Me, Aunt Sadie & Cindy
My mom and I lived with my grandparents until I was six years old. Pop-pop was a tenant farmer in Maryland on the Delmarva peninsula and lived in an old white two-story farmhouse, the kind where the stairs go straight up from the front door. I fell down those stairs once. The only thing I remember about the fall was afterwards as my mom rubbed some awful smelling stuff on a lump on my forehead. Later I found out it was turpentine. Those narrow stairs led to some cold, cold bedrooms in the wintertime. When we climbed up to bed, my mom carried a brick she had heated on the kitchen cook stove. She wrapped it in a towel and tucked it under the quilts to keep my feet warm.
Pop-pop planted a huge field of tomatoes every year, and I remember carrying water in a Mason jar to him and my Uncle Johnny when the sun was high in the sky. Shoeless, I never worried where I stepped or thought much about the hot black dirt squishing up between my toes. When the tomatoes were ripe, they became lunch accompanied only by a salt shaker. The sun-warmed red juice ran down my chin and tiny yellow seeds dried and stuck to my shirt front. When I got back to the house, Grandmom met me on the closed porch off the kitchen where the big hand pump was. After a couple pumps of air, cold water spewed out. She washed my stained mouth with a wrung-out cloth, clucking under her breath. My dirty feet did not seem to matter.
Pop-pop had a small herd of dairy cows, and many mornings I would get up early to go with him for the milking. Standing back at a safe distance, I looked in fascination as the cows all lined up in their stalls and stood quietly with only a swish of their tails every now and then. They munched on hay as the buckets filled, and I watched Pop-pop pour the creamy liquid through cheesecloth into tall silver milk cans. When he finished, he would load up the cans, take them down our long lane, turn right onto a dirt road, and drive to a four-way stop sign. He left them there at the side of the road for someone to pick up later.
After the milking was done, it was time for breakfast. Grandmom stood over the hot cook stove frying pancakes, my favorite food which I doused with blackstrap molasses. Heavy eyelids mixed with satisfaction took over, and usually I curled up behind the cook stove for a mid-morning nap.
Most days, nothing earth-shattering happened, but life on a farm is an educational process for a little girl. Cows and horses do not get along and must be pastured separately. I think the horses must have been leftovers from plow-pulling days because I never remember anyone riding a horse, but Pop-pop did have a favorite white one. Where there are cows, there are bulls, and we had a mean one.
Walnut trees lined our long lane, and when the nuts dropped to the ground below, Grandmom and I collected them for shelling. Getting those shells off was tricky and involved two bricks and fast fingers. Even gathering the nuts was tricky for me, because I had to keep one eye on the mean bull who roamed in a field just beyond the trees. I could read his thoughts. He was waiting for me to drop my guard so he could come barreling through that barbed wire and get me. He stalked me and Grandmom up and down the fence line.
Grandmom was always alert to his nearness, too. You see, this bull had gored and killed that favorite white horse of Pop-pop’s. I don’t know how it happened, but I remember the yelling and shouting and the fear it instilled into my soul. To this day, I remain hand-sweating, heart-racing scared of bulls.
