It was fun playing in the neighbors’ old barn loft

In spring there were baby kittens and their mothers in the Estes’ barn loft. In summer there was soft-stacked hay there. It was great for jumping and rolling in. And it was a good place to hide from my brother and his friend, John Austin Estes. As there were baby chickens up there, I wondered how a hen got into that high place; certainly it was not by the vertical, homemade ladder I had climbed! I was concerned because there was no water up in that second-floor loft for the hen. One day I saw that hen on the ground walking around in circles, eyeing the big open hole at the front of the loft. When the hen was finally in the right spot, she ran, flapping her wings wildly, and then went airborne still flapping. She just barely caught on to the loft boards with her feet and kept her balance. I worried no more about the hen.

Mothers and others convinced us girls that it was time to learn stichery; we were taught to make samplers. We were expected to embroider name, date, location and a Bible verse in tedious cross-stitch. I was helping in the dairy and didn’t have time to make a sampler; those samplers are now treasured as heirloom antiques.

Some farm boys proved their manliness to each other and to some of their dads by swallowing raw hens’ eggs! They were secretly proud of having swallowed one without getting sick. Girls weren’t supposed to suck eggs, and that was just fine with me! A boy was supposed to be able to down one, maybe more, by the time he was 13 or 14 years old.

Before we started home, Bess Estes walked with us as far as the barn; we watched as she sat down on a one-legged stool to milk her cow. No milk came at first, but when Old Bossy began to "give her milk down," the sound of milk hitting her heavy metal bucket was "zerpt-zerpt; zerpt-zerpt." A cow’s udder has four handles, or "teats." Old Bossy stomped at flies and switched her tail a lot. Bess would rock backward each time, but she never lost her balance, and she didn’t spill the milk! That’s why milk stools have only one leg!

John Estes preferred goat’s milk. Nanny goat’s udder had only two "teats." In late afternoon the goat hopped up on a narrow platform attached to the side of the barn and waited for John to bring her food. He poured grain into her box, and she licked and chewed as he milked a rusty cup full of milk. He held it in one hand as he milked her with the other. Bess poured warm, foamy milk into a rusty bread pan, and many cats jumped down from their perches and raced to it, lapping up supper as fast as their little pink tongues could bring it up to their mouths.

In many ways this family lived much like other early farmers in mid-America. However, most families had several children. Bess and John Estes had only one, my brother’s friend, John Austin. Sadly, in his teens, John Austin was killed instantly while driving a team of horses in a violent electrical storm. Bess visited his grave at Olivet Cemetery almost every Sunday for the rest of her life. She always went early to arrange flowers for their beloved son, John Austin Estes.


Click here to return to the index
Copyright © 1994-2010 Sue Gerard. All Rights Reserved. No text or images on this website may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the author, except small quotations to be used in reviews.