  I had to toss it a few feet to them.  They used to fill their cheeks then take it some where to hide it then come back for more.  I used to use it to catch the horses when they were out to pasture.  I’d hold it out and they’d come to me.  The coons liked to get in the cornfield too and Father showed me how to make a box trap to catch them.  They were good to eat.  I used to get a lot of groundhogs that way and rabbits too.  Always had some kind of meat through the summer then had the beef and pork during the winter when we could keep it frozen.  The squirrels and groundhogs were always chewing their way out of my box traps if they were in too long before I got to go back to them.

Six

One day in school the bigger boys told me the reason girls took small steps was because their legs were growed together up above their knees.  I sure wondered about that but didn’t know how to find out.  I couldn’t ask Father or Mother as no one ever spoke about such things in the family so I didn’t know anything.  I was about 8 or 9.  We had a young woman teacher.  I sued to keep on eye on her when she sat at her desk up front of the room but she wore big baggy bloomers that came down to just above her knee.  They reminded me of an empty grain bag.  She used to catch me watching a couple of times and turned sideways.  She’d give me a funny look and shake her head ‘no’ at me.  Boy, I could feel my face get red.  I was bashful anyways.  I remember once I hid my face with hand but I was sure them bloomers were hiding something.

There was one girl I used to chum around with at school and eat lunch with.  I stayed way from the rest.  She was about my age but she wasn’t bashful.  I guess at home her family was told about everything.

Anyways she could never keep up with me running.  I told her if her legs wasn’t growed together she could.  That’s how she found out I thought that way and she teased the heck out of me.  There was a big field of grain that came up close to the schoolhouse.  During break and noontime we used to run and run and play hide with each other.  One day just before school ended for the year she asked me to go out in the field, that she wanted to show me something.

After we got a ways in the field all of a sudden she fell down on her back, pulled her dress clear to her hips and started kicking her legs all around and said, “See, my legs ain’t growed together.  Them boys was just fooling you!” 

Boy, she sure stopped me in my tracks!  I was so bashful I felt like digging a hole in the ground to hide.  I was going to run back to the school but she got me to sit down after a while and told me a lot of things her Mother told her.  After that she used to ask her Mother different things and then tell me all about everything but it still took some time till I got over being so bashful around her.

But anyways, her Mother was teaching the both of us and never knew it.  We used to laugh about that. 

Her and I played hooky from school a quite a few days during nice weather.  We had our lunch pails so we used to meet just before we got to the schoolhouse and go off alone for walks in the woods.  We found different berries to pick.  We used to share our lunch.  Sometimes we just lay down and slept for a while.  We found a brook but we couldn’t swim so we just waded or sat in the water.

One day we ended up in the next little town but there wasn’t anything much there for kids, just farmers, horses, wagons and buggies.  We used to open the gets to pastures and let the farmers’ cows out then watch the farmers get them back in.  Anything just so we could stay away from school till it was time to go back home.

        One Fall she didn’t come to school.  I found out they moved away.  As the years went by I used to wonder if she thought of me and missed me like I did her.  For a long time I never did take up with anyone else after that, just kind of a loner.  

Five

One Fall I dug a hole in the ground deep enough so it was below the frost line and buried a bushel of apples; set the basket in and put a lot of straw around and over it.  That was in October.  I was wondering how long this would keep.  I dug them up the last week of February.  There was only one rotten apple.  It happed to have a bump on it when I buried it.  The rest was just like when I put them in.  Father said they would of lasted till Spring.

Once Father came home with one of the first washing machines.  It had a wheel on the side with a handle to turn by hand.  Mother would always start than she’d call me.  I sure used to get tired turning that thing.  I think that’s why she always got me on it.  Then in the Summer I always had to turn the grindstone for Father to sharpen the cutter bar for the mowing machine to cut hay, and the axe too.

A couple of years Father smoked some meat.  I had to go looking for dry Hickory wood in the woods.  Sometimes I’d come back with tow or three different kinds of wood until I knowed which was Hickory.  Mother said Hickory smoke made the meat taste best.  Some farmers used corncobs but we didn’t shell any corn so we had no corncobs.  I used to find a lot of Hickory nuts and had about a half bushel for cracking during winter.  There was two or three Walnut trees.  I had a few of them too.  Then I found a few Hazel nuts along the roads on the way to school.  I used to help pick a lot of Blackberries and a few Raspberries.

One I was left at home alone most of the day.  The old cat we had was an outdoor cat and lived in the barn but I got him in the house to eat.  I found out he was scared to be inside so I helped things along by getting after him with the broom.  He ran up the stairs and under the bed.  I poked him out with the broom.  He’d go under the chair, the dresser, up on the dresser, downstairs, upstairs.  I got him so scared he jumped up on the window against the glass.  Once he jumped up on the curtains and climbed clear to the top of the window.  He tore one curtain down.  He got so I didn’t dare to get near him.  He was growling and blowing at me.  I opened the door and he sure got out of there in a hurry but I sure got heck when Mother got home. 

One day the next summer Father got a pint of whiskey.  He had to mix some with other medicine for something that was wrong with one of the cows.  He told me not to touch it or it would make me sick.  I knew that people drank it so I tasted it one day when I was alone.  I took two or three tastes as I liked it but I got a little dizzy so I stopped, but I started thinking about the old rooster and wondered how he would act.  So I run him down and held his mouth open and I poured about four tablespoons into him and let him go. 

In a couple of minutes he was staggering all over the place and flapping his winds and falling down.  So I done it to fiver or six of the chickens.  Some just sat down and others tried to run.  They’d run into everything.  It lasted about five minutes then they stared to straighten out.  It was fun and different while it lasted and Father never did find out where about half of his whiskey went.