Post eighteen: Living by the sweat of our brow

     My Dad was always big on avoiding extra expenses, if a one time expense, combined with the sweat of our brow, would work as well. We had land, 250 acres or so, but a lot of ready cash was just not available. Our income came from raising registered Polled hereford bulls, and the sale of bull calves for quality herd bulls each year amounted to about $2000. and that was normally about it. So, we had a small Grist mill, Sorghum mill, sawmill, and pea thresher. The grist mill ground corn into corn meal. Mom usually cooked enough cornbread for us and a little extra for the dogs. The shelled corn was put into a hopper at the top. It was powered by a belt to the tractor. If the belt started running off, Dad always kept and old can of sorghum molasses to pour onto it. The corn was shaken down into the mill, and the first batch of meal that came out was always discarded, along with the body parts of the mice that did not get out in time. I suspect that was a problem with all the old time grist mills. The inner reaches of the machine would seem like heaven for a mouse–until all hell broke loose! Our “sawmill” was also powered by a belt from the tractor. We regularly got stave bolt trimmings from Plainview, ten miles away, and cut them up into firewood length. Once, the belt to the tractor broke, and the tractor started rolling down the hill. I chased after it until I finally caught it, and tried to push the brake. Finally, the tractor and I both wound up hung up in vines at the bottom. Dad also regularly cut a medium sized Sweet Gum and I cut it up into “back sticks” for the fire place, to focus the heat out front. I only saw the pea thresher running once, when I was very small.
     Our sorghum mill was powered by old Murt, our last mule. A long timber reached out from the mill, attached to the mule, and she walked round and round. The sorghum stalks were fed in, and the juice was pressed out. It was put in very long copper pans with a fire built around them. The juice was evaporated, with impurities constantly being skimmed off the top, until molasses remained. I'm sure there was more to it than that, but I am walking along the edge of my memory here, so I will leave it at that.
     One of the most common sayings Dad had, when things were not going well on the farm was, “I'm afraid we may be headed for the poor house.” Over and over he said that. I never knew what a “poor house” was. Then, recently, Barb and I visited one, on a trip to Ireland. It was set up when untold thousands of people were starving, during the Great Potato Famine of the early and mid-1800s. They wanted to limit it only to people who were on the edge of starvation, so it was set up so that only those people would want to go. Families were not allowed to communicate with each other; they worked very long hard hours, all on a bowl of thin soup a day. It looked like a prison. We stayed at a bed and breakfast in Ireland, where the lady who ran it told us about her grandpa. He broke his leg, badly. But he was afraid that if he went to a doctor, he would be put in the poor house. He lived out his life with his leg broken instead. I did not know at the time, but have since learned they were commonly used in this country, before the welfare system. I am not sure how they compared with the Irish variety, but I do know that fear of the poor house was deeply ingrained in the old Gillums. I guess that fear finally died out, because I have never heard it used by my generation. ___________________________________________________________________________