FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: THE CELLAR

The cellar was a marvel of construction. It was dome-shaped, like an old-fashioned bee skep. The interior brick walls were smooth-plastered and whitewashed. Concrete floor. The whitewash made it less dim inside. The only other light was from the opened door or the small round tile pipe protruding to the outside of the center of the ceiling. This was for ventilation. The whole mound was covered with a foot or two of sod. A slanting wooden door, pitched to the slant of the sodded dome, when opened and laid back revealed steps that descended well below the surface of the earth. At the foot of the steps was another wooden door that was kept shut to preserve the warmth in winter or cool in summer.

A concrete bench about three feet wide and two feet high circled the base of the interior. On this circular platform rested the jars of canned berries, peaches, apples, plums, green beans, beets, corn, mustard and spinach greens, tomatoes and anything else that was raised on the farm and could be put into glass jars or tin cans. In the early days, tomatoes were put into tin cans and a tin lid sealed on with hot, orange-red sealing wax.

When the County Home Demonstration Agent came to our county, she taught us how to can tomatoes and meat in glass jars. I have never tasted meat as good as those pork chops and sausages, home-canned.

Then came Mr. DeLaval. That wasn't his name, but we always called this salesman by that name. Living on a remote farm, with hard-to-travel roads, we did not meet anyone at the door with a curt, "We don't want any and have no time to listen." We usually wanted everything any salesman had to offer whether we could buy it or not, and time was in plenteous supply.

So when Mr. DeLaval came, he was graciously met at the door by Mama and Grandma looking over shoulder and Lou and Lillian trailing out behind. I had already been sent hopping to the barn or fields to notify Dad and Grandpa that, "Company has come!"

"Through some wonder of wonders a machine has been invented that will separate the cream from the milk instantly, or almost instantly," Mr. DeLaval said and waited for our reaction.

We all just stood silently, staring at this stranger.

"Let me show you," Mr. D. said.

Dad nodded affirmatively whereupon Mr. D. went to his conveyance and brought in a heavy machine and placed it on as level a place as he could find on the kitchen floor. He returned to get many more pieces which he identified as the milk container, the floater, the spouts, discs, gasket, screw, etc.

"Works on the centrifugal principle," he told us as he assembled the pieces in a certain order and placed them in the machine.

We stood silently.

"Bring some milk," Mr. D. requested, "and get your cream cans."

Lou and I bumped into each other as we raced to the cellar for some crocks of milk. Mama went after the cream cans.

Mr. D. poured the milk into the big container at the top and started to turn a crank on the side which began to hum gradually then slowly picked up speed until we could tell something inside was really moving. He turned the spigot to release the milk from the top container and in a minute a stream of cream was coming from one spout and "blue john," or thin milk from the other.

We stood in abject, wide-eyed awe.

Heretofore the milk had been put into big crocks, allowed to set overnight while the cream arose to the top, then skimmed off and put into two 1-gallon milk cans. When full these cans were hurried off to the train depot at Elvins, as fast as horse and buggy could take them. From there they went, according to the wired-on stiff cardboard address tags, to the Blue Valley Creamery in St. Louis, Mo. In about a week came our check through the mail. We could pick up our empty cans at the Elvins depot, sent back to us by similar address tags described above. Thus, for us, four cans were always in use. For other neighboring families, it might be only one can or maybe five or six.

We bought the cream separator! It may have saved time, work and money, but for Lou and me, who washed and dried the 20 or more different parts two times a day, its glow sometimes grew dim.

Not all our milk was run through the separator. Some was carried up to the kitchen to "clabber." This was then poured into the big cedar churn and churned, by way of a hand-manipulated dasher, to make butter.

A sufficient amount of butter was kept for cooking and table use, the rest molded into pound molds and exchanged at Landgon's Grocery for the things we could not raise, or sold for money we could spend at stores that did not trade for butter.

Another source of security that the cellar provided was that when the severe storms came, we all went down, closing the two doors behind us until the fury was over. Propped against the wall, behind the downstairs door, were picks, shovels and axes so that if the house or the big cherry tree blew over on the cellar we could dig our way out. And if it took several days to do this there were all the quart jars of canned food, potatoes and cream cans in various stages of fullness.