Man of the Family (3 page)

4

We Start a Cookery Route

A
T NOON
on the third Monday Mother was home, Hal met me at the schoolhouse door. There was a note and a dollar bill pinned to the front of his blouse. The note said for me to get a pair of rubber gloves—the inexpensive ones—at Hill's drugstore, and four dozen picnic spoons at The Nimble Nickel, and to hurry so I wouldn't be late for school in the afternoon. If I'd had Lady I could have done it in fifteen minutes, but without her I had to run most of the way.

When I got home Mother met me at the back door. She didn't give me a chance to find out what she wanted the spoons and gloves for, but passed me out a glass of milk to drink, and some sandwiches to eat on my way back to school. Then, before she closed the door, she said to hurry straight home that afternoon; she had a very important job for me.

As I came up the lane from school, I saw a Jersey cow tied to one of the cottonwoods in front of our house. Of course, I knew Carl had brought her, and I supposed that taking care of her was the important job Mother had for me. But I couldn't figure out why we needed rubber gloves and picnic spoons to take care of a cow.

Mother knew how to cook really good things to eat—from just common groceries. She'd learned most of it from her mother, down in Maine. She could bake beans that were golden brown, didn't get mushy, and glistened in their own syrupy juice. She knew how to steam New England brown bread—the kind that's made with two cups of sweet milk and one cup of sour, two cups of Injun meal and one cup of flour. And she could make Injun pudding that would set with whey lumps like jelly all through it. I never tasted doughnuts as good as Mother's, nor apple pie, either.

That was what Mother wanted the rubber gloves for. She and Grace had been cooking all day, and Mother had to wear a glove over her still tender hand. When I came into the kitchen she had a pot of baked beans, one of Injun pudding, an apple pie, doughnuts, and two loaves of brown bread all laid out—piping hot—on the table. She and Grace were putting a piece of three-inch plank into the oven when I came through the door, and the kitchen was hotter than Tophet.

Mother told me to sit down at the table because she wanted to talk to me. When she came over, her face was bright red and her hands were trembly. “Ralph, I am giving you a very responsible job,” she said, “but I'm sure you can do it very nicely. We've got to begin making our own living, and we must make it through things we can do at home, so we may all be together and help each other. Most people like New England cooking, and there's a good profit in it if we can sell it. Do you think you could go from door to door with these samples and see if we could get enough orders to make it worth while?”

I didn't see how I could carry all the things on the table from door to door and write down orders at the same time, but I nodded my head, and Mother went right on as though she knew what I was thinking. “I have planned it all out,” she said. “You can take Hal's little gocart”—Mother always called Hal's little wagon a gocart—“and we'll put a piece of hot wood in the bottom to keep everything warm. Then you can wheel the cart right up to the doors—always go to the back doors—and ask the ladies if they would like to come out and sample your mother's New England cooking. Never ask them if they'd like to order some until after they've sampled it. Do you think you could do that?”

I nodded my head again, and Grace brought a little writing pad and a pencil.

“Now the prices are very important,” Mother went on. “I'll write them down here on the first page, where you can look back at them if you forget. Baked beans and Injun pudding are fifteen cents a quart. Brown bread—five-pound lard pail size—is ten cents. Doughnuts are ten cents a dozen, and apple pies are twenty cents each. That may sound high for an apple pie, when they're selling for ten cents in the stores, but you point out to the ladies that my pies are larger and have a lot more apple in them. We'll make our first delivery next Saturday. From then on—if you get any quantity of orders—it will be Wednesday and Saturday afternoons.”

I had time to water the new cow and put her in the barn before Mother thought the plank was hot enough. Then we loaded all the cookery onto Hal's wagon. Mother cut the pie, took one piece out so the ladies could taste the apples, and set it into her low Dutch oven with the iron cover. Then she packed the doughnuts into a hot stone crock with a napkin over them, sliced the brown bread with a string, and wrapped the picnic spoons in another napkin. As I started away from our kitchen door she called after me, “Now do be careful and polite, and don't forget the prices.” She called again when I was going out the front gate, “Remember what I told you about the apple pies.”

It didn't look as if I was any good as a salesman. I started at the corner where our lane came into the highroad, and I went to every house. Most all the ladies came out and ate a doughnut, and sampled the other things. Some of them even went back into their kitchens and brought out a knife to cut themselves a little wedge of pie, but most of them said the same thing: “I'd just love to have some of your mother's baked beans. My! that is delicious brown bread, and this Injun pudding is lovely—do you know how your mother makes it?—but they're so dear. . . . I'm afraid we can't afford any this week, but you call around again.”

I knew the cow needed to be milked, but I didn't go home till it was way after dark and all the doughnuts were gone. And I only had orders for eight quarts of beans and four quarts of Injun pudding, five loaves of brown bread, six dozen doughnuts, and two apple pies. I figured it all up and it only came to three dollars and thirty cents.

I always had trouble with getting a lump in my throat when I wanted to cry and wouldn't let myself. I had one as big as a baseball when I got home that night. I was mad about it, and I hated to go in and tell Mother how poor a job I'd done. But I started telling her as soon as I got to the door. She opened it just as I wheeled the wagon up, and asked me what had kept me so late and if I'd had any trouble.

I was so mad I didn't know what I was going to say till after I'd said it. “Yes, I had plenty,” I almost hollered, “and I don't like to do business with women. They're piggy and stingy and cheaters—most all of them. I only got three dollars and thirty cents' worth of orders, and they ate up all the doughnuts and pudding and more than half of the beans and brown bread. And the ones that ate the most said it was too dear, and then told me to call around again so they could eat some more. And that fat old Mrs. . . .”

