Farm Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

When we went to town, I got one but never finished it.
    When I was living in Lincoln, Mother wrote that she finished my painting, liked it and bought another one. And that started her painting again.
    Her cousin Telia Erickson lived about three miles away and did oil painting. Mother watched her and talked to her about it. She bought the kind of board and canvas that Telia used and started painting.
    Mother always worked downstairs in the basement on the small oval table by the coal bin. She said once she had done 2000 paintings, many of them sold through a store in Minnesota.
    During the Depression, the Omaha World Herald wrote a big article about Mother trading her paintings all over the country for different things, trading through the mail with people in other states. She often said that her paintings hung in every state in the nation.
    At first she bought her boards from an art company in Chicago and her canvas mounted on frames. Then she thought, Why pay all that money, I can do this myself. She cut the wood, making the frames the size she wanted, then nailed canvas on the frames with a certain glue to process it. She worked in the shop across from the ice house. When the canvas dried, she’d take it down the basement and paint on it.
    Mother figured out how to do a lot of things herself. She never doubted her ability to do anything.
    But Mother didn’t know much about children. She didn’t really want any and wasn’t happy when she found out I was coming. She wanted time to paint and do photography and other projects and not be bothered with children.
    Dad was the third oldest in his family, so he had five or six younger than him. He practically raised Ford, who was fifteen years younger. As a young man out doing the farm work, Dad would have little Ford on his lap, riding with him on the horse- drawn machinery. He loved children and knew all about raising them.
    But Mother treated me fine and we had fun together.
    When I was real small she made a little table and covered it with oil cloth. This little table set under the window in the kitchen, and I’d sit there to eat and feed my dolls. Mother made clothes for my dolls, for my one boy doll she made a little pair of denim overalls just like every farm boy wore back then. She made all my clothes. She had an old sewing machine with a door that would shut. When I was little, I liked to hide behind that door.
    Every so often salesmen would come to the house, and one time one came in selling Singer sewing machines. Mother bought that and they took her old one with the cabinet. The new one didn’t have nice wood sides or a wood door in front. These were the kind of machines you ran by pumping the foot pedal, they didn’t use electricity. She kept that Singer for as long as I can remember.
    Every Sunday Mother cooked a big dinner and invited Uncle Ford. We’d have chicken or roast, with cake or pie for dessert. She made one dessert called prune pig. She rolled the dough flat, laid pitted prunes on it, then rolled it up like a jelly roll. She wrapped it in a dish towel and steamed it. It came out like a soft, white jelly roll. Mother didn’t make many Norwegian dishes, but she did make that.
    In the Norwegian community someone would always get dried cod, or lutefisk, as hard as a board and three feet long, six or eight inches wide. Mother brought home lutefisk from the Norwegian community when her mother or Uncle Anton were still alive, because they liked it. She’d soak it in lye water until thick and oh, how it would stink. When cooked, it tasted just like it smelled. Dad didn’t like it, so after her mother and brother died, she no longer made lutefisk.
    Paap was bread broken onto a bowl, and Mother would heat milk with a little flour to thicken it, then pour the milk over the bread and sprinkle nutmeg on it. I liked this for breakfast. It was good made with homemade bread. We’d often have pancakes and sausage for breakfast, or fried or boiled eggs. We didn’t