| Etna led him to her desk. They squeezed onto the
wooden bench that was attached with cast-iron scrolls to the
wooden desktop. Johnny saw that there was a hole in the desk
at the upper right edge with a bottle of something black in
it. He felt with his hands inside the shelf below the desktop
just above their knees. Pieces of chalk, a book, and a smooth
piece of what felt like stone a little larger than the book
but much thinner. There were initials carved in the desk. Etna
pointed to an LD near the top. "That's for Lent Dwigans,"
she whispered, "my grandpa."
Johnny wondered why the teacher had not asked Etna about
her visitor. No one had noticed him, in fact. "I guess
I'm invisible to everyone but Etna," he decided. He looked
around the room and counted nineteen children besides the
two of them. But they were all different sizes. He and Etna
were in the front row and another little girl was across the
aisle in a desk the size of theirs. In each row toward the
back was a slightly larger size of desk. The big boy, Kenneth,
was in the back row in one of the largest desks and his legs
still seemed to be too long for it.
Johnny looked behind them at the fire glowing through slits
in the door of the stove. It was comforting to think of their
coats and caps hanging on hooks on the back wall being warmed
by it.
He turned back when he heard Miss Brown say, "Etna and
Mary, take out your slates and write your spelling words on
them." Etna took out that flat, gray, rectangular sheet
of stone that Johnny had wondered about and began to write
on it with chalk. Johnny whispered to Etna that he thought
he might be invisible. She nodded without saying anything,
and he realized that she mustn't talk now, even in a whisper.
The teacher might be just Ruby at home, but here in the classroom
she looked very stern. No one in the room was making any noise
except the scraping of chalk on slates. He looked at the girl
behind them; she was writing on her slate with a soft-looking
stone. What a funny world this was in the long ago. Stone
on stone instead of pencil on paper.
But when he looked across the aisle, he saw that the boy
sitting behind Mary was writing on paper, dipping a pen that
didn't look anything like any pen Johnny had seen into that
black stuff in the bottle in the hole of his desk. But then
the boy picked up one of Mary's long braids and was about
to dip the end of it into the bottle, when she jerked it away
from him and carefully put both braids on her chest, giving
him a frown.
"Leo!" Miss Brown said. "Go stand in the corner!
The next time you try that, I'll take a ruler to your hands!"
Leo slid out of his desk, embarrassed as the other children
snickered. He went to the corner on the left by the front
black board and stood facing the wall.
When Etna and Mary had finished with their words, the teacher
asked them to sit on the fold-down benches in front of their
desks. Johnny stayed where he was, since it was more and more
obvious that no one but Etna could see him. The girls were
told to point at each letter of each word on their slates
as they spelled out loud.
"This is going to be a very, very long day," thought
Johnny. "I wish I had a remote so I could fast forward."
And instantly there was a remote in his hand! He touched FF
lightly. A dizzying motion swirled around him. Etna and Mary
in speeded-up motion returned to their seats and the children
in the rows behind them took turns zipping jerkily to the
front benches, standing and sitting, their mouths moving very
fast and high, funny sounds coming out as they recited their
lessons. Leo jerked his way back to his desk, his punishment
over. Miss Brown, too, was moving jerkily and speaking in
that high, chipmunk voice as she corrected them and called
them up in turn.
Johnny took his finger off FF and everyone returned to normal.
"It's recess time," Etna whispered to him. "Let's
put on our wraps." Johnny wasn't sure what 'wraps' meant,
but all the children went to the back of the class room where
their coats were and began putting them on. Johnny pulled
on his coat, cap and mittens, too, buckled up his overshoes,
and went out the door with the others.
Kenneth went over to a woodpile and got an armload of firewood
which he carried into the school house. Johnny followed him
to watch, because he had never seen how a wood-burning stove
worked. Kenneth went to the stove, laid down the split pieces
of wood on the floor, opened the door of the stove, and shoved
two large pieces of firewood into the fire, then shut the
door. Soon the fire was making a humming noise and the air
next to the stove seemed to shimmer again as it had when they
first arrived that morning. How different from a gas furnace
in a closet with a thermostat!
When Johnny got back outside, Etna and the other girls were
walking toward one of the small sheds. Johnny went with them,
since he didn't know what else to do. "You can't use
this one," Etna told him. "That's the boy's over
there." She pointed to the other shed.
Leo was opening the shed's door as Johnny got there, so Johnny
went in with him to see what in the world this was all about.
Leo didn't see him, of course. Inside was a wooden bench with
three holes in it. Leo unbuttoned the fly of his overalls,
opened the fly of his long underwear and peed into the hole.
