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Show CmS VVIm wn.u. service HZtfT THE STORY THUS FAR: Amos Croy, lormer sergeant In the Civil War. left Ohio and made his home near Marys rllle, Missouri. He married Susan Sew-til, Sew-til, dauchtcr ot another covered wagon ' pioneer. They built op a farm that later developed Into one f the best In the state. It was not lone before Tlomer was born to the Croys the year the Brooklyn Bridge was built. lie received his name from a township la Ohio, not after the blind poet. Tils Brst memory was of a eyclone which blew the barn down and wrecked half the orchard. As nelehbors were far apart be had few friends In bis earlier days. It was always hard for Homer to make friends, he was naturally reserved and backward. CHAPTER in In the center of the table would be a high dish with a single stem, and on this dish would be a cake covered with white icing. On a low flat dish, close beside the tall one-legged one-legged dish, would be a black chocolate choco-late cake. This cake always showed the marks made by my mother's knife when she spread the chocolate over the cake. But the knife marks didn't show on the white cake. I always looked at the cakes first, even if they were the last things to be eaten. Fried chicken! No Sunday dinner in the summertime would make sense without fried chicken and gravy, gra-vy, with the gizzards on a little dish by themselves so no one by mistake would get a gizzard. But the necks stayed on the big plate. Why this was, I don't know; but they were always with the good pieces, just as if the scrawny things belonged there. Toward the foot of the table, where my mother sat, would be two kinds of pies. If anybody asked company to Sunday dinner and didn't have two kinds of pies it was pretty close to an insult. In this little cluster of pies and jams would be the fine, creamy-white "coffee sugar," as we called it. Weekdays we used brown lugar, or coarse granulated white . sugar, but not on Sunday! In this group would be the spiced peaches which my mother had put up. But spiced peaches presented a problem. The best kind was the yellow clingstones, but the meat was hard to get off; so we had to decide whether to try to cut it off, or to put the whole thing in our . mouths. You had to know people pretty well before you could do that. - Ma would make a trip or two back and forth to the kitchen, then say, ; "Everything's on, Amos," and Pa .would say, "Well, folks, since you're . here you might Just as well stay and - eat with us." In a moment we'd all be standing around the table, me pretty close, ' and the sight of the food just about driving me crazy. Newt would look at the table and say, "1 guess you haven't sold anything any-thing lately, Amos," and everybody every-body d laugh. When we were seated, there'd be a different air; a little awkwardness awkward-ness now. "Will you ask the blessing. Newt?" Pa would say, because it was manners man-ners to let the company do that. . Then Newt would lean forward and clear his throat. There would be a silence when he finished, then everybody would begin be-gin to laugh and talk. The sound would rise and fall then there would . be a serious note. Somebody had died, or mastitis was in the next county. A long pause, here. Then as if to make up for the serious note the talk pendulum would swing up again and pretty soon everybody ev-erybody would be laughing. Ma would pick up the peacock fan and swish it with its lovely rustling. "Let me do that, Susan," Mrs. Kennedy would say when it was again time and Ma would say, ( "Thank you, Minnie, but I can do iL" But Mrs. Kennedy would pick up the fan and swish the flies anyway. any-way. You had to be pretty well acquainted for that. The "filling food," as we called it, would disappear, and chicken bones would pile up. Suddenly Ma would jump up and dash out to the kitchen; then, in a few moments, come hopping back. "Gracious, I almost forgot the roasting ears!" There they'd be, the long Grimes' Golden we had got out of our own field. We'd butter and salt 'em and ' fly into 'em, because there isn't : anything better than yellow field I corn roasting ears. We'd work our way down to the "fancy vittles," the pies and cakes and preserves. By this time everybody every-body would be eating more slowly than at first, and talking a great deal now. Mrs. Kennedy would say, Susan, how long do you cook your watermelon preserves?" and Ma i would tell ber and I'd get hungry all ver again. Newt'd push back in his chair . pd ilgh and say, "For a while I didn't think the food was going to hold out, but thank goodness! it did." Pa, who always joked ot the table with Newt to make the womenfolks laugh, would say, "That's because ny family held back," After we'd eaten everything we "Ovid, Phebe would get up in her 4Uiet way and go to the pantry and bring back a Mason jar with a screw top, and say, "Maybe gome-,i gome-,i body'd like to have a molasses cookie." cook-ie." Nobody would, ercept me. Some way or other I could always manage a few. After dinner we'd go out and sit under the water maple and Newt would open his vest and say it wasn't manners, but it was comfort, and Pa'd say, "That's what counts' It wouldn't be long till the men were sleepy, hardly talking at alL their heads now and then jerking for-, ward. The women never seemed to get sleepy. A team would top the hill and we would all try to be first to tell who it was. The company would say, "It looks like So-and-So." Pa would say, "It's not his team. It must be a stranger." Then Newt would say, "A mover passed my house yesterday," and Pa would say, "There's a lot of changes taking place." The men would continue to come closer; by this time the women would be in the door. Then Pa would say, "That's Jim Vert! He's breaking in a new horse. That's the reason we didn't know him." Pa was good at spotting people. peo-ple. Then Pa'd go out to the road and call, "Do you want to come in, Jim?" "I can't, Amos. I'm breaking a filly." "You'd better stop, Jim. We're going to weigh." Jim would be tempted. "I'd sure like to, but I better not You know We'd pick out three or four steers and head them for the scale lot. how a filly is the first time you drive her." Pa understood. After Jim'd gone, Ma would say, "I don't think he ought to break on the Sabbath." A bit later Pa would say, "Do you want to guess on the stock, Newt?" Of course the company