From the Relief Society Magazine, May 1958 –

The Finish

By Frances C. Yost

Tom sