Reminiscences

[Stephen_Wiley]

Kalijah.........never milked a cow, cus...he did'nt have the pull !!!

When the cows would see him coming, they would wail:  "........here comes oh lousy fingers with his pail"

New verse:

"Poor old Noble he could'nt find the cows
They had seen him comin......and snuck back to the house
Now it's no longer a wonder why he made 15000 trips
The cows had done outsmarted him agin..........."

When Noble got to the barn, not a cow did he find
So he turned around - back to the house, makin doule time.
But the cows had figured him out back to the barn they went
And now 'old Noble's' feet are worn and spent.

 8) :D  8)  8) 8) :D :D :D

[breederman]

Growing up we had a herd of jerseys,just skim a little cream off the top and wipped cream could be had for desert!
  As a youngster we still used milk cans as we were one of the last to get a bulk tank.Dad had a can route picking up other farms milk and taking it to the creamery. He had an old chevy truck that the windshield wipers worked by way of a stick in the radio hole in the dash,it was a BIG deal when we got to ride along and "run" the wipers.
  Later on when we got the bulk tank it seems someone always forgot to bring milk to the house for breakfast,I could make that trip in about ten seconde in my barefeet---in January! :D

[Ed_K]

 Norm, if you can get a swiss, you won't have a bony back to ride  ;D. Bro Noble, was that 15000 weekly or a little more?

[Bro. Noble]

WEAK  ly :D

[Ed_K]

 I remember getting sent to the barn hourly, :'( when we had one coming in. Rita had a nice herd of swiss, she traded the registration papers back to the farm for our house lot and 10 acre maple orchard. good deal, I thought.

[etat]

     First time one of my Brahma's had a calf of course she had it across a little creek, in in a little thicket, in a far corner of the pasture.  First calf I'd messed with too.  About this time of the year.  I noticed she didn't come in so I went to looking for her.  At that time I had a border collie that'd keep the cows off me if I wanted him too.  

      I crossed that little ditch on a foot log, we ran the mama off for a minute, and much to my horror the calf was dead.  I went over there and jostled it around a little bit and it took a breath.  I knew I outta get it back to the barn and get it warmed up.  Dang little thing was heavy but I picked it up and started back.  About the time I was crossing that log across that ditch......... that calf COME BACK TO LIFE!......  I managed to get it across the bank, but doing so I fell in that COLD water!......  The calf wobbled back to it's mama who met it half way and I went back to the house....

      The calf growed up just fine,...... without my help!

[Tom]

that's a great story. I'll bet you felt good that it started breathing. You probably had a lot ot do with it.

[etat]

Tom, when I found that calf it was dry.  I've since found out that that meant it had already been borned for a while. The way it fought, struggled and kicked with me a crossing that log and the way it was able to wobble to it's mama  I'm a thinking that when I found it it was playing possum!  I don't know that much about cows, still learning.  But when them bramas have a newborn sometimes they'll hide em and unless you actually go up and kick at the calf you'll swear it ain't even breathing!  

[Haytrader]

 :D
It is instinct that causes that baby to lay still.
And it is all breeds of cattle. They have very little odor for the first few days also so the preditors can't smell them. That is why the momma licks them dry and eats the afterbirth as soon as they are born. It is best to not disturb them as sometimes they will do what comes next instictivelly and that is to jump up and run. And they may be running away from momma. No fence will stop them. They will sometimes run till out of sight or they may go hide again and neither you nor the momma can find them.

I know ya said you were still learnin ck, but there was a reason that momma went to the far side of the pasture and hid. She wanted privacy. The only ones you need to watch are first calf heifers. You should have them close to the barn or corral to start with. (Iam getting ready to calf 15 heifers)
The older cows? They will take care of thenselves.
 ;)

[Patty]

