Maxine Lee is grandmother of our good friend carterzest. We will continue to share the narrative of her family’s history as presented in the book she published in 2005 entitled Some Assembly Required.  The gathering of her stories in the book was a result of her dream “to leave a printed account to my family, of my beginning, my birth place and childhood, and a few of the lessons life has taught to me.”  Thank you, Maxine, for sharing with us what you gathered for them.

Links to previous posts in the series will be shared at the end of each Sunday’s post. This is # 3 in our series of 7.

Scalped

My brother, Larry, was about three when Dad was plowing a field up the hill from the house. My mother was on her way to mail some letters near the highway. We kids liked to follow the plow, walking in the cool, sweet smelling earth as the horses slowly pulled the plow down the furrow. Maybe Mom’s arrival in the field distracted us all. I am not sure how it happened, but my little brother stumbled into the furrow, and instead of getting behind the plow, he got in front of it, and the plow ran over his head. Mom threw the mail into the brush, grabbed my brother and raced for the house with Dad and us behind her, after he tied the horses. Like with most head wounds, there was blood every where. My little brother recovered nicely – without a doctor, except Doctor Mom, and without antibiotics, just cool well water. The cut didn’t even leave a scar.

Fruit and Vegetables

We never went hungry. The farm always provided what we needed, and the cream money bought things like sugar and salt. Since we raised chickens and went fishing, we ate chicken and fish in the summer.

From our little home on the edge of the peatmoss swamp, Mom foraged for greens in the spring. She made a salad from the new dandelion greens – splashed with hot bacon grease, some vinegar, a little sugar, and fresh green onions from the garden. We had field corn, sweetened with a little sugar, wonderful potatoes, fresh from the earth or from the cold cellar which was dug into the side of a hill. In the fall, we gathered carrots, potatoes and turnips and buried them in sawdust in that cellar. We stacked squash for our table and for the cattle to eat. We also stored dried onions.

Mom bought flour and corn meal. One winter, it was so cold no one dared to venture to town, and we had to eat a lot of corn meal mush which was not good without salt. We also ran out of kerosene for the lamp, and had to sit by the light of the cook stove until bed time. We kids thought it was fun, except for eating corn meal mush without salt. Once, I got a taste of celery and I didn’t like it.

We had a young guest, and Mom prepared a lunch, made up of vegetables and a big ear of buttered corn. Our guest looked at it and asked, “Is that all we get?” Later, he refused seconds because he was full and said how good it was.

The storekeeper in New London knew my dad had a bunch of kids, so he sent home a box of bananas which were getting too ripe. It was the first time I had tasted a banana. In our home, an orange was part of the treats Santa Claus brought. I was becoming quite worldwise.

My father had us pick dandelions, and when he had a huge supply of the little yellow blossoms, he made dandelion wine. All those flowers we picked only made about a pint of wine. We never had a taste of it, of course.

We had a crabapple tree and a mulberry tree at one home and the fruit made a lot of jelly. We picked wild gooseberries, and once we picked and picked wild strawberries from which Mom made a strawberry shortcake with real whipped cream.

We always made our own butter from a good supply of cream. Making butter was a game for us all, especially in winter when it was too cold to play outside, and we got too wild around the house. Mom would bring out a two-quart Mason jar, two thirds full of cream. We rolled the jar back and forth, or shook it, until after much complaining and arguing, the cream turned to butter. The milk was used for making biscuits. Mom made the best biscuits ever, and baked the finest white bread anywhere. To keep up with the demand, she baked eight loaves of fresh bread every other day. Bread and white gravy was a staple, and having fried bread on baking day was a special treat.

Coming home from school, Mom would make us a snack. A big slice of that home-made bread spread with bacon grease and peppered, or set in a dish and covered with thick, rich cream and some sugar. Yumm.

In the fall we butchered our winter meat. There was lots of lard and Mom would use it to make donuts.

Company’s Coming

Our visits away from home were few and far between. You don’t travel far with six kids when your transportation consists of a horse-drawn buggy. But those trips were unforgettable. Mabel and her brother lived not too far away on the old family farm. They were big Norwegian people, good friends.

