The Summer of ‘42 (Actually ‘43)
This was the best summer of my life. My father was in the army on his way to Europe, my mother had to work, so we were sent to a chicken farm in mid-eastern Virginia to live. I was three and a half, pushing four.
(Actually, I was four and a half, pushing five, according to my big sister, who was also there.)
It was a real farm, like a farm a century ago but for trucks etc., and we were free, except for our chores, and, I had a job on Saturday mornings. My sister, a year older, didn’t like it as much as me, probably because being female, she had many chores, while I had only one.
My chore was to milk the cow before breakfast. That was it, and it was wonderful. I’d get up before light, grab a bucket from the kitchen and head to the barn. There I’d simply place the stool, sit, and squirt. And yes, I did squirt the cat. Then it was back to the kitchen, where I waited as one of the ladies poured the contents through cheesecloth into a metal pitcher. That done, I carried the pitcher to the dining room table, poured myself a glass of pure milk, still warm from the cow and sat down to the spread.
And what a spread. There was ham, sausage, bacon, and fried chicken, fried, scrambled and omeletted eggs, biscuits, pancakes, cornbread and toast. I had never seen food like that in my life. I ate like a king on that farm.
Then I was free. They had a plow-horse and they said if I could catch her I could ride her, so I made a loop with a rope, threw it over her head, walked her to a hay bale, climbed up and on her, and rode a horse. She was so broad backed both feet stood out level with my hips, but I rode her around the barn.
My job was weird. As I said, they were chicken farmers, and they operated a slaughterhouse in Newport News. Every Saturday, after breakfast we would climb in the back of a stakebody six by and drive to town to clean the slaughterhouse.
They killed chickens all day, five days a week, and let them bleed from hooks in one room. By the end of work Friday there was a six inch layer of coagulated blood on a cement floor with a single six inch drain in the middle. My job was to walk bare-footed around in that room, breaking up the clots and kicking them down the drain until the floor was clean enough for them to hose it, and me down.
I didn’t mind the job at all. I was just a worker, doing his job, and I was treated that way. And it led to two great adventures.
Coming back from Newport News in the stake body, we’d climb the slats and look ahead over the cab. One day I saw a pond and commented. The kid next to me said there were fish in it and asked if I wanted to go fishing. I said “sure”.
Later he said “let’s go”, and started walking to the fishing hole. He had some string, some hooks, and a pocket knife.
When we got there, he cut two sticks for poles and six sticks for stringers and bobbers, then strung and hooked them, dug a worm from the ground, and we fished. He caught one and I caught three, but the third was a pickerel that sawed through my stringer and got away, as did my second catch. But we came home each with a fish, and they prepared our catch for us at dinner.
Another time, coming back from Newport News and looking out over the six-by cab I saw a watermelon patch. The answer was “sure” again but this one took a little planning. Instead of going to bed that night, I climbed out a window and we took off silently.
At the patch we began to gorge ourselves. We’d split a melon, eat out the succulent middle, then on to another melon. We must have gotten noisy, because suddenly there was light, a screen door slammed open, a voice shouted “get out of my watermelon patch”, and a gun went off. I heard pellets striking the leaves just above my head, and we left.
I’ll never have a summer that good again. I was treated as a small adult, and I got along with my fellows and my environment quite well, quite unlike the rest of my youth.