The Ancestors, Part 20

Our third Christmas was spent with the Corl family and Possum Ross.  Mrs. Ross (Rossie) the children called her, had been called back east to be with her daughter who was very ill.  Possum got us a real Christmas tree that year.  We drove up to their place the day before Christmas, which happened to be Sunday, so we stopped at the school house for Sunday school on the way to the Corls. We took the children's gifts and the xmas decorations my mother had sent the first year and spent a wonderful Christmas eve, and the next day together.  During the we had a beautiful white frost the decorated every building, every fencepost, even the ugly barbed wire.  I never had seen such a thick white frost before.  It just transformed everything.  Clyde had to go back home Christmas to take care of the animals, but came back early.  The children had a wonderful holiday and we had lots of music.  Christmas night the musicians played for a dance in Arthur.  I stayed with the kids and had a tooth-ache.  I had had a good deal of that ever since Mildred was born, but we were 45 miles from a dentist and it didn't seem possible to make the long trip.  Fortunately we didn't have much candy to promote the pain.  I had started out with such good teeth, but lack of dental care and probably not the proper good during pregnancy.
Clyde bought a young pig each fall to feed and butcher soon after the holidays.  We made a smoke house out of a big box and smoked our Bacon and hams, made sausage.  We also made sauerkraut.  We had learned home to make craut from Clyde's mother.  It tasted especially good out there.
We named our pigs Tipperary from the wartime song.  The children always made pets of them and it was hard for them to lose them when we butchered.  I had to help with the dressing of the animal the first time we butchered, because Gene Wilson didn't show up when Clyde was ready for him.  A hog has to be scaled and scraped and after the processed is started, it has to proceed.
I didn't want the children to watch us and had them settled on the other side of the house, but we got so busy that I didn't see them watching.   When we finished, there they were, having cried while the watch the whole process, but not loud enough for us to to hear them.  Children on the farm have to learn some hard lessons.  I am surprised now that they seemed to forget them as they grew older.
Clyde often cam in on winter afternoons and and, "If you will stir up some doughnuts, I'll fry them" and while I fried the doughnuts, the children waited for the little round balls that were the holes.  We read a good many books.  Clyde like to read Zane Grey.  He hadn't read very much as a boy and I liked to have him do it.
Ruth learned to play my guitar that I never mastered.  She couldn't reach around the neck of the instrument, so she laid it flat in her lap and pressed the strings down in the right positions.  Clyde show the chords and she was able to play with  him.  We knew that she needed a piano at that age, but it wasn't possible at that time.  Clyde made a diagram of the key board of the piano, so she could learn the names and positions of notes.  By the time that we did get a piano she was really ready for a teacher.

Next week:  a long wrap up (first of two parts) as the ancestors move on with their lives, beyond the farm.