PREPARING THE CHILDREN VISIT

This meant that on Thursday we made soap by boiling lard with some lie, lavender branches, then adding ashes from her stove into a pail by the door. We milked the four cows all week and separated enough cream, and then filling a large vat to make butter. She would start cranking the heavily geared separator for me because it was not strong enough to do that. Yet I took pride that I could keep it turning with no problem once it was started. Then we would go pick up some string beans with a large woven hamper. She would attack each long row by ambling sideways and bent over, filling her apron as she went, often whistling old Acadian songs and the Rudy Vallee hits that she loved. Only at the end of a long row would she stand erect after dumping the content of her apron into the hamper. Thirty minutes later we had a mountain of beans to cut, with a proud handful coming from me. I did learn to whistle a few songs, but the thought of the garden still fills me with a little guilt. Time to fess up to my grandma Clementine if she is listening. First of all, I was not supposed to play with uncle Jean-Marie's clarinet wrapped up in a white towel in the bottom drawer of the living-room dresser. Well, Clementine, I would close the windows and played it when I could see that you were across the street, weeding that large garden. Feeling better, back to the work at hand! The next day I would cut up the slab of grey-green soap into little bars that I then wrapped up with wax paper and a ribbon, all that for my uncles and aunts coming over in just 2 days. Next was making bread, about 20 fat loaves as some of the bigger families took 2 home with them. First, the loaves had to rise in her cavernous cast-iron stove with three decks. It had a large fire chamber that I filled and later emptied of ashes. I loved going to the woodshed to feed the fire. She would actually start baking all those loaves at 5AM in batches of 5-6 at a time, heating up the house while I churned the butter, sweating a lot. Boy that was hard work for me, something that made her smile a lot. To give me a break, twice a day she would send me to walk my namesake to the spring across the street by the garden, a horse called Jimmy just like me; I thought that was so funny! When I came back, she was sometimes plucking a chicken from the coop after killing it with a short painless flick of the wrist. She knew that I hated to see her do that, waiting until I was away with the horse. I preferred fish, as when a fisherman came up the hill with a wheelbarrow full of freshly caught Atlantic salmons, so huge and slippery I could never hold one up in my arms. The warmer waters in the Gulf have long made those large beauties leave the area.