Continued from Wed., March 13
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 handi-handi 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 thestarlings squawk. Or skin-acat 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 apiece 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 hangout 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 03/27/2013