It didn't sound like pee landing in water, but like peeing
on the ground. There was no water tank or flush lever. "So
that's why it stinks in here," Johnny thought. There
was no toilet paper, either. On the bench between the holes
were catalogs that looked as if they'd once been thick, but
now had lots of their pages torn out. Johnny opened the door
and went out, glad to be back in fresh air.
Etna was emerging from the other shed. "Let's get some
water for Sparkle," she called. So they went to an iron
pump that had a bucket hanging on its spout. Etna showed Johnny
how to use its handle to pump water, then let him try it.
The pump squeaked as he pushed the handle down and water flowed
out into the bucket. They carried the bucket between them,
careful not to spill, as they walked over to the shed. The
other horses were there, but in Sparkle's place was only the
halter hanging by the rope that was still tied to the pole.
"That ornery pony rubbed his halter off and went home,"
Etna said, her hands on her hips, leaving Johnny to hold the
bucket by himself.
"Maybe he ran away," Johnny suggested, setting
the bucket down.
"No, he always goes home when he gets loose. Papa will
ride Lucy and lead him back in time for us to ride him home.
I could ride double on Ruby's horse, Bess, but Ruby always
stays here until supper time, and I have chores to do."
Johnny didn't know the word 'chores,' but he could tell by
the way she said it that it meant some kind of important responsibility.
She picked up the bucket and handed it to Leo who had come
in to water his horse.
"I want to swing; will you push me?" Etna ran toward
the swings that hung from iron pipes. Mary and two other girls
whom the teacher had called Irene and Evelyn were in the other
swings. So Johnny walked over and gave Etna pushes until he
was tired of it.
"What's that thing?" he asked, pointing.
"That's a teeter-totter," she said. "Want
to play on it?" He nodded, so she jumped out of the swing
and ran over to the low end of a board that lay across an
iron pipe structure. Etna lifted her end of the board until
it was level. Johnny went to the other end and when she climbed
on to her end, he climbed on to his. They sat straddling the
board facing each other. Etna's end began to go down because
she was a little older and bigger than he. When her feet touched
the ground, she shoved against it and went back up as he came
down.
"How can you be teeter-tottering with no one on the
other end?" asked Mary. All three girls on the swings
were watching Etna curiously. Etna and Johnny looked at each
other and decided it would be just easier to stop teetering
than to explain about an invisible friend, so they swung over
to their tummies, hanging onto the board until it was level
again. Both let go at the same time and ran off, leaving the
girls to watch Etna in bewilderment. Miss Brown was ringing
the bell again, anyway, so it was time to go in.
Johnny was so glad he could get the remote in his hand whenever
he wished for it! He could hardly stifle his giggles every
time he speeded everyone up. He knew that they were all unaware
of his FF tricks, and that time was moving very slowly for
them because he saw Kenneth pull from his pocket something
that looked like a small, round clock on a chain almost every
time the teacher was writing on the blackboard facing away
from the class. "I bet he wishes he had a magic fast-forward
button," Johnny thought. Then he remembered that this
was a long, long time ago and these children had never even
dreamed of a television set, let alone a remote control. It
made him feel very strange to think about it.
During one of the dizzying, fast-forward times, all the children
got out their metal pails. Miss Brown rushed to the stool
by the tall stove again and with special curved tongs jerked
each jar from the warm water and plunged it into the hands
of whichever child claimed it. Brothers and sisters sharing
a jar clustered together, spoons zipping in and out of jars
and mouths at high speed. In no time the jars were empty and
all the children snatched out sandwiches made of bread that
looked like the kind made in a bread-maker. Johnny was fascinated
to watch their speedy chomping, their chins going up and down
so fast, he nearly fell out of the desk to roll on the floor
in his giggles. They did the same with hard-boiled eggs and
big, thick, homemade cookies that came out of those buckets.
Some of them had smallish, slightly wrinkled apples that disappeared
jerky bite by bite.
Johnny wondered why he didn't feel hungry, then figured out
that in his dream it would be hours before he would be hungry
for breakfast.
The last time that day that Johnny held down the FF button,
all the children suddenly dashed jerkily out of their seats
and back to their winter coats and were madly throwing them
on. He lifted his finger from the button, so he would have
time to put on his "wraps," as Etna called them,
and be ready to go home with her. When they got out the door,
he saw Sparkle with his halter and bridle on again standing
beside a reddish-brown horse. The reins of both bridles were
tied to a large metal ring on a post by the door that Johnny
hadn't noticed before. The same man who had been whistling
Etna's song with her that morning was stroking the neck of
the horse as he waited for the children to come out.