That's as far as I got. Mother had come down the steps. “There, there,” she said. “You're all tired out and hungry. Didn't you even stop to eat a doughnut yourself? I should have given you one when they were hot, but I just didn't think. Why, it seems to me you did pretty well for your first day. We only have to sell twenty dollars' worth a week. It's half profit, and that will give us all we need.”

I didn't like being a sissy that Mother had to pat, but I did like her hand rubbing up and down on the back of my neck. “Now you come in,” she said, “and let me warm you up some beans before you milk our new cow.”

Our new cow was a good one. She was real light fawn colored with curved-in horns, and her back wasn't any higher than my head, but she was bigger around than Lady. Hal had named her Ducklegs because her legs were so short, and her bag was so big it came within a foot of the ground. I had to use two buckets to milk her. She gave about twelve quarts at a milking, but that big a bucket wouldn't fit in under her. I had to milk her into a ten-pound lard pail and keep pouring it over into the big bucket.

Mother let Grace and me sit up that evening after the other youngsters had gone to bed. For a while I thought I was going to be able to talk her out of my having to go to school any more, but I didn't. First we talked about the cow. With her giving as much milk as she did, we couldn't use it all, and Mother wanted to be sure we got the most we could for what we didn't need ourselves.

Grace was quick as a flash with figures, so Mother sent her for a pad and pencil. When Grace came back, Mother said, “Now, let me see. . . . Let's say our cow gives an even twelve quarts of milk at a milking. . . . That's twenty-four quarts in a day, isn't it? We'll need about four quarts a day for you children. Then—Injun pudding takes a lot of milk—let's say Ralph is able to sell . . . How many quarts of Injun pudding did you get orders for today?”

I said, “Only four.”

Mother turned to Grace, “You see, what we have to figure out is whether we'd get more for our extra milk as just plain milk or as butter, but first we've got to see how much extra milk we'll have.”

It seemed to me as though Mother was going at it just the right way, but Grace kept opening her mouth as if she wanted to say something. Mother noticed it too, and asked, “What is it, dear?”

“Well,” Grace said, “if we just want to know which will bring in the most money, we don't need to know how much we'll have to sell.”

Mother pinched her lip a minute and said, “Well, I can't see why not. How will we know how much money we'll get if we don't know how much we'll have to sell?”

“But we're not trying to find out how much we'll get, are we? We're trying to find out which way we'll get the most.”

“No . . . are we? . . . Why yes, I guess we are,” Mother said.

“Then all we need to know,” Grace said, “is how much milk it takes to make a pound of butter, and how much a pound we can get for butter. We know that we pay Mrs. Lenheart a dollar for every twenty-four quarts of milk we get from her, and we should get more for rich Jersey milk. I think we ought to get five cents a quart. How many quarts of milk does it take to make a pound of butter?”

Mother pinched her upper lip again, and said, “Now let me think some about how I made butter on the ranch. When both cows were fresh I used to have four good pans at a rising. That would be eight pans a day. Then, I used to churn once a week and would have about twenty-five pounds of butter. Now let's see, where does that leave us?”

Grace hadn't put down any figures at all, but she answered right back, “That's twenty-five pounds out of fifty-six pans, so it's two and a quarter pans to a pound. With Jersey milk we could figure it two pans. How many quarts in a pan?”

“Now, let me think,” Mother said. “Those were six-quart pans we had on the ranch, but I didn't fill them brim full. Oh, about five quarts, I'd think.”

“Then it would take ten quarts of Duckleg's milk to make a pound of butter. How much a pound do you think we could sell it for?”

Mother knew that right offhand. “Twenty cents,” she said. “My, my! Why that way we'd only get two cents a quart for our milk, and think of all the work we'd have. Ralph, I think I'll have to let you stay out of school tomorrow and see if you can't drum us up some milk customers. You could tell them we'd deliver it right to their doors and they wouldn't have to come after it. Gracie, will you put the teakettle on so we can sterilize a couple of fruit jars. I want to set some samples so he will be able to show the ladies what a deep cream line our Jersey milk has.”

When Mother said “ladies,” I got mad all over again. The only reasonable ones I'd ever done business with were at Fort Logan. Right in the middle of the gold panic, when nobody else had any money, the officers' wives at Fort Logan had plenty. I knew, because Father and I had sold them all the garden truck we didn't need for ourselves.

I was thinking of that while I dried the milk pan and put it back on the shelf in the woodshed. When I came into the kitchen again, I said to Mother, “It doesn't seem to me we made a very good deal when we loaned Lady to Carl Henry for his cow. If I had Lady I could haul all the cooking you could do up to Fort Logan and sell it as quick as anything, and those officers' wives wouldn't eat up all the samples and then say things were too dear. And besides, I could make a lot more money with Lady, plowing gardens and helping drovers through town, than we can ever make off selling milk from that old cow. If I could just stay home from school and have Lady all the time, I'll bet I could make two dollars a day, and that's twelve dollars a week—if I didn't work on Sundays—and that's two dollars more than you said we needed.”

I guess I was talking a bit too loud before I finished, and the two little frown lines came between Mother's eyes. She pulled my chair over toward hers, and her voice was real quiet when she said, “Sit down here, Son, I want to talk to you a few minutes. Gracie, I'll take care of setting those milk samples. You run along to bed and get some rest, you've worked very hard today.”

I sat down in the chair beside Mother, but I didn't know what she was going to say to me. Grace fussed around getting a drink out of the water bucket and putting the cat outdoors before she started for bed. All that time Mother didn't say a word, but just sat there rubbing her upper lip with her thumb and finger, and humming “In the Sweet Bye and Bye.”