5. Papa’s Young Protégé

In one of the small drawers of this so-called “secretary,” we kept our money; all of it. There would be a few large and dirty ones and twos, a couple of fives, maybe a ten; also a dozen or more silver dollars and an assortment of smaller coin. We all had access to this drawer. Perhaps, in the late afternoon, Mama would tell me to take a quarter and go down to the butcher shop and buy a half-dozen pork chops. They would be large ones, too, about three quarters of an inch thick. I do not know what that many king-size pork chops would cost today, but I am sure that the price would be higher.

I think I am safe in saying that Papa’s cash salary of $600 in 1888 was the equivalent of at least $2000 at present. The value of a dollar depends entirely on its purchasing power. I do not pretend that this is a startling new discovery of mine; but the fact is that many people seem not to have realized the truth of it. Every day your dollar, no matter where you keep it, in bank, in insurance, in stocks or bonds, or in a little drawer of your desk, is worth a little less than it was worth yesterday.

In addition to Papa’s income, which was really much better than it sounds, there were the donations; no trivial matter, these donations.

On a certain day, probably early in December, after a heavy snowfall that had put all wheels off the road and brought out the sleighs and bobsleds, a large delegation of people belonging to the three churches farthest away, would arrive, whole families of them, about ten o’clock. Most of the younger ones would take off immediately for the downtown stores, and some of the older ones too; but enough remained to prepare a noon dinner for everybody. Dining tables were borrowed and expanded. Benches, stored in the loft of our woodhouse, would be brought in and dusted. Our large cooking stove was covered with great iron skillets loaded with the fat, yellow-legged cockerels that our friends had brought with them.

Out in the barn, the men would be dumping large bags of oats into one of the tall bins, and filling another with corn. There would be large sacks of bran, too.

The communal dinner was necessarily served in relays, for the party was large and the seating accommodations were limited, but I do not recall that there was any impatience on the part of those who had to wait. Most of these, I think, were of the younger fry who had been making small purchases at the stores, or “window shopping.”

All things are relative; and the little town of Monroeville, in the eyes of teenagers from deep in the country, may have had the stature of a metropolis.

Dinner for everybody was dispatched quickly. Farmers were not in the habit of lingering over their meals. They came to the table for only one reason and they attended to this business with a minimum of conversation. It was not long before everything had been cleared away, and the donations were brought into our kitchen from the sleds and sleighs. Goodbyes would be said and our benefactors, peeling the blankets from their horses, would climb into their vehicles and make off to the accompaniment of a jubilant jingle of sleigh bells, bound for the long trip home.