"Hi, Bill," her papa said to her with a grin when
she ran up to him.
"I'm not Bill; I'm Etna," she corrected him, smiling.
Johnny guessed it was the joke they shared every day. Etna's
papa lifted her to Sparkle's back.
"Lift Johnny up, too," she told him. Her papa grinned
again, then pretended to lift someone up behind her. "No,"
she told him. "Johnny's right there," and she pointed.
So the next time Papa pretended to lift, Johnny actually was
able to get himself on Sparkle behind Etna.
The pony ride to Etna's home was delightful. Johnny loved
the rhythm of Sparkle's walk, the pony warm beneath him in
its shaggy winter coat. He looked out over the fields on either
side of the road. Now and then he saw cattle or hogs eating
the old corn stalks or nibbling the stubble of other crops.
Crows and sparrows and jays sometimes rose out of the trees
along the fencerows. There were sounds that he wasn't used
to in the city. Milk cows bawling at a gate, the occasional
snortles of Sparkle and Papa's horse, the cackle of hens as
they passed a farm that Etna told him was where her uncle
Irving and Aunt Gladys lived. And then again when they passed
the farm that she explained was where her grandpa and grandma
Dwigans lived. Once a rabbit dashed across the road in front
of them with a yelping brown and white spotted hound dog close
behind it.
And there were silences he wasn't used to, either-no sound
at all of traffic, no hum of electric appliances or power
lines, no planes going overhead. 1920s, he thought. Did they
have cars and planes back then? Maybe this was the time of
the cowboys and stage coaches he had seen in movies.
"Do you have a car?" he asked Etna.
"What?" She sounded surprised.
"Do you ride horses everywhere or do you have a car,
too?"
"We have a Model T Ford, but we can't use it in the
winter because it gets stuck in the mud. Papa and Grandpa
put it up on blocks before Thanksgiving."
Johnny thought about that for a while. Ford he knew. But
he wasn't sure about Model T. "So you ride horses everywhere
you go in winter?" he asked.
"No, we have a buggy that Lucy and Max pull when we
go to Fairview Church. It's a mile east of the school house,"
Etna told him. "Max is Lucy's son, but he's grown up
now. He's as big as she is."
Johnny had no idea what a buggy was. He wondered if it looked
anything like a Volkswagen Bug. Then he noticed that there
were thin ruts in the dirt road, as if tires much thinner
and smoother than car tires had passed there when the road
had been muddy with rain or melted snow. The road had also
been roughened by the hooves of horses in mud.
"What'd you say?" her papa asked.
"I'm talking to Johnny," Etna explained. Her papa
grinned and nodded. "We go in the buggy to town on Saturday
nights, too," she went on. "And when we go to church
socials or to Dramon's farm over there on the west or to any
of the other neighbor's to visit. We have more time to visit
neighbors in the winter when the field work is all done."
Johnny tried hard to imagine what it would be like to have
been born here in the long ago and to know all the things
that Etna knew and not to know all the things that he knew.
"How far away is your home from the school?" he
asked, finally, when his legs had begun to ache from gripping
Sparkle's sides. He could understand how cowboys got bowlegged.
"It's a mile," Etna answered. She didn't know that
he was from eighty years in the future and was surprised at
how little he knew about what seemed so ordinary to her. But
it made her feel very wise to be able to explain. It was like
playing school and being the teacher. "There's a school
on the corner acre of every two-mile square in every direction
so no child has to walk more than two miles to school."
They were approaching another grove of trees like the ones
at the two farms they had passed. Lucy and Sparkle turned
in the driveway. "We're home," Etna said. "See?
There's the buggy." She pointed to a wooden wagon with
large, wooden wheels lined with narrow, metal strips. The
body of the wagon was enclosed with a roof and walls, open
on the front. Johnny remembered, then, seeing vehicles something
like this being pulled by horses in movies about the olden
days.
The horses went past the white frame house and stopped at
a wooden tub-like tank of water where they each pushed their
lips up to their nostrils into the water and slurped out a
big drink. Then they walked to the gate by a red barn. Papa,
Etna, and Johnny slid off. Papa and Etna led their mounts
through the gate and over to the barn door, Johnny following.
A large, mixed-breed dog, black with yellow blended in was
in the barn curled up in a corner in the clean straw on the
dirt floor. He got up and came over to greet Etna as she led
Sparkle into the stall on the left.
