3. More About Papa

By mid-November there were mornings when white frost was to be seen on the ground. About that time our country parishioners were slaughtering hogs. The preacher’s family was not forgotten. Our friends would drive up with a fresh ham or a few yards of sausage. Some of this pork we preserved in brine, but Papa had invented a process for curing sausage, hams and bacon; he climbed up on top of the house and suspended the meat on a broomstick over the huge chimney. For many days nothing but hickory was burned in the fireplace. (I have tried to remember whether, on these occasions atop the house, Papa wore his plug hat; but I am not quite sure. That would have been something to see, though, and I wish I could say certainly that this occurred.)

Neither my sister nor I went to school. I was too little and Lou was easily subject to bad colds; and the schoolhouse was a couple of miles away. Considering her family’s record for pulmonary troubles, our parents thought Lou might be better off at home in bad weather. However, she probably learned more at home where she was in the hands of skilled tutors.

I have no remembrance of our first Christmas in Kentucky; nor do I recall anything of importance happening that winter. But the arrival of spring was eventful. It came early. Sparrows built untidy nests in the tall pines. Blue jays glided low, buzzed the house, and inspected the eaves of our barn. Robins pulled worms out of the ground. Sometimes this was very funny and made us laugh. A big robin would put his ear to the ground and listen. Presently, as if he whispered some deceitful promise to his victim, the top end of a brownish-red worm would appear. The robin would grab the worm about an inch back of its ears, and pull. The worm, realizing that he had been played for a sucker, would try to wriggle back into his hole. Now the robin would brace himself and give such a mighty tug that the worm would suddenly surrender his full length, and the robin would tumble back on his tail. So far as I know (I am not an authority on birds) a robin’s face never betrays his emotions, but he can reveal plainly enough, by a toss of his head, that he is embarrassed. He glances at your window, notes a couple of laughing children, shrugs his shoulder, and takes off with his squirming worm.

Soon the bare branches of the maples seemed to swell and intimations of leaves appeared at the top. Papa found a clump of alder-berry canes, cut the heaviest of them into foot-long pieces and made hollow spiles of the bark of a size to fit the auger holes he was boring in the tallest maple trees. We went about, for days, pouring the sap from the pans, dishes and kettles into our large tin buckets, which Papa carried to the kitchen, and Mama boiled down to a thick sirup. This was good fun, and it was good sirup. It went very nicely on buckwheat cakes; and there would be a thick slice of smoked ham for breakfast. (A man told me recently that our modern smoked ham is produced by giving the pig, while still afoot, a hypodermic shot of some chemical that tastes a little like smoke; though this man may have been kidding me. I am a trusting soul and will nibble at almost anything, no matter how preposterous. However, this is not an invitation to any of you to try to sell me a dead mouse-to wear on my watch chain.)

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