Tag: childhood

The Calf in the Kitchen

Brenda Stratton

A calf was born one bitter winter night when I was four years old. Dad was in the barn feeding the livestock when the cow came wandering in. He was alarmed—she had been due to calve, but it was obvious she was no longer pregnant. Her calf wasn’t with her.

He knew he had to hurry. A newborn wouldn’t survive long on its own in that weather. The cold would take it fast. 

It was the kind of cold that made every breath sting and froze water in minutes. He followed the cow’s tracks through the snow and was horrified to find she had dropped the calf in the slough at the bottom of the pasture.

When he found it, the calf was barely alive. Only its nose was above the black water. Dad scooped it up—thirty or forty pounds of soaking wet calf—and hoisted it onto his shoulder. Its body was soaked and heavy, the slough water already stiffening in the cold. 

By the time he reached the barn, both of them were drenched and freezing. 

He knew he had to get the calf warm and the only way to do that was to take it in the house. He placed the calf in a metal bushel basket with handles to make it easier to carry.

I couldn’t figure out what he was doing when he came in the back door with that basket. I recognized it from the barn—the one he used to take corn to the livestock. I had never seen him bring it into the house before.

What I remember next may be something I truly saw, or it may be the way the story settled in my mind after years of hearing it told. Either way, this is how it lives in me now.

It wasn’t until he set the basket down that I could see what was inside—a tiny calf, cold and shivering, barely alive.

Mom hurried for towels and blankets. Dad lifted the calf out of the basket and laid it in front of the warm oil burner while they rubbed it gently, trying to dry it and bring some life back into its stiff little body.

Dad didn’t want to take it back to the barn that night. The cow was a first-time mother, and after what had happened, he wasn’t sure she could be trusted to care for it.

So they left the calf on the kitchen floor beside the stove, where it would stay warm through the night. If it rallied, they needed a way to keep it from wandering through the house—so they tied its feet together with a pair of Mom’s nylon stockings. 

They went to bed, hoping the calf would still be alive in the morning. 

Imagine Mom’s surprise the next morning when she found the little Houdini had slipped free of the stockings and was strolling around the kitchen like it lived there.

Fortunately, Dad was able to reunite the calf with its mother. He kept them together in a stall he prepared in the barn until the weather warmed and they were both stronger.

Looking back, I think that little calf taught me something before I was old enough to understand it. Sometimes life hangs on because someone refuses to give up.

The Pink Piano

Brenda Stratton
Pink upright piano with family photographs and pink roses displayed on top.


I will never forget the pink piano. 

Yes, you heard that right. 

A. Pink. Piano. Baby pink, to be exact.

I was five. Things like that make an impression when you are five.

It was an old upright piano, and it wasn’t pink when we first got it. 

That came later. 

I’ve told you before how much Mom loved pink. I don’t know for sure what led to the decision to paint it pink, or what whispered in Mom’s ear to convince her it was a good idea. 

I seem to remember the wood had been damaged, but I can’t say for certain. Whatever the reason, it remained the only pink piano she ever owned.

I’ve seen people paint them white. But that was the only one that was pink.

It sat in our living room for a long time, next to the television. 

You could see it from almost anywhere on the bottom floor of the farmhouse, except the kitchen. Unless you stood in the doorway. 

I remember people coming to the house. They almost always commented on the piano.

“It’s pink,” they said. 

“Yes,” Mom answered.

She never explained why she painted it pink. She let them draw their own conclusions. Maybe even she didn’t know why. 

Eventually, someone gave her an old pump organ.

That’s when she decided she didn’t want a pink piano anymore, and its fate was sealed. 

Dad pushed it out the front door onto the porch. 

After moving it outdoors, he hooked a chain around it and dragged it with the tractor down to the slough at the bottom of our pasture. 

I wasn’t allowed to go down there, so I never saw it again.  

Living on a Working Farm

Brenda Stratton

I lived on a small working farm until I was six years old. It is one of my most treasured memories. There were so many things to do and explore in my small world.