"Hello, Carlo," she said, patting him with her
free hand. "Out of the way, now, or Sparkle will step
on you."
Papa followed, leading Lucy who nickered a greeting to the
horse in the middle stall. "That's Max," Etna told
Johnny. Max nickered back, looking over his shoulder as he
stood tied to his manger with a rope on his halter. There
were three of these two-horse stalls with long, sloping poles
to separate each pair of horses. Lucy went to her side of
the middle stall; Papa secured her in place and removed her
bridle.
Etna did the same to Sparkle in his stall. Johnny guessed
that Miss Brown would later put Bess on the other side of
Sparkle's sloping pole.
Another team of horses in the third stall on the right began
nickering when they saw Papa take a pitchfork and climb a
ladder by Lucy's manger to what Etna called a "hay mow."
She explained that last summer the whole center of the barn
and been filled with loose hay. There had also been hay over
the ceiling of the horses' stalls and over the ceiling of
the cow barn on the other side. Much of the hay had been eaten
over the winter. But it still looked like a lot of hay to
Johnny.
Papa threw some down, then climbed back down the ladder and
filled all three mangers with hay while Etna and Johnny went
to the granary on the other side of Sparkle's stall and got
a bucket of oats and an empty can that said syrup on it. She
used the syrup can to measure oats into the feed box at either
end of Sparkle's manger, one for him and the one at the other
end for Bess. Then she let Johnny dump cans of oats into the
four feed boxes of the two teams. Etna called the horses in
the far stall Kelly and Prince. She said Kelly was a bronco
and a little bit mean. So Johnny dumped Kelly's oats quickly
and moved back. But he rubbed Prince's soft muzzle for a moment
as Prince munched his oats.
Johnny hooked the barn door as he followed Etna and Carlo
out. Etna picked up her lunch bucket that she had set down
on the ground outside the door. They climbed the board gate
instead of going through it this time. "Race you to the
house," she said and took off running. Carlo ran with
them, barking excitedly. Etna's hand reached the gate of the
yard just before Johnny's did. "I win!" she said.
They went in the back door of the large, square, two-story,
white-painted farmhouse. In the enclosed porch they took off
their overshoes and put them on the old pair of overalls that
lay on the floor, serving as a doormat. There was an odd-looking
contraption in the corner. "What's that thing?"
Johnny asked, pointing.
"That's our washing machine," Etna told him, once
again surprised at his not knowing about things she thought
everyone knew. Wow! He sure would never have guessed that
was what it was! There was no resemblance to the smooth, box-like
appliance everyone he knew owned.
Then they opened the inner door and went into a large kitchen
where a little boy about two years old, dressed in bib overalls
like the ones Johnny was wearing, was waiting with his arms
up for Etna to pick him up. She gave him a hug that lifted
him off the floor, then put him back down. "You're getting
heavy, Eldon," she said.
"Papa's 'kinny boy!" Eldon said, grinning. He went
to a rather short woman who was in the little room next to
the kitchen, rolling out dough on a floured cutting board
that pulled out (like a writing board on a desk, Johnny thought)
from a free-standing cupboard. The woman looked over her shoulder
at Etna.
"There's fresh-baked sugar cookies on the table,"
she told her. "Give one to Eldon and you can have one,
too, before you do your chores." She picked up a cup
with its handle broken off, dipped its rim in flour and began
cutting the thick dough with the upside down cup in one hand,
the other hand putting each round of dough as it was cut on
a greased sheet to bake.
Etna gave a cookie to Eldon and one to Johnny. She put one
into her coat pocket and grinned at Johnny as she began nibbling
on another.
"Could I please have some milk to go with the cookie?"
Johnny asked politely. Etna opened a door on the far side
of the kitchen beside something he knew was a stove only because
he felt its heat as he passed by it. The door opened to a
landing at the top of wooden stairs. A cupboard of varnished
wood was against the wall. She opened its door and took out
a pitcher. He saw a half-melted block of ice on its bottom
shelf. Back in the kitchen, she got a glass from another free-standing
cupboard and poured milk into it.
"Don't you want some?" he asked.
"I don't like it," Etna told him. "It's a
little bit sour already since morning milking."
Johnny tasted it and decided he didn't like it, either. So
Etna put a little sugar in it from the sugar bowl on the table,
stirred it and gave it to Eldon, who drank it without complaining.
"Mama usually puts a little vanilla with the sugar to
hide the sour taste, but she's busy now," Etna explained.
