CHORE TIME: POST #44

When our son was younger and about all that we asked of him was to carry out the garbage two or three times a week, he hated it so much that he told his mother that when I was real old and had to come live with him, he was making me carry out the garbage every day! That is how spoiled most of the kids are these days. They are asked to do very little except maybe kind of straightening up their own room occasionally. Most of the either don't do that or resent it.

Down at Herman Junction we had chores and if we didn't get them done we had to pay in some way like getting up on a cold morning and having no kindling or wood to build a fire. So, most of the time the chores were done. Let me list some of them for your consideration.

• There was the cow to milk. I never did learn to milk a cow so when it was my turn to do that I had to do some trading with somebody. I had all kinds of lessons from nearly everybody but I just couldn't do it. I would squeeze those teats in every conceivable way but no milk would come out. Dad or one of the older boys would come squeeze and squirt that milk forty feet but I could not get more than a drop or two. I sure am glad that my living did not depend upon me milking.
• There were hogs to feed. We had to mix up the shorts and get all the scraps together and fill the hog trough to fatten up the hogs. We would be rewarded greatly for that feat later in the winter.
• There were eggs to gather. I hated eggs and still do. They could have just rotted as far as I was concerned but my older brothers were sloppy pigs when it came to eating eggs. Harvel, Jack, and Ray could eat half a dozen each or more right now! When they would pour gravy over about three fried eggs and then mash and stir them up and run a cat head biscuit through there it was the most sickly looking site that I could think of. So, I gathered up the eggs like I was supposed to.
• Feeding the chickens wasn't too much of a deal. We always had some corn and it was kind of fun to throw out the corn or chicken feed and watch them scramble for it. All that I could see when I was doing that was a nice, big, pully-bone running around in there that would one day be mine all fried up crispy brown and hot. That kind of kept my mind off it being a chore.
• We had to pump up some water in the winter time because the pump would freeze that night and we wouldn't have any unless we got out in the cold, cold, weather and thawed out the pump. So, buckets and dish pans were filled with water every night when the weather was going to be so cold.
• Of course there was that splitting wood and making kindling and I hated that. I was not good with an axe and it is a wonder that I didn't cut my leg plum off. I have skinned them up a few times when I would miss the chunk of wood or that axe would bounce off the wood and get me. Then we had to carry it in the house and put it behind the stove for the fire that night and the building of a fire the next morning.
• Someone had to bring in the clothes off the line that Mom had washed and hung out to dry. It looked like that clothes line was two miles long and I thought that I would never get them all carried into the house. Can you imagine the clothes that Mom washed, rinsed, and then hung on the line? And she did that all by herself most of the time.

Yes, there were chores that had to be done every day. That was after a hard day of chopping or picking cotton in some cases too. But, it never hurt us and it didn't hurt Marty to carry out the garbage either. I wish that he had lived a few days back then, he would have said, "Man, Dad I appreciate getting to carry out this garbage a couple of times a week!"

Just getting to live in Herman Junction was worth all the chores that one had to do when we lived there and that is why everything is alright in Herman Junction today.