In His time

There's still some of us around that milked the cows by hand. My first encounter with this age-old routine came when I was 11. I'd been hired out to Uncle Lesile for the summers' hay'n. A bad storm left us without power and so there we were at 5 a.m. milk'n 24 cows by hand. Uncle, wife and me. Their children were grown and gone.

Uncle milked seven, Marie 16 and me one. Otherwise, Marie never went to the barn. And she was ex-city gal from California. The Golden State was a different place back in the 1920's when they married, so they say.

We remember the metal "kickers" hang'n on the wall cuz s...