They went out into the porch again, holding their cookies
in their teeth as they buckled on their overshoes. It was
the best sugar cookie Johnny had ever tasted, still warm from
the oven, golden, fragrant, large, thick and soft with a sugary
top and a fat raisin pressed into the middle. Modern sugar
cookies seemed pale and thin and tasteless by comparison.
He missed having milk with it, though.
Carlo was waiting just outside the door when they stepped
out. He went to Etna and stood looking at her cookie, his
big tongue slurping across his upper lip. "Carlo always
makes me feel bad unless I share with him." She held
out the last half of her cookie which disappeared in one gulp
down Carlo's throat. He didn't even take time to taste it!
She took out the cookie in her pocket, trying not to look
at the dog. So Carlo went over to Johnny and looked at his
cookie. That was when Johnny realized that dogs and horses
knew he was there.
"I guess they can smell me," he thought. He offered
Carlo the last bite of his cookie. Etna broke what was left
of her second cookie and shared it with Johnny. He was glad
she'd had the foresight to pocket an extra cookie.
"Help me do chores," Etna said to Johnny as they
went out the gate. He followed her, not knowing what he might
be getting into, but at least he'd find out what that word
'chores' meant. Funny how many words were different eighty
years ago.
"Let's go to the corncrib first," Etna called,
as she headed for a building with walls made of boards that
had half-inch spaces between them so you could see the ears
of corn inside. The front part was empty, but corn was piled
to the ceiling over the back three-fourths or so. She told
him to turn the handle on an iron machine that was just inside
the door. It had a bucket under it. As he turned the handle,
she fed ears of corn into the thing's "mouth." Each
ear of corn bounced and spun its way into the machine as gear-like
"teeth" knocked the kernels off. Shelled corn poured
from the bottom into the bucket. It was so much fun, he was
sorry when the bucket was full.
Etna and Johnny put the bucket between them as they had the
water at school and carried it to the hen house where they
poured it out in a long row on the ground. The noise of the
hens suddenly got much louder. Their white feathered bodies
crowded around the curved row of corn, a hundred beaks pecking
at the kernels on the ground.
Etna picked up a bucket beside the henhouse door and went
inside. Johnny followed her. Oh, ick! He'd stepped in some
fresh chicken poop! The straw on the dirt floor was littered
with it. He saw that Etna was being very careful where she
stepped. Along the wall was a row of wooden boxes half-filled
with straw. In each box were several eggs. They carefully
put the eggs into the bucket, then walked to the house, taking
turns carrying the bucket of eggs very carefully so they wouldn't
jostle them and break any. Johnny dragged his overshoes in
the dirt, trying to scrape off the chicken poop. This time
they didn't go into the back door on the west; they went to
a pair of low, almost horizontal, sloping doors on the south
side of the house. Etna pulled the door on one side open and
laid it back against its frame. Then she showed him how to
scrape his boots on a scraper that was stuck in the ground
beside the doors. She took the bucket of eggs from him, and
he followed her down the concrete steps.
When she opened the vertical door at the bottom he was struck
by a dank, earthy smell, rich with other fragrances that were
not quite familiar. Something sour, something sweetish, something
musty. They left the door open so that there was just enough
light to see their way between wooden bins that Johnny peeked
into. One had potatoes in it, another apples. Etna set down
the bucket of eggs, then they felt their way up the dark stairs
to the landing.
When Etna opened the door off the landing, Johnny could see
in the afternoon light that he had been here before. "Oh,
this is the thingy with sour milk in it."
"Icebox," corrected Etna. They waited on the landing
until Mama came over and handed Etna a cage-like thing with
a flame in it which gave them enough light that they could
see the stairs on the way back down.
"What kind of candle is that?" asked Johnny.
"It's not a candle; it's a lantern." She set it
on the floor beside a wooden box about as tall as it was wide
and twice as long. It was divided in half with one side almost
filled with eggs in layers with cardboard spacers something
like the ones in cases of soda. She put a gray form made of
molded paper on the bottom of the second half, then expanded
a new cardboard spacer and set it on the molded form. Very
carefully she put eggs one at a time into the remaining spaces
on the filled side while Johnny began filling the bottom layer
of the other side. Each egg fitted nicely into the curved
cup of the molded form and was held upright by the cardboard
spacer.
Etna was counting as she put the eggs in place. Then she
counted the ones he had put in the other side. "Thirty-eight,"
she said as he slipped the last egg into its stall. "They're
starting to lay better again. In January we hardly got any
eggs at all. Next fall when the new pullets start to lay we'll
get almost a hundred!" Johnny was looking as if he didn't
really understand about egg numbers, so she added, "Mama
has ordered 150 baby chicks from the Henry Field seed catalog.
