With or without company, Sunday dinner was a little more — a little more leisurely in terms of the time set aside for enjoying the meal, a little more dressed up, a little more scrumptious on the dessert.
And one of the amazing perqs of acquiring electricity (always called “juice” on the farm) was that when we went to church on Sunday, we left the cook at home.
Dad would start the ’53 Ford about 9 a.m.. Brother and I would scoot into the back seat and we’d all have a few minutes to wait for Mom while she was tucking the last of Sunday dinner in the oven before we left the house. Dad would have the car radio on with regular Sunday program featuring Percy Faith and his orchestra. We thought it was terribly clever of us to say, “That’s Turkey Face and his orchestra” and then laugh ourselves silly until Dad glanced at us in the rear view mirror remind us that our cleverness was limited.
When we came home two and half hours later, the aroma of the roast beef dinner or the fried chicken would wrap around us as we walked up the stairs from the back door to the kitchen where Mom would turn on the burner under the big kettle of potatoes ready to go, same for the vegetables, and put her big apron on over her Sunday best. Children also kept their church clothes on until after dinner was finished. I would help set the big kitchen table and within thirty minutes, we would sit down to the best kind of eating, with dessert. Dad would take his suit jacket off to enjoy the meal in the informality of the long-sleeved white shirt, perhaps with the tie loosened.
The routine was much the same if company was coming, except that everything was much more. Women didn’t skip church to get ready for Sunday dinner company, since they understood that’s what God made Saturday for. So most of the much more was before Sunday.
Saturday evenings before Sunday dinner company would be slightly different for Dad as well, since he would finish up the chores an hour earlier than usual in order to peel a big kettle of potatoes and do other vegetable preparation to free Mom up for finishing the pies and other desserts. The six leaves would be brought out for the dining room table, which would be set by us kids, with the china, the sterling silverware, the pretty water goblets and — my personal favorite — the occasions when we had the desserts that called for the use of the sherbet glassware.
One time it was the preacher and his family who came to dinner and the beautifully done roast was ready to be served when we got home, filling the air with the promise. The table was set, water poured all around, everything served family style and a good forty-five minutes of convivial conversation was enjoyed. It was only after everyone had quietly and politely eaten about 75% of the food she prepared that Dad quietly asked Mom if she might want to serve the roast as well. Personal courtesy dictated that he would never embarrass his spouse, but respect dictated that he wouldn’t remain silent for the entire meal, and leave her to deal with the by-then unfixable embarrassment of not having ever served the main point of the meal. That one became quite a story in the family –“Remember the time Mom forgot to serve the meat?” only because he truly did wait until about two minutes past the point where it really didn’t matter any more. The meat sort of became its own course that day.
If dessert called for whipped cream topping, that was a separate project. It meant that the big kitchen mixer would have been taken to the basement and set on the butcher table the night before. The cream (thick, yellow, cream separated from the milk from our own cows) would be taken downstairs at the last minute and put in the big mixing bowl.
If I am trusted to make it (a privilege that only came to me in my late teens when I finally got all the nuances figured out) a big dish towel goes with me as I head downstairs carrying the open-top cream can. The dish towel will be draped shoulder to shoulder to cover my entire front, because the cream is going to spatter until it starts to thicken. Then at the right point, the sugar and the vanilla is added and — oh, my — by the time this little project is done, folks, we’ve got whipped cream. It was only made at the very last moment when it was time to serve the dessert.
After dinner, in our younger years, the afternoon would probably include some hide and seek with the cousins — in the winter the upstairs was heated when company came if the cousins were included — so six or eight of us might be up there. The hiding places behind the clothes in the closets, in the storage boxes in the closets, under the beds on the bare floors, sliding way to the back–flat on our stomachs…(which, again, is why God made Saturdays, so those floors were squeaky clean. If there was Sunday company, the church clothes stayed on all day — and the floors were clean enough that no one could ever see afterward that we had been hiding under the beds. Again, that was a result of the fact that we understood why God gave us Saturday. )
In order to keep the hide and seek challenging when it was done indoors, whoever was IT had to count to fifty while we hid, but also only had until the count of one hundred to find everyone, at which point we would recycle into a new game, with the first person they had found being the new IT.
By this time, Mom would have set out the stack of little Danish hymnals and the aunts would be singing downstairs, in Danish, a cappella, 7-8 voices strong. There were ten aunts just on Mom’s side, and we had sixty first cousins, most of whom lived within fifty miles, so it was never a strain to get a houseful of good times going. People, food and time. They always made time for all three.
In the summertime, the afternoon would develop into a grand horseshoe game with Dad and the uncles, still in their suit pants, white shirts and ties. Younger children would blow endless bubbles and chase them around the yard. Mom and the aunts would continue visiting in the house until around 5:30 when it was time to “put supper on.” Supper was a rerun of dinner: now roast beef or sliced chicken sandwiches on the fresh buns baked on Saturday, along with some fruit salad or potato salad that hadn’t been part of dinner, just for a change-up. More coffee. More visiting. And finally, as dusk is setting in, they begin loading the cars to return to their own farm homes, 45 miles north of our farm and 40 miles south. Our farm was located in the midst of our father’s childhood community. Our mother’s home community was 45 miles north of us, with many of her sisters having the good sense to marry farmers 45 miles south of us where they actually had irrigation for their land.
We were always stunned to drive to the Yellowstone Valley, and see predictably green fields. Our lilac bushes did look exactly like the one at the right here — lilacs are tough. But the fields? Hmmm…that was a different story.
Irrigation was a fantasy that our land could never see, situated as it was high and dry and bare, miles from any water source either above or below ground. Although the Yellowstone River dependably fed their irrigation systems, the farming was certainly no less work, 24/7, but the water was a blessing.
The Sunday afternoons that followed company dinner varied a bit as we got older. Our cousins may have stayed home to take care of chores so their parents could visit longer or perhaps were with friends. Whatever the reasons, sometimes no cousins came along and it became a comfortable routine for me to do the dishes by myself. Mom would assure all her sisters that I was content and happy to take care of that, so I’d be stacking plates and sorting silverware, polishing the glassware and scrubbing the kettles in the kitchen by myself as the aunts were singing in the dining room and the uncles were visiting and laughing in the front room. Having the solitude of doing this task while soaking in the sounds of family was very pleasant to me.
There was a fun variable on the cleanup when the men, hardworking farmers all, would take over. Dad and three of my uncles did that on this occasion. Dad took the photo, but was part of the crew as well.
Montana farmers. The men of my childhood.
“The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. Yea, I have a goodly heritage. ” Psalm 16:6 (KJV) [Alternate punctuation: “Yea!!!! I have a goodly heritage!!”]