Summer past
McCarthy, Abigail
OF SEVERAL MINDS ABIGAIL MCCARTHY SUMMERS PAST Listening to the corn grow As we head into high summer I find myself thinking often of summers long ago and a way of life long gone. When...
...In the yard near the back door, hens—speckled black and white or Rhode Island Reds— scratched for food, each surrounded by her chicks...
...It was a simple life filled with small satisfactions and discoveries...
...Others with an urge to "setting" had to be shooed away...
...It was always called Aunt Molly's, never Uncle Dan's...
...Then it was back to the house where preparations for midday dinner were in progress...
...We looked on from a distance because of Aunt Molly's fear that what she always called "the animal" might be with them...
...Sunday Mass the next day was followed by a special dinner and a quiet, lazy afternoon...
...The farm I remember was relatively small—one hundred and sixty acres...
...One cousin was shelling peas, another peeling potatoes...
...D Commonweal 9 July 16,1999...
...We children played hide-and-seek or softball with the children there while our elders sat and chatted...
...We found the creature life on the farm endlessly interesting...
...There was leaf lettuce to gather, carrots to pull, potatoes to dig, pea pods and string beans to pick...
...But when the bull was safe in pasture, Martin would take us to see the newborn calves or the latest litter of pigs...
...Sometimes we watched the cows as they came one by one to drink at the water tank by the windmill after evening milking...
...First came the gathering of eggs from the chicken house where laying hens scattered with a clatter of wings as we came in...
...In retrospect it seems like a lot of food but it took a good deal to fuel the energy required for the work of the farm...
...I remember evening walks and being aware of the scent of new-mown hay in one field and the heavy fragrance of pollinating corn in another...
...Then it was home to cold supper in the kitchen and the evening spent reading or playing checkers by the warm yellow light of the big kerosene lamp...
...We enjoyed working our way up Main Street with them and meeting with other farm families and catching up with their news...
...It was not a very prosperous farm but it sustained a family and was a haven of hospitality for a widespread group of our uncles, aunts, and first and second cousins...
...They were kept busy with the constant baking, cooking, gardening, and canning that filled the summer days...
...Farms today are as much factories as farms and require such huge investments of money to equip and run them that fewer and fewer young people can start out on their own...
...We could help or not as we chose so we found joining in the activities as enjoyable as play...
...The farm population has dropped drastically and the small towns dependent on farmers are fast disappearing...
...Finally for us children there was the treat of ice cream cones and the rare ride home in the dark...
...It was a constant harvest...
...They were not penned but roamed the yard and seldom strayed far...
...By the time the men came in and were washing up at the pump at the kitchen sink, the table was set in the big cool dining room...
...Our Aunt Molly was the matriarch of the clan...
...Perhaps a pie was cooling in the kitchen...
...Some days we went visiting—to neighbors on the next farm or to cousins on farms not far away...
...Sometimes a late-laying hen greeted us with triumphant cackling...
...When I was a child we four—my brother, two sisters, and I—spent part of each summer on a farm...
...After breakfast the day was well on its way...
...We learned what was inside a milkweed pod and how wheat newly cut by the binder was shocked...
...Short, round, smiling and imperturbable, she was its heart and center...
...Eventually the chicken hens or, less often, the turkeys, became Sunday dinner...
...The turkey gobbler bestrode that yard and occasionally went into attack mode with his tail features erect in a fan, gobbling furiously, and posing a delicious threat as we ran past...
...Perhaps Aunt Molly had baked rolls...
...Then it was off to the garden where, depending on the part of the summer it was, there were low-lying strawberries to pick, raspberries, blackberries, and prickly gooseberries to strip from the bushes, and rhubarb to cut before it became woody...
...His flock of white turkey hens forsook the yard early to forage for food along the lane and in the orCommonweal 8 July 16,1999 chard across the road...
...Platters of pork chops or roast beef and dishes of potatoes and vegetables were on the table...
...We had time to notice the meadowlarks starting up from the meadows and the black-eyed Susans beside the road...
...Uncle Dan and Martin had already finished the morning milking and, as the noise of the separator died down, we could hear the tinkle of the bells as the cows returned to pasture...
...Each evening before the dew fell we went with one of our cousins to herd them in before they could roost in the trees as they were apt to do...
...We were allowed to make pets of the downy yellow chicks if we could, but we had little success and lost interest as they grew larger and began to sprout feathers...
...We thought it a shame when they were led away from their bed of straw into the mud of the pen by their big shambling mother, but they took to it enthusiastically...
...We soon fell into the rhythm of the days and weeks on the farm...
...We woke to the sound of the cream separator...
...On hot July evenings it almost seemed that we could hear the corn grow...
...Amazingly enough, once dinner was cleared there was time for pleasure...
...By midmorning it was time to take morning lunch to the men in the fields...
...I am glad I have all that to remember...
...Most of the eggs we picked from the nests were still warm...
...We walked with one or another of our cousins through the stubble or the corn rows to wherever the men had found a resting place at the edge of a field for themselves and the horses, and waited while they ate the sandwiches and drank lemonade thirstily, fanning themselves with their big straw hats...
...The latter were beguiling, white and clean and cuddly looking at first...
...When we came down to breakfast we could see in the room off the kitchen the tall cans of milk and cream cooling and ready to be taken to the creamery...
...The routine was varied by the Saturdaynight trip to the nearest town where our cousins picked up the few staples needed...
...The farm was worked by Uncle Dan and our cousin Martin...
...Their heads were lopped off on a block near the woodpile by Martin as we watched the gory sight with horrified interest and no guilt...
...His sisters, Catherine, Nellie, and Teresa, were teachers home for the summer...
...At the approach of anyone or anything deemed dangerous, they spread their wings, gathering the chicks under them for shelter...
...The crops were mixed—wheat, oats and corn—and there were varied livestock— a small herd of cows, some pigs and, of course, flocks of chickens and turkeys...
...On very hot days we were taken by horse and buggy to splash in the shallow pools of a creek not far away...
...There are few farms like it anymore in this day of huge acreage, single crops, and big machines...
Vol. 126 • July 1999 • No. 13
