CHAPTER 27- PART 2

Father and mother had come to the last payment on the twenty acres. How well I remember that sunshiny, muddy, blustery March-day and inky black night preceding the day of that last payment.

Ellis who was two years my senior was nine and very business-like as we gathered the eggs early in the forenoon. He explained to me that mother and father said we might lack a few cents of having the payment and we had to get all the eggs that were laid before the “Huckster” came.

Huckster day came once a week and was a real event. The big horse-drawn covered wagon was fitted with shelves in the back.

The driver, Pete Phillips, driving for Kirkpatrick’s store at Cherry Fork, would unlock a padlock at the top of the back part of his wagon and let down the door hinged at the bottom. The stay chains on either side made a loud rasping noise as the door was lowered. This made a shelf on which he displayed his goods. Bolts of yarn goods, mostly calico, denim, muslin and hickory shirting; trays of thread, yarn, needles, pins, jack knives, beads and such.

Groceries, candy, brooms, twine, etc. were stored up front back of the driver’s seat. The scraping of those stay chains would bring Ellis and me running from any corner of the farm if we might have let some things elsewhere claim our interest until the huckster wagon was there before we were on days when school didn’t keep.

This door was only lowered occasionally now for mother, but a neighbor always came across fields and met the huckster wagon at our house for she lived back off the route.

We children always looked forward with pleasure to huckster days. Not that we very often had pennies to spend for candy or beads, the items perhaps the most attractive to us, but we enjoyed looking. We didn’t mind, for mother made us maple sugar eggs and we strung “Job’s tears,’ paw paw seeds and colored corn for beads and with chicken feathers in our hats played Indians.

The pretty calicos were of special interest to look at today for when the land was paid for, I might have my school dresses of this colorful cloth like other little girls and wear buttoned shoes.

It seemed that almost since I could remember I had tried to be content as I could with my dresses made from hickory shirting and to wear little copper-toed boots like my brothers’. Very practical these were, especially as I was the tom boy type, but the memory of how it irked me to be different remains with me yet. Only on Sabbath days did I shine with the others.

My “good” dress of red cashmere was very pretty still, although it had been lengthened with a black ruffle, but the ruffle matched the black beads that trimmed the Bertha collar. My shoes were tight but I didn’t complain, though they really pinched. I certainly didn’t want to wear the boots to church.

Eggs were six cents a dozen and butter eight cents a pound and I remember Mother saying, “No, there won’t be anything today.” The huckster then gave her $1.52

for twenty dozen eggs and four pounds of butter. I was disappointed for it was my turn to get the bird card from the Arm and Hammer baking soda box. I had peeked into the box in the cupboard and it was almost empty.

“You can wait for your card until next week, for father won’t fuss and he will have to eat light bread and he likes soda biscuits.” Ellis both reproved and consoled me.

The last payment amounted to $100 plus 4% interest. Most of the money was to come from William “Billy” McCreight whose farm joined ours on the west, but around the road it was at least two miles from his house to ours. He had a big farm and a lot of jersey cattle, some sheep, goats, pigs, lots of horses and many kinds of foul.

Father said some of these animals were old enough to vote. I didn’t understand all of father’s remarks. The great variety of foul were most interesting to us children. There were pens of various breeds of chickens, guineas and turkeys too, but the wonder was the pea fouls (peacocks) and the parrot. Going there was better than a trip to the zoo in later years.

Mrs. (Mary Ann) McCreight, Billy’s wife was a daughter of Robert Ralston & Rosanna (Glasgow) Ralston and a first cousin of grandmother (Eleanor Ralston) Wickerham and they were much older than father and mother, so we children called them Uncle Billy and Aunt Mary Ann for they were real personages in our eyes. Uncle Billy was a Civil War veteran with a pension. Father said he needed it to feed all that fancy stock that didn’t pay for their keep.

Ellis and I were glad father had raised so much corn to help feed all those wonderful animals and fowl; then it was nice to have the money to help with this payment. Uncle Billy was going to stop by on his way home from town today and pay for the corn.

We children always looked forward to Uncle Billy’s visits for unless he was in an awful hurry, he would tell us a war story and sometimes he would let us get up in the high wagon seat and ride beside him up the lane to where the road turned into the woods. These rides seemed much grander than to ride with father, for father and everyone else we knew just drove two horses to their farm wagons. Uncle Billy always drove four “beasts” as he called them, in a two-team hitch even with just an empty wagon. When in family worship the beasts of Revelations were read about, I could vision Uncle Billy’s beautiful black horses in distorted forms.

(History presented by Joyce Wilson)