"PEARL...what in tarNATION...." sometimes Chud would holler.
It usually meant that Pearl had "fixed the fence" which meant that the pigs had gotten out...and there'd been a RUCKOUS.
Towards the end of day, after supper--with nobody saying too much about the excitement of the day, Chud would walk out to the barn and on his way he would notice "the patch."
Grandma Pearl would use anything she could find...like pieces of crate and twigs and any spare thing.
Sherry would watch her make a tapestry of fence to plug the hole.
Stand there watching me! Pearl might've been thinking real loud.
Now go get the pigs, Pearl would be towards frantic barking commands like a colonel...that was their income running wild.
Mama dropping her books and gettin' to work, I can see it.
Then they'd laugh and laugh doing homework and making dinner, then put on straight faces the closer he got coming home from the fields.
He'd never be too angry, more like needing to know if there was something else he had to do before retiring for the evening.
He loved his Pearl through and through but never did admire her for her handy work or mechanical skills.
There was a division of labor, and, that thing about "at home" on the marriage license would've come to most peoples' minds in those days.
Mama's got stories.
Watching Out for the Piglets
One of the only times Pearl had to leave and go to the doctor, our mama--little Sherry had to watch the pigs and the pig mama had just given birth.
"It was a HUGE Sss-OWww," Mama's lips curl around the "O" and "W" sounds as she emphasizes the pig was much bigger than her.
And Grandma Pearl had told her how sometimes the mama pigs, the sows, roll over on their babies and smush them right out, dead.
"The family's depending on you," is how Pearl expressed the chore.
And mama said it seemed like four years those couple hours of watching and worrying. "I'm sure it aged me," she likes to tell. She didn't know what she would do if that were to happen so just concentrating...watching it...watching it...breathing and maybe just moving a bit was "INTENSE."
Probably Pearl'd told her to hit it with a pitchfork or a shovel if the pig rolled onto the babies, but Sherry was too little, so she stressed and stressed watching it. Would've known Jess was a world away, maybe in the farthest field...a little spot of dust moving across the land on his tractor.
They didn't get squished...and that led to a story about trying to get those pigs on the truck.
That time it was Grandpa Jess forgot to put the parking break on and it was like everything happened in slooooooow moOOOOOtion, the truck got rolling while the pigs were still tramp-tramping up the boards...you know the kind, all old and gray with big splinters that could "catch ya there if yer not paying attention"...hurt hands on a farm can mean the difference between eating and not eating. Pearl was waving the stick around and poking those pigs from behind and around on the sides and Jess was...those pigs were hard enough to get into the truck...Mama swears she heard creaking noises and crackling and Jess yelling at Pearl and Pearl yelling right back...
Mama claims she didn't mind the hollering one bit, in fact, hollering through stressful times is the natural way!
Horse-ing Around On the Farm...
Mama was remembering how making the horseradish sauce was a torturous experience at the farm. Even though they worked on it outside on the porch, the stinging property of the root when ground up made their eyes sting and their breathing hurt.
One year Mama thought she'd outsmart "those people"--her grandparents--and figured IF there wasn't any radish to be horsed, there wouldn't be that awful chore.
So she "accidentally" mowed down the plant.
"Much to my chagrin", Mama recalls, "that plant grew back up even taller within two weeks."
SODA drinking ONLY
"Is this where you drank the root beers, Mommy?" We asked when we went to visit from New York.
A laugh all the way around amongst the grown ups.
"No, that was up the road a piece--like Pop-Pop says."
Mama and Pearl and Chud would go visit a neighbor who had cold, cold Sass-par-illa sodas. That was the only "beer" that Chud ever drank. And the lady, from what Mama remembers kept the bottles of soda off the porch in a real barrel of cold, cold water.
"Handmade soda, I can still taste it," Sherry remembers any time anybody says sass-par-illa. Jess and Pearl were real strict about no drinking alcohol on account of it ruining so much family. Jess was one of ten children, the only one who didn't mess with "the drink." Some of the scariest times for a farm girl way out in the middle of nowhere were nights when cars would run off the highway and crash in the eight foot deep ditches, or, when people would trespass steaming mad and pound on the door ranting and a-raving.
Pearl and Jess agreed with each other about soda drinking only.
They called it "pop" out there, sodie pop was how the old people said it.
Look how "tan" Jess is in this picture.
"That's his farming hat."
Mama still has it.
"Aunt Anne was Pearl's sister and her daughter's name is not written down here with these photographs."
"Aunt Anne was famous."
Her hands were in advertisements--for a ladies hand cream.
After that she became a nurse.
And, one time, Pearl was driving with Sherry Lynn and Aunt Anne and they were going somewhere and they got down the road and Anne demanded that Pearl stop the car.
She'd looked in her compact and realized, "I forgot to put my eyebrows on. I have to go back."
Grandma Pearl told Mama she didn't have any eyebrows either.
To this day Mama answers Grandma Pearl like she's settin' right here next to us, "I have eyebrows, they're just blonde!"
Sherry remembers that "Aunt Anne" (that's ant, not old english--AHHHnt, but the midwest way of saying Aunt like ants in the pants) would come to visit at the farm and she'd have a huge black opal ring on her superlong and elegant fingers. And Sherry would think, I want a ring like that, but her and Pearl and Jess thought it was kind of funny, secretly. So fancy in a world of dirt and pigs and tractor grease. But they all admired her, that Aunt Anne.
