I don’t know exactly how old I was when Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus came to Independence.  I was probably seven or eight.  The circus travelled by rail and Daddy took me to town early in the morning to watch them unload.  I remember they set up in a field by the railroad tracks not too far from the depot.

It was so exciting to watch the roustabouts and the elephants set up the big tents.  The whole process was a confusing jumble of sights and sounds with the wild animals roaring and the men yelling.  I remember that I had never seen anything like it and thought it must be a glamorous life travelling from town to town.  It was show business!  I kind of made up my mind that when I grew up I would like to be a trapeze artist and wear beautiful costumes and travel all over the country with the circus.

 I am sure one reason Daddy took me to see the circus unload was that we really couldn’t afford the price of circus tickets and this was one way I could experience the circus atmosphere for free. 

Later that day we came back and we could afford the tickets to see the Side Show.  I remember the different people in the side show…the bearded lady, the fat lady, the wild man from Borneo, and last, but not least, the sword swallower.  It was the sword swallower to made the biggest impression on me.  He swallowed, not only swords, but a fire stick.  What a marvelous talent to entertain.  I didn’t know whether I could do it or not, but vowed to practice when I got home. 

Of course, I had to practice the acts I would do when I became a trapeze artist, too.  So I tried to stand on one leg in my swing and do other tricks like that.  I hung by my knees from the limb of the cedar tree in the front yard and just to perfect other tricks, I used a tea towel as a parachute and jumped off the high end of the front porch.  I practiced bowing and smiling and generally getting ready to become a star.

I also practiced sword swallowing.  I used a table knife as we didn’t have any swords available.  I put my head back just like the sword swallower did to make a straight path to my stomach  and started guiding the knife down my throat.  There was only one problem.  I gagged.  Each time I tried to swallow the knife, I gagged.  The knife was cold and my throat would not accept it.  I kept trying and I kept gagging.  My mother heard me and that was the end of my sword swallowing career. 

I imagine after a week or so of practicing to be a circus trapeze artist, something else must have captured my attention.  I guess I just didn’t have the stick-to-it-iveness to make it in show business.  Of course, a lack of talent might have also been the problem.

Easter was a great holiday when I was little.  It still is, but the significance of Easter was actually lost on a six year old.  My baby brother had arrived by this particular Easter and I had gone through the jealous period and come out on the other side a “better” person. 

The important thing about Easter when I was six was having new shoes and a new dress, and yes, an Easter bonnet.  My Mom made my clothes and so my Easter dress was always something special.  The year I was six, I put in my order for the kind of dress I wanted.  It was to be pink or lavender and I wanted the skirt to be ruffled and ” stand out”.  Perhaps this was a tall order, but not to someone who lived in a fantasy world peopled by Sonja Heini, a figure skater whose costumes always had skirts that “stood out”.  I tried to communicate the dress I pictured in my mind, but perhaps my six year old communication skills were not honed well enough.  Then again, perhaps my Mom did the best she could with what she had at hand.  Perhaps she realized that I would look comical in a skirt that “stood out” and wanted me to look beautiful instead.

So my Easter dress, beautiful as it was, was a disappointment to me that year.  In fact, that is the only year I actually remember what my Easter dress looked like.  It was made of lavender organdy.  It had a plain bodice and a tiered ruffled skirt.  Four ruffles if I remember correctly…and it was very pretty….but it wasn’t the dress that existed only in my imagination.  I wore it and I also wore it in the class picture taken that spring.  But I still remember how guilty I felt because I really didn’t like the dress my Mom had worked so hard to make like I wanted it. 

I never shared these feelings with Mom and now that I am a Mom myself, I wonder if my disappointment showed on my face when she presented me with the finished dress.  I also now know that the dress I wanted was a dress with a tutu…a word not in my six year old vocabulary.

My daughter, her husband, and three children visited us here this week.  The big highlight of the week was supposed to be a visit to South Padre Island and the beach.  The only problem was it wasn’t beach visiting weather when they first arrived.  We instead visited a neat museum and the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas.  This zoo is said to be one of the six top zoos in The United States.  I really believe it lived up to its billing and we had a great time with great weather. 

As I walked through the zoo, I was reminded of the little zoo in my home town as I was growing up.  It was a very good zoo with lots of animals and for a little town of approximately 10000 people was excellent. 

