Farm Girl Read Online Free Page B

doing like I always did, and the scoop shovel hit me right above the eye and cut a big gash.
    They were building a cement foundation for the ice house. The foundation went two feet above ground, then a frame over that, with a door in one end. The door opened on the enclosed end where the frame was taller and went to a point.
    In the winter when the ice got deep on the pond, Dad and Ford would cut ice and load it on the horse-drawn wagon, insulated by straw. They’d layer the ice and straw in the ice house clear up to the top, then heap it with gunny sacks and straw. All summer we’d have that ice. Mother would go out there with the wheelbarrow to get a block of ice for the refrigerator, or ice box, on the back porch.
    One time Dad and Uncle Ford got the idea that snow would work just as well. They got snow that was heaped up along the banks and shoveled it into the ice house, with straw all around it. Then Mother shoveled snow into a gunny sack and put it in the ice box. She eventually moved the ice box from the back porch to the basement because the snow was messier than the ice.
    When we wanted to freeze ice cream, we’d just scoop the snow into the ice cream freezer along with the salt. You wouldn’t have to break it up like you did the ice. Once they decided on snow, they always used snow.
    Mother had to work pretty hard to get that snow out of the ice house, especially when it would get down deep near the end of summer, but she would do it without any help. She took great pride in being strong and able to lift heavy things. She could lift a fifty pound sack of sugar and carry it down the basement. She was nearly as tall as my dad, but pretty, too, with lots of reddish-gold hair piled on her head.
    My dad’s hair was black and thick. I had dark hair like my dad but no curls. My hair was straight as a stick, and I wore it cut to chin-length with bangs that went across. I never thought I was pretty, but that didn’t bother me. I was too busy playing or helping my dad to worry about how I looked. My parents had made this farm where we had a comfortable home and everything we needed. I felt like they could do anything.
    I was born at home at that new farm house, the doctor coming from Campbell. He had a nurse with him, and my parents had her stay two weeks to help take care of Mother and me. I was nearly two months old before I was named, because my parents couldn’t decide.
    Dad wanted to name me Peggy, but Mother didn’t like that saying, “The other children will call her ‘Piggy’ in school.”
    So Dad said, “Well, name her whatever you want then.”
    Mother couldn’t decide until quite a bit later, then she saw the name Lucille in a book and decided to name me that. Edna was given as the first name and Lucille the second, but I was always called Lucille. I never liked the name Edna, although I liked the fact that my initials spelled “ELM,” a nice, strong, beautiful tree.
    When I was twenty-one and attending the University of Nebraska, often when walking home, I’d go by way of the main floor of the Nebraska State Capitol Building past an office that said “Birth Certificates.” One day I decided to stop there and see if I could look up my birth certificate. I told the secretary my name, but she couldn’t find it.
    She said, “Come look for it yourself,” and as I was searching through the file, I saw a birth certificate with the name “Baby Girl Marker” with my parents’ names on it.
    I took a pen and wrote my name, Edna Lucille Marker, on my own birth certificate.

Baby Lucille held by the nurse who came to help

Self portrait of Julia Walstad, 1910

Chapter Four:
Mother and Me

    Mother was very ambitious. She often had the recurring dream of flying, with everyone watching her and wondering how she did it. She wasn’t a very social person, expressing herself mainly through writing and art. When I was in eighth grade, one girl at school had a paint-by-number set, and that’s what I wanted.