My dad ordered a seperator. I remember them setting it up, and I remember the hole in the seperator and how the cream came out of one side and the skim milk the other side. I had never seen anybody do the sterilizing my father did. The parts of the seperator had to be taken apart immediately and taken care of. We were not allowed to touch any of it.
My father sold cream and some milk, but his biggest thing was that he developed a ttype of chese which he told us about one day and had us all taste it. At that time, my older brother had started school where he was learning a few letters and he would come home and tell me a little about the letters. I was learning to sound out letters and one day I figured that I could sound out every letter in the alphabet and I could read any book in the world. The thought was overwhelming. I became so thrilled with reading that I learned to read all the little storybooks we had. I could read stories to my sisters and brothers, but I didn't have anybody who could answer my questions. I pondered about certain words. My brother was a good reader and he wasn't interested. My mother was always too busy to answer my questions. My dad said we could all help him find a name for this new cheese and some of the farm help came up with different names. Finally, since the cheese had to be packed in a glass jar, my dad came in saying it would be called "Classic" cheese. I worried about their spelling it with a C because it was packed in glass. I thought it should be spelled "glassic". I puzzled so much about that name because I didn't understand it.
I also found a magazine that came in the mail. To me it was "Diggest". I didn't solve that the first word was "Literary", but I looked forward to seeing the pictures that were in that "Diggest" and I wondered why I never hearn anyone talk about it. It was a long time before I knew that the magazine was the "Literary Digest". I am sure these things about words may sound silly to other people, but remember this was before I had been to school. When someone asks now why i didn't ask my mother or my father or my brother who had been to school, I recall that somehow, while everyone was asking me questions at that age, I never asked anybody. It wasn't until later that I learned about the dictionary, the encyclopedia, and even the library.
There are several incidents that happened that are important to the story of my life and they happened in the first house we lived in before the Roland Ranch. Once the farm hands found that the horses were loose and they were crying, "Stampede! Stampede!" We knew what that meant and the story was told to me that I ran for the house and porch as fast as I could go while my sister just younger than I had the presence of mind to pull the box that had been part of our playhouse over the baby who was just basrely toddling and in the path of the stampede. The horses all ran around her and she wasn't hurt. Of course being the eldest, I was very ashamed of what I had done, and my younger sister really deserved the credit she got for saving the life of her younger sister.
Another incident took place when the hired men, having finished the haying at thios time of year, would pull the big hayrack up along the sidfe of the barn and we would have a ladder and and we would crawl up to the bed of the hayrack and we would make our playhouse there. We would leave our things there and they wouldn't be disturbed by anyone. We would go from day to day and play on this spot. This went on until the season came again and they needed the hayrack. The men came one day in a hurry, saying, "Get your things off there. You kids get off." In our haste we took our playthings and left. When we gathered my things together, I found I didn't have my doll. We went back and looked everywhere. I had a doll that had a bisque head and a kidskin body. It had really ugly joints, but when she was all dressed, she looked real pretty. We searched everywhere for the doll, my brothers and sisters helped me. Our hired men said they knew nothing about it. I really wept foir that doll. There is a poem about a doll which I read later, which really related to what happened to me. We sort of gave up ever finding the doll, until the next year when they put the hayrack up and we got our little ladder and took our playthings and went up. I looked up above me and on the roof of the barn was a little leg and a little shoe hanging over the edge and there was my doll. Most of her body was stiff as a board. The little poem says, "I lost my little sweet doll dear as I played in the field one day." Then it goes on and says, "I found my sweet little doll dear as I played in the field one day. Folks say she is terribly changed for her face is all washed away, but to me she is, and always will be, the loveliest doll in the world." I made the best of the way the doll looked and played with her for some time after that.
