Abby got a Spy Kit for Christmas, and it delighted me to watch her unpack all the elements. I still aim to find joy in small things: a barely-working compass, a disappearing pen, and messages coded so secretly that only a red lens reveals the true message. I felt disillusioned when I learned how to read the text without the red gels.
This picture is of our family friend, Jared Wright, a fully grown man who works at a bank.
If you want to make any night a great night during these icy nights, spend fifteen minutes and sing some Christmas songs in public. Mary Ann and I and a group of about twenty sang songs after church tonight around Market Square. It seemed as if a night where living mattered—after a wonderful Christmas service in the company of great friends—got a whipped cream topping (I would add a maraschino cherry, but they’re not Mary Ann’s favorite).
We kept a charge account at Cobb’s Country Store. I used it to buy a lot of junk I did not need nor could our family afford. Our only source of income, except in the Fall when we sold cotton, was from the sale of milk to the local Carnation Milk Company. We three boys would milk about ten to twelve cows per day. At night, when we were through milking, we would strain it once or, sometimes, twice. It was gross what we caught in the strainer. If the cow put her foot in the bucket, which they often did, we would curse and pull her foot out and continue milking—just double up on the straining pads.
After a cow had had a calf we would allow the calf to get two teats and we milked the other two to sell. We would fill two ten gallon cans with the morning and evening milking. The cans were then put in a wooden 55 gallon barrel and we poured water around them until they floated, which kept the milk from souring. If it soured, the Carnation Company would send it back. We learned that one could put baking soda in the soured milk and send it back the next day and they would accept it. They later wised up and put food coloring in the bad milk. It was only good for the hogs after that. We also tried to beat the system by adding a couple gallons of water to each ten gallon can. Supposedly, one was paid based on the milk’s butter fat content and the overall weight. Our modifications only helped our earnings.
Later, we learned that our milk truck owner and driver, who owned no cows, received a bigger milk check than anyone on the route. He would stop on the route, take his own milk cans and fill them with a gallon or so from his customers. The moral of this whole story is that there is always a way to cheat, even in the most non-lucrative trades.