She baked either pies or cake for us every day,
unless, for a change, she made my favorite pud-
ding, striped with currants and boiled in a bag.

Next to getting warm and keeping warm,
dinner and supper were the most interesting
things we had to think about. Our lives cen-
tered around warmth and food and the return
of the men at nightfall. I used to wonder, when
they came in tired from the fields, their feet
numb and their hands cracked and sore, how
they could do all the chores so conscientiously:
feed and water and bed the horses, milk the
cows, and look after the pigs. When supper
was over, it took them a long while to get the
cold out of their bones. While grandmother
and I washed the dishes and grandfather
read his paper upstairs, Jake and Otto sat on
the long bench behind the stove, "easing"
their inside boots, or rubbing mutton tallow
into their cracked hands.

Every Saturday night we popped corn or
made taffy, and Otto Fuchs used to sing, "For
I Am a Cowboy and Know I've Done Wrong,"
or, "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairee." He
had a good baritone voice and always led the
singing when we went to church services at
the sod schoolhouse.

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