Sunday, November 30, 2008

Willard Carlos McBride (con'd)

(This is continued from last week's post.)

Most mornings, my brother and I (Willard C. McBride) would drive the cows, after milking them, to the "field" for pasture, two miles away, thereafter would go on to school. After school, again, we would go after the cows, drive them home, feed them some, and milk them. I recall one experience which frightened me because I was afraid my brother, Dewaine, had been seriously hurt or killed while driving the cows home one evening. Due to a screeching of brakes on a car going too fast, the cows became startled and quite wild. They turned around from going forward, and ran backwards, tromping my brother, Dewaine, until he was unconscious. It was by the home of Hyrum Crockett, and with the aid of his family, first aid was given to Dewaine and it was found that he was not seriously hurt.

As I have said, much of our food was bread and milk. My mother would make jams, preserves, jellies, etc. from the fruit of the orchard. Often, we did not have enough money to make jelly from the fruit, so my mother would put up in jars the juice from the fruit. Then if we later got a little money, she would make jelly out of the juice. Jelly required a lot of sugar to make it, and often we would not have the money for sugar.

I remember well the delicious and beautiful lovaes of brown light bread my mother made, which we would break into pieces into big bowls filled with milk, take some jam, preserves or jelly in a spoon, dip it into the bread and milk, and this became a fine evening meal in the summer, especially. Also, we would eat the bread and milk, taking bites of onions or radishes, which we grew, and found this fare to be delightful to eat. We grew a garden, although this project was not always successful. In the winter, we had pork from the hogs and beef from one or more of the steers which we would kill (steers, being castrated male animals, which otherwise, would have been bulls.)

2 comments:

Alanna said...

It's neat to hear about Grandpa's life as a child and the things that his family went through.

We're lucky that he wrote these things down.

Ellen said...

Hi Jane, this is Ellen Walker, your cousin. I did a search for your dad on the internet, and found your blog. My email is lnwmelon@gmail.com.