I made a sentence like, "The cow wouldn't give down her milk."
The teacher gave me a zero on the sentence. And when I asked her why, she said, "A cow can not hold up her milk nor give down her milk."
I told her, "Lady, you may know your English, but you sure don't know milk cows."
Now back to the Flint farm.
I was so little that, when I would throw out corn and maize seed to feed the chickens, I couldn't throw it far enough away from me. Some of it would fall at my feet. So the big chickens would crowd around my feet to pick up the grains and I was afraid of so many big hens so close to me. And I really got scared when they started pecking the feed out of my feed bucket. Sometimes I would drop the bucket and run away.
I remember seeing Papa digging up big trees where he was going to make a field. It wasn't far from our house. Sometimes I would go take him a drink of water. And sometimes Mama would send me to tell Papa dinner was ready.
While Papa was drinking his water and resting a bit, I liked to get down in the big hole he dug around the bottom of a big tree. The dirt was damp and cool in the hole. Some of the holes were so big and deep it was hard for me to crawl back out.
Sometimes our old surley (bull) was close by and I was afraid of him, so Mama would leave me at the house to watch after Albert while she took Papa a drink. But if the cows were way over in the other side of the pasture, I wasn't afraid to go.
I remember our garden just outside our yard. I was big enough to pick fresh beans and peas. The older ones in the family taught me how to break the peas off the vines without breaking the vines. Mama could pick them so easily, with just the right twist of her hands. But I had to hold the vine with one hand while I twisted the peas off with the other hand.
I had the smartest Mama. She could do so many things, and she could do them so easily.