Because of the Biscuits

I grew up on a farm. My daddy was a farmer. My four older brothers followed in his footsteps, helping on the farm. Naturally, as a girl at the time, I was expected to cook and feed everyone in the family with my mother usually at my left elbow. Don’t get me wrong, I liked cooking and I loved my family but there were days when I was just tired of, what seemed like, bottomless stomachs. Every morning, I would wake up to milk the cow and bring the milk in to make buttermilk biscuits.

In the course of a week, no slight exaggeration, I would have made several hundred biscuits. My favorite days of the week were school days. The reason I loved school days was because the one room school house was an escape from making biscuits and all the other chores that came along with living on a farm.

On school days, I would pack my lunch and I do the same for my three brothers. My oldest brother Matthew was past school age, so he was always helping daddy out. Anyhow, my three brothers and I would walk to school without shoes. Of course shoes for five kids in those days was far too expensive. Most everything was far too expensive actually.

I loved school because I loved to learn things. Learning to read made me feel alive! Days could be difficult but going to school always put a smile on my face. Daddy and mother couldn’t read much themselves, so some nights I’d read books out loud to them by candlelight. None of my brothers particularly liked reading out loud and I’m not so sure they enjoyed school like I did but they tolerated it enough to go.

The other reason I loved school was because of Mr. Credence, our one and only teacher who taught all the grade levels and all the school subjects. He was amazing in every way. He wore small glasses. His smile was both the sunrise and sunset to me. His chestnut brown hair and green eyes were like a painting. Mr. Credence was the most handsome man I’d ever seen.

I studied so hard every moment of every day that I could spare because I just wanted to make him proud as his student. He seemed impressed by how hard I worked on my writing and arithmetic problems. My cheeks felt tingly when he looked in my direction.

I had two dresses made from old flour sack material. My mom had made them. One dress was a dark blue color and the other was a cream colored dress. One day, I was wearing the cream colored dress and one of my brothers threw a clump of cow manure at me. The clump of poop exploded right on the front of my dress and I lost it. Yelling at my brother in anger, I was mad. There wasn’t enough time to run home and change clothes. I definitely didn’t want to be late for school. The main reason I was upset was because I didn’t want Mr. Credence to see me with a terrible stain on the front of my dress. When I got to school, I tried scrubbing off the stain but it just made it worse. I ran to the outhouse and then had an idea to flip my dress inside out so that the stain was on the inside of my dress.

Proud of myself for thinking quickly, I went inside the school house for the beginning of the lessons for the day. Of course this just had to be a day where Mr. Credence called on a few of us to come up to the chaukboard to do problems of the other children to see the examples. I prayed silently that he wouldn’t call on me today. He called on me. I went forward to the front of the classroom like it was my execution day.

I took the chalk and started to work the math problem. I finished the problem. I heard my brother in the back snickering. My cheeks burned like they were biscuits in the oven. I was hoping that the teacher didn’t notice my dress was inside out. On the way home from school, I punched my brother hard on his arm and that made me feel a little better but not all the way. He half apologized for getting my dress dirty. I halfway forgave him for it. I grabbed a handful of cow manure and threw it at him but it was all dry and just fell away from him without leaving a trace. Still, I just didn’t feel completely vindicated.

Several years later, I graduated from school. The day after my last school day in fact, Mr. Credence proposed to me! I was a bit shocked at first. Thinking about it, I told him I’d marry him on one condition only. This is what I told him, “I’ll marry you, only if we can move to the city… so I don’t have to live on a farm and I don’t wanna make a single biscuit ever again!”

He smiled with his sweet green eyes and we were married a couple months later. We moved to the city and I never made another biscuit ever again.