Mom taught me my ABCs, my colors, and how to count long before I entered school. She applied for a library card in my name when I was four. I couldn’t read yet, but the picture books introduced me to ideas beyond the farm. By the time I started school, my education had already begun.

She also encouraged me with art projects. I remember fondly watching her mix flour and water together to make paste, something she had watched her own mother do for herself and her eight siblings.

I spent my days exploring the parts of the farm where I was allowed to roam. One of my favorite places was the barn. I can still smell the bales of fresh-cut hay. Dad turned the cows out into the pasture in the daytime, so I didn’t need to worry about getting stepped on by a cow. 

Sometimes, Dad let me watch him milk the cows. We had several, so there was always a lot of milk. Dad brought some into the house for us, some went to the barn cats, and some went to the calves. He had a metal bucket with a nipple on it that he hung from the gate in the barn lot. The calves always emptied it. None of it went to waste. 

I loved playing with the barn cats, too, especially the ones that let me tame them as kittens. I almost always had one that I’d named Nosey, but it wasn’t always the same cat. 

The tame ones used to come up to the house. I carried them around and dressed them up in my doll clothes. There was always the problem of what to do with their tails. I solved that the same way I did in A Basket Full of Puppies. I put their tails through a leg hole along with one of their legs if the doll outfit had a pair of panties. They never objected and let me wrap them in doll blankets and push them around in my doll buggy. Occasionally one would jump out and I had to chase after it to get my doll clothes back.

Since our chickens were free-range, they often laid their eggs in the barn. Sometimes Mom sent me out with the little green basket she gave me to gather any eggs I could find. When I brought them into the house, Mom held them up to a lightbulb over the kitchen sink to make sure they were fresh. Dad had a stack of hay bales on the barn floor, and that’s where I usually found them. 

There were so many sounds that I remember well. The cows mooing, pigs oinking, chickens clucking, an occasional woodpecker drilling for insects in one of the tall trees, and the call of the bobwhites. 

Visiting the rabbits was always fun. They were so cute and fluffy. I especially adored the babies. I stood in front of their cages and watched them for long stretches of time. I could have watched them all afternoon.

I remember the blue morning glories Mom used to plant along the fence between the house and the empty chicken yard. They were so pretty. Mom and I both enjoyed them. I remember trying to smell them and the way the blooms wrapped around my nose, but they didn’t have much scent. 

Pale pink wild roses blooming among green leaves.


Wild roses grew in the ditch on the far side of the road that went past our house. I wasn’t supposed to cross it, but I did once to smell them. They were beautiful and smelled so good. But I learned the hard way that the stems had scores of tiny prickles growing all along them. I wasn’t tempted to cross the road to pick them after that. 

Looking back, I realize the farm was my first classroom. Long before I ever sat behind a school desk, it had already begun teaching me about animals, nature, hard work, kindness, and paying attention to the world around me. I suppose I’ve been learning ever since.

Mrs. Brayton and Anne of Green Gables

Brenda Stratton

I can still hear the inflection in her voice when she’d say, “Oh, Anne…”

I don’t remember any more what the characters’ conversation was about, but I know who was speaking. It was Marilla Cuthbert, Anne’s guardian.

Before she began reading, Mrs. Brayton passed out brown paper towels—the rough kind that came on a roll and had to be cranked out manually. She gave one to each of us. Then she poured a careful measure of raisins onto the paper towels—our cook, Mrs. Archer, had graciously contributed them. We sat there, quietly eating one raisin at a time, while Mrs. Brayton brought Prince Edward Island to life.

Those afternoons were like magic in my ten-year-old mind. It was the best part of the day. Everyone was so quiet we didn’t miss a word of the story. I could see the scenes unfolding in my imagination as clearly as if I had been there myself.

All eyes were on her—at least mine were—as I watched her slowly turn the pages and speak in her expressive voice. The raisins were just sticky enough to leave a faint sweetness on my fingers, though they didn’t cling too stubbornly to the paper towels.

I believe she read to us during the winter months, probably instead of recess. Whatever the reason, those afternoons stretched over many days, giving us time to journey through Anne’s world together.