When I was five or six years old my parents were good friends with the man who was the Superintendent of the zoo.  He was also the caretaker of Riverside Park, the home of the zoo.  He and his wife had no children.  This was a great advantage for me as they showered me with affection….and presents.  I also got free rides on the Merry-Go-Round when we would go to visit them.  They had a parrot in their house.  I don’t know whether this was a pet of theirs or one that needed special attention.  Anyway, it could talk.  It really did say, “Polly wants a cracker”, just like parrots are supposed to. 

At the time they were caretakers of the park, there were lions, tigers, bears, monkeys, and birds of many kinds.  I really think the monkeys on what was known as monkey island were my favorites.  Monkey Island was constructed during the WPA era and had a little main street with small store fronts and signs.  It was easy to imagine that the monkeys went into the “movie theatre” and watched movies.  There was also a jail complete with bars and once in a while a monkey would go inside and peer out through the bars.  The monkeys were free to roam anywhere on the small island and they would swing from rope swings, etc. and do stuff monkeys do. 

One time at Easter my parents’ friends fixed me an Easter basket.  It contained a dyed Ostrich egg.  I assume it was either boiled or the stuff was blown out of it, that I don’t remember.  I just remember it was the biggest egg I had ever seen.  Wow!  What an Easter basket!

I always loved going to the park and the zoo and in later years I realized what a great gift it was to Independence.  The park and zoo are still there.  It has now been named Ralph Mitchell Zoo after the business man who donated a lot of money to make it a reality.  He owned a bakery in Independence and I assume that is where the money came from.

After Mom and I moved to North Second Street two blocks from the park, we could hear the lions roaring during the night.  At first, I would lie in my bed and hope the lions wouldn’t be able to escape.  Later, I don’t even think I heard them I was so used to the sound. 

I appreciate the people who make it possible for children to be able to see animals from all over the world.  I enjoyed seeing the animals again through the eyes of my grandchildren.

By the way, one of the animals we saw was a Komodo Dragon.  He was very large and very ugly.  I shared with the children that their Uncle Mike had done a report at school on that animal from the Island of Komodo.  This was the first time I had ever seen one of them.  Very interesting.

When I was a young child, I really never gave much thought to how I came to be born in Independence, Kansas.  I also did not think it unusual that I had so many relatives living in the area.  It just seemed very natural.  I studied history in school, but those were just names in a book and facts that had to be memorized.  I didn’t connect them at all with my life which I was busy living.  Nor did I realize that the life I was living was a part of history.

I was an adult before I really became interested in my past and my ancestors.  It was then that I learned that my Great-Great-Grandfather, Samuel Parkhurst, led a wagon train from Johnson County, Indiana, to Independence, Kansas, in 1869.  When this wagon train arrived, it doubled the population of the town.  G-G-Grandfather also arrived with $1000. cash money which was quite a handsome sum in those days.  He apparently loaned out the money at very high interest rates..even to his family…and set about buying land.  I don’t know how many acres he acquired, but I know he at one time owned the land that Riverside Park is on.  He also owned part of what is now Mount Hope Cemetery.  In fact, one of Dad’s cousins tried to get Dad to go to the city and check on the original lease of the land the park is on.  She said the land was leased to the city for a small sum for ninety-nine years and that the lease should be up.  Dad would not do it.

According to the Montgomery County History, the immigrants made shelters of hay for the first winter they were in Independence, giving rise to the name “Haytown”.  My Great Grandmother was sixty-two when she joined her father’s wagon train for the trek to Kansas.  (if my calculations are correct.)  She built the house where we lived when we moved to the farm across the road from Grandma and Grandpa. 

My impressions of Great-Grandmother Hudiburg are those of a very young child.  At the time she was in a big wooden wheelchair.  I don’t know how tall she was, but my impression was that she was very tall and thin.  I think she was in her nineties at the time.   Aunt Winnie (Winifred) took care of her.  Aunt Winnie was a twin to Uncle Wilfred and she never married.  I assume she never married because it fell on her to be the one to care for her mother in her old age.  Anyway, I remember Great-Grandmother looked scary.  Her hair was pulled back severely from her face and braided.  The braid was put into a bun at the back of her head.  So there she was with nothing to soften her looks and I imagine she was a bit senile at the time because I remember she spit on the floor.  She did have a spitoon, but I just remember her spitting on the floor.  (I wonder if she dipped snuff or something like that.)

