Continued from March 13:
It was a Sunday afternoon and my aunt and uncle were in the house visiting with mom and dad after a big dinner. My two cousins and I were wandering around over the farm trying to find something entertaining to do with our time. The 8-year-old cousin reached down, picked up a rock and chucked it a short distance- right through a pane of glass in the wash house window, one of the six panes in the window.
The sound was delightful to our ears, the tinkling of breaking glass. It was immediately the entertainment we’d been looking for. We drew a mark in the dirt with a stick to stand behind and took turns stepping up to the mark and taking aim. I don’t remember the score, but remember that I was the winner. I broke the most of the 18 panes with the least amount of stones. The game was finished and other entertainment was sought.
Later in the afternoon when we came back from playing in the pasture, our dads were waiting for us by the shed. Our consciences hadn’t bothered us a bit about the right or wrong of the game until we saw the looks on their faces and suddenly we knew the wrong of it. Questions were asked. Did you? Why did you? What are you going to do about it?
Arrangements were made for the two cousins to come to our house after school the next evening. We attended different country schools and they were located two miles apart which meant a 2 1/2-mile walk both ways for them.
Hard as glass - and fragile, too
The next evening my dad took us to the garage and instructed us to watch him closely as he repaired one pane because we were going to repair the rest. He chipped out the hole and then measured it to exact 16th of an inch. Then he measured a piece of glass he had taken from overhead on the rafters and scratched or grooved it with a glass cutter. It broke when he tapped it out and he had to measure and cut another one. The second one was perfect and it fell into the space easily. Then he picked up tiny little triangular pieces of metal and he called them wedges and pushed one into the wood with his thumb. Then he put the tip of a screwdriver on it and gently tapped it with a hammer. Two on each side, eight in all. Then the putty and the smoothing process We were impressed! Then he turned from the workbench facing us and explained to us that we were going to buy our glass from the lumber yard with our own money as he didn’t think we would be able to cut it. Then he walked out and left us standing there.
Well, we started measuring but everyone’s measurements were different. They had to be perfect. So we organized! I was the oldest I would measure. Lyle would write it down. I guess Lyla didn’t have a job. Before we could measure, all the old wood and putty had to be chipped away to make a perfect opening. It took us many evenings but finally we told dad we were ready with the measurements.
A trip to town
Now, every Saturday we took the cream to town - 12 miles. Our country store still bought our 15 to 30 dozen cases of eggs every week but cream testing equipment had become too expensive to fool with. So every Saturday afternoon after dinner. Dad carried the cream cans out of the cave and loaded them between the seats of the 1935 Ford. We’d pull up in front of the creamery and a high school boy would come outon the sidewalk to unload them. He would give mom a ticket with her name and the number of cans. Then we’d go to an Uncle’s house in town and visit one hour while the cream was tested.
There were two more cousins my age; but town living seemed to me to be so limited. I just couldn’t understand how they stood it. We could just walk to the back fence. Couldn’t even walk on top of it. It belonged to the neighbor. Couldn’t yell - would disturb the neighbors. Couldn’t play catch - might break a window. Couldn’t play handihandi over - it would tear up the shingles. I couldn’t ride fast on their bicycle either there was a speed limit on bikes. All that lovely smooth concrete street just made for fast riding, not a bit like rocky country roads.
I couldn’t jump curbs with it - it would break the bike.
Couldn’t ride uptown - it wasn’t licensed. I don’t know how they stood it living in town. But when they came to visit me, they were afraid to climb into the hay mound (my second home) or climb the old pine tree and shake it to hear the starlings squawk.
Or skin-a-cat on a limb 20 feet off the ground and if we got out of sight of the house, they got panicky. So I suppose they were right to live in town.
In an hour mom and I would go back to the creamery, our scalded cream cans were always setting on the sidewalk so I would load them while mom took the tickets off the handles and went inside to collect the money. Sometimes as high as $8 - $10. Sometimes as low as three, depending on how hot the weather had been, how soured it was, what the cows had been eating, how hard I had run them bringing them to the house (a no-no) to be milked and how steady I had turned the separator handle. For all this I was awarded the large exact sum of 20 cents every Saturday right there at the counter.
Then while mom was at Hydes grocery store or J.C.
Penney’s I had about an hour to find my two country cousins and we would go to the ice cream parlor. They, too, always were rewarded the same as me by their mother.
For 17 cents we could have a hot fudge sundae a piece or for 19 cents a quart malt or we could, pool our money and buy a giant malt for 24 cents and share it, but Lyle could suck three straws like a suction pump so that was never very satisfactory.
Now I know they had to work harder and do more for their 20 cents than I did. I had an older brother and sister that did the hard chores.
(I didn’t know my turn would come) but I never told them they had to work harder than me.
Also I had another secret, when we took eggs to the country store on Wednesday night (family night), there were free drawings for a sack of sugar or flour, but you had to buy some groceries and had to be present to win. I received another 10 cents for my work in the chicken house, but under strict orders not to tell my cousins or spend it in front of them. Wouldn’t it be funny if they had the same secret! The creamery had an ice cream room also and it was the hang out for the high school kids. We never could understand how those kids could overlook the smell of hot cream cans, wet concrete floors and the heavy smell of sour cream, but they were town kids and we didn’t understand that they had never poured water through the separator or washed the disks in hot slimy soapy water and then poured boiling water over them from the teakettle and smelled the smells.
To be continued.
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Editor’s note: Edith Lammey has been a resident of the area for nearly 40 years. The article was originally published April 15,1987, by editor Cal Beisner.
Opinion, Pages 4 on 04/03/2013