One of my favorite summers growing up was in 1962.
 As soon as school was out my folks packed up all our furniture and stored it in one of our neighbor's garages, rounded us five kids up, and off we went on a great adventure.
I was just about to turn seven, I was the middle child of five, the oldest of us was my brother who was fourteen and the youngest was my sister who was only 6 months.
The first stop on our adventure was Gramma & Grandpa's house up in the Kickapoo Valley of Wisconsin. All the cousins, aunts and uncles were there visiting also, so every inch of Gramma's house was full. I remember sleeping under the kitchen table so no one would step on me in the middle of the night. The older cousins got to sleep up in the attic where Gramma stored all the neat stuff she had collected over the years. When we got older we were allowed to go up there and play dress-up in her old clothes. We would wrap curtains around our shoulders and pretend they were mink stoles. We would put on plays in the back yard and make all the aunts be our audience. My uncles would stay in the house and play cards all day smoking cigars and cigarettes, except my uncle Jimmy, he would leave at dawn to go fishing on the great Mississippi river, and wouldn't return until late in the evening. We kids would catch crawdads down in the crick for him to use for bait.
Soldiers Grove was the little town that was near, so when the grown-ups tired of us, they would give us each a nickel for a cherry coke down at the local drug store. Going to town was a big event for both us and the townsfolk. When the Ewer's gathered together at Gramma's house we probably doubled the town's population. So when us kids would show up at the drug store with the nickel in our pocket, the store owner would line us all up and ask us which one we belonged to, "Oh, so you're Mel's girl!" he'd say to me every year, "My haven't you grown! Why you'll grow up to be just as pretty as she is! You know I knew your mom when she was just a little girl." And so it would go until all us cousins were matched up with which parents we belonged to. The local kids knew every year when the Ewer's cousins were in town also and they really capitalized on it. They would bring over their ponies and rent them to us for an hour at a time, or even the whole day if we had enough money. Those poor ponies would patiently stand there while we tried to see how many of us could get on at one time to ride.
My Grandpa was a sweet old guy always wearing bib overalls with the side buttons undone and a green hat with white polka dots perched on his head. Grandpa was his own man, he didn't really care what others thought, apparently, when he painted his little house bright yellow and trimmed it in fire engine red. He even painted the front walk in red. I loved the house; you could see it for miles it seemed. Every time we would visit, it was a game to see who could see Grampa's house first. Grampa didn't have screens on the house and the flies were plentiful. Grampa would give us a penny for every dead fly we brought him. I remember my cousin Tommy would bring him the same fly over and over. I think Grampa probably knew what was up, but he never let on.
After a fun filled week with the cousins we went on to Madison to buy a tent big enough for the whole family. I had never been to such a big city before, and the Sears & Robuck Store was huge. I remember my little brother, who was four at the time, and I got separated from my dad in the Sear's store. Being the older sister, I knew it was my responsibility to find our way out of the store, and hopefully to our car where my mom waited with my little sister. I was pretty short, being only seven, and the only way I could see the front door was to go up the escalator. So my brother and I would ride the stairs up, locate the front door, ride the stairs down, and promptly get lost among the racks. We repeated this several times, and I was getting a little nervous. What if they left and didn't notice Brian & I weren't in the car? After all, there were three other kids and it was a big car. Finally a store clerk noticed us riding up and down the escalator, and came over to tell us to knock it off.  I told him our dilemma and he gladly escorted us to the tent department where my dad was, to get us out of his department. I don't even think dad had noticed we were gone he was so wrapped up in buying our new tent.
From Madison we headed back west. I had no idea where we were going, and at seven, didn't really care. We would pull into a camp ground and spend the next hour putting up the tent and unpacking our sleeping bags. My baby sister would sleep in the tent box. We kids loved living in the various parks across the Midwest. All day we would swim and fish and hike and greet the other campers. We met lots of folks and had a blast playing with the kids as they came through. We really didn't have chores, just roll up the sleeping bags in the morning, sweep the tent, and go off to play the rest of the day. Mom would go into town now and then to do laundry and buy groceries. She would bring our clothes home wet and hang them all out on a line we strung up between trees near the tent, taking extra care to get Dad's white shirt hung so it wouldn't wrinkle so badly. Sometimes she would get back to camp to find my little brother and I tied to a tree where our older brother had left us. Looking back I can't imagine what my mom must have been going through, spending the summer going from camp ground to camp ground, and living in a tent with 5 kids, one being less than a year old. The woman is a saint. By August we were in Pierre, SD, and camping in the city park. My dad found a job in Pierre, so every evening mom hand washed his white shirt & trousers, and spread them flat on the picnic table to dry, this must have been a more effective way to get the wrinkles out. When school started it was fun to tell the kids we lived in the city park. Back then Pierre was a poor community, so the kids didn't notice so much that my dresses were wrinkled and worn, because theirs were too. The evenings were getting cold by September, so we had to move into a real house with bedrooms and a kitchen, and my magical summer was over.

[etat]

Patty, thank you for sharing the memory of your  magical summer. What an experience to remember!     .  

[Tom]

Great memories. It's funny  how parents can convince kids that they are having a great adventurous vacation when they are actually looking for a job. :D  

That was good.  write another.

[Swede]

  I can recognize much of what You are telling about even if I´ve repressed a lot. Remember the pallets(?) tables(?) or what You call them. Construction in wood where the farmers  placed the cans, so the trucker easily could load them on the truck. Farmers meet there and could spend more of the day than they had time for. (As I do here) ;D. And young people used to meet there in the evening.
We get chees and butter from the dairy when the milktruck came back whith the cans. Just ordered in the morning on a piece of paper in the "unikabox". We didn´t buy much more but coffee and sugar, nails, salt........Oh yes! Coarse salt for the pork.  ;D Once a mounth there came a man in a rusty car and sold fish. We get potatoes and eggs from the farm. And the salted pork.

