Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl (6 page)

“I’m coming,” I said, looking at Mom who nodded.

“We’ve got it all. Go on.” She was already heading toward the table in search of Edna’s wheat bread.

I raced off after Doug. A year younger than I, Doug ran everywhere and though I seldom beat him, I never stopped trying.

The churchyard was swarming with kids and we all knew each other well. We went to church so often, all these kids were almost like brothers and sisters. The other parents were just like so many added sets of parents. And none of those adults hesitated to set us back in line if we stepped off track—particularly when it came to running or yelling in the sanctuary.

While we’d been carrying things inside, Dad had arrived. I didn’t see Dad anywhere, but I headed to the pickup, with Doug in tow. “Come see our calf,” I urged. “It’s a heifer. I helped Dad get her ready.”

We scrambled up on the truck bumper and clung to the panels, looking down into the truck bed.

“Nice calf,” Doug agreed.

I nodded, but I was confused. This was not the calf I helped Dad load up. That calf was mostly white. This calf was mostly black. In addition, this calf wore a halter and was tied on a short rope. I looked around for Dad but didn’t see him anywhere.

“Let’s go,” Doug jumped down from the truck and ran toward the church. “It’s time to eat.”

I looked at the calf again. Why would Dad bring a different calf from the one we loaded?

“Come on,” Doug shouted.

Jumping down, I tore off after Doug. Dinner was most important. I would ask Dad about the calf later.

With a full stomach, including a Blarney Stone and a slice of banana cream pie, I wandered out of the church basement and into a yard full of cars and people milling around, checking out the auction goods. I spotted Dad standing in the shade of a pine tree, smoking a cigarette, talking with some men. As I walked up, I overheard him say,
If I’d tied her down, it wouldn’t have happened.
When Dad saw me, he stopped talking, dropped the cigarette to the ground and stubbed it out with his toe.

I tugged on his sleeve. “Dad.”

“What?”

“Our calf. Doug and I looked in the truck. It’s not the same one we loaded this morning.”

Dad looked at the other men.

“How’s your corn looking?” one of them said as he dropped back a step.

“Good,” the other replied. “We’ll be picking soon,” They faded away leaving Dad with me.

“It’s not the same calf,” I repeated.

Dad looked at me for quiet seconds and in those seconds a little chill ran up my back.

“No. No, it’s not the same calf.”

“Well, where is she?”

“I had to get another calf.”

“But, why? You said the one we had was one of the best.”

“She was.” Dad crouched down on his heels and looked me straight in the eyes. “On the way in, she tried to jump out of the truck.” Dad hesitated. “When she tried to jump out, she fell and broke her leg.”

My stomach went hollow. “Will she be all right? Where is she? Can I see her?”

“No, Squirt. I had to put her down.”

Tears welled in my eyes. I felt my throat clench and my face go red as I struggled against crying. It was not as though this calf was more special to me than any other calf. But I had helped get her ready. And she was the best.

Dad put his hand on my shoulder and the warmth sank into my skin. The tension drained out of my face.

“Let’s go now,” he said. “We don’t want to miss the bidding. Shorty told me he’s going to start with that stray dog.”

Dad did not linger on the calf he lost nor would he let me. Together, we walked over to the hayrack where someone lifted up a puppy that looked as though its parents included Beagles, German Shepherds, a Collie and any range of mutts. It was very cute.

“We’re going to start the auction with this little puppy,” Shorty called out to the crowd. “She needs a good home and we hope to find her one. Who’ll start the bidding at a dollar?” Someone raised a hand. “
All right, got one-let’sheartwo-two-gottwo-howaboutthree.”
The auction was off and running.

Shorty was a farmer, a professional auctioneer and he also sang with a band at wedding dances on Saturday nights. He and Johnny called the Harvest Auction every year. They knew how to work a crowd, helping novice bidders get into the game and encouraging experienced bidders to go higher.

When the puppy sold, the winning bidder donated the puppy back. That little puppy was sold and donated back at least four times during the day until she went home with the people who bought her the first time.

I slipped in and out of the bidding crowd during the afternoon. But when everyone stood in front of our truck and Shorty drew the crowd’s attention to our calf, I wiggled through to stand at Dad’s side. “This is one of Harvey’s best heifer calves,” Shorty said. “You won’t find a better calf in these parts. Let’s start this one out at $25.”

I gasped. I looked at Dad. He was holding back a smile.

