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Show 61 The coming of coal did much to "citify" us, as it lessened the need for hauling wood. Each man had several racks for interchange on the wagon bed. Besides the beet rack there was the wagon box for general use and for hauling grain. The wood rack was light, a frame, with uprights and chains for stacking the wood which was ours for the picking up, and a man was judged by the kind of load he brought home. If it was packed tight and high, with mostly heavy pine logs, a little cedar for kindling he was admired. If he brought back little stuff loosely packed it was a "crow's nest. " Grandma Rawlinson always sniffed the air appreciatively when we met her at the train. "I like to come here, " she would say. "Smell that fat pine in the air! " They had only cedar in Oak City, where she moved from Aurora, and from Joseph. Aunt Rachel and Uncle Abe lived there, as did Uncle Walter and Aunt Eliza. Aunt Jane and Uncle Eli taught school there; Mama's youngest brother and sister. Papa was a good farmer, a good stock man, a good wood-hauler. Mama didn't fully appreciate our affluence until Clif Shipp, the postmaster, told her that her order of forty dollars to Sears Roebuck was the largest he had ever made out. Was she sure it was correct? Maybe he was more used to orders like mine: Water Wings 21£. I demonstrated more stupidity by learning how to build fires, but more especially by learning how to milk cows. The triumph I felt escaping from the corral after extracting one fourth inch of greenish milk from a puzzled |