WIDE MEADOWS; THE DAYS GO BY (A CONTINUING SERIES)

Editor's note: This is a chapter from Jean Bell Mosley's book "Wide Meadows" that was first published in 1960.

"Got a calendar today," Grandpa announces.

A calendar! Next it will be, "Heard frogs last night." "Here's the sassafras roots." "Saw a robin today." And so on through the year. But a calendar! It means that now everything will be to do all over again. However, we are a year older and a year wiser, and this year we will do everything a little better. The rhubarb does not do well on that side of the garden, so it will be moved. The Home Demonstration agent has taught us how to can pork. The mixture of laying mash Grandpa and Dad have concocted produces more eggs. We have learned from our neighbors, made new friends, experienced and observed, formed new opinions, and strengthened old convictions. Lou has grown into Lillian's clothes and I into Lou's. This might be the year all the cows will have twin calves and the hens will lay in December as they did in May.

But, first things first the INTEREST, on or before the fifteenth of January! Sometimes the corn did it. Other times the wheat, or the two combined. Maybe a fat steer or two. Always we try to do it without having to sell any of the AT&T stock.

When the subject is brought out in the open, usually at the supper table so that every member of the family will have knowledge of the running affairs of the farm, Lou, never one to mince or pussyfoot around a vital issue, asks flat out, "Are we gonna have enough without selling the AT&T?"

Lou and I didn't even know the workings of such mysterious things, the teacher asked if we knew whether any of our folks had any stocks and bonds. To our amazement, the Russells said they were quite sure that their uncle had some General Electric stock and the McFarlands had hear of AT&T, which the teacher explained to us meant American Telephone and Telegraph.

On our way home from school Lou and I discussed the matter of investments further, arriving at the conclusion we didn't have any.

We did our best to feel forlorn about this condition, but thinking of the good warm supper that awaited us, the comfort of the old kitchen, and the fact that we'd all be there as usual, we just didn't feel poor.

That night, as we sat at the table working our arithmetic problems, Lou announced to the rest of the family that the Russells had kinfolks who owned stocks and bonds.

"Well, that's nice," Mama said, going on with her patching.

"Some of the McFarlands have AT&T, too," Lou added.

No further comment was made. After a while, Grandpa, having finished reading the paper, put his glasses away, stretched, and said, "Well, I guess I better see about our own AT&T stock."

"We got AT&T?" Lou asked eagerly. We didn't think Grandpa had even been listening.

Grandpa looked at Mom as if seeking her permission to reveal the truth of this news.

"Why, of course, we got AT&T," Mama confirmed, laughing.

On the morning of Interest Paying Day the roosters seem to crow a little louder. Old Anabelle, Trudy, and Trixy clang their bells and snort and blow bran around in their feedboxes, wanting everyone to know they had a hand in this, too. Grandpa strops his razor noisily in preparation for his trip to the bank. Grandma says she believes she'll just stir up a cake. Lou and I polish our shoes and put on our second-best dresses.

"My, what are you two dressed up about today?" they ask at school.

"Oh, Vermont declared is independence on this day in 1777," Lou replies airily, leaving eyebrows raised all around. It said that on our new calendar Grandpa hung up by the comb rack.

"And it's Jean Baptiste Poquelin's birthday," I add for good measure.

"You got a piece of his birthday cake?" Anna Kotiski asks, looking speculatively at my lunch box.

"Fried cakes," I reply.

Anna sighs in deep satisfaction and I hope Mama has put in several cakes, and more than likely she has for today is Interest Paying Day.

Winter days wear on. Grandpa takes new straw to the hound-dog pens. Tabby and Tom sleep all day in the attic and at night we open the attic door and invite them to sleep on the foot of our bed. New snow comes on top of old.

On Saturdays, if it is not too utterly cold in the attic, we play there a while, going through the old trunks, dressing ourselves and Tom and Tabby, looking at old pictures and old valentines. Valentines! Hurriedly we repack the trunks, gather bits of old wallpaper, discarded flower catalogues, crayons, scissors and paste, and set up shop in front of the kitchen fireplace. Old store-bought valentines are cut up, rearranged, and pasted together anew. Bits of lace and red satin, cotton-padded hearts, sprinkled inside with our Christmas talcum powder are pressed into use. I do not dare to cut out the phrase, "I love you" and paste it on my valentines, so Lou uses them all, sending such sentiments promiscuously to Ercle, Leemon, Medford and a half dozen others. My prettiest one I choose for Cabe Ashton.

When the valentines are done and still the long day is not over, Mama says we might have a baking spree since the oven is hot. Lou works with the gingerbread dough making nothing so common as a gingerbread man, but likeness of Britt's bull, old Jethro; the hound; and snakes, zigzagged snakes with swollen stomachs, tapering tails, and bulgy, raisin eyes.

With the oven filled with doughy animals I rack my brains for top-of-the-stove cookery. Examination of the wooden bread mixing bowl reveals a leftover wad of dough from the morning's biscuits. This I roll out with much deliberation and many times. I have all afternoon and to me the texture never mattered. Cut into varied shapes, I not being as talented as Lou, and fried in the big black pot, then rolled in sugar and cinnamon, they were tasty to me and the family ate them gallantly, along with the gingerbread bulls and snakes.

It is dark in the kitchen on gray winter days. So Mama and Grandma do what they can to better the situation. Across one window sets the big majestic cabinet. Clear up to the ceiling it reaches, replete with flour bin, meal bin, concealed breadboard, spice shelves, dish shelves, and several drawers for countless other things. There seems no other proper place for the cabinet except across the window, for here it is handy to the pantry and the cookstove.

"Can't we knock out this part?" Mama asks, pointing to the back portion from the working top up to the first shelves. "Then the window would show though."

"Why, of course," Grandma exclaims, provoked because we haven't thought of it before.

With claw hammer, chisel and saws, she and Mama remove the portion that has obstructed the light from the lower panes of the window. Now there is light to work by, and, sitting down, we can see clear out to the cellar door and the cherry tree and the clothes line. What a wonderful place for red geraniums!

When Mrs. Kotiski came to see us, she couldn't get over our cabinet.

"Before this, I never saw a like one," she declared, standing off a proper distance to admire it.

"Well, it's just an ordinary cabinet," Mama said.

"No, no," Mrs. Kotiski protested. "Never is one like this in whole world." There is awe in her voice.

We looked at it critically after that and for the life of us couldn't see how it was any different from those other housewives had for miles around. Just a plain, ordinary, stained-oak cabinet with a piece of linoleum on the top.

But Mrs. Kotiski continued to admire it inordinately every time she came, and later, when we decided to get one of the new white ones coming out, Mama said she was just going to give the old one to Mrs. Kotiski, so she had Dad and Grandpa haul it over to her cabin.

We asked her how she liked the one we had given her, now that she had it up in her own kitchen.

"Is fine," she replied, but gone was the enthusiasm, the light in her eyes she had had heretofore when speaking of it.

When the Kotiskis decided to move on, seeking greener pastures, we were surprised to see Mr. Kotiski coming up the road with our old cabinet in the back of the wagon. Mrs. Kotiski was with him. They were bringing the cabinet back!

"Is too big for us to move around," she explained, "and, anyway, is not so nice after out you took the window."

"Window?" Mom questioned.

"Yes," Mrs. Kotiski replied, sadly. "For you it had a window."

After that we moved the shiny new cabinet over to the other side of the kitchen and put the old one right back where it belonged, where its "window" let in the light and kept the geraniums blooming, and, through the years, whenever we were unable to see any particular beauty or merit in anything, we were very tolerant for, after all, maybe someone else could see a window in it.