Thirteen

I liked winter time as there wasn’t so much little jobs to do during the day and I’d get to go along when Father took some logs to a saw mill about six miles away to have them sawed into boards and it back home. 

He’d put three fare sized logs on the bobsled which was a pretty good load for the team.  It would take most of the day and some times it would be awful cold before we got home or we had to sit right on top of the load and all the weather would hit us. 

When we stopped the team for them to rest I’d go up to their head to see the frost and ice on the long hairs all around the nose and mouth from breathing and the steam would be coming off their body where they sweat. I often wondered why they were never cold. Father said they got a lot more hair in the fall and it would keep them warm then shed a lot of it in the spring and summer.

Some days in the early part of the winter I would be thrashing some beans by hand in the barn. We would let them get ripe and dry in the garden then pull them up, put them in a pile in the barn, then as we had time we spread some out.  I had a three foot stick with a shorter one tied to one end and we’d hit the beans with it.  The dry pods would bust open then we used a fork to pick the stalks up and shake them out and all the beans went on the floor.

Mother used to soak the amount she wanted to cook overnight then put a gallon crock in the oven.  I guess it took three or four hours ‘til they were done.  We always had enough ‘til we had new ones the next fall.

Father left some of the parsnips in the ground over winter and we’d dig them up early in the spring. Most of the other vegetables Mother canned. A lot of the apples was dried and kept in pillow cases.  We used to have some pop corn we raised.  We had to plant that a ways from the sweet corn as it would be mixed on the ears if it was side by side. Father planted some sweet corn as early as he could then one month later he’d plant more that way we had sweet corn longer.

I used to pick a lot of the dandelions in the spring.  We had a lot of them for greens.  Mother used to pick some greens in the woods that we ate.  I don’t remember what they were called but they lasted about three weeks.  They were used like dandelions then toward the end they had roots on, big enough to use too.  We had a lot of rhubarb to use for pie.  Mother canned some of that too.  There was a lot of all kinds of things but it all had work to it, to pick and clean and get ready to use.  I spent a lot of hours helping to get things ready for Mother to can.

We had ice cream once in a while. We had an ice cream maker I had to turn by hand.  It made about two quarts when it was done and it sure tasted good as we didn’t have that only about two or three times a year.

Mother used to skin some of the thick cream off the milk in the milk house that was from the night before. I used to like to drink it as it was good and cold. Some times we just put cream in a two quart jar, about half full, and I’d shake it until it was butter.  The buttermilk from it sure was good.  The butter and maple sugar was good on pancakes for breakfast.  The maple sugar made the oatmeal good too.  We used a lot of that when Mother got it for a change once in a while. I used it on raspberries, blackberries and blueberries.  There was a lot of them to pick every year.

Twelve

There used to be a lot of the gliding squirrels around at that place. I called them flying squirrels but when they jumped from a tall tree to a shorter tree the spread their legs and the skin would act as a glider.

In the winter it used to be dark when I got home from school and one night one jumped and missed the short tree and landed beside me and I took off.  I had about a mile to go and didn’t stop until I got home.  That was the first time I knowed about them.  That’s why I thought there was some kind of animal after me.  I seen and learnt more about them as time went by.

I used to shoot at a lot of crows in the spring when we planted corn.  When no one was around they’d scratch and dig the corn up and eat it in the garden. I made to scare crows with sticks and used empty grain bags to hang on for cloths; it helped to keep them from the sweet corn.  Groundhogs, rabbits and coon would sneak in anyways.  Father showed me how to make a box trap. I made five or six of them and put something they liked on the trigger for bait.  I caught all kinds of small animals.  The only thing it was a while before I know how to kill them.  Then I hated to as there was certain kinds I would like to keep as pets but most always I had my twenty-two rifle with me.

One morning I forgot to take the shells out of my pocket and leave them home when I went to school.  I had nine of them along during the day.  I began to wonder what one would do if I threw it in the stove.  It was winter time and there was a good hot fire in the big iron pot belly stove.

When it was break time I watched when no one was looking at me and I opened the door, all the shells was in one hand, instead of taking time to pick one out I just tossed all nine in, shut the stove and hurried out the door.

It was a cold day and the teacher and about two thirds of the kids stayed in.  I waited outdoors and in about one minute it sounded like giant firecrackers gone off and it scared everyone so bad the teacher and everyone else came running and screaming of the door.  I could hear the shells hitting the inside of the stove hwe4n they went off.  It kind of scared me too as I didn’t know it would sound so bad as it did.

The teacher made us all stay out doors until she looked what happened. She found one of the busted shells after looking about ten minutes and then she knew what happened but nobody knew who done it and I sure kept that one to myself.  I could tell when the teacher looked up she had a funny look on her face and didn’t know who to trust after that.  She was a young teacher and she sure was scared too.

Then a few days later I had a rope and I tied one end to a small desk, laid it across the one step outside the school house door, covered it with a little snow.  I took hold of the other end and waited.  When the kids all came running out of the door I pulled it tight which made it about six inches high.  The first one or two fell and the rest fell over them.  Boy, what a pile of kids! A couple of the little ones was crying and they went and told the teacher.  I had to stay after school two nights and had to clean the blackboards both days and she gave me a good talking to. I couldn’t get away with very much in school as there was too many tattle-tales.

