Those were the days of honor and honesty…

Every Wednesday and every Saturday my Daddy would make his usual run into town to do what he called “peddling the milk and butter”. I don't know how many gallons of milk he took in to town each trip, but since we had quite a few cows and that meant excess milk, something had to be done with that milk. We had a refrigerator that stored as much as possible,considering we had a family of four children and our parents.

Daddy had his usual customers on his milk route, and I’m sure there were many more who would loved to have bought milk and butter from him had they had the opportunity. Very rarely did he sell what we called “sweet milk”. That’s what Northerners call “white milk”. Pretty much all his customer data base included buttermilk customers. The milk wasn’t pasteurized because it came straight from the farm and to make sure he didn’t sell something to someone and make them sick, he had very, very limited “sweet milk” customers. That was kept for family consumption.

Sometimes a few gallons of the milk would be stored in the spring down below the big house. That spring would keep the milk ice cold. I don’t remember a lot of that, just some, but I do remember the days of modern things happening at our house when Daddy bought his first Coca Cola machine to store that milk in. Eventually we had two of them.

How does one store milk in a Coca Cola machine, you ask? No, it wasn’t the kind where the little hole twirls around and dispenses your iced cold drink to you. This was a box made for Coca Cola before those fancy individual drink dispensers came along. It was a big rectangle-shaped box that held water. They were usually found in the little country stores.

You filled it half way with water, plugged it in, and eventually the water became ice cold and after a few hours of storing your gallons of milk in it, you would have the most delicious glass of buttermilk in the whole wide world. Add a chunk off a pone of cornbread, and you were doing some fine dining. Better than at the best restaurant in town.

There was no comparing sweet milk to that tart, ice-cold glass of buttermilk, with tiny chunks of real, homemade churned butter still floating in it.

In my opinion the only thing sweet milk was good for was making homemade ice cream. Well, maybe once the heavy cream was whipped it did taste pretty good. But my favorites were the pans of homemade chocolate and vanilla ice cream that awaited us when we arrived home from school.

Back to Daddy’s milk route…he loaded up the car with his gallons of milk and pounds of butter and headed for an all-day trip to town. Occasionally one of us kids would have the opportunity to spend the day with Daddy as he peddled his milk. I like to think of him as starting the modern version of "Take your kid to work Day", although that was everyday of our lives. They always carried us to work with them...straight to the fields.

On Daddy's 'milk days', Mama was left holding down the household chores and field work at home...unless Daddy took one with him. I always looked at these as Daddy’s days of vacation. Mama didn’t have any. The closest thing she could call a vacation was Sundays. That was't much of a vacation. Still the usual morning chores of milking, washing churns and jugs, churning, putting up the milk, cooking etc.,had to be done because cows and kids don’t take a day off. Mama just didn’t have to work in the fields because it was the Sabbath.

Daddy always kept a black book with lines drawn down the center, listing each of his customers, how many gallons of milk he had sold them, how many pounds of butter he had sold and whether or not he had been paid (always in cash, of course) or whether they still owed him ‘X’ number of dollars. Every gallon was accounted for. Every pound of butter was accounted for.

Daddy was an honest man. He was a man held accountable by himself, for himself and his family, for his income. There was a giant calendar Daddy kept hanging in their room. It was a giveaway calendar he had received at the end of the old year, advertising a local fertilizer store in town that he did his farm business with. Every Wednesday and every Saturday, without fail, Daddy would come home and record his sales for the day on that calendar.

Every year at tax time, he would pack up his calendar and whatever other receipts for income and expenses he had and take them into town to have his taxes figured by the local accountant.

Sometimes I wonder how it could have even been worth his time to keep track of those few gallons of milk he sold. That butter and milk my Mama had labored so hard over, put so many hours into, and he had sold for fifty cents a gallon. But it was their livelihood, money they had proudly made, paid their tithe from, and he was not above paying his share of taxes on it.

It was their contribution to society as meager as it was,helping the economy stay alive in the years I remember…the years during the late 40’s, 50’s and early 60’s. They were proud people, my Daddy and my Mama. They were the givers, the contributors, albeit in a small way. They were not takers. There were never free lunches at school for us kids because there was always at least a banana and loaf bread available for our school lunches. Taking welfare never entered their minds, though I’m sure they probably could have qualified. You never would have known it because they were too busy making a living and a life for their family.

They didn’t waste valuable time trying to figure out ways to beat the system. They added to the system. They were too busy raising their family. They didn’t have time for pity parties. They had created their children and they would make life happen for them as best they could. They would have been insulted had someone even suggested their children were suffering. Because they weren’t; they were taken care of by their parents. There was always food on our table and clothes on our backs…healthy food and clean clothes…

And as for “paying the IRS”, what did it really accomplish? It instilled a sense of pride in my parents.and it imprinted upon the minds of their little children, consciously or sub-consciously, “You pay your own way in life, you hold yourself accountable, and you are proud of your income, large or small, and it taught over-all honesty.

“Thank you Daddy and Mama for life’s little lessons, whether seen or unseen, appreciated or just taken for granted at the time. You made us who we are.