25overherenow35-35-35-now40got40now50-50-50got50-50-60-70got80allright

The bidding was fast and furious and it took several moments for me to realize Dad was bidding, too. On his own calf! Shorty’s eyes darted back and forth, catching and signaling bids with his hands and urging the bidders on. Looking around, I saw that several men were watching Dad as much as they were watching Shorty. Each time Dad bid, one of them would bid, signaling in the almost invisible way of experienced auction goers: a wink, a nod, a raised finger. Motions the casual observer would never even see. The bidding on our calf was a game, just like selling the dog, and they were all in on it.

Got85-85-85let’skeephergoingboysthiscalf’llmakeagoodcowgot85-90-90

A cheer went up from the crowd. The bids came more slowly as the price crept up, but Shorty urged the crowd on.

Don’tstopnowboys90-90howabout92-92-got92-92-now95-95-95.
It looked as though the bidding might be over when Shorty caught a bid from Dad.

now100

Another cheer from the crowd.

100-100-
Shorty scanned the crowd, taking in every man who had bid up to now. None of the other bidders raised a hand, dipped a head or winked.

100 going once . . . going twice . . . going three times. Sold! For one-hundred dollars to Harvey Denter!

The crowd cheered and clapped and laughed. It was the most paid for any one thing at the auction so far.

Dad bought back his own calf. For $100. I didn’t know much but I did know that $100 was a
lot
of money.

“You’ll get flies in your mouth,” Dad said when he saw me gaping at him. I pulled my mouth shut but incomprehension clogged my mind. “I couldn’t let that good calf go,” he confessed.

Dad had donated two calves and then bought the donation back. This was a twist on giving, a level of sacrifice, that was beyond my understanding. I ran off to tell Mom.

“He did?” Her eyebrows arched and she shook her head one-quarter inch. “Well, it’s for the church.”

Turning 10

The Big Ben alarm clock erupted, clanging in the predawn quiet like a spoon on the sides of an empty soup pan. The silver-green, glow-in-the-dark hands pointed to 5:15. I fumbled to shut it off even as I struggled to pry open my eyes.

Flinging off the blankets, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat up. I was afraid if I closed my eyes for even a few seconds, I’d be asleep again. I’d lain awake last night thinking about this day, as excited as if the dawn would bring Christmas morning.

Next to me in bed, Sue burrowed down under the covers, cocooned in the warm nest I had just vacated, blissfully unaffected by the alarm. At eight years old, my younger sister would not get up until 6:30. Until yesterday, I’d slept in just like she did. But yesterday I turned 10.

As I pulled on my pants and sweatshirt, I heard Jane fumbling around in her room down the hall. In the dark, we sat on the mud room steps and struggled to pull stubborn rubber galoshes over our shoes before we headed out the door. The first light of dawn was breaking and dew was heavy on the grass as we trekked down the hill to the barn.

Jane saw me yawn and gave me a light jab in the arm. “Get used to it,” she laughed.

Stifling another yawn, I grinned back at her and took a deep breath of cool October air that made my lungs and skin tingle. Reaching up over my head, I cupped my hands around the Morning Star as if it could hold my excitement over how grown up I felt to be heading for the barn to help milk the cows.

Each morning, Dad left the house at 4 a.m., way before it got light out, to start the milking chores. Every morning and every evening of every single day of the year he milked cows. Start to finish, the milking chores took about three hours, though the actual milking of the 50 cows only took an hour or so. When Dad went to the barn, he set the milking machines together, poured a bucket of grain in front of each stanchion, and opened the barn door for the cows to file in.

Just like chickens, cows have a pecking order so when Dad opened the barn door he knew which cows would come in first. The same 10 cows came in the first batch, the same 10 came in the second batch, and each cow always went to the same stanchion.

Milking began exactly at 5 a.m. Dad was particular in that way, as precise as his German ancestors. Mom was supposed to get up after Dad did, but sometimes she fell back to sleep and then his impatient voice at the door jolted all of us out of sleep: “Ma! It’s time to milk!” When Dad had to trek back to the house to wake Mom up, he wasn’t happy. At the sound of his gruff voice, Mom scrambled out of bed and hurried to the barn where she took over washing the cows’ udders with warm iodine water and attaching the milking machines.

When a cow finished milking, Dad took the milking bucket off the cow and emptied the warm, foamy milk into five-gallon pails. This is where Jane came in. It was her job to carry those heavy pails into the milk house and pour the milk into the bulk tank.

With time and strength, one person could milk the cows. But more hands made a difference. When any one of us wasn’t there, someone else had to carry that weight.

Nearly 12 years old, Jane had been carrying milk for a year and a half. Since she turned 10. Now I had reached that milestone and it was my turn, too.

