Mother was proud of our dairy. The milk bucket and pans shone like the sun. Old cow was a great red and white spotted beast that gave quantity, but the little Jersey gave quality. The cream was leather thick. Bong(1) brought in the great shining bucket brimming with the warm foamy milk and set it on the kitchen table. A piece of cloth was placed over the wire strainer and the milk was poured into great round pans. These were in turn set into a greater pan containing boiling water and put on top of the stove to scald.
Mother knew just in how many minutes the cream crinkled up like bad sewing. This was Devonshire cream, used on porridge or deep apple pie or on junket for the children’s tea. And sometimes, if I was lucky enough to wiggle my seat at breakfast so that the red tea cozy was between my plate and Father’s eye, Mother substituted the hated porridge for a slice of bread and cream.Brother Dick was a skinny, fragile little boy, and instead of ordering him tonics, Dr. Helmcken would order two tablespoons full of cream every morning.
There was nothing skinny or fragile about me. I used to hang around the dairy door, hoping. One morning at cream time, two little city boys were playing in our yard with Dick. Mother, thinking to give them a treat, creamed them all round. They made dreadful faces and went running home to their mother. They told her the Carrs’ milk had the most disgusting thick yellow scum on it and was quite unlike the nice blue kind their milkman brought them. Their mother thought it a joke, and told our mother, who sent her a jar of yellow scum.