did, and so the men and me would start to the pasture. As they walked along. Pa would say, "Are you having any trouble with Russian thistles?" and Newt would say, "I'm having one hell of a time." There would be a silence, because that had slipped. And I would think of him, not two hours ago, addressing God. Life was hard to understand. Pa would say, "Is your jack serving serv-ing many mares?" and Newt would say, "Two yesterday." Real man talk now. "Do you guarantee to stand and suck?" Pa would ask. Then Newt would say, "I wouldn't do business on any other platform." "That's right," Pa would say. Pa was always for the square deal. "Have you got any Bangs' disease?" "Yes. I have." Newt would admit. ad-mit. "You want to be careful. It's hard to handle once it gets started." start-ed." "I sure know it." "If you have both Bangs' disease and mastitis, you're in a bad way." "I've got 'em both," Newt would say, then Pa would give him advice. And nine times out of ten, Pa'd be right. He was a good farmer. "Your pasture looks short, don't it, Amos?" Newt would ask. "I'm' getting a lot of dog fennel," Pa would say. "The only thing that'll eat it Is sheep," Newt would say. "And it don't do them any good," Pa would answer. We'd pick out three or four steers and head them for the scale lot Stock weighing was a neighborhood neighbor-hood party; everybody knew we'd have a stock weighing and they knew they'd be welcome, too, and so they'd drive over about the right time. When we got the 6teers up, there'd be an extra wagon in the drive lot and a buggy, or two; maybe may-be some of the neighbors would have come across the fields on foot They'd be coming toward the scale lot, laughing and talking, the women a little behind- Everybody would crowd up to the fence and look at the steers with the white clover saliva falling out of their mouths. A steer would toss his head to get a fly off, or stomp a foot. Suddenly one of the Bteers would make . a dash and bump up against another, the way penned cattle cat-tle do. Then he'd stand still again, the saliva running a little faster. "What do you say. Newt?" Pa would ask. "You saw their pasture, you ought to come pretty close." That was a sly dig, because Newt was not much of a steer guesser. But he was a natUTal-born mule man. No one could beat him when It came to mules. Even If he couldn't guess good, Newt always made a ceremony of it He would turn his head from side to side and pull his chin and squint; sometimes he'd get over the fence and try to run his fingers along the backbone to see how firm the fat was. "Write that whiteface down for 650." Ma would put it down. One by one the men would guess, Pa last. There'd be a little silence, because he was the best guesser and knew the cattle. "I can see 720 pounds." Then the women would guess. Lots cf laughing, because nobody expected expect-ed much from them. One of the men would open the scale gate and the steer would make a dash, thinking he was getting away, then see the other gate and have to pull up short More white clover drippings. Pa would run the marker up and down till the beam was steady, then put on his glasses and announce the weight What a shout would go up! More codding than ever. What a disgrace to be low man. He'd have to make all sorts of excuses like he could of guessed closer, only he wanted to give somebody else a chance. Then they'd read the women's guesses. More laughing now. Guesses would be placed on another an-other steer and he'd make a dash, thinking too, that he was free. Finally all the steers would be through and Ma would announce who was winner. Usually it was Pa. He had to appear modest, so he'd say, "I got them up and weighed them yesterday." Then a moment of seriousness. "They've got some blackleg in Hughes Township," one of the men would say. A silence. When everybody was feeling it. Pa would say, at just the right moment mo-ment "I'll go out to the patch and see if I can't locate a melon," This would make them laugh and the silence that had vibrated for a moment mo-ment would be gone. They'd all walk to the house, the men in one bunch and the women in another, and Pa and I would go to the cave and bring up the melons. Ma would put on her apron and pass around plates and knives, and forks and saltcellars. Pa would tak the butcher knife and stand Its point on a melon, with everybody watching watch-ing and knowing a big moment had come. Down would go the knife i crack! "Why, it's full of seeds!" Pa would say with pretended disgust It wouldn't be long till everybody'd be eating, the women sitting on chairs and the men planted along the porch edge. I'd have to collect the rinds and carry them to the chicken yard and put them down, good side up. Then I would skip back, so as not to miss any of the talk. The porch and yard became a sort of Grange, as we exchanged ideas and caught up on the news. Mr. Trullinger was going to have a public sale the fourteenth, Lawson Scott was going to witch for a stock well, and So-and-So had applied for job as Knabb teacher. About choring time, they'd leave and, as they drove away, lonesome-ness lonesome-ness hung in the air. Then we would change our clothes, feed the stock, get the milk buckets and start down across the corncobs. After the chores were finished, Ma would get supper and we'd draw up our chairs to the kitchen table. But no blessing, because it was only cold mush and milk and oilcloth. We would go into the sitting room and Ma would take the paper bag off the chimney and light the lamp, and we would talk over everything that had happened, and exchange news, because Ma had got some from the women and Pa some from the men and Phebe, who lived with us, had got some. Pa would get out Wallaces' Farmer and take off his shoes with the brass eyelets and set them neatly beside his chair so no one would break their neck. Ma would look through the church papers pa-pers we'd brought home, then get out the Bible and begin to read. Now and then she would stop and ask Pa something, and he would put down the Farmer and say he'd heard it explained this way. Then she would begin to read again. Along in the autumn Pa Would say, "I think we'd better dehorn. I'll see if I can see Jim Vert In town Saturday," When he cams home he would say, "I saw Jim and he promised to come Tuesday," "How many hive you got?" Ma would ask and Pa would say, "On a rough estimate sixty." rrO BE CONTINUED) |