Before I turned 10, my barn chores included feeding the calves during the evening milking and bedding their pens with fresh straw after school each day. It may sound crazy, but I aspired to carry milk, and I was more excited about getting to do that than to open any present I found on my breakfast plate that year.

On my birthday, Mom made our traditional birthday cake to celebrate—a white layer cake with chocolate pudding between the layers and fluffy white, seven-minute frosting mounded in dramatic swirls on the top and around the sides. Ten candles burned as she carried it to the table at noon and everyone sang. I looked at Dad. I looked at the candles. I wished and wished as I blew them out. Dad didn’t disappoint me.

“You come to the barn with Jane in the morning,” was all he said. I didn’t even try to hide my grin.

When Jane and I unlatched the barn door that morning and stepped into the alleyway by the calf pens, it was like I was seeing the barn and the cows and all the action for the first time, seeing it with a mind full of desire for grown-up responsibility.

“Morning, babies,” I murmured to the calves that stuck their heads through the slats and started bawling as soon as they saw us. I stopped to scratch the black-and-white hair that curled in tight whorls on their foreheads. Cats waiting for milk wound figure eights around my legs.

The barn pulsed with quiet rhythms during milking. The cows wiped up every kernel of grain from the manger with their long tongues and then stood placidly chewing their cuds, lowing occasionally in response to calves bawling in the nearby pens. Light from bare bulbs and the even, heartbeat thumping of the vacuum pipe that ran the milking machines suffused the barn. Up on a ledge, a dust-covered radio fed us a steady stream of weather and farm reports, local news and country music.

“Squirt, Tooter, get the buckets. You can feed the calves with this milk,” Dad said when he saw us. We grabbed the galvanized pails from the hooks in the alley and set them down by the feedbox just as Dad pulled the teat cups off a cow, flipped off the vacuum valve, disconnected the hoses, and lifted the heavy milk bucket off the belt hanging around the cow’s middle.

When he poured a measure of milk into each of the calf pails, I saw that the milk was tinged yellow. That cow had calved recently and I knew her milk couldn’t go in the tank yet. “Tooter, make sure the new calf gets some of this,” Dad said. Jane nodded. We picked up the buckets and Jane stepped into the calf pen to feed the newest baby calf while I stayed in the alley and fed other calves through the slats.

The oldest and strongest calves shoved the smaller ones out of the way, plunging their noses deep into the fresh, warm milk. “Hey. Don’t be so pushy. You’ll all get some,” I growled. Struggling to hold the pails steady, I wedged them against the side of the pen, bracing each one with a knee. With the weight off, I could flex my fingers and get the blood flowing again. Dad could balance two buckets in each hand and feed four calves at the same time. I would do that, too, someday. Today, just two buckets presented a challenge.

It took only seconds for the calves to drain the buckets. After the calves sucked up all the milk they could, I tipped the remaining drops into the cat pan where half a dozen cats waited to lap it up. This was the kind of work I already did during evening milking. Carrying milk was the new challenge.

With the calves fed, Jane and I stepped up by the five-gallon pails, ready to take over carrying milk, a task Dad and Mom had handled before we got to the barn.

“Tooter, you help Squirt,” Dad said.

“I know how,” I protested.

“The bucket’s heavy. It’ll take both of you,” Dad said and he filled the pail nearly to the brim.

Positioning ourselves on either side of the pail, Jane and I lifted at the same time. Taking short steps, struggling not to spill even a drop, we made our way with the heavy pail to the milk house. As Jane pushed open the milk house door, I heard Mom say, “Harvey, they can’t lift that.” Glancing over my shoulder before the door swung shut behind me, I saw Dad watching us. “Hmmph,” he grunted as he crouched down between two cows. I was going to prove that I could lift the pail. I could do the job.

“Wow,” I whistled once Jane and I were in the milk house and set the bucket down. “This is heavy.” We flexed our fingers. I stared up at the strainer on top of the bulk tank. I looked down at the pail full of milk. Forty pounds at least. Maybe 50. “How are we going to get it up there? It’s so high.”

The bulk tank filled half of the milk house. A stainless steel monster, the tank was big enough to hold the milk from milking the cows morning and night. A cooling system at one end of the tank ran a paddle that stirred the milk and cooled it as we poured more in.

The top of the bulk tank met me at eye level. The stainless steel strainer, fitted with a disposable filter pad, was positioned in a porthole on top of the tank.

“We can do it,” Jane said. “We both have to lift at the same time.”

“I don’t know,” I eyed the bucket and the strainer warily.

“We can. Grab hold,” Jane ordered. “Are you ready?” she asked when I’d taken a position opposite her and had a good hold on the pail handle.

