The Life of Me | Page 8

so heavy I couldn't carry it. And sometimes we had to get eggs out from under old setting hens that wouldn't get off their nests. They would peck me to keep me away. I was too little to get those eggs. Mama or some of the bigger kids would have to get them.
But if the old setting hen was off the nest, I knew which eggs to get and which ones to leave in the nest. The ones she was setting on to hatch out little chickens were marked all over with a lead pencil. The ones that didn't have marks on them were fresh eggs that had been laid that day.
Some city folks are confused at times about some of the words we farmers use. For instance, take the words sitting and setting. The truth is, if an old hen is on an egg that she has just laid, and if she is planning to go away in a minute or two, she is just sitting on the egg. But if she is on the egg or eggs with the intention of hatching out little chickens, then she is not sitting, she is setting.
Even some people who are supposed to be smart don't know farm words. In college English, the teacher had us making sentences using certain double words like, "Look up a word in the dictionary." And "Hand over your gun."
I made a sentence like, "The cow wouldn't give down her milk."
The teacher gave me a zero on the sentence. And when I asked her why, she said, "A cow can not hold up her milk nor give down her milk."
I told her, "Lady, you may know your English, but you sure don't know milk cows."
Now back to the Flint farm.
I was so little that, when I would throw out corn and maize seed to feed the chickens, I couldn't throw it far enough away from me. Some of it would fall at my feet. So the big chickens would crowd around my feet to pick up the grains and I was afraid of so many big hens so close to me. And I really got scared when they started pecking the feed out of my feed bucket. Sometimes I would drop the bucket and run away.
I remember seeing Papa digging up big trees where he was going to make a field. It wasn't far from our house. Sometimes I would go take him a drink of water. And sometimes Mama would send me to tell Papa dinner was ready.
While Papa was drinking his water and resting a bit, I liked to get down in the big hole he dug around the bottom of a big tree. The dirt was damp and cool in the hole. Some of the holes were so big and deep it was hard for me to crawl back out.
Sometimes our old surley (bull) was close by and I was afraid of him, so Mama would leave me at the house to watch after Albert while she took Papa a drink. But if the cows were way over in the other side of the pasture, I wasn't afraid to go.
I remember our garden just outside our yard. I was big enough to pick fresh beans and peas. The older ones in the family taught me how to break the peas off the vines without breaking the vines. Mama could pick them so easily, with just the right twist of her hands. But I had to hold the vine with one hand while I twisted the peas off with the other hand.
I had the smartest Mama. She could do so many things, and she could do them so easily.
I especially remember one little incident that took place in our home when I was three. Most of the things I remember from my early childhood have been almost forgotten and I now remember them through special effort and recall. But this one brief moment has lived with me and was never put aside to be recalled later.
Mama was sitting in a chair in our living room. Albert was in her lap getting his natural milk breakfast. I was in a hurry for the baby to get through nursing so I could play with him down on the floor. In the meantime, I was standing leaning against Mama and playing with the baby--playing with his hands and feet, rubbing and patting his "tummy," and sometimes tickling him to make him laugh.
Now all this activity caused a lot of wiggling and squirming in Mama's lap. And it also caused a lot of letting go of, and getting back to, the baby's morning meal. This kind of playing with the baby might have aggravated some mothers and might have brought a word of scorn, or at least an expression