Friday, September 01, 2006

Crying over spilled milk

I was in first grade, I can still see this little girl hiding and crying because he ruined a food item, and made a huge, huge mess besides.
Someone had loaned us a cow to milk, I believe it was Tony Harper, He ran a service station where my brother worked and he raised cows. When a cow has a calf they wein as soon as possible so Tony loaned us the cow to milk. That way we could have fresh milk and butter.
My mama had a churn, The old kind with the dasher, The dasher had long ago been destroyed, so Daddy came up with his own, He took a piece of cedar, carved it out and attached it to a stick, aproximately 3 foot long. The stick went through the hole in the churn top, The top was then covered by a dish cloth, to keep milk from splashing out. Fresh milk was then put into the churn and each kid had a turn churning the milk into fresh butter. It was not a fun thing to do, You had to stand or sit or both, and push the dasher in and out of the milk. Mama always wanted us to work a little faster but be consistent.
I more than once had my turn, maybe only for a few minutes but enough I remember it like it was yesterday.
When my mama milked the cow, she would put the milk in a huge bowl to chill in the refrigerator. One day she put the bowl in, I am going to say it held at least 2 gallon, It was yellow, and part of a set of bowls she had, the largest yellow, then red, blue, green, maybe another color but you may have seen parts of the set before, In fact Sher I think you have part of Mamaws set.
So in the fridge the milk went with the door closed, But the fridge was pretty full, so Mama carefully put it in and pushed the door closed, It was a tight fit.
I opened the door and out came the entire bowl, milk, bowl and all.
I ran and hid under the table. I was covered by milk and I did not even drink milk. Mama came and got me out, she said it was all her fault, she should not have put the milk in that way.
I must have stood in amazement for a few seconds, because in my minds eye, I can still see the bowl crashing down.
That day, Mama lost her favorite big bowl, we lost at least 2 gallons of milk and a pound of butter.
But we all learned, open door slowly, don't stuff the fridge, and don't cry over spilled milk.

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