I nodded.

“When we get it halfway up, rest the pail on your knee, grab the bottom of the bucket with one hand and we’ll lift it the rest of the way.”

I drew a big breath and held it as we lifted the bucket and balanced it first on a knee and then lifted again to lean it against the edge of the strainer. When we rested the weight of the bucket against the strainer, the strainer tilted. Milk splashed. “Yipes!” I jerked as milk soaked through my sleeve.

“Hold it still,” Jane barked.

“I’m trying,” I gasped through gritted teeth as we righted the bucket. “It’s heavy.”

“Okay. Lift again. Tip the pail just a little.” We lifted the bottom of the bucket higher and poured the milk a little at a time into the strainer. Jane was two inches taller and I strained on tiptoe to keep my side of the pail even with hers.

“Not too fast. It’ll run over,” she said.

When we finally emptied the last milk into the strainer, I breathed a sigh of relief and stared at Jane. “How do you lift that by yourself?”

She shook her head, “Dad doesn’t usually fill the buckets that full. I guess he thought we could do it.”

“I can’t,” I shook my head. Here I’d been given a chance to help with the milking and it was clear I wasn’t going to be able to. The excitement I’d felt earlier drained out. Instead, fear that I could not do the job knotted my stomach.

“You’ll get the hang of it. Come on. We have to get going,” Jane grabbed the empty pail and I trailed behind her back into the barn. I was not so sure.

When we set the bucket down in the alleyway near the cow Dad was milking, neither Jane nor I said anything about splashing the milk. But looking up at us as he squatted between the cows, Dad’s eyes trailed over the milk-soaked sleeve plastered clammy and cold to my arm. “Squirt, go get another pail out of the milk house.” I ran back into the milk house and grabbed the nearest pail off the rack on the wall.

When Dad took the bucket off the next cow, he poured half the milk into Jane’s pail and half into mine. I hoisted the bucket alone. I took a few steps, wobbling under the weight, the edge of the pail scraping against the side of my leg. It was still heavy. Straightening my back, I kept walking. If Jane could do this, so could I.

Jane leaned her back against the milk house door and pushed through. I did the same. Once inside, we set our buckets down. “Look at my hand,” I said, showing her the white ridges where the pail handle pressed into my fingers.

“Yeah. Me, too,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, turning her palms up to me. “You get used to it. Come on. I’ll help you empty your pail.”

When we lifted the half-full pail of milk between us, it felt light by comparison. This time, we didn’t spill any.

“Let me show you how to do it yourself,” she said after we emptied my pail. In one swift move, she took the other pail of milk, lifted it with both hands until she could rest the bottom rim on her knee. Then she held the handle with one hand and grabbed the bottom rim of the pail with the other. With what looked to me like superhuman strength and in one even move, she lifted the pail up until the top edge rested lightly against the strainer. She emptied it without spilling a drop. “Got it?” she asked when she brought the pail down from the strainer.

“I think so,” I frowned. “What if I spill it?”

“You won’t. Now let’s go,” she said and turned back to the barn.

I grabbed the other pail and followed. I hoped I wouldn’t. I wasn’t so sure. My confidence was not as great as when we walked down the hill from the house. This was a lot harder than I had thought.

I set my empty milk pail near the cow Dad would finish milking next. He was crouched down by the cow, checking the flow of milk from the teat cups into the milking machine. Just as he looked up at me, the cow swished her tail and smacked him flat across the face. I clapped a hand across my mouth to stifle a giggle. Dad grimaced, grabbed the cow’s tail and tucked the end behind his bent knee. “That’ll fix her,” he said, winking at me.

Dad moved among the cows with confidence. Meanwhile, Mom was tentative, wearing a hesitancy she telegraphed to me in a tight smile and to the cows in her abrupt movements.

Carrying a small bucket of water, Mom squatted down between the cows, washing each udder clean of manure and dirt. When the udder was clean, she tugged on each teat, squeezing out a squirt or two of milk. Those squirts of milk cleaned out the duct and encouraged the cow to let down her milk. That task accomplished, Mom took one of the milking machines, hooked the hose to the vacuum line and attached a teat cup to each teat. Then she moved down the line, stepped between the next two cows and crouched down to do it all again. Mom did these tasks morning and night, every day of the year. But she never came to like it.

Thinking about it for more than two seconds, you will understand why Mom was never quite at ease. While washing udders, Mom put her 140 pounds between two cows with a combined weight of more than a ton. If two cows decided for any reason to step toward each other at the same time, anyone standing between them absorbed a ton of pressure. Literally. Dad’s ribs were cracked more than once.