They'll come in the mail in about another month. Half of them
will be roosters and we'll eat most of those as soon as they
get big enough. We'll eat any old hen who quits laying, too,
and when the new pullets start laying, too, we'll get almost
100 eggs a day."
Johnny was used to going to the store with his parents to
buy eggs and meat and other groceries whenever they needed
them. The idea of there being lots of food at one time of
year and none at another was shocking. "What do you eat
in January?" he asked, after he had thought about it
for a minute.
"This cellar is full of food," Etna told him. (He'd
thought they were in a basement, though it did seem unlike
any he had ever seen with its dirt floor and dirt walls.)
"You saw the potatoes and apples. See all those canned
vegetables and fruits in the jars?" She pointed to the
heavy wooden shelves along the walls that were crowded with
green glass jars with gray metal lids like the ones in the
school children's lunches. Only these each had a rim of red
rubber showing between the lid and the jar. Smaller jars were
filled with jam and jellies of several kinds. Then Etna pointed
out the braids of onions hanging from nails on the rafters.
She showed him crocks of sauerkraut and then lifted the lid
from a large metal can and he caught a whiff of a strong,
sour smell.
"This is the cream that we take to town every Saturday
night along with the egg case whenever it's full. We trade
them for the things we need that we can't grow ourselves.
We use some of the cream to make butter, of course,"
she added.
"But, it's sour!" Johnny protested.
"You can make butter out of sour cream," she said.
"And cheese, too."
Johnny's head fairly spun. He had always just assumed every
kind of food came from the grocery store. "You make butter?"
Etna showed him a small barrel with a wooden lid that had
a hole in the middle and a wooden rod sticking through the
hole. "We put cream in here and push and pull the dasher
up and down until it turns into butter," she said. "It
takes a long time. My arms get real tired before it's thick.
Then mama has to separate the butter from the buttermilk and
wash the butter in cold water and mold it in a bowl. The buttermilk
tastes good if it's salted."
Johnny thought about this all the way back up the concrete
stairs and across the barnyard to the corncrib. The two children
filled two buckets with unshelled ears of corn, this time
carrying them to the hog pen. They set the buckets down and
hurled the ears one at a time over the fence. Johnny was glad
they could stay on their side of the fence. The ruckus of
squeals and grunts as the hogs snapped at each other was scary.
No one had ever taught them to be polite and share. One of
them looked at him with its little eyes, its lips parted as
it chewed with loud, disgusting smacks. They sure did have
the worst table manners he'd ever seen!
"It's good to be scared of hogs," Etna reassured
him. "Mama says hogs will eat babies-and even grown-ups
if they fall down and can't get away fast enough!" Johnny's
eyes got big, and he backed up a little as he threw the last
ears over the fence. He remembered the part in "The Wizard
of Oz" where Dorothy fell into the hog pen and was quickly
rescued by a hired hand.
Next the children went to the tub the horses had drunk from,
or "stock tank" as Etna called it. There was a five-gallon
bucket beside it. She dipped it into the mossy-sided tank
and filled it. Johnny helped her lift it out and carry it
a few feet to a steel trough just on the other side of the
hog fence. They poured the water through the fence into the
trough. Soon the hogs were squealing and snapping over spaces
around the water trough.
By that time, Papa and Carlo were driving four cows through
a gate and across the lot toward the cow's side of the barn.
Etna and Johnny ran to get there first and went in. Papa had
carried a bucket of shelled corn from the corncrib and dumped
four piles of it inside a wooden structure on the side toward
the haymow.
Johnny stepped back out of the way when the door was opened
from the outside and the four cows came through with Papa
and Carlo behind them. Each cow seemed to know which pile
of corn was hers, and put her head between two vertical boards
to munch on her corn. Papa swung a short, pivoting horizontal
board against a pivoting vertical, locking each cow in.
"What's that trap thing?" Johnny asked, amazed
that the cows had walked right into it.
"That's a stanchion." Etna told him, pleased to
know the answers to all his questions.
Then Papa took down one of the pails that were hanging on
nails on the east wall, picked up a strange-looking one-legged
stool that looked like a piece of stove wood with a short
board nailed across one end, and sat down beside the first
cow, placing the pail between his knees. He began to squeeze
milk from two of the cow's four teats into the pail. The milk
fell in strong streams, singing against the bottom of the
pail at first, then the sound changed as foamy milk began
filling the pail.