Looking back, I realize those afternoons did more than fill the winter hours. I was already an avid reader—my mother had seen to that—but being read to was something different. It wasn’t just about the story. It was about cadence. Tone. Inflection. The way a voice could make words come alive.

Maybe that’s part of why I love audiobooks.

And maybe—though I hadn’t thought about it until now—it was also the beginning of something else. I remember being in fourth grade and wanting to write stories of my own. I tried a few times. But when I didn’t know what the next step was, I stopped.

Perhaps I was still listening. Still learning how stories were supposed to sound.

The Old Red Pump

Brenda Stratton

I remember it like it was yesterday, a moment caught in time. I was nine years old.

It was a cool, sunny day in spring. Dad was standing beside the old well, the sun at his back, creating a halo effect around him. 

He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of muddy jeans and work shoes, holding an old bucket with a rope attached to it. 

We had just moved to the Millersburg property, which was my mother’s childhood home. The only available water source was the old shallow well. We lived too far out in the country, so city water wasn’t available. 

The well hadn’t been used in nearly twenty years, since my grandmother moved into the city. 

Dad knew he had to clean the well and purify the water to make it safe before we had any usable fresh water at all. 

The well was hand-dug and approximately thirty-five feet deep. The sides and bottom were dirt, so the bottom of it was muddy. 

Dad repeatedly climbed down the ladder he had placed in the well, and brought up the mud bucket by bucket. 

He brought up other things, too: an old bucket and a wrench that had been lost down there many years before. 

After Dad cleaned the well, he began lining it with reclaimed bricks.

I know the weather was still cool because Mom had been cleaning the bricks with a wire brush and water they brought up beforehand. I remember her mentioning how cold her hands were, and I also remember how red they were. 

Once the brick lining was finished, Dad treated the water to make sure it was safe to drink. He said he put lime down the well to purify it, which is how they did it back then.

When that was all done, the last step was to restore the hand pump, which he had pulled out of the well before he started cleaning it. 

After cleaning it, he replaced the leathers, applied a fresh coat of red paint, and reinstalled it when the paint was dry. 

For several years afterward, before Dad built the new house, we had to go out to the well, pump the water we needed, and carry it into the house.

At age nine, I wasn’t strong enough to carry a full bucket of water, so the job mostly fell to Mom and Monty. Sometimes Mom was busy and Monty was off carrying his paper route, so Mom would ask me to bring in a half bucket. Once in a while, if she needed more, I had to make two trips. 

I remember hanging the bucket on the pump spout, having to pump it three or four times to prime it, the squeak the pump made, and the clatter of metal on metal as I brought the handle down and it hit the pump body. 

Later, when Dad built the new house, he installed a jet pump in the basement and connected it to the well. After that, we did not use the hand pump nearly as often.

Even so, Dad—and later Carl—kept the hand pump in good working order.

Dad’s reasoning was simple:

A family’s source of water should not depend entirely upon electricity if another choice exists.

Where They Are Still Alive

Brenda Stratton

So many of my childhood memories are anchored to the farm where we lived until I was six. I have already written many of the stories that happened there, but there are so many more to come. 

I find myself coming back to them often. I think it is at least partly due to the fact that my parents were still young, and so was my big brother. My brother and I hadn’t grown up yet and found our ways in the world. We were all still  together. I can go back there in my memories, where they are all still alive.

The farm is where I began to learn about the world. It was the setting for so many firsts—first adventures, first friendships, first discoveries.

A few years ago, my daughter, Liz, drove me by the farm. It is all gone now—the buildings, everything. It has all been turned into pasture. But to me, it lives on in my mind, just the way it was in the 1950s. 

I can still point out where the barn was, the garage, Dad’s fuel tank, and the chicken yard. I still know exactly where the house was, and I can see the interior as if I was standing in it right now. I know the furniture placement, and I remember how Mom had it decorated. 

It has been sixty-eight years since we drove out of that driveway for the last time.

The buildings are gone.

The people I loved are gone.

But in my memory, the farm is still there—just like my family.

