What I Learned as a Country Kid

I was a middle child with an older brother and sister and three younger sisters. Owen and Susan bossed the younger ones around while Shannon was the baby to be cosseted and indulged. Somewhere along the line, I determined that my role was the peacemaker. I’ve applied that behavior to my social and work interactions for the past sixty years.

I preferred reading over chores, so Mom had to call me numerous times to come help with household chores. I still feel twinges of guilt for being so selfish with all the work necessary in a large family.

After dinner, my sisters and I formed an assembly line to take care of the dishes from eight people. One cleared the table, while another washed, and another would dry and one would put them away. We even devised a game with the dictionary to help pass the time as we worked our way through a mountain of dirty dishes. Whoever cleared the table, would then get out the dictionary and choose an obscure word. The rest of us would try to guess what it meant.

Living on a farm, we had a lot of outside chores. My brother milked the cow in the morning and evening and he had pigs as his 4-H project that had to be fed. The old sow was named Suzie. I don’t think we named the piglets. They would get out of their pen and we would have to herd them back. Pigs are very independent and don’t herd easily.

Every year the cow had a new calf. We fed him with a bucket that had a teat on it. One year we named the calf, Hamburger. His mother, the milk cow's name was Cream, so Hamburger sounded appropriate. He was cute when he was small. As he grew, we took care to keep our bare feet away from his heavy hooves when he followed us around or leaned his bulky body against us.

We all had our rabbits to feed and water. That meant hauling buckets of heavy water down to them. No matter how hot, and Kansas is very hot in summer, or how cold, the rabbits required tending. It wasn't just a cage or two, as our combined rabbitry must have numbered around 100 animals.

All of us provided the slave labor for the enormous garden the family grew. I remember hours of hoeing and pulling weeds and planting under the searing Kansas sun. A productive garden was essential to feed the family. It seemed burdensome at the time, but now I find growing vegetables and flowers a fun hobby.

Living in the country, we had little opportunity to spend money, so we didn’t receive an allowance. Since we didn’t get television until I was in the 8th grade, we weren’t bombarded with advertising the way children are now.
Our 4-H projects earned us small sums when we won prizes of cash and ribbons at the county fair. We also sold some of our rabbits to other 4-Hers getting started in the project and sold the rabbit meat to a local supermarket. Besides the daily care of the rabbits, we all participated in helping slaughter them when they reached the right size. That sounds cruel to someone not raised in the country, but as farm children, we knew where the food on our table originated.

We learned cooking techniques in 4-H where we started out learning to make muffins; the bread type, not the cake kind that people eat now. We helped with family meal preparation, but Mom was often more concerned about getting a meal on the table than in instructing five girls in cooking skills. Along the way, we learned to make cookies and cakes. I knew how to churn butter, snap beans and peel potatoes. Some of my sisters learned more about cooking, so probably my lack of interest determined what I was taught.

I learned to make flower arrangements which I liked doing. Mom liked that too, and we won some blue and purple ribbons at the county fair with our flower arrangements. She grew hybrid iris and other flowers along the fence in our yard. If there weren't enough flowers for our fair entries, we would gather wildflowers and interesting seedpods to augment the display.

We learned to iron our own dresses for school. We started with handkerchiefs, then progressed to aprons and finally to ironing a dress. Those puffed sleeves were the hardest part. The skirts were gathered and full, so it took awhile to iron those.

I don’t remember shopping much for clothes. We had some more affluent cousins and enthusiastically divided up their hand-me-down dresses. Again 4-H taught us some sewing skills and I remember making an apron. Later in high school home economics class, I reluctantly made a dress, but goofed up the button holes, making it unwearable. Although I admire people who sew, I just don't want to do it myself.

I wasn’t interested in learning to drive. It was a standard ninth grade class, so I muddled my way through Driver’s Education. Since I was only fifteen then, I wasn’t going to be driving on my own anyway. My older sister was anxious to drive and my brother took a part-time job at Sears to earn enough to buy his first car. All through high school, he drove us to town for school. Finally when I started college, I had to dredge up my memories of Driver’s Ed and start driving. Fortunately by then, the frightful images of car crashes shown in the cautionary film in class had receded in my memory.

Story ID:	5326
Written by:	Virginia Allain (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Organization:	none
Story type:	Family Memories
Location:	El Dorado Kansas United States
Year:	1950
Person:	Virginia Allain