DOWN ON THE FARM

Aunt Lottie, dear Great Aunt Lottie, called me ‘Goldeneh’. That meant I was like golden sunshine. I loved her too, and her farm. It was real, just like Old Mc Donald’s. There was a well, dark and deep, with a bucket that brought up cold, clear spring water. Mama held me very tight in her arms and let me look down the hole, warning me sternly to keep away from it.

 

The house was hot, stifling hot. Sitting on the screened in porch was better but the tiny, tiny black oat bugs squeezed in thru the fine mesh. Aunt Lottie didn’t mind them but Daddy and Mama were miserable. They constantly swatted and complained.

 

The hen house smelled absolutely horrible so I only stayed in there only long enough for Aunt Lottie to show me how to feed the noisy pecking birds. Outside, ah, the air was clearer. Then she showed me a secret, one I couldn’t tell the chickens. Under the grey front steps, we crawled. Eggs, three eggs. Aunt Lottie found three eggs, 2 still warm. The third glass. She used it to fool the chicks as they would only lay where others had. As we put the delicate treasure in a basket, Sheba came bounding out of the cornfield. Don’t ask me what kind of dog Sheba was because I already asked Aunt Lottie and she didn’t know.  I fell in love with Sheba and wanted her very badly but Aunt Lottie wouldn’t let me have her. Mama was glad!

 

If Mama and Daddy had come with us, they would have cooled off a lot. Down the hill, just off the road, was a one room shingled hut. We had to step down and duck to go into its near pitch blackness. Dimly I could make out baskets and crates filled with fruits and vegetables, large milk cans against the wall. Aunt Lottie gathered onions, potatoes, beets and carrots and off we went, back to the house.

 

Daddy had his camera set on a tripod to take a family picture. Chairs were in a neat line on the lawn- seven of them- for Mama, Rose, me, Aunt Lottie and Cousin Esther- none for Sheba. Daddy said,’That’s one too many. Rose, move one away.’ My aunt was coming from the porch carrying a cold pitcher of lemonade and a cane with a white pearl handle. She set the drinks on a tree stump, put the chair back with the others and tenderly laid the cane against it.  When Daddy develops the pictures, she told us, her dear departed husband would be seen sitting in what seemed to be an empty seat. Nobody laughed. Nobody said anything.

 

After dinner we made ice cream in a churn with milk right from the cow and peaches picked from the trees.  I helped lift and plop, lift and plop. It turned out to be the best ice cream in the whole world. Old Mc Donald must have been a very happy farmer. And–do you know what? Mama and Daddy were kind of happy, too, because of the eight pictures on the roll, one and only one, came out blank, black.

 

I think Uncle Benny didn’t want his picture taken.