Read Online My Children Are More Precious Than Gold by Fay Risner - Free Book Online Page B

the
door which creaked open to allow the glowing figure to enter.
“Boys, boys! What are ya yellen so fer?” The voice shouted. “Settle
down. It's Pap.”
    “ Hush! Listen! It's Pap,
not the haunt,” Lue gasped in relief.
    “ Oh, oh. I knew this was a
dumb idea,” softly grumbled Sid.
    “ Ya boys like spenden time
with a skunk, y'all go right ahead. I'm getten out of here.” Pap
coughed as he raised his lantern to see behind him and retreated
outside into the fresh air.
    His sons followed on his heels until
Jacob turned and raised the lantern to survey them. “Hold up. Don't
come any closer to me until yer cleaned up,” he
demanded.
    “ Jacob, what's goen on out
there?” Nannie called from the porch.
    “ Nannie, hunt some towels
and a bar of lye soap. These boys have decided to take a bath down
at the creak.”
    “ Mercy sakes, this time of
night? That means I’m goen to have to wash towels again before bath
day or there won’t be enough to go around,” Nannie grumbled, going
back into the house.
    “ Oh, Pap, that creak is
cold,” complained Lue.
    “ Yer not comen back in the
house smellen like that. What were ya boys up to anyways? There was
enough noise comen from that there barn to wake the dead, not to
mention those of us who were in our beds where ever one of y'all
ought to be,” Jacob scolded, surveying the bowed heads. “Oh, never
mind. I'll leave the lantern so ya can see so get to the creak and
take that bath. Make sure ya use plenty of lye soap. We'll talk
about this in the mornen.” Jacob sniffed then pulled up his shirt
tail and smelled. “By the way, what was that awful smellen stuff ya
threw on me?”
    “ Genon Mitt's haunt scaren
powder,” Lue sheepishly informed his father.
    “ By golly, that stinky
stuff ought to do the trick,” Jacob commented dryly. “Providen
y'all get the right haunt. I don't know who to give my piece of
mind to first. Doak for starting this, or Genon for encouraging
y'all, or ya boys for being so gullible. Nannie, ya better fetch a
towel fer me, too,” he growled as he took the towels she handed
him.
     

Chapter 6
     
    Geese -- Baked Or Stewed
     
    On a day in early May, Bess and Lillie
were headed the two miles home from an overnight visit at Grandma
and Grandpa Bowers. The girls walked along the narrow, rocky, clay
cow path that trailed among the tall broomsede weeds bordering
Little River.
    Holding onto the handles of a bushel
basket of cornmeal that Grandpa Bowers ground at his mill, the
girls were taking the meal home for Nannie to use to bake bread.
When they were short of coffee or sugar, cornmeal could be used to
trade at the store for what Nannie needed, because there was very
little money to spend. The price of coffee at that time was fifteen
cents, sugar was four cents and the price of a dozen of eggs was
fourteen cents.
    Bess and Lillie liked to visit their
grandparents so the day before they willingly shelled enough corn
to fill the bushel basket and carried it the two miles to the grist
mill. The children enjoyed going down to the grist mill with
Grandpa Bower to watch the corn ground into meal under two large
stones rolling together by power of a water mill. A big wooden box
connected to a dammed up area in the river filled with water then
flowed over a big wheel that turned the stones.
    Payment was usually one gallon of meal
for grinding the bushel basket full, but Grandma insisted that
Grandpa didn’t want payment. She liked to help her daughter in
whatever way she could, because she knew that it was hard to put
food on the table for all those children.
    Thing was Jacob’s pride usually got in
the way if the girls came home with too much so Grandma had to be
careful not to send more than Jacob might object to. Grandma Bower
need not have worried. Nannie thought more about taking care of her
children then she did Jacob’s pride. If Jacob wasn’t around when
the children arrived home from her parents bearing gifts, she
quietly put away