Mike and Ken visiting Grandma Bergman in Nashville, MO.
Now that the crops were all in the work was slowing down some. The cattle had been moved down to the Johnston Home Place for the winter and grain feed, then hauled to the Joplin Stockyard when they had fattened.
On a day when there were no work scheduled, Morris and I would take the day to visit the Grandma’s.
Grandmother Morgan lived with her daughter Florence, on the Morgan home place that had once been the Liberal Brick Yard, just across the railroad tracks on the south side of Liberal, MO. Her husband Ira P. Morgan had suffered a heart attack at the age of 52 and left her with 8 children and one not yet born. Her oldest son was working as an apprentice pharmacist and with his help and the help of her older daughters she managed to raise them all. Her life story is another book!
Grandmother Morgan always served us hot green tea when we came to visit. It was so strong! She put the tea in the kettle on the stove when we first arrived and boiled it! Of course she served it with about half milk. How I’d love to get some green tea like that once again. We have searched for tea like that and have not found it anywhere.
Florence was a school teacher then so usually she was not home on weekdays.
Some days we would go and visit Grandma Johnston while Morris saw to some chores around the home place. She was always sitting in her rocking chair and usually crocheting. She saved all the string from the feed sacks and would tie the pieces together and make lovely lace for edging on blouses for Isabel or Morris’s Mom, Dorothy. For pillow cases and table runners. She even made table clothes from those feed sacks.
She had bad feet from wearing shoes with those pointed toes when she was younger and now in her old age she didn’t wear shoes at home. She made herself cloth booties from the old denim overalls her son’s John and Jake had wore out. She had a quilt in the frame most of the time. She would give a new quilt to each family for Christmas. How I wish I had saved mine. I used them all the time and wore them out!
If she was not sewing she was reading as she was a very learned lady. She wrote to her daughter Isabel at least every other day and sometimes every day. She cut articles from the daily newspaper she thought Isabel might enjoy as well as poems she thought she would enjoy also.
She kept a weather journal and recorded the temperature every day! What a different life she lived from our life here in the 2000’s!
It was only 7 miles farther to my Mom and Dad’s in Nashville, MO. She was always delighted for us to stop by with the babies. She quite often had made or purchased some little outfit for them to wear.
Of course Morris still had those 18 cows to milk, so we would hurry home for him to do that and I would have to fix supper for us, then with their tummies full, and tired from the days journeys those little guys would sometimes fall asleep in their highchairs. Although they both were still having their "baba", and with their warm jammies on and a bottle they were asleep soon.
“As you read my stories of long ago I hope you will remember that the things that are truly worthwhile and that will give you happiness are the same now as they were then. Courage and kindness, loyalty, truth, and helpfulness are always the same and always needed.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder
I so agree with Laura now!
