Ramblin' Roses and Flyin' Bricks
Counting my blessings
The late Earl Tucker
Wednesday, September 11, 1957 This isn't the Thanksgiving season, but I never did think a fellow had to wait until a particular season to be thankful. Besides, I have so much for which to be thankful that I couldn't attend to all of it one day. There's a very pretty church song, called "Count Your Blessings" and the older I get the more I like to pause and think of the good things that have happened to me down through the years.

Late yesterday, driving along a country road, I saw a man milking and I got to thinking how much nicer it is to get fresh milk at the grocery stores. We never had a shortage of milk at our house when I was young, but we had to get it the hard way. Actually, we always had too much milk and sometimes it put us in a powerful strain to find an empty container to put it in, but the cows had to be milked, morning and night, regardless. The milk would be strained, put in a cool place, and then in about three days we would feed to the hogs on account of we had to have buckets to put some more milk in to strain, cool and finally give to the hogs. I never could figure out why we didn't go ahead and give it to the hogs to start with. The hogs would gobble it up in nothing flat not realizing how much trouble we went to. There's so little gratitude about a hog.

Ice Cream Then

Looking back. I think how much we could have enjoyed using the milk to make ice cream, but the only way we could get ice was for two of us to walk the mile-and-a-half to town and fetch it back with a stick stuck between the string that held it. As it melted we would have to tighten up on the string and we had to buy 15 cents worth in order to get home with a nickel hunk. Then, already tired and exhausted, we had to turn the hand-operated freezer. Even with all that, we did enjoy the cream and we took turns about licking the dasher. Nowadays, when I see kids eating two or three cones a day, it makes me sort of sad to see how little they seem to appreciate it. I wish they had to milk a cow, carry ice, turn a freezer and then fight two over-grown brothers to get in on the dasher-licking. I'm very thankful now that it's possible to get ice-cream an easier way. Somehow, though, it doesn't taste as good in cones as it did off a dasher.

It's mighty nice, this time of the year, not to have to start hauling firewood for the cold winter months ahead. All I have to do is to work hard and try to make enough money to pay my gas and electric bill. It amounts to the same thing, but it sure seems a lot easier. Too, with gas or electric heat, you can get warm on both sides as the same time. People talk about the "open fireplace" when actually nobody ever saw an open fireplace. You couldn't see it for all the people backed up to it, and when we had a lot of female company I think the andirons were red from blushing.

Head Start

I'm thankful for modern transportation and miracle drugs, both of which are far, far better than wagons and castor oil. I'm thankful for communications, so I can know what's going on all over the world in a few minutes after it happens. That permits me to start worrying a little quicker about what's going to become of the country.

I'm thankful for electric refrigerators, television sets, finance companies and running water. I'm thankful for what we old people call "modern conveniences" which ain't nothing but a bathroom inside the house.

I'm thankful, too, that this column is written for anther week.

Reader Comments

No comments have been posted. Be the first!

Other Stories With Comments:
Article	Comments
Football season starting	1
Taking Names and Keeping Score	1
Frances Nichols passes at 91	1
Bryant is a contestant in Ms. Senior Alabama Pageant	1
Dunagans to celebrate golden anniversary	1