Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl by Carol Bodensteiner Read Free Book Online Page B

We had pie in sight.
    “Look, Mom! We picked mulberries,” Sue exclaimed as we raced into the kitchen, each of us tilting a bucket for Mom to see.
    “Oh, girls, these are great. Look how many you have,” Mom enthused, as she wiped her hands on her apron and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
    “We think there’s enough for a pie,” I suggested, the hint totally transparent.
    “I believe you’re right,” Mom said as she glanced at the clock. It was 3:00—still an hour before she had to go out to the barn to start chores. “I’m going to make a pie right now. You sit right here and tell me how you picked all these berries,” she urged as she poured glasses of milk and slipped a plate of brownies out of a plastic bag.
    “We took the ladder because we couldn’t reach them,” I said, drawing in a big gulp of milk. Mom opened the flour drawer and measured flour into a mixing bowl.
    “Look at my leg,” Sue interrupted, flinging her foot up on the edge of the table to display the bruises.
    “ Both my legs,” I said, hopping off my chair and dancing in a circle to show off the fabulous black-and-blue marks.
    Mom dusted the flour off her hands and touched lightly on the swelling discolorations. She shook her head and tsked, “Those will be big bruises all right. I wondered what you girls were doing when I saw you take the ladder down the lane.”
    “We brought it back,” I said around a mouthful of brownie. Even though it was a long haul, even though it was really heavy, it never dawned on us to leave the ladder in the pasture and ask Dad to drive down with the truck to retrieve it. We’d gotten it out; we’d put it back.
    “I know you did. I saw that, too. You worked hard for these berries,” she said with a smile as she cut lard into the flour.
    “We wanted it to be a surprise,” Sue added.
    “Well, it sure was. You have to tell me every last detail,” Mom urged.
    So we did. As we talked, Mom rolled out crusts and mixed sugar, flour and butter with the mulberries to make our pie. Never once did she say anything about the white sheet stained purple or the fact that at least half the berries were green. While we sat there telling her all about our adventure, Mom simply made us the sweetest mulberry pie ever.
     

     

 
     
    The Harvest Auction
     
    “Help me, here, Squirt. We need to get a calf ready for the church auction,” Dad said as he threw a bale of straw up on the end gate. He cut the twine with his pocketknife and broke up the bale, pushing the sections toward me.
    I grabbed squares of clean, yellow oat straw and shook them out, covering every inch of the Studebaker truck bed a foot deep. As I spread straw, Dad fitted panels onto the sides of the truck, creating walls on the truck bed that reached as high as my shoulders.
    “There,” I said, dusting my hands against my shorts when I finished. “That will be a good bed for the calf to spend the day on.” I dropped down on the end gate, dangling my feet over the side, as Dad made sure each of the side panels was tight in place.
    “Yup.” Dad nodded, giving the last panel a shake. It was solid. “Let’s get the calf.”
    “Why are you going so early?” I asked, trailing him into the barn.
    “Gotta get a parking spot under the trees. Don’t want the calf to spend all day in the sun.”
    That made sense. Even though it was the first Saturday of October and days started out cool enough, by afternoon it could get hot. Both parking and shade would be at a premium with all the people that showed up for Salem’s annual Harvest Auction.
    Dad herded a heifer calf less than six weeks old out of the pen, into the alleyway. “Hand me a currycomb,” he said.
    I grabbed one of the metal brushes hanging from nails above the cat milk pan and handed it to him. While I traced around the whorl of hair on the calf’s forehead with my fingers and admired her blue-black eyes, Dad combed away bits of dirt and manure until the calf’s coat was