Good Times Back In The Day

Today's high temperature was:  62 degrees

Rain in the morning, partly cloudy most of the day

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My Daddy was an only child.  I was his Mother's first grandchild and only grandchild for thirteen years--until my little sister was born.  My Grandpa died on Valentine's Day from pneumonia.  He and a group of other farmers were out in a cold, rainy day, hunting for a pack of coyotes that were killing the farmer's sheep.  Grandpa had a stroke and died a few days later.  He was 49, my Grandma, 48.

Our farm was just up the road, about 1/2 mile and I spent a lot of time at Grandma's.  She called me "Precious" until the day she died.  She had a poultry farm and hatchery, which she ran for the next twenty years, after Grandpa died--all by herself.  Up in the middle of the night to go across the drive to turn the eggs that were on racks in the incubator.  

Up early on a Sunday morning to "take off" the chicks that had hatched--usually 3,500 - 4,000 at a time.  Putting them in boxes--25 chicks to a section--100 chicks in a box.  I couldn't put the boxes together, because they were too stiff, but Grandma let me punch out the air holes.  Then, I'd play with the cardboard circles that had come out of the holes.

About 10:30, this guy would arrive to determine the sex of the chickens.  Tom--he was Japanese--apparently orientals were the best at this job.

Three boxes lined up.

The middle one held the chicks.

The one on his right was for the females (pullets)

The one on his left for the males (cockerels)

I'd sit up on a three-step stool and quietly watch.  He called me "Sweet Baby" and I knew him until he died, at age 87.

When the box on the left was full (males), Grandma took them down to the end of the hatchery and put them in a big bucket of water to drown them.  I was ONLY allowed to play with the Cockerels because Tom said, "You squeezed them and loved them to death."  The Cockerels were drowned because no one wanted to buy them.  You only needed one rooster to fertilize a whole flock of hens.

Notice the strong grip on the poor chick

My Grandma always put an extra chick in each section of the box.  So a customer paid for 100 chicks, but received 104--just in case.  If a couple of the chicks didn't make it, the customer wouldn't feel cheated out of their money.

She called it a "baker's dozen".  When I was in high school and helped her, I wondered about that.  A "baker's dozen" is 13, but she had 25 chicks in each section.  I never asked her why--apparently that was her version?

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When I got a bit older-5 or 6, Grandma took me everywhere she went!!  I remember so clearly, one day she had to take her car into Byron, to the Standard Gas Station to get the oil changed.  I got to ride along.

This is not a picture of that gas station, but similar.

We went inside the "office" and waited for her car to get finished.  There was a glass ball machine with peanuts inside.  You put a coin in, pushed the little handle off to the side and peanuts came out of the flapper.  Grandma let me do it and she told me, "Put your hand under the flapper before you slide the lever so the peanuts won't fall on the floor."

OHMYGOSH!! Best peanuts ever!

There was a pop machine too.  We didn't have pop in our house to drink, so I hadn't ever had a taste.  Grandma asked me if I wanted some pop.  She opened one cover so I could look inside.  There were bottles inside, floating around in water and ice.  I spotted a red one and asked for that.

She reached in and pulled out the bottle with the red pop inside.  "Straw-Cherry," she said.  "That ought to be real good!"  There was a place on the machine to stick the top of the bottle in and pop off the cap.  She handed it to me...

I took a gulp and almost chocked.  That pop was so icy cold and so fizzy that is burned my tongue and throat. MAN!!  It was delicious!

Over on the other wall of the office, was a rack that held potato chips, pretzels and small cakes--cup cakes and Sno-Balls and.....Banana Flips!!!

                         

Grandma got me one of those too.  

Every time we went to that station--even if it was just to buy gas, Grandma and I went inside and I got an MS Straw-Cherry pop and a Banana Flip.  She'd usually get a handful of peanuts.  After the first time, she always let me get my own pop.  I cannot begin to tell you how cold that water was!!!  I'd chase that bottle of pop around as it bobbed and floated in the water and by the time I got it out, my hand, wrist and half-way up my arm was numb from the icy, cold water.

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In recent years, I have bought other brands of Red Pop--Faygo came closest to the taste of the MS Straw-Cherry, but still, not the same. I still buy a Banana Flip every now and then, but nowadays, they taste so artificial that is hardly worth biting into it.

The summer I turned 12, Grandma made a pact with me.  Every Friday evening we would go to "the show".  The theater was located in a town (Durand) about 12 miles from home.  Because I was so tall, in order to get me in with the children's price, Grandma carried a copy of my birth certificate in her purse, to prove my age, LOL.  The movies that poor woman had to sit through...........ah-hh, but that is a story for another time.

Grandma and me.  All the time together.  Grandma and me.  

She was everything in this world to me!