She had had thirteen children.  They were all “old” by the time I knew her.  My Grandfather was one of her boys.  I wonder what she was really like when she was younger.  I have nothing to let me know that, but she had to be terribly strong.  I don’t know when she was widowed, but have the impression that she lived on the farm after her husband died.  In fact, the house was supposedly built by her….or rather she had it built.  I do know she had extensive land holdings which had been divided with her children by the time I came along.  There was a large farm near Sycamore, Kansas, called “Farm Ridge”.  I don’t really know where it was located, but heard of it as I was growing up.

I wish I had been more interested when I was young enough to have people to ask about all the questions I have now.  I do know that Parkhurst Avenue is the little street on the north side of the railroad track in Independence and is named for my Great-Great Grandfather.  It is at about the 1000 block north.  I know this because Mom and I lived at 1020 North Second Street when we moved to town and Parkhurst Avenue was the first street south of our house.

One of Grandpa Hudiburg’s brother was named Samuel after his grandfather.  I thought he was the “real” Uncle Sam who is the symbol of our country.  He lived in Oklahoma and we did not see him very often.  He, like my Grandpa had snow white hair and really kind of looked like the posters of “Uncle Sam”.

Grandpa’s youngest brother was Uncle Elmer.  He was the baby of the family and after Great-Grandmother Hudiburg died, Aunt Winnie went to live with him.  He and his wife, Aunt Bessie, built a small house behind their home for her.

I was in a meeting of senior citizens yesterday and the subject of refrigerators was brought up.  It was at that time that I realized I was not the only one who used to think the word for refrigerator was Frigidaire.

When I was little, we had a Frigidaire.  Grandma and Grandpa had an ice box and I mentioned it in the posting about homemade ice cream.   The way they let the ice man know they needed ice was by putting a sign in the window.  This was a square sign with different numbers on each edge which told the ice man how many pounds of ice were needed.  It depended on the size of your ice box compartment how large a block of ice it would hold.  The ice man would then bring the block of ice into the house and place it in the compartment.  As I remember, nobody back then kept their doors unlocked and sometimes the ice man would just come in, announcing his presence as he did by saying, “Ice Man”.  He knew where the ice box was and put the ice in and left.  I don’t know how he got paid, but assume the customer was billed periodically.  The house where we lived when we moved across the road from Grandma’s house had a very large ice box in the pantry off the kitchen.  The ice compartment had a door on the outside so the ice man didn’t have to come into the house.  (As we had a Frigidaire, we didn’t use the ice box and the ice compartment being opened on two sides made a great place to play hide and seek.)  As I read that, it seems scary to me that we hid in the ice compartment.  It must not have been air-tight.   People who had ice boxes used ice picks to take off small chunks of ice for cooling tea or lemonade, the two most popular drinks in the summertime.  I don’t recall using ice in water as it was cool as it came from the cistern.

Our Frigidaire was not the kind that had the unit on top, but looked like a regular refrigerator of today.  The main thing I remember about it was that it had a rubber ice cube tray.  This was supposed to facilitate the removal of the ice cubes as you could flex the tray and the cubes would fall out.  Much like the plastic flexible ice cube trays of today.  The difference was that everything frozen in the rubber tray took on the flavor of the rubber.  I don’t know how that happened after many years, but it did.  Mom used the rubber tray to make Kool-Aid popsicles.  These were the only popsicles I ever knew about when I was a kid.  The “popsicles” could be popped out one at a time and although they weren’t very big, they were a treat in the hot Kansas’ summers.  I loved red best of all, whether it was strawberry or cherry didn’t matter…just so it was red.  They were delicious and cheap.

Another summertime treat we were able to make because of the Frigidaire was  ice cream.  It couldn’t hold a candle to hand-cranked homemade ice cream but was supposed to be more convenient to make.  There was an ice cream mix that you could buy at the store.  It came in little packages and was mixed with cream or milk.  The mixture was then placed in the ice cube tray and frozen.  The mix had to be stirred frequently as it was freezing so that it would have a creamy consistency.  Since my Grandma’s homemade ice cream was so delicious, this didn’t even come in a close second and was very seldom made.

We also had floats made with store bought ice cream.  I don’t remember having “Coke” or “Pepsi” but we did have root beer and flavored soda.  I liked Fruit Punch with the vanilla ice cream.  One time Grandpa (who used to make home brewed beer) made some root beer.  As I remember, it wasn’t carbonated and tasted flat…not good at all.

The Frigidaire lasted a long time, because we still were using it when we moved to town.  I don’t know how old it was and don’t even remember getting it replaced at all.  I do remember I was a teen-ager before I knew there were other brands of refrigerators which were not Frigidaires.  Talk about brand recognition!

