Drive - A Memoir 26th Installment
loss
had been too carefully constructed. Supposedly, she’d taken the
strap off its sainted nail to use as a riding crop to urge on 'Oscar'
our burro. She had ridden out into the desert (which she’d never
done before), and when she came back, she’d told the parents she’d
lost it. “Linda deliberately lost it a foot underground where she
buried it,” I told Russ and then explained my conspiracy theory –
which turned our later to be exactly true.
“So
the very same day Edith pulls out the Monkey Ward's catalog and
orders the new razor strap to hang on the nail and frighten the
children,” Russ said.
“You
know she never uses it, only the Old Man does. She controls us with
the
look,”
I added.
The
look! If we would act out, sass, or disobey, even with guests nearby
which might inhibit the normal parent, she would snap her head around
before we could scram. Her eyes would burn into our eyes. Even if we
looked away and then glanced back, her eyes would be just as focused
and would draw us like a vacuum “wham” right to her eyes. We were
doomed to obey seeing the pinched brow and statue–like intensity,
and to top it off, if we were really deserving of ‘the look,' she
would vehemently intone ‘tut, tut, tut’ and that would finish us
off.
Chapter
5
At
chore time I would sometimes recall growing older milking cows. I
think I was about seven or eight when I started milking by hand. I
recollect one time when I was very young I had finished milking and
was toting a bucket of milk to the old house. I was spinning around
and trying to see how high I could spin with spilling milk. Worked
real good and the centrifugal force kept the milk in the bucket. I
thought, “I wonder if I could swing the bucket around then up over
my head?” and I tried it. Didn’t work. As the bucket swung I
didn’t have the strength to complete the swing and the bucket went
over head, stopped, and dumped the still warm milk down on my head.
To
my surprise Edith didn’t punish me and only laughed at my story
saying, “It’s okay; we have plenty of milk.”
Time
passed and the dairy herd grew. Linda, Russ and I were milking 18
cows by hand every morning and every night when we finally got
automatic milking machines. My thoughts returned to the present and
as we collected cows from the field, I asked Russ, “Do you remember
milking the cows before these fancy milking machines?”
“Boy,
do I,” Russ said, as we herded the milk cows into the corral,
jigging back and forth to keep the steers and heifers out. A
seriously stupid heifer saw an opening and bolted through the gate
and knocked me into the gate post.
I
began complaining, “Crazy cows!
500 more words tomorrow
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