My hometown is located halfway between Lancaster and Camden, South Carolina. Both cities are County seats and the county line used to run right through our town. Not a straight line, mind you, it more or less ambled along its way. One of our Mayors once said that it looked like somebody must have gotten the surveyor drunk, tied a brick to a rope, tied the rope around his waist and he dragged it along behind him plotting the line as he went. The old joke was that in some of the homes you could sleep with your head in one county and your feet in the other. It was probably true of the ones that bordered the line.
Kershaw’s main industry back then was farming, the Kershaw Oil Mill, and Springs Cotton Mills. Springs Mill was located at the northern end of town between the main highway into Kershaw and the bypass that ran parallel to it. Their land joined the Kershaw Oil Mill property that was located directly behind our house. You could say that one of us was in the other’s backyard. The railroad tracks lay between the two of us.
The train usually passed through Kershaw once a day. When we were children we would run out back and wave at the engineer. Most of the time he would blow the whistle and wave back as he went by. There were occasions when I heard the train and the mournful sound of its whistle at night. I would lie in bed pretending it was telling me goodnight.
There was an ice plant at the oil mill and my friends and I loved to run down the railroad tracks in the hot summertime and ask Mr. Clyburn who worked there to give us some ice. He would open the big old door to the freezer room where the huge blocks were stored and chip off hunks for us to eat. He was a kind old man who was never too busy to take a few minutes to talk with children.
The Oil Mill was the largest business in Kershaw during those years. They owned the biggest store in town, the bank, and a livery stable. They were also cotton buyers. I’ve already mentioned the ice plant but what I remember most was the cottonseed meal and hulls they processed. The hulls were sold in large croker sacks and that’s what Daddy bought to feed our cow. She loved them. The meal was as smooth as flour and a deep mustard color. I put the hulls in one of Mama’s old discarded dishpans and sprinkled the meal over them. Old Daise would stand there eating the whole time I was milking as contented as could be. Like Elsie the Borden’s cow I suppose.
Milking was my chore. Mama had always milked but she had a bout with eczema one year and the doctors said it was caused by an allergy related to the milking. She taught me to milk and that was my job from then on. It didn’t bother me one bit at the time because, since I milked the cow, I didn’t have to help with any of the housework or washing dishes. That suited me fine. I hated housework.
You wouldn’t believe how good the oil mill smelled at times. A lot of people thought it smelled like ham frying and at times I suppose it did. There was a lot of dust that formed from the mill and it settled on the houses nearby. Daddy just got out the water hose and rinsed it away when it began to build up. It must have been good as a fertilizer too because there was always plenty of grass in the fields around the house for the cow to graze.
Old Daise and I almost parted ways one time. It was summertime and I was milking away hurrying so that I could get on to more important things like playing with my friends. We had a short stool that I sat on. The milk pail was on the ground in front of me and almost full. A horsefly must have bitten Daise because she suddenly swished her tail and lashed me across the face almost blinding me. She kicked out and the milk pail went sailing across the ground slinging milk every which way. I jumped back out of her way and fell backwards over the stool and almost broke my neck. I jumped up and anger overcame common sense. I hauled off and kicked her as hard as I could on her leg. I forgot I was barefooted. You haven’t experienced pain until you kick a bony cow leg barefooted. My big toe and the one next to it swelled so big I thought they would burst. To this day I don’t know how I missed breaking both of them but I was spared that. I picked up the pail, hobbled to the back door, sat down on the steps, and called Mama.
Mama didn’t laugh then. She brought a small tub filled with ice water and soaked my foot. The ache finally subsided enough for me to make it in the house. By the time Daddy got home that evening some of the swelling had gone down. Mama told him what had happened and I could hear them laughing. That made me mad all over again. I was pouting in my room when Daddy came in to look at my foot.
“I reckon I better go check on the cow,” he said. “No telling what you did to her leg."
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