Now people on Facebook and other public sites are reminded that whatever they post is visible to anyone who wishes to see it.  Back in the day, the party line was somewhat similar to that.

I don’t even remember if we had a telephone at Glencliff.  After we moved over to the farm, we were on an eight-party telephone line.  Our telephone number was 69F4.  I don’t know exactly what all of those numbers meant, but I do know that the four meant four long rings.  Grandma Hudiburg’s number was 69F33.  To reach her from our phone meant all we had to do was crank the handle on the side of the phone six times.  Three long cranks or rings and three short ones.  All of the people on the 69 line could reach each other without going through the operator. 

To reach other people whose prefix was not 69, you had to go through the operator.  To reach the operator, you cranked the phone one long ring.  The operator would answer and say, “Number, please.”  You would tell her the number you wanted and she would connect you.  I don’t know exactly how the switchboard worked, but the operator wore a set of headphones and had cables which came from the horizontal part of the switchboard to holes in the vertical portion of the switchboard .  In this manner, the operator could put you in contact with anyone you wanted to speak to locally.   If you wanted to speak to someone in another town, it was an entirely different story.  Actually, I don’t recall my parents calling anyone out of town as it was terribly expensive. 

When the phone rang four long rings, we would pick up the phone and say, “Hello”.  Often you could hear clicks as other people on the party line picked up their receivers to listen in.  Most would hold their hands over the mouthpiece of the phone so that the background noise in their homes could not be heard.  Actually, people thought nothing of doing this as this was the way news was transmitted.  I have seen Grandma do it many times.  I have even done it myself, believe it or not.  Privacy laws were not in effect on party lines.  If you wanted privacy, you had to have a private telephone line….and then not talk to someone on a party line, I guess. 

Some people’s conversations were more interesting than others.  If a girl had a boyfriend and he called her, it was probably one of the better conversations to listen in on.  However, most of the conversations were quite mundane.  It was always nice to know who was visiting whom and who was ill and who needed help of any kind.  Some conversations were downright boring and not really worth all the trouble it took to be quiet while listening. 

As I said at the beginning, the internet today equates to the party line of my childhood.  Nothing is ever really new,  is it?

Every Sunday we went to Grandma and Grandpa Hudiburg’s home for dinner after church.  It was always a fun time for me as my cousins and I could play together.  Aunt Bess and Uncle Dayton MaGee and their four children also came. 

I don’t know whether Grandma prepared the dinner alone, or whether Mom and Aunt Bess brought something.  I do know that Grandma and Grandpa didn’t go to church so maybe she had it ready when we arrived.  I do remember that it was always delicious as Grandma, Mom, and Aunt Bess were very good cooks and Sunday dinner was an occasion!

After dinner, my cousins and I always played together.  George and Naomi were ten years older than I was and Margaret, Charles, and Elizabeth were also older.  Elizabeth and I played together and the rest of the older kids did stuff, too.  Anyway, the afternoon would be spent enjoying each other’s company.  I think the adults played cards or dominoes.  The older and middle cousins would play Monopoly or Chinese Checkers.  Elizabeth and I played Dolls or Paper Dolls or Dress-up. 

In the summertime, we would have homemade ice cream.  Of course, Grandma and Grandpa had lots of eggs and cream and even during the wartime sugar rationing, there was always enough sugar saved to make ice cream.  My Grandma’s homemade ice cream is a recipe still used in my family as it is delicious.  

 Grandma and Grandpa had an Ice  Box.  The ice man had a regular route and all you had to do to have ice delivered was to put the ice sign in the window with the amount of ice needed.  The ice man brought the ice in and put it right in the compartment for that purpose in the ice box.  The ice man had to be fairly muscular from lifting the heavy blocks of ice.  He used large tongs to carry it into the house. 

To prepare the ice for making ice cream, it was put in a gunny sack and pounded with a sledge hammer.  The large chunks were then broken up with an ice pick until they were small enough.  I do remember at one time Aunt Bess bought a fancy ice pick that had about five prongs and it broke the ice up more quickly.

