‘Those were the days’ ...

by Julia Cocoa

     A chicken coop facing Mother’s garden housed a number of cackling hens and an obnoxious rooster or two. In the summer when eggs were plentiful, Mother laid some away in the cellar in a crock containing Water Glass. This clear substance solidified into an opaque, white, jelly-like preservative. In winter when hens laid fewer, or no eggs at all in the extreme cold, Mother fished these out. The yolks did not remain solid, but broke up. They could not be separated from the whites. This was fine for Mother who made many, fine egg noodles with whole eggs, and we had to be satisfied with scrambled eggs. Once, when my father caught a chicken pecking to death and devouring a garter snake head first, he snatched her up and beheaded her. He was not about to, knowingly, eat the flesh nor the eggs of an animal that had eaten a snake. He buried her, snake and all.

     Father had purchased the farm because he had been led to believe there was gravel to be mined, and he needed gravel in his block-making. After he moved his equipment from the vinegar plant and set it up on the farm, he began exploring for gravel. He soon discovered only sand, but that harbored streaks of dirt, unsuitable to bond well with cement. This was before the days of washed gravel. One year later my brother Arthur arrived. Since our two-room schoolhouse had become too crowded, the district had rented from my father two large, downstairs rooms connected by a wide opening. These served the first two grades under Mrs. Crozier.

     When I visited her in our nursing home, she recalled vividly the morning following Arthur’s birth. She remembered well Father’s words. ‘We have a hungry boarder who arrived in the night. We don’t know whether to call him Arthur or Richard.” There were several Richards then, one being Richard Klancer, our Gowanda mayor today. So our hungry boarder became Arthur, later shortened to Art. Time has proved Art better befits his personality.

     During those years we were kept busy. Father assigned each of us four older children so many rows of cabbage to hoe, so many rows of potato bugs to pick every evening. Boys helped in the barn. I helped Mother with household tasks. I ironed clothes and babysat Art while Mama worked outside. She taught me to crochet, and she encouraged me to use the sewing machine.

     All was not work. Our chores completed, we were free. In the summer we went swimming in the girls’ swimming hole. This was up the Cattaraugus Creek from the boys’, and much larger. And we did spend many happy hours there. We discovered a dangerous shortcut, but that did not stop us. On Point Peter Road there drops a very steep cliff above the creek over which families tossed their garbage. We had traversed this steep climb down to the Cattaraugus Creek many a time. Once however, when I stepped barefoot from one ledge to another, I landed on the bottom of a broken beer bottle. The gash bled profusely. My brother, George, helped me back up the cliff to a Mrs. Myers who lived nearby. There she washed my foot, poured burning iodine over the cut, and bandaged the foot. Then I hobbled home. That accident cured me of the shortcut!

     We “younguns," always eager for a few pennies of our own to stash in our assigned drawers among the kitchen cupboards, found work on Bunnell’s truck farm. We were supervised by Mabel Bunnell whom we called Ma Bunnell. We hoed row after row of strawberries, and when ripe, we picked them for a penny a quart basket. I really had to work fast to earn a dollar a day. Oh, how my back ached from all that bending! Then came the sweet and sour cherries, followed by Columbia berries, blackberries, currants, and red raspberries. These bush berries I enjoyed picking from a standing-up position with a basket tied around my waist. No matter when we arrived in the field, Ma Bunnell was already there. Lastly in the fall, we harvested grapes, often in wet, cold weather. We did enjoy Mr. Bunnell’s lovingly teasing his wife about their “courtin’ days” with his horse and buggy in North Collins. I can still hear her sputter, “Oh Bert. Do stop!” Late in life she became blind and lived alone on Jamestown Street near the trestle, her Burt having passed on.

(Volume IX next week)