Staying in the Lines
"Each Day I'll Do A Golden Deed"
My grandfather milked cows for most of his life. Even after there was just himself and grandma. He gave milk away at times.
When we, Coco and I were living at 'the farm' we took two glass quart jars of milk to our neighbors twice a week.
We took the full jars and they would send back two empty ones for the next batch. Coco and I had it stuck in our mind that we should do a good deed every day, and this counted as one of our deeds.
Mrs. Hurst would always drop a dime in the bottom of the clean jars and we thought we were rich.
I don't remember when the dairy maids stopped taking milk. My sister, cousin Coco, and I all lived with grandparents for about two years before my aunt remarried and took Coco to live with them.
I missed Coco when she left. Sister was six years older than I, but Coco was only a year older.
Coco and her family often came back during school breaks, summer vacations and Christmas vacations. Those were times she would tell me what books she was reading and impart new intelligence to me.
New intelligence like how she liked eating aspirins, and don't eat the strings on bananas, and ever so much stuff I would have never figured out on my own.
Summer breaks she and I would wander through the timber berating our cow Henrietta for eating our gooseberries. We were sure she got there before us and that was why our harvest was so slim.
If by chance we did happen onto some green gooseberries we always kept a piece of salt— broken from the cow's salt block in our pocket to eat with them. (Coco told me not to eat the purple gooseberries because a spider had bitten them and they turned purply-black).
I don't know what memories my grandchildren will take with them, but I'm sure they'll have stories.
