The breakfast menu at Grandmother’s never varied; oatmeal, boiled eggs, toast (bread held with a long handled fork over an open stove flame) and hot tea. Often the toast became a little black, but we didn’t seem to mind. There was always grandmother’s homemade butter to spread on the blackest side. Her quaint kitchen was the heart of their home. Two stoves, one kerosene and one a coal range, stood in her kitchen along with a glass-door cabinet, a flour bin, table and chairs and along one wall a built in cupboard.
Grandmother set her pies on the back of the flour bin to cool when she took them from the oven. As soon as we arrived at their home, we would hurry to the flour bin to see what kind of pie we were having for dinner. Her custard pie was our favorite. Now her great, great granddaughters use her recipe.
The hot tea for breakfast was a special treat because my folks would not have allowed me to have hot tea at home. “It might stunt my growth.” I’m sure my love of a cup of hot tea today is a result of the good memories I have of tea at my grandparents.
Grandfather was a hard worker. He had ten acres of land that he farmed with horses until he was eighty-four. Later when he rented out the ground, he would take his hoe and begin to hoe around the corn or beans and between the rows. He continued until he had been over the entire ten acres. He did not like to see weeds and grass in his cornfield. After his corn was harvested, he would glean the field for food for his animals. He raised chickens, pigs, and a cow and always had a large garden. He had a big boysenberry patch that brother Mick and I loved to slip into to look for ripe berries. We knew dad would scold us, but we did it anyway. At ninety-one, grandfather asked dad to get him twenty-five strawberry plants. How is that for optimism?
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