THANKSGIVING AT GRANDFATHER’S FARM
Thanksgiving at Grandfather’s farm was more than a holiday. It was a
great date on the calendar, for it divided the year in halves as no
other single day of the three hundred and sixty-five did. It marked
the end of the outdoors, and the beginning of the indoors--the day
when everybody came home; when along with them into the house came all
the outdoors, too, as if the whole farm were brought in to toast its
toes before the great hearth fire!
For the hearth fire was big enough and cheery enough. And so was the
farmhouse--that is, if you added the big barn and the crib-house and
the wagon-house and the dog-house and the hen-house and the
“spring-house!”
Oh, there was plenty of room inside for everybody and for everything!
And there needed to be; for did not everybody come home to
Grandfather’s for Thanksgiving? And did not everything that anybody
could need for the winter, grow on Grandfather’s farm?
And it all had to be brought in by Thanksgiving Day--everything
brought in, everything housed and stored and battened down tight. The
preparations began along in late October, continuing with more speed
as the days shortened and darkened and hurried us into November. And
they continued with still more speed as the gray lowering clouds
thickened in the sky, and the wind began to whistle through the oak
grove. Then, with the first real cold snap, the first swift flurry of
snow, how the husking and the stacking and the chopping went on!
Thanksgiving must find us ready for winter indoors and out.
The hay-mows were full to the beams where the swallows built; the
north and west sides of the barnyard were flanked with a deep
wind-break of corn-fodder that ran on down the old worm-fence each
side of the lane in yellow zigzag walls; the big wooden pump under the
turn-o’-lane tree by the barn was bundled up and buttoned to the tip
of its dripping nose; the bees by the currant bushes were
doubled-hived, the strawberries covered with hay, the wood all split
and piled, the cellar windows packed, and the storm-doors put on.
The very cows had put on an extra coat, and turned their collars up
about their ears; the turkeys had changed their roost from the
ridge-pole of the corn-crib to the pearmain tree on the sunny side of
the wagon-house; the squirrels had finished their bulky nests in the
oaks; the muskrats of the lower pasture had completed their lodges;
the whole farm--house, barn, fields, and wood-lot--had shuffled into
its greatcoat and muffler and settled comfortably down for the winter.
The old farmhouse was an invitation to winter. It looked its joy at
the prospect of the coming cold. Low, weather-worn, mossy-shingled,
secluded in its wayward garden of box and bleeding-hearts, sheltered
by its tall pines, grape-vined, hop-vined, clung to by creeper and
honeysuckle, it stood where the roads divided, halfway between
everywhere, unpainted, unpretentious, as much a part of the landscape
as the muskrat-lodge, and, like the lodge, roomy, warm, and
hospitable.
Round at the back, under the wide, open shed, a door led into the
kitchen; another led into the living-room; another, into the
store-room; and two big, slanting double-doors, scoured and slippery
with four generations of sliders, covered the cavernous way into
the cellar. But they let the smell of apples up, as the garret door
let the smell of sage and thyme come down; while from the door of the
store-room, mingling with the odor of apples and herbs, filling the
whole house and all my early memories, came the smell of broom-corn,
came the sound of Grandfather’s loom.
[Illustration: “THE LANTERN FLICKERS, THE MILK FOAMS, THE STORIES
FLOW”]
For Grandfather in the winter made brooms--the best brooms, I think,
that ever were made. The tall broom-corn was grown on the farm in the
summer, ripened and cut and seeded, and then, as soon as winter set
in, was loomed and wired and sewed into brooms.
But the cured and seeded broom-corn was not the main thing, after all,
that was brought in for the winter. Behind the stove in the kitchen,
stood the sweet-potato box (a sweet potato, you know, must be kept dry
and warm). An ample, ten-barrel box it was, fresh-papered like the
walls, full of Jersey sweets that _were_ sweet--long, golden, syrupy
potatoes, such as grow only in the warm sandy soil of southern New
Jersey.
Against that big box in Grandmother’s kitchen stood the sea-chest,
fresh with the same kitchen paper and piled with wood. There was
another such chest in the living-room near the old fireplace, and
still another in Grandfather’s work-room behind the “template” stove.
But wood and warmth and sweet smells were not all. There was music
also, the music of life, of young life and of old life--grandparents,
grandchildren (about twenty-eight of the latter). There were seven of
us alone--a girl at each end of the seven and one in the middle.
Thanksgiving always found us all at Grandfather’s and brimming full of
thanks.
That, of course, was long, long ago. Things are different nowadays.
There are as many grandfathers, I suppose, as ever; but they don’t
make brooms in the winter and live on farms.
They live in flats. The old farm with its open acres has become a city
street; the generous old farmhouse has become a speaking-tube,
kitchenette, and bath--all the “modern conveniences”; the cows have
evaporated into convenient cans of condensed “milk”; the ten-barrel
box of potatoes has changed into a convenient ten-pound bag, the
wood-pile into a convenient five-cent bundle of blocks tied up with a
tarred string, the fireplace into a convenient gas log, the seven
children into one or none, or into a little bull-terrier pup.
But is it so? No, it is not so--not so of a million homes. For there
is many an old-fashioned farmhouse still in the country, and many a
new-fashioned city house where there are more human children than
little bull-terrier pups.
And it is not so in my home, which is neither a real farm nor yet a
city home. For here are some small boys who live very much as I did
when I was a boy. No, they are not farmer’s boys; for I am not a
farmer, but only a “commuter”--if you know what that is. I go into a
great city for my work; and when the day’s work is done, I turn
homeward here to Mullein Hill--far out in the country. And when the
dark November nights come, I hang the lantern high in the stable, as
my father used to do, while four shining faces gather round, as four
small boys seat themselves on upturned buckets behind the cow. The
lantern flickers, the milk foams, the stories flow--“Bucksy” stories
of the noble red-man; and stories of the heroes of old; and marvelous
stories of that greatest hero of all--their father, far away yonder
when he was a boy, when there were so many interesting things to do on
Grandfather’s farm just before Thanksgiving Day.