By RAY ADLER
Ask Adler
As Grandma got older, I asked her how to make her bread. She made bread in a round pan with all sides making a dome of bread. I could eat a whole loaf after school with her homemade apple butter.
She began, “You start with a medium-sized potato and boil it until it is cooked.” Thinking that she had not heard me, I said, no, I want to know how you make bread. She said, “You boil a medium-sized potato and take the potato out and add flour to the water.” How much flour? “You add flour until it looks right.” Suffice it to say, I don’t have Grandma’s bread recipe.
She also taught me how to butcher chickens. We grew up butchering a hundred chickens a year for the extended family. It was my job to haul the chicken manure, and that is probably the singular strongest reason that I became a lawyer. Although, even as a lawyer, I’ve concluded every job has its manure-hauling aspect.
I remember the field we were working in and almost the exact location in the southwest corner. It was the field east of the woods, south of the ditch, and north of the cattle pasture that backed up to our house. Dad had a one-row Oliver corn picker. He had to drive over the first two rows of corn to open up the field. After he had worked a ways in, he turned around and tried to harvest the first two rows that he had knocked down. Needless to say, some corn was left. That was my job: take a five-gallon bucket and pick up any corn that had been missed.
That day Grandmother Adler helped. She told me stories about her own father, who had been President of the Indiana Sheep Association and later a county auditor. I was fascinated to have talked with him, as he had been born prior to the Civil War in 1856. He had told the story of taking sheep to England and eating in the royal palace. Grandmother showed me how to make a corn husk doll and told me stories about how strong Grandpa Carl had been in his younger years. He had worked as a carpenter and a farmer. I was depressed because I just knew I would grow old and have no stories to tell my own grandchildren.
Grandma assured me that I would have stories, I just needed to be patient. Sure enough, walking up the lane I encountered my first blue racer. As their name suggests, the blue racer is a very fast snake that can move at speeds of 4 mph. As I startled him, he began moving in the same direction I was going, and I became convinced he was after me. I made it home in short order.
As I grew older, I saw some of the feats of strength of Grandfather Carl. In his early 70s, he built a 12-by-12-foot barn door with a 2-by-4-inch frame and 1-by-6-inch shiplap siding to replace a damaged door. I witnessed him lift that by himself and hang it on the barn.
On another occasion, when I was trying unsuccessfully to back a load of wheat into his corn crib to avoid the rain that had just started, I saw him pick up the entire end of the loaded wagon and move it over several feet. As a young man I helped fill in the well where Grandpa Carl had lifted out a 250-pound hog that had fallen in the well.
Grandma’s stories seem to continue even after both she and grandfather passed away. She had a chicken house about 15 feet wide by 60 feet long that was destroyed during a storm. It took the Amish neighbors just four hours to re-create the chicken house, install the windows, and pour the concrete floor. Later, when it was determined the chicken house needed to be moved, 75 Amish neighbors came and literally picked up the chicken house and moved it about 200 feet to its new permanent location.
It is remarkable how an ordinary life brings with it so many stories. My grandmother, an ordinary midwestern women, amazed me with dozens of wonderful stories about her life. I now find joy in doing the same with my grandchildren.
Educational material and not legal advice, written by the team at Adler attorneys. Email andrea@noblesvilleattorney.com with questions or comments.