Part 2 (1/2)

I told her, ”Lady, you lish, but you sure don't know milk cows”

Now back to the Flint farm

I was so little that, when I would throw out corn and h away fro chickens would crowd aroundhens so close tothe feed out of my feed bucket Sometimes I would drop the bucket and run away

I re to make a field It wasn't far froo take him a drink of water And sometimes Mama would send me to tell Papa dinner was ready

While Papa was drinking his water and resting a bit, I liked to get down in the big hole he dug around the botto tree The dirt was da and deep it was hard for me to crawl back out

Sometimes our old surley (bull) was close by and I was afraid of him, so Mama would leave me at the house to watch after Albert while she took Papa a drink But if the coay over in the other side of the pasture, I wasn't afraid to go

I reh to pick fresh beans and peas The older ones in the fahtthe vines Maht twist of her hands But I had to hold the vine with one hand while I twisted the peas off with the other hand

I had the ss, and she could do them so easily

I especially remember one little incident that took place in our hos I reotten and I now reh special effort and recall But this one brief moment has lived with me and was never put aside to be recalled later

Ma roo his natural h nursing so I could play with hi against Ma with his hands and feet, rubbing and patting his ”tuh

Now all this activity caused a lot of wiggling and squiro of, and getting back to, the baby's gravated soht a word of scorn, or at least an expression of impatient dissatisfaction from them, but not from this mother She was one of a kind She see on Mama's left When Albert finished and was full, Maht And while he was standing there holding to her dress for support, before Mama put his breakfast away, back into her blouse, she looked over at me and very motherly asked, ”Now, do you want some of the baby's milk?”

I didn't say a word I just bashfully backed away a step or so and looked up at her and thought so like, ”That's for the baby, not for me”

For the first time in my life I was consciously aware of my mother's love for esture The poet expressed it better than I can, when he wrote, ”the love of a mother for her son that transcends all other affections of the soul” I was deeply h she had another little one to hold closely and love and nourish, she had not pushed me aside Her love included me too

As the years went by, sometimes all seemed hopeless and I would ask myself, ”What the heck? Who cares anyway?” And always that little three-year-old kid would give me the answer, ”Maarden and the water tank way up high on the tower When the wind blew and thewater, we could open a faucet at the top of the well and get a drink of fresh cold water We had a tin cup hanging on a nail on the wind up on our back porch in a wooden water bucket made out of cedar There was a dipper in the bucket that we all drank out of

Once when Papa was building his big barn at the Flint place, before he got it finished, a strong wind hit it and leaned it way over, but it didn't blow it all the way down Papa took a block and tackle and got soht

Our house had three rooether There was a long porch at the front of the house and an L-shaped porch on the back There were flower beds and flowers in our front yard, and lory vines on the front yard fence and china trees in the back yard Theypen on the north side of the barn, with sheds to protect the hogs from the summer heat and the winter cold The horse lots and cow lots were on the south side of the barn, with sheds to shelter the stock Feed troughs were under the sheds and feed was stored in the big barn

I remember the hill west of the barn about a hundred yards It wasn't a steep hill-just a gentle rise in the land But it was high enough to get up on and see Uncle Andrew's house and Grandood as I could Uncle Andrew's because hers had sotrees all around it

I remember we had a syrup mill too, up on the slope northwest of the barn We had a horse that would go round and round andiron rollers squeeze the juice out of the cane stalks The juice would run down a spout and ould catch it in buckets Then Ma pan over a fire out there in the pasture

Of course Frank and Susie and Earl would all help keep the fire going and help Papa keep putting cane stalks through the big rollers Joel would help a little bit, but I was just in the way And Albert had to be looked after too

Sometimes the cows and horses would come and try to eat the cane and we had to put the the juice out, ould let them all come out of the pen and eat the stalks we didn't want any ood ribbon cane syrup and ould put it in big jugs and take it down in the cellar But not all of it We would take so pile of wood and lots of mesquite posts They were southwest of the barn on the slope of the hill The wind had been blowing and lots of sand had drifted up in piles by the woodpile Soons were out there too by the woodpile The posts were leaning up against big trees

Just north of the hog pen was our stack lot with big stacks of bundled feed in it And when I think of the stack lot, I think of a little black horse we had named Keno, because all too often Old Keno was in the stack lot without an invitation He was not a big work horse, yet he could hold his ohen hitched to a cultivator And he could outdo all the others at acrobatics