A Basket Full of Puppies

Brenda Stratton

The house next door hadn’t always been empty. Friends of my parents lived there once, so I was familiar with the house, yard, and outbuildings. 

I don’t know who the family was that moved in next, but they weren’t there very long. Soon, the house was empty again.

One day soon after, Dad was driving slowly by the house with his window down. 

You didn’t drive fast on a country road. There was too much dust, and several houses sat close together in a tight little cluster. You never knew when someone’s child might chase a ball into the road.

A basket full of small blonde puppies.


It was then he heard the puppies crying. He stopped and listened because he knew no one lived there.

Our house was nearby—what would be about two blocks by city standards. Dad went home and told Mom what he had heard. They were both upset and knew they had to rescue the puppies. 

Dad went back to the house and followed the sounds of the crying puppies. I remember hearing him tell Mom they were locked in the shed and he had to force the door open. There was no mama dog with them, and he wasn’t going to leave them there to die. Dad placed them in the box he had brought with him and carried them home to Mom.

There were three puppies. They were light brown in color with white markings, and their little bellies were round and tight—but I didn’t know what that meant then. 

They were dirty and smelly—and they were starving.

Mom warmed some milk for them—milk she hadn’t yet skimmed the cream from. They ate eagerly, but Mom only let them eat a little at a time, knowing that if she gave them too much it would make them sick.  

When they were finished, she gave each of them a warm bath, then dried and wrapped them in towels to keep them warm. Then she made a soft bed in a laundry basket and said that’s all she could do for them that night. 

The next day, Dad called Dr. Beer, our veterinarian, and asked him to make a farm call. He also had some livestock for the vet to examine and asked him to stop at the house to look at the puppies while he was there. 

I had been quietly watching over them. When Dr. Beer came, I had to move back to give him and my parents room. I heard him say in a low voice that he didn’t know if they would survive because they were pretty little and very sick. He told Mom she was doing exactly what needed to be done—little meals often. He said they would know in a few days if they would live. 

A few days passed with Mom giving the puppies round-the-clock care, and Dr. Beer stopping by whenever he was “in the neighborhood.” I think that was his way of saying he was worried about the babies. 

With Mom’s tender care and steady feedings, the puppies rallied quickly. They grew strong and were ridiculously fat and round, but this time it was because of good nutrition. 

On one of his trips to check on the puppies, Dr. Beer said they were out of the woods and would be just fine. 

It wasn’t long before the puppies were playing, tumbling, and finding their voices. Mom started letting me hold them, then. The weather was nice, and when they got big enough, she let me start taking them outdoors to play. She knew I would be careful with them. 

They were so wiggly and squirmy but didn’t seem to mind me dressing them up in doll clothes and pushing them around in my doll buggy. Most of my dolls had dresses with panties. So, when I dressed the puppies, I wasn’t sure what to do with their tails—so I put them through one of the leg holes with their legs. 

I had so much fun with them, but too soon Mom and Dad said it was time to find new homes for them. We already had one farm dog, Brownie, so these little ones would need to have homes of their own. I wanted to keep them all. 

One by one, people came to see them, and soon they all found new homes.

I missed them. A lot.

I had watched my parents do what needed to be done. That seemed to be how things worked in our house.

Looking back, I realize they were teaching me something far more important than how to care for abandoned puppies.

If something was hurting…

…you helped it.

Mom Made Ten Dozen Doughnuts!

Brenda Stratton

At least, that’s what it sounded like to me. 

Mom made a lot of desserts… Doughnuts weren’t something she usually made, which is one reason that day has stayed with me all these years. 

She also made pies, cakes, cobblers, cookies, puddings, and almost anything else you could imagine. My favorites were cream puffs and Boston cream pie, but those doughnuts were near the top of the list. Nearly everything she made was from scratch, although she occasionally used a cake mix if she was in a hurry.

We had a Crosley electric stove back then in the late 1950s. The back left cooking area had a deep well. It was simply a deep cooking pot set into the stove itself, and that’s where Mom made soups and stews, and where she deep fried the doughnuts. 