A thin cat that Johnny hadn't noticed before crept up to
Papa and rose up on her hind legs to put a front paw on his
knee, meowing. Papa laughed and sent a stream of warm milk
into the cat's open mouth. It was funny to watch the cat swallowing
as fast as she could but getting quite a bit of milk all over
her face. When the stream ended, she went to the side of the
barn and wiped creamy milk off her face with a paw, then licked
the paw. Johnny saw several other cats sitting near her, watching
Papa intently.
Papa began to whistle a song and Etna sang along with him.
"Just a song at twilight," she sang, "when
the lights are low. And the flickering shadows softly come
and go." It was one of the songs Grandma Claire and Grandpa
Evan had sung in the tent before he got too sleepy to listen
anymore.
When the last stream had been stripped from the first cow's
udder, Papa stood, threw his stool to the side and walked
to a pan in the straw at the side of the cow barn. He poured
out some milk, and suddenly there were half a dozen cats crowded
around it, tongues going in and out so rapidly they seemed
almost to be on FF. Papa poured milk into another pan for
Carlo who lapped it up noisily, then licked the pan clean.
Each cow was milked in turn until both milk pails were full,
with foam showing over their rims. Papa threw more hay down
from the center mow, and Etna and Johnny put it where the
corn had been for the cows to munch on in the night. She was
explaining to Johnny that the horses would sleep standing
up, resting one foot at a time while they stood on the other
three. But when the cows had eaten the hay, they would lie
down, sliding their necks down inside the stanchions, and
chew their cud until the morning milking.
"Chew their cud." Another expression Johnny had
never heard.
Then Etna opened the top half of the south door and Papa
used the manure fork to pick up a pile of poop that one of
the cows had lifted her tail to expel. He threw it out the
door on to the big mound of manure to one side. Etna closed
the door and hooked the lock.
Papa took the full pails of milk from the nails where they
hung on the wall, and Etna opened both halves of the east
door for him, closing and locking them after the three of
them passed through. Carlo and the cats stayed behind to sleep
warm in the hay. It was dusk now; a thin line of red-gold
lay along the western horizon, partly obscured by the mulberry
grove.
"Race you to the house," Johnny said and took off
running. She ran after him and they arrived at the gate of
the yard almost in a tie, but Johnny's hand touched first.
Both were breathless. Papa was trudging along, careful not
to spill the milk. Johnny held the gate open for him. He didn't
seem to notice that Etna wasn't touching it, though she stood
nearby. Johnny followed them across the yard to the slanting
cellar doors, which Etna pulled open. Papa went down first,
and this time the children pulled the doors closed over their
heads, then descended the concrete steps once again.
Mama was coming down the wooden steps carrying the kerosene
lantern. She hung it on one of the posts holding up the beams
of the house, then went back up the stairs.
"I'm going to set the table for supper," Etna told
Johnny as she followed Mama up the stairs.
But Johnny wanted to see what was going to happen next in
the cellar, so he stayed with Papa. The fire in the lantern
cast a flickering, shadowy light on the scene. Papa poured
one bucket of milk into a metal bowl-like thing that sat atop
a machine that Johnny hadn't noticed when they put away the
eggs. It had a big wheel with a handle like the one on the
corn sheller.
Then Papa began turning the wheel. Soon a thick white stream
of milk came from one spout and a thin golden stream of cream
came from the other spout. The milk flowed into the emptied
bucket placed under that spout. The cream was filling a kettle
under its spout. Papa intercepted the milk stream with a pitcher,
setting the full pitcher on the wooden steps. Then he emptied
the other bucket into the bowl and put that bucket under the
spout as he removed the first bucket, which was not quite
as full as it had been of whole milk. He turned the wheel
some more.
When the bowl was empty, he took the kettle of cream and
poured it into the cream can Etna had showed Johnny earlier,
carefully placing its lid back afterward. He poured some water
from another pitcher into the bowl then and turned the wheel
while holding that pitcher under the cream spout. A thinner-looking
cream filled the pitcher while whitish water flowed from the
milk spout into the second pail of milk.
"Bill!" he called, and Etna came down the steps
to get the pitcher of milk and watered cream. She opened the
door of the icebox and put both pitchers in it. Johnny climbed
up the stairs, removed his overshoes and carried them into
the kitchen. There was another kind of light on the table
now that smelled like the lantern, but was not a cage.
Johnny put his overshoes and his wraps where he saw Etna
had put hers, behind the door they had come in when they got
cookies.
Mama was turning meat in a skillet on the stove, and Eldon
was pulling a small toy horse on a wooden platform with wheels
and a string. Johnny squatted down and looked at it carefully.