We all know that wather is boiling at 100* C ~212*F (?)
Do You know when milk is boiling?


Swede.

[Stephen_Wiley]

Swede,

Some of your memory's remind me of simpler times when I was younger, prior to all the electronic amusement gadgetry.

Values from relationships with your neighbors, and those you came into contact with left you with greater appreciation of life.

I think some of us appreciate this site for similar reasons, as the way we greet each other, remember values, and joke come from the appreciation of others in our lives.

Will Rogers once said: " A stranger is a friend I have yet to meet"

In our neighborhoods a stranger nowdays, may not share the same values we have come to appreciate. He or she would rather steal you blind as has recently happened to Tom !!

[Swede]

Stephen_Wiley

Today I left my old mobilephone for repair. The man in the shop told me that less than 30 years ago, when he began working with this stuff, he just had to call telephone exchange, tell the lady his own number and ask for being conected. NO ONE had in his mind to say he was calling from another´s  number!
Today You can get killed on the street for a ´phone.

It´s my best memorys, that time when people understood that we need each other. In the village I lived untill I was 5-6 Y.O. they had a thresh maschinery  and many other things together, necessary for get the life go around. Ewery man  in the village where in the barn at that farm who had  treshing-day. There where no place for deviance.

Swede.

[Patty]

Some places are still like that; you just gotta go looking for them. In our area, if a neighbor needs help, all the folks around pitch in. We've helped to build a corral for 1 neighbor, a lean-to for another, pulled folks out of ditches, etc. It makes life more fun. Last summer a bunch got together and reroofed the widow's house, while the ladies inside baked up lots of goodies. One of the neighbors boys was hurt badly in an accident, the whole area pitched in to help raise money, watch their cattle, watch their other boy, etc. It is just what you do. Just lately Norm & I have been treated to some great cooking. Norm shot & butchered a couple deer for one of the neighbors who needed the meat, since then she has brought lunch over to the office for us many times. What a nice treat! My point is there are still nice people out there in this world, you just gotta go out and find them.  ;)

[etat]

For some reason I was just sitting here thinking about the old party line.  Remember them?

[Stephen_Wiley]

Yes,  I remember the party line and...................I also spent a summer in eastern Oregon in which the phone was the old box with a ringer.

If I remember right to make a long distance call required the operator to make it. You would contact her (generally a her in those days) by making three short rings followed by two long ones.

In the community I was in, I think there were approximately 20 people.  The hand written phone directory looked something like the following:

Smiths        o_ _ oo
Johnsons     _oo_ _
Bakers        o_o _ _o_
Operator      ooo _ _

Note: at anytime anyone would could come on, while you were talking.  Many were often courteous and would say hello, apologize, maybe even ask your help with a problem (after you finished your call) and hangup. But their were the busy body Martha's who you could hear snickering, sighing or trying to quietly cough while they were listening in.

[Norm]

I do ck, we had about 5 or 6 people on ours. One was the neighborhood gossip. Even thou we lived in the country she could always find something to talk for hours about.

Not that I ever evesdropped tho. ;)

[Tom]

I remember them.  My Aunt's number was 567R.  The "R" meant it was a party line.   I know there were listener's-in but at my age I was little concerned. :D  All we wanted to do was find our cousins so we could play.  That was in the late 40's and early 50's.  .........back before the turn of the century. :D

[Patty]

Yep the party line was a main form of entertainment out in the country. You get bored, just pick up the phone and listen in on the latest gossip goin' round. Mom used to get so mad at some of the ladies gabbing all day (I guess she wanted her turn too); that she would take the dinner bell and ring it into the receiver!  ;D  

[Bro. Noble]

I can remember the party lines--------that was just about 5 years ago for us.  We didn't get phone service at all untill the early seventies.  Before that we had to go about 15 miles to use a pay phone.

[etat]

About the maddest my grandmother ever got mad at me, and she was a woman who usually never got mad at all was once  when I timed how long she was on the phone.  She always claimed she never talked over a few minutes.  The actual time was more like thirty minutes, or an hour.  

[Swede]

sktate;

I´ll tell You a secret, Thats the way I´m here. Just 10 minutes but but I only watch  the hour hand.......... 8)

Swede.

PS. Please, don´t tell anyone!

[etat]

Swede, yeah, that's kinda what got me to thinking about it, and how this ole computer is kinda like a party line, gossip and all!