Eleven

            I was getting older and had more of the chores to do in the morning and evening, like giving the cows their grain, the horses too.  Then there was the chickens and we always raised a pig, sometimes two.  We butchered and sold one.  We always raised a beef or veal calf for our meat.  There was eggs to gather every evening.  We always had about twenty or twenty-five cows to milk so I got so I could milk four or five. 

Then there was about eight or ten dry cows that wasn’t giving milk and would soon give birth to calves.  They had to be cared for too.  After two or three days they would be taken away from their mothers.  Then they had to be taught to drink from a pail.  We put one finger in their mouth, they would suck the finger and at the same time we pushed their mouths down into the milk in the pail so they would be sucking up milk too.  After once or twice we would ease the finger out and they would soon be drinking milk themselves.

I didn’t like the job of cleaning the cows and horses about every other day with a curvy comb and brush.  They didn’t like to have their bellies and legs cleaned and would do a lot of kicking.  I used to get kicked a lot and had some sore places on my legs where they hit me.  The horse stepped on my feet sometimes and they would be sore or lame for a couple of days but the job had to be done because every once in a while the inspector would come around to the farms to see if the barns and animals was kept clean and the milk pails and strainers too.

Once a year we had the truck with a big tank and hose come to white wash the cow barn inside.  One time the man let me hold the hose and do some of the wall, and as always, leave it to me, I turned the hose on the cat.  Boy, he took off and didn’t come back.  He was white fur for a month before it all came off.

We never had a dog.  I used to ask for one quite a few times but for some reason my Father and Mother never liked dogs and didn’t want one around.  Father used to say they chased the chickens and the other animals too much, but I could tell when they were around where they was dogs they didn’t care for them at all.

Father used to do some trapping on the farm.  There was a small brook and he set traps for muskrats and there used to be some beavers around the brook and a lot of gray and red foxes.  He used to get up at four in the morning to go look at the traps.  He asked me if I’d like to go along and learn how to set them.  I used to like to go but it was so early in the morning I got tired of it after a few weeks but I did like to help skin what ever he caught and stretch the hides over boards he made.  The foxes was hard to catch.  There couldn’t be no tracks or human scent left any where near where he set and covered the traps or they wouldn’t come around any more.  He had some stuff in a little bottle he used to drop around and it took all the human scent away. 

Father caught a lot of coon and weasel.  He had to send all the hides to the company in the spring, when trapping season was over.  He made out pretty good every winter.  I used to like it but it was too early in the morning for me to come back and do my work and get ready for school. 

Father used to have a pair of snow shoes he let me try but I never could learn how to use them just right and I kept getting them tangled up and falling more than I could walk.

It was always real dark at that time in the morning.  Sometimes the moon was out but then I’d see all kinds of shadows up ahead and would think it was some kind of animals.  I’d always stay behind Father all the time.

He caught a lot of skunk but I didn’t care about them because of the smell.  They came out and traveled around when the weather wasn’t too cold at night.  Them and the foxes was great for getting into the chicken house if they could find any place to get in.  Father always had traps set around with bait.

Ten

            I only ever saw one Mulberry tree.  That was in Pennsylvania on the farm where we lived before.  They looked just like big blackberries to me.  I used to call it the blackberry tree and I spent a lot of time up in it after the berries.  It was a big spreading tree and had only about eight feet so it was easy to lean a board against it and get to the first limbs.

            That was the farm me and my brother was alone one day and decided to take my Father’s Model T ford for a ride.  We didn’t have the keys so we took a jackknife and stuck it in the switch and got it turned.  There was no starter but we managed somehow to crank it and get it started.  We couldn’t steer it straight and was all over the road.  We only went a couple of miles until we run off the road and over the bank steep anyone could’ve lifted on the upper side and tipped it over. 

            We were stuck and we had to show Father where it was.  He hired a farmer with a team of horses nearby to hitch the team to it while he tried with the motor and between the two of them he got the Model T out.

            When Father first saw it he asked us how we started it.  We took him to show him the knife in the switch but it had shorted the wiring and melted the blade off.  Boy, we both sure did get it that time.

            For a while it was back to the every day life.  Nothing different to do.  Nothing new happening.  And that’s what got to me.  I was always trying to think of something to do and when I couldn’t think of anything it sure got to me.  I could always think of things I was supposed to do but I just seemed to be hunting for things I wasn’t to do. 

            I know in school the teacher seemed to always be picking on me for some reason.  It seemed every time she looked at me she sent me to stand in the corner or made me clean the blackboards.  I had to stay after school a lot of times.  She made me sweep the floor or carry some wood in for the next day.  Sometimes I thought our school must be the cleanest school in the country because I was always cleaning it.

            At one school there was a couple of older boys that always picked on me.  I was always fighting with them.  Sometimes I’d get in the school before they did and I set a lot of carpet tacks on their seats.  They came running in and jumped in their seats and boy, did they holler and jump up with some of the tacks still sticking in the seat of their pants.  They never did find out who did it.

            Once I had a big toad and I carried him around for a couple of days wondering what to do with him.  I put him in a drawer in the teacher’s desk.  I saw her open the drawer and shut it quick.  She didn’t open it no more all day.  She must’ve been afraid of it jumping out on her.  I never did know what she done with it.  I think she got it out after we was all gone home.

           I used to stick a soda straw in the back end of frogs and blow them up like balloons.  I threw them back in the water but all they could do was swim around on top of the water.  The next day the air leaked out and they were ok.  I wanted to take them to school but they made too much noise.  They kept croaking and wouldn’t be quiet long enough so I gave that idea up and went back to being good for a few weeks.