way back when

Starving Farmers

barn where i first milked a cow. 

     Although we had lived on a farm when we were young and it was my grandpa’s farm, and we were so fortunate to live there as mom had four mouths to feed and my real dad had taken off, or grandpa had shooed him away with a gun at that point after having threatened mom with a butcher knife at her throat, in front of us kids, and laughing in a drunken stupor about it, to say the least mom was lucky to be on her own and living where she was , as life was a hell of a lot easier without his dumb ass.

    Mom milked cows every day, 6 of them and she would haul the milk to the side of the road in those old milk cans everyone adores asa country item now. But full of milk was quite a job and then  a milk truck would stop and pick it up and take it to make ice cream. Grandpa would get a check from it and share with mom. Back then there was no aid to dependent children, welfare, food stamps, or anything in the way of legal aid to even divorce him at the time. This little bit of money she made working on the farm milking, or waitress work when she could find it,. was all she had to feed and clothe us kids.

    We had a roof over our head and a big garden and even sold sweet corn one year we had raised from seed planted on a drag grandpa would haul behind the tractor, in a freshly plowed field and the runners were spaced so that if you planted the corn in the runner marks, the rows were evenly spaced, and it was nothing to ride on the sled and just drop seed to be later covered over with a hoe. It worked well and I remember us selling the corn along the road that went in front of the house.

      Still it was not enough to get by , but it always seemed to stretch magically and mom would somehow still find a way to take us to a movie once in a while. She would give us a nickel and tell us that we were supposed to keep it so we would have something to spend at the movies. My sister Sherry did so well at keeping hers that she decided to keep it close to her heart, so she swallowed it and we all had to stay home because of that. It was years later before I ever had a chance to see the movie called “Flubber, “ with Fred Mc Murray , I was so excited to be able to see the movie, and then we found out she swallowed her nickel and I still have a problem with her. For her everything came out find in the end, my grandma seeing a chance to reclaim a nickel made sure of that. And in the end wondered I am sure what ever made mom think of giving us kids money when we had so little in the first place.

     It wasn’t all bad as I heard mom say of some old folks talking about poverty as you never knew you were in bad shape because everyone was. My world was small I still did not go to school and would accompany mom to the barn each morning while she milked the cows. To me at that time , the greatest joy I had was her filling an aluminum painted glass with warm milk straight from the cow and mixed with some Nestle’s Quik from a paper tin, just like it is today, we had stored in a dusty windowsill in the barn.

    I would come back for more and soon mom figured it was best for me to get straight from the cow’s teat and at four I would guess I had the chance of milking my first cow and I would sit on a one legged stool and cuddle my head into old Sally our most gentile cow and she had the biggest faucets my hands needed to be able to muster up a good squirt out of . I felt so proud to be able to fill my first glass with warm frothy milk straight from the cow’s teat on my own, and at times later in my life, I remember especially when milking other cows that this was truly my first job where I would be able to help take care of myself in this world.

        This introduction to work was soon followed by a host of other work I felt compelled to get on with in  my young life as I started to follow my grandpa around helping him do stuff and the same with mom. Wherever there was work I would be there. I doubt I was a lot of help but they never seemed to mind and would always take the time to be a dad to me even if the one I had , had let me down so miserably. All this work let me not worry about things and in ways made me a rich little kid, as I knew a lot more about things, than most even though I didn’t have a dad who cared to teach me. At least now in some ways I could help feed myself if only in a small way.