  The ice cream mix of cream, eggs, sugar, and vanilla was put into the can and the can was put into the ice cream freezer.  Then the proper ratio of ice and salt was added and the men took turns cranking the freezer.  As the ice cream froze, it became harder to turn and the freezer was harder to hold still.  So the gunny sack was placed over the top of the freezer and a medium-size child sat on it to hold it down.  Usually this little person got to lick the paddle when it was removed from the freezer, so there was always competition to be the one sitting on the freezer.  I think we took turns.  After the paddle was removed,  the brine was drained from the freezer and a mixture of salt and ice was packed in around the can.  The ice cream was then left to “cure”.  This was always the longest time and it was so hard to wait until it was ready to eat. 

Just writing about this has made me hungry for ice cream so I think I will go get a dip of Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream.  Not the same, but it will have to do for this afternoon.  No chocolate cake to eat with it, but I guess I could eat soda crackers as that is what Grandpa always ate with his.

I read recently that the first edition of Superman comics was to go on the auction block and was expected to bring thousands of dollars to its owner.  Wow!  How many of us would be very rich had our mothers not cleaned our rooms and thrown out our comic books. 

I loved to visit my good friend and neighbor Marvin Garner when I lived on the farm.  Marvin and I walked to school together and since he was my nearest neighbor even close to my age, I guess he was my best friend.  Marvin had a big tree with exposed roots and he also had a farm set.  We used to play with his farm set and his toy cars around the roots of that big tree.

Marvin also had a big collection of comic books.  Marvel Comics were our favorites and my favorite super hero was Captain Marvel.  I think he wore a red suit with a big yellow lightning streak on the front of it.  Or it may have been the other way around.  He also wore a cape.  I don’t remember what his “civilian” persona was, but I remember that to unleash his super powers, he shouted “SHAZAM”!  Marvin also had other superhero comic books and sometimes we would spend the whole afternoon just reading them.  Wonderful fun on a rainy afternoon or a winter afternoon when it was too bad to play outside.  Add to this the fact that Marvin’s mother made the very best peanut-butter cookies and you have paradise.

My little brother’s taste in comic books ran more to the “funny” kind.  I think his favorite was “Little Lulu”.  In fact, my mother sent him some Little Lulu comic books while he was in VietNam.  Imagine, if you will, the chagrin of my brother when he received that package from mother and opened it in front of his fellow Marine officers.  I’m sure Mom didn’t even think about that aspect of it, she just knew he liked Little Lulu and wanted to give him a taste of home.  More power to her.

I really never cared for Batman or the Green Hornet or even Superman as they couldn’t hold a candle to Captain Marvel.  The fact that the Superman comic books have gone from the original ten cents a copy…if I remember fifty-two pages an issue…to several thousand dollars while Captain Marvel is virtually forgotten tells you about my lack of ability to predict values of things.  Oh, well, it doesn’t really matter, Mom would have probably thrown them out anyway.

There were a lot of little communities around Independence, Kansas.  One of the most interesting was LeHunt.  LeHunt was a ghost town and information about it can be found in Ghost Towns of Kansas.  It was located about six miles northwest of our farm and was a destination for Boy Scout Troops from Independence for day hikes.

I think as a child I took LeHunt for granted, but as I grew older, I realized that here was history at my fingertips (or should I say my feet).  My Dad had lived on the farm most of his life and his parents before him had lived there through several generations.  Consequently, he knew the history of the area and was a wonderful teacher who loved to share the stories.

LeHunt owed its existence to a cement plant.  It was definitely a company town.  The availability of natural gas deposits in the area provided fuel needed for the manufacturing process. It was  located on a landmark called Table Mound which was made of limestone deposits and provided the raw material for cement.  The main machinery of the plant was dismantled during the war to be used as scrap metal so there were only the skeletons of that part left.  There was a huge (you could easily walk inside it) smokestack, a very large warehouse area with only the concrete walls left standing, and a tunnel containing a narrow railroad track leading from the top of the mound down to the former manufacturing area. 

At one end of the warehouses there were several stacks of cement which bore the marks of the cloth bags in which they used to be contained.  The bags had all rotted away, but the imprint was left on the cement.  The warehouse had trees growing up inside of it , a testimony to the fact that nature will reclaim abandoned man made structures in the end.

There were sidewalks running through what had been the town part of the area and along the south end an abandoned inter-urban track (without the metal rails as they had been taken for the war effort) which along with the nearby railroad must have provided transportation for the people of the town as well as the shipping of the cement.  I remember one large concrete building which Dad said was the office.  At one time it had a large safe, but in later visits to the site, that was gone. 