It was a beautiful toy, probably hand-made, not anything like
the plastic toys of his own time. It was covered with real
horsehide with golden hair. Its mane and tail were made from
a horse's tail. He took hold of it to feel the hair, but Eldon
yelped when the horse seemed to be stuck, so Johnny let go
again.
Ruby Brown entered the kitchen from the door on the other
side of the stove. Johnny caught a glimpse of some steep,
brown-painted, wooden steps going upstairs before she shut
the door. "Etna didn't miss any of her spelling words,"
she told Mama, with a smile at Etna. "And her recitation
was better than yesterday. She's a good reader."
"Good." Mama smiled at Etna, too, then turned back
to the skillet.
Johnny looked at the thick white plates and cups and some
heavy-looking silverware on the table. There were four white
chairs and a high chair drawn up to the table. "You can
share my chair and eat with me," Etna explained. "Mama
won't let me put food on an extra plate."
"I'm not hungry," he told her, "but I am thirsty."
"We're not old enough to have tea," Etna said.
"Would you like warm, skimmed milk? Or there's water
in the pantry."
"Water, please." So she showed him a white enameled
pail of water on a narrow table in the small room where Mama
had rolled out cookie dough. It had a pewter dipper hooked
over the side. He filled it and took a sip. It wasn't like
Crystal Lake water at all, but he was so thirsty after all
the chores they'd done that he drank it down quickly.
"Papa carried the buckets of skim milk to the hogs,"
she told him. "When he comes back, we'll have supper."
Johnny went over to the stove to get a closer look. It was
unlike any cook stove he had ever seen. He could see the fire
when Mama opened a door and threw in some dry corncobs. There
weren't any burners on its flat top. The whole top was hot.
A fat, dark-blue-speckled-with-white, enameled pot with a
spout and handle was toward the back. It didn't look like
the teapot at home, but it smelled like tea, all right.
All of a sudden, Johnny began to feel very sleepy. Maybe
it was the warm kitchen and the soft light. Maybe it was all
the things he had done and all that he had learned that day.
He went over to Etna and whispered in her ear. "I think
I want to go home now. Thank you for spending the day with
me; I had a good time."
And then something strange began to happen. He wasn't a boy
in overalls standing beside Etna in the old-time kitchen anymore.
He was aware of seeing everything as if it were all happening
at the same time. He could see the family and the teacher
seated around the table, and he could see Etna climbing the
steep, wooden stairs. Mama was one step ahead of Etna, her
arm around Eldon on her hip and a smaller kerosene lamp in
the other hand. He could see Etna being tucked into a bed
that was mounded like a huge feather pillow, covered with
thick quilts that reminded him of the one that hung on the
living room wall in his own home.
As he fell into a deeper and deeper sleep, he felt himself
floating through the air toward the great lavender-blue balloon
and its woven basket, sinking down into a mound of feathers
inside it as the basket gently rocked.
When he awoke, he was in the tent, and it was a summer morning
in Crystal Lake in the year 2000.
a recipe from
the "olden days."
Grandma
O's Sugar Cookies
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. (Vera O. would have fired up
her stove with dry corncobs and tested its heat with a hand
briefly held in the oven.)
In a large mixing bowl, cream together (beat with a big spoon
until smooth):
1 cup lard (substitute butter, margarine, or shortening)
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
Beat in:
2 large eggs (eggs from hens that are not in cages are best)
1 cup sour cream (not the cultured type, just cream that has
gone sour. Can
substitute sour milk. Can make cream or milk sour by adding
a tablespoon
of vinegar.)
Sift together and stir in:
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
"enough flour to make the dough thick enough to roll
out"
On a floured cutting board, scoop out about one fourth of
the dough. Sprinkle a little flour over the top. With a rolling
pin, begin in the center and gently roll outward. Do this
in four directions, then in the four directions between those.
Sprinkle a little more flour as needed to keep pin from sticking.
(Too much flour makes the cookies hard and tough, so go easy.)
When the circle of dough is about 3/8th inch thick, sprinkle
granulated sugar evenly over it. Cut with round cookie cutter
(or with rim of cup or glass) dipped in flour. Lift each cookie
with spatula and place on a greased cookie sheet. Press a
raisin in the center of each. Bake about 10 minutes, until
the bottom is just barely golden brown and the cookie is still
soft. Remove from pan with spatula and cool on cutting board.
Add more dough to the scraps and roll out the next batch.
Repeat until dough is gone.
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