The night we left sticks in my mind. Some of us had gone to sleep had to be carried to the sled. We were our friend’s dinner guests and after the meal it was customary to play Whist. It was a cold winter night. The smell of the snow, and the moonlight making diamond sparkles everywhere still lives in my mind. That it was cold was not important.

When we visited the relations in Sisseton, South Dakota, one hundred-five miles away, it was a real trip. There were lots of cousins, uncles and aunts and my grandma. We ate well including cakes and cookies, and we all slept in the wall-to-wall bed arrangement upstairs.

When Mom and Dad went for an evening to the neighbors, they played cards with a house full of neighbors who gathered from here and there. Once someone kept all the kids upstairs by running a broom stick back and forth along the open steps half way up the stairs. Something was going on, which they didn’t consider good for us. That only made us more curious.

Aunt Beatrice invited my sister and me to spend some time with her and with Uncle Wallace, who, I am sure, did not like kids. They did have two daughters later in life. This visit may have been a training period for them, I guess. We visited with a little girl next door. But one day, we were told not to go there but to stay at Aunt Bea’s house who gave us each two pennies as a bribe. It wasn’t long though before we found ourselves across the yard at the neighbor’s. We didn’t have closer neighbors at home. As a result of not obeying Aunt Beatrice, we lost our two pennies. I cried and cried.

Uncle Wallace took us with him one day. He was a mailman. It seemed like hours just riding around in that hot car, stopping at every mail box. He did buy us a soda pop which was quite a treat. Probably lunch was in a box. He got cranky and so did we.

When my little brother was being born, or maybe it was the one before him who died, we went to stay at our neighbor’s, the Quesburgs, who had a mean Guernsey bull. They had two teen-age daughters who had two big dolls with hair. We go to play with them and were babied by the girls. Our neighbors had a fine house with shiny, light colored wood floors.

Once, we visited our Aunt Mildred who was a nurse in Minneapolis. They didn’t have children and the visit does not stand out at all in my mind.

Then there was the trip out to Oregon, but that’s on another page.

Kittens, Dogs, Etc.

My father loved dogs, and we always had at least one hunting dog. His favorites were spaniels. Since he hunted a lot when he was young, there were usually two or three hunting dogs to feed.

Dad had a black and white springer spaniel named Terry. He was great for bird hunting and my father loved that dog. One day, while he was mowing hay with the horses and the old fashioned mower, with a long arm full of sharp steel teeth that went over about four feet of grass at a time, the dog, who never left dad’s side, went ahead of the horses. Suddenly, Terry cut across the horses’ heads and my dad lost sight of him for a moment. There must have been pheasants in the long grass. The dog’s full attention was on a spot five feet in front of the sickle bar and could not be seen in time. Terry lost a leg in that encounter. Dad doctored his beloved spaniel, but ever after that, the dog would suddenly feel those steel teeth again, and tear around the yard, howling and running to escape that phantom pain in his leg.

Dad came home one day with six spaniels. I don’t remember how long they were ours, but we each claimed one. Two were beautiful, blonde pups.

When our kids were little, Harlan had a dog named Cad. I don’t know where he got that name. It got distemper, and I feel badly now, that since it was his dog, he had to clean up after it. Cad had a nervous tic after that, and we would laugh and tease Harlan, because Cad sat beside the road and waved that one paw. We maintained the dog waved at all the passing cars. Cad died when he got into the path of Alice Kruse’s car. She felt terrible and so did Harlan.

His next dog was a big golden retriever who was given to us, and another found a home with Bobbie Harmon who lived up the road. Bob said he was a tough dog so he named him Tough. But Harlan named his Tuffer. He was very important to Harlan, but we were young and too busy to realize the pain it caused when we had to get rid of the dog. Tuffer had joined two others in chasing Harmon’s sheep. It’s one of those regrets you live with later.

On the farm, Dad used horses for plowing, haying and other chores for which we use tractors today. He bought two new horses, one a shiny black, named Nancy. The bargain included an unbroken bronco, named Nellie. Dad tied them to a large oak tree in the front yard of the old peatmoss cabin and went inside the house. He warned us kids to stay clear of them because the bronco was pretty flighty. And we did stay away. We watched from a distance, so we saw what happened. A slight movement of the horses shook the tree, dislodged a bird’s nest which lost an egg–one tiny bird’s egg which landed on Nellie’s back. Scared, she reared up once or twice, got Nancy all upset and both horses jerked loose and took off running.