Probably the most fascinating structure in LeHunt was a large wall probably twenty or thirty feet high.  It was somewhat free standing and had the name,”BOAZ”  or “BOARZ” carved into it.  Above the name was a wheelbarrow sticking out of the wall with a crossed pick and shovel.  This was a monument to a man who was killed in an accident when the wall was being poured.  He fell into the concrete and they were unable to recover his body, hence, the memorial.  No OSHA back then and no rescue teams available. 

At the top of the mound was the remains of the clubhouse used by the executives of the company.  It had burned down at some time.   I don’t know whether it was before or after it ceased being used.  The only thing left of it was the foundation and a large fireplace at one end.  The view from the top was magnificent and well worth the climb up the remains of a concrete stairway. 

When I previously said that the metal from the manufacturing process was dismantled for the war effort, I am not sure whether it was the first or second world war.  If I remember correctly, the cement plant ceased operation in the early nineteen hundreds and was a victim of both the depletion of the natural gas supply and the fact that the location of the plant made the transportation costs too high to compete with other cement plants in the area. 

The area is now closed for the most part, as it is owned by a private company who quarries the limestone out of the side of the hill.  The graveyard is still open and is a fascinating place to visit for those who love the history of the past written in stone.  The school, a large cement structure has been closed for many years due to consolidation and the population decline.  It was purchased and made into a home as were many of the old country schools, including Peebler. 

I think LeHunt had a great deal to do with my love of history as Dad always made it so interesting and let me know that history isn’t just words in a book, but stories of real people who lived in interesting places.

I played cards yesterday with a group of ladies all of whom were originally from cold north climates.  We were all sharing winter stories from our childhood, including the chores we were required to do. 

I remember especially the fact that we heated with wood.  That meant that the wood had to be cut and brought up from the pasture.  We had several hedge trees down by the creek which provided very hot fires.  I mentioned in the last post about “manning” one end of a six foot cross cut saw.  I use the term “manning” loosely as I know I wasn’t much good at pulling the saw through the tree.  I hated doing that particular chore.  It seemed like it was always cold weather when we cut down the trees.  I guess that was because there were so many warm weather chores that had to be done and this just got put off.  Hedge wood is hard but makes a very hot fire.  After the tree was cut down, Dad had to cut it up into usable lengths and split the larger limbs and the trunk using a wedge and sledge hammer.  He was quite good at this.  My job was to carry the split wood to the wood pile and stack it.  After the wood was all stacked, it also became my job to bring it in as needed for the wood stove.  Now that was a job at times because when it snowed or froze, the wood would stick together and sometimes one log had to be used to knock the others apart. As they say, those who burn wood get warm when they cut it and again when they burn it.

Another winter chore I have previously mentioned was milking the cows.  Even though the cow was warm to sit next to, the barn was always very cold.  It seemed milking time was always too early and too late.  I just didn’t understand why it had to be dark when we milked in the winter time.  I know now that it is important (especially to the cows) that milking be done at a regular time each day.  Then there were always animals to feed like pigs, calves, chickens, and cats and dogs.

Another of my chores was to gather the eggs.  At least, in the winter, I didn’t have to worry about black snakes in the nests like I did in the summer time.  But the chicken houses were also very cold and sometimes the eggs might freeze if you didn’t get them gathered in time.  I never liked reaching under the chickens still on the nests as sometimes they would peck your hand. 

I didn’t mind feeding the chickens and the calves, but I did not like messing with the pigs.  They were always so aggressive when they ate and I was a little bit afraid of them.  Besides, I didn’t like the smell of them or the food they ate.  It was truly called slop.  And it smelled really sour.  Ugh!  Then they would almost not let you get it poured into the trough before they started eating and it would get all over them.  I know they are supposed to be clean animals, but I don’t really believe it.

The year we had the lambs was a really cold winter.  One night especially I remember we had a new little calf and the five lambs in a little building.  When Mom went out to check on them, the calf and three of the lambs had frozen to death.  She brought the two remaining lambs into the house and put them in the oven to save them.   That was a really sad thing, but something one learns about living on a farm is death. 

It really wasn’t a chore, but we did not have modern plumbing and our outdoor bathroom was not heated.  It was about fifty feet from the house and had to be “visited” no matter what the temperature was outdoors.  (When we later moved to town, Mom said she just sat in the bathroom and thanked God for modern plumbing.)  I could definitely relate to that.

I was happy to move to town and vowed I would never live in the country again….but my daughters can attest to the fact that every spring I would be hunting for a place in the country.    But I still don’t like Winter!  And here in South Texas winter is when it gets into the high 50’s and that’s fine with me!