During my primary school years I almost never had to do any school
homework. Since I attended a 2-room school there was always time during school
hours to complete our assignments. (We did that while the “other grades” were
“up front” for their specific subjects.) The only homework I recall was my
mother listening to me recite my “Religion Recitation”, memorized Bible verses,
Catechism lessons and hymns.
Household chores were shared (after all eventually there were 9 of us
kids.) I often helped “do the dishes” and got an earful from one or more of my
sisters when I tried to be excused from this as I suggested this was “girls’
work”.
We lived in the church’s teacherage, which was located on several acres
of the congregation-owned land. So there was room for our home, barn, stables,
hen house, large pasture, small field for crops, a large garden and a big
cemetery. Our lawn was immense and the grass was always mowed by me using a
hand-driven mower.
The cattle, chickens and pigs needed twice daily feeding. We shucked corn
and shelled it for the chickens with the hand-driven corn sheller. We sometimes
had fun shucking corn, seeing who could shuck 100 ears the fastest. Or we would
get a thrill out of shucking an extra amount of corn and hiding it. Then when
we were told to “go shuck corn” we gleefully exposed our already completed
work.
From very early on I milked the cows. The cow was let into the stall and
her calf was allowed to come suckle. Then we roped off the calf, sat down next
to the cow and milked her. The milk was immediately taken to our home and run
through our hand-cranked separator that separated the cream, which was then
made into butter. I always liked to drink my milk when it was still warm,
having just come from the cow’s udder. When the calves reached a weight of a
couple hundred pounds or so they were sold to the local butcher.
We slaughtered our hogs ourselves on cold days with the assistance of
neighbors. I recall how they were killed (usually be slitting their throats).
They were bled. Then dropped in hot water so that the hairy skin cold be
scraped off. We had wonderful fresh pork and also preserved smoked sausages and
hams (and occasionally also the stomach). One of my jobs was to keep the bark
of logs smoking in the smoke house where the pork was cured.
We ate lots of eggs and chickens. My mouth still waters as I recall my
mom catching a young rooster, chopping its head off, getting the feathers off
and then frying that wonderful chicken in home-made lard. The price I paid for
getting those always fresh and tasty meals was two-fold. 1) Feed those chickens
plenty of corn and 2) Keep scraping the chicken “droppings” to keep the hen
houses clean.
Summertime meant it was time for us to earn some cash for the family. (We
kids never kept a penny of those earnings for ourselves and we never had an
“allowance”. Those meager resources all went into the family coffers. While
others “chopped cotton” I never had that chore. It entailed hoeing very close
to the young cotton plant, removing weeds and surrounding the cotton plant with
fresh soil. I think the fear was that if I were given this task I would too
often chop out the whole plant. But I could ”pick cotton”. An 8 to 10 foot long
bag was strung over our shoulders and dragged behind. We “crawled” between 2
rows of cotton plants and extracted the soft cotton bolls. The load was weighed,
placed in a wagon and when some 1300 pounds had accumulated was taken to the
gin. There the lint was separated from the cotton seed and debris, then packaged
into 500-pound bales and sold. On a really good sun-up to sundown day of
picking I might make between 50-75 cents. But I was such an inept cotton
picker (my sister out-picked me every
time) that rumor has it that the verdict was, “Melvin will never make it on the
farm. He’d better go to work for the church as a teacher!
And that is what I did.”
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