My dad canvassed the near neighbors looking for the runaway horses, but no one had seen them. That night, my brother and I went with our dad in the car and made the rounds farther out into the county. We did eventually find the horses. But the best part was the stop at a house late at night. We were awakened out of our sleep in the back seat and taken into the bright lamp light of this big house. The lady went went into the cellar and brought up an unforgettable piece of gingerbread and an apple for each of us. That’s the part I remember.

(Kittens, Dogs, Etc….will be continued next week)

(Maxine’s faith is part of her story, and included in the book are many Scripture lessons which are also illustrated with stories from her life)

 Forgetting the Thorns

For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. (Romans 8:18)

There is a billboard on the outskirts of the city advertising a huge bowl of ice cream topped with mouth watering juicy blackberries. On a hot summer day, it looks good enough to eat.

Along the entire fence line to the river in our pasture, we have the mixed blessing of a crop of blackberry bushes growing there. Each August, we enjoy picking and eating those delicious berries. Our freezer is well stocked with blackberries for pies and cobblers, as is the jelly cupboard, with blackberry jam and syrup. Our neighbors have enjoyed buckets of berries, our pastor’s family have an ample supply of them, and anyone else who hungers for blackberries and has the ambition to pick them.

Blackberry picking is not without hazards. The thorns on those bushes, especially the old vines, are wicked. And they hide. When you push your arm into a bush to reach a tempting cluster of berries, you have to be careful how you exit. A leaf may hide thorns that are as tenacious as fishhooks and just as sharp. They grab your flesh or clothes and hang on. If you pull a bare arm out from the tangle of branches, you may end up with a nasty gash almost deep enough to require stitches. You may be so hypnotized by that cluster of shiny, ripe berries that you forget to be cautious and pay for that carelessness with blood.

When the rain comes and winter is around the corner, it will be a while before you pull out those hard-earned berries from the freezer and create those delicacies you had been thinking about while the thorns were attacking your body. You can taste that cobbler. You can taste that waffle piled high with berries or drenched with syrup and topped with whipped cream; you will forget the thorns of summer. This is reward time.

In this life, trials come. They are as trying as thorns on the blackberries, but there is coming a day when all those promises of a home in heaven and the beauty and glory promised the saints of God, in the presence of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. When we see Jesus face to face as he has promised, we will forget the thorns. It will be worth it all. We will forget the tears and the broken heart, the pain and the disappointments and the struggles. The thorns are now, however, the reward is coming and if we endure the thorns of life, we will receive a “crown of righteousness” and be forever in heaven with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Won’t it be wonderful there?

I don’t see any thorns. All I see are streets of gold and a clear, crystal stream of Living Water. I see a throne of every color of the rainbow. I see flowers and smell a perfume I have never known before. And there is Jesus, coming down the path to meet me.

Mailboxes along the roads and old barns set back in fields overgrown with weeds often served as landmarks in rural Montana. These landmarks told us where we were, and how far we had to go. Sometimes they signaled “home”  and the end of the road.  At other times, barely visible through swirling snow, they told us we had miles to go.

Maybe you’ve seen some of the same mailboxes along your roads, or glimpsed some of the same old barns through your storms.

In one way or another, anything you read in this weekly feature is a word picture of some mailbox or some old barn, tangible or intangible, seen by the author somewhere along the roads of their memory. Our stories of other times and places become word pictures of our mailboxes, our old barns.

This current series from Maxine Lee has elements of Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Oregon in it. Others have shared MBOBs from Kansas and Texas and Oklahoma and MBOBs from anywhere show up in the threads. Thank you to all who share in the posts and in the threads, and thanks again to Maxine today. 

Previous posts in the series:

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2014/05/04/mailboxes-and-old-barns-guest-post-some-assembly-required-by-maxine-lee/

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2014/05/11/mailboxes-and-old-barns-guest-post-some-assembly-required-by-maxine-lee-2/