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Old 03-20-2014, 06:44 AM
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Location: Sarzana,Italy
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Default Re: The farm part 2

Life on the farm

Within this complex lived my Great Aunt Lillian, her husband Andrew, their teenage sons - Carl, Bob and their daughter Eva There was also Earl, he was the hired hand. He dressed in bib overalls, had a long ragged beard and chewed tobacco. He gave me some one day and laughed as a spit it out in disgust.
It did not take Carl and Bob long to learn that with a small amount of teasing I could be brought to tears. “Bastard, bastard, you piss the bed at night and cry like a baby all day” They would tease; I would run to their mother. She would console me and scold them. Then she would fix for me what was called a sugar-titty, which consisted of a large dollop of butter mixed with sugar wrapped in pieces of gauze which I would then suck on. I never experienced a day of hunger on the farm and I became a very fat child.
I loved life on the farm when I was with my Aunt. I would always accompany her to collect eggs and soon knew where every hen and goose had made its nest. I would help her peeling apples for pies. We would go for walks to find wild strawberries, black, and blue berries, and concord grapes for desserts and jams and as I grew she would send me on those adventures alone.
Earl was always kind to me, showed me how to peel a birch tree and make small bark canoes and to make a flute from a tree branch.
At evening time after supper in the parlor there was the big Phillips radio with its glowing dial where I could sit in front of and listen to the adventures of ‘The Lone Ranger’.
I would stay up and wait for the announcer to say ‘And from out of the past comes the thundering hoof beats of the great horse Silver. The Lone Ranger rides again.’ Sometimes I would also listen to The Green Hornet, The Shadow, Amos and Andy and others that are too dim in my memory to recall.
There was also a small square game table in the parlor, with eagle’s claws grasping round balls of green glass at the ends of its spindly legs. I would sit there for hours working on picture puzzles, playing games, pickup sticks, Chinese checkers, and Tic-Tack-Toe with Eva and sometimes my Great Aunt.
Uncle Andrew taught me how to play checkers and I would sometimes play with him on the sun porch. In the afternoon he always sat in his white wicker rocker, reading newspapers and smoking Bugler tobacco from a corncob pipe. I don’t ever recall seeing him cut or split wood, wash a dish or help my aunt. His job was to drive the yellow school bus and oversee the farm.
It was Uncle Andrew’s custom to get shaved every Saturday afternoon, when I was three or four this became a great entertainment for me.
. Every Saturday afternoon when it was time for Andrew’s shave, a pan of water would be put on the stove. White towels placed on the kitchen table; a chair set up in the middle of the room. Andrew’s cup of shaving soap would be brought down from the cupboard next to the sink. His razor strap hung on a nail, and I had learned great respect for it. The straight razor was stropped, the hot towels readied, and heated water was put in to his shaving mug. Then Auntie would tell me, “Go and get Andrew from the sunroom.”
The thing I remember most distinctly of Andrew was his huge nose. It protruded from his big head, had pimples and looked like a zucchini. He always wore blue bib overalls with a silver pocket watch in his breast pocket.
I looked at that nose every Saturday for all the years that I was there.
Other children came to live on the farm, one a boy who became my friend named Sammy. We would gather on the top step by the warm cook stove and watch Andrew get lathered. My Aunt would dip the brush into the shaving mug then she would cover his face with lather, then she would take the straight razor and start to shave.
First his side burns and then his jaw while we waited for the best part of all. Andrew’s nose was so big that in order to shave under it my Aunt had to grab it and lift it up. Then she shaved his upper lip making us all giggle. Andrew would glare at me and Sammy as he sat with shaving soap still on his face. We would never dare laugh at Andrew for he was very big and mean and we were afraid of him.
So it came to be one day as the year went by, when Saturday came and it was time for Andrew’s shave, I would sit on that step and pray to God with all my might, that my Aunt would slit his throat while she held him by the nose.
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