She had just started making them when Monty and I came in from school. She said we could have some for dessert that evening, but she wanted to have some left over for breakfast the next day. 

We hovered around her watching what she was doing. She let us, but kept us away from the deep well in case it splattered hot oil. 

We did get to peek once in a while, and I remember watching the oil sizzle around them.

It didn’t take long for them to fry. She took them out of the hot oil and laid them on paper towels she had spread on some plates. 

When they had cooled a little, she drizzled them with a thin powdered sugar icing. The frying bread dough and icing together scented the air in a way that any bakery would have been proud of. I will never forget how the kitchen smelled that day. 

When they had cooled enough for us to handle, she gave one to each of us. They disappeared so quickly, one might have almost wondered if they had been there in the first place, but there was the lingering taste and telltale signs of sticky fingers on both of us. 

 Of course, we wanted a second one, but she said we had to wait until after supper. 

Dad came home from work not long after, and he had one, too. I remember him telling Mom how good it was. 

After we ate supper, she gave us each a doughnut for dessert, and then a second one. If I remember correctly, we might even have gotten another one before bed, and, of course, before our baths.  

The next morning, we got up eagerly expecting doughnuts for breakfast because she had said so the day before. 

Unfortunately, she told us there weren’t any left. We ate them all the night before.

As an adult, I’ve realized she probably made only two dozen or so because that’s what most recipes would yield. Either that, or Dad had quite a bedtime snack!

But at the time… I would have sworn I heard her say ten dozen.

Your Pants Are On Fire!

Brenda Stratton

When we lived on the farm, there were only two bedrooms on the ground floor. Monty had one room and Mom and Dad had the other. 

I was only four or five years old, so they put me in a tiny room off Mom and Dad’s bedroom that I think must’ve been a dressing room. 

Because the room was so tiny, there was only a small white dresser and my single bed which was tucked under the north-facing window.

There was no overhead light, just a bare lightbulb screwed into a light socket on the wall with a pull chain to turn it on.

One evening, while Mom was busy in her bedroom, I wandered into mine. 

There was a pair of Mom’s black-and-white zebra striped pedal pushers hanging from the lightbulb.

I remember the light turning on, but I don’t recall who did it, although I’ve always suspected it was me. Mom would have known better.

I was fascinated when I saw the smoke starting to curl toward the ceiling.

All of a sudden, Mom was there. 

She moved me out of the way and grabbed the zebra striped pants, flinging open the front door and hurling them out onto the front porch.

If I was the one who turned on the light, I didn’t get into trouble.

But Mom never hung anything on the light again, and that was the last time I ever saw the zebra striped pants.

The Night the World Turned Color

Brenda Stratton

One afternoon when we came home from school, Mom told us that Nellie Briggs, our landlady who lived next door, had invited us over to watch Bonanza the following Saturday night. 

She had just purchased a new color television. 

Bonanza was one of our favorite TV shows, and we knew that it was now broadcast in color. It was hard to imagine since we were used to seeing it and all other television shows in multiple shades of gray.

I was so excited! I could hardly wait for Saturday night to come around. 

When the time came, we walked across the two connected yards between our homes. We stepped up onto her front porch and knocked. Nellie welcomed us and ushered us into her living room. 

And there it was. The television was larger than ours. The screen was set behind a thick glass front with rounded corners.

Mom and Dad exchanged pleasantries with her, while Monty and I sat quietly in our chairs, anxiously waiting for the show to begin. 

Finally, it came on—and I was instantly mesmerized. 

It was almost like walking into a magical world, color replacing the tones of gray that I was used to. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.

After the show ended, we sat in silence for a few moments, and then the adults started discussing the program.

I was so enchanted by the colors that I barely remembered what the show was about. 

Soon, it was time to go home again. My parents said their goodbyes and thanked Nellie for inviting us over. 

We walked home, but I barely remember anything that came later. All I could think about was the color. 

It would be another fifteen years before I would have a color television of my own, but I never forgot that night at Nellie’s and how special it was to me. 

By today’s standards, the color probably wouldn’t seem remarkable. But to a little girl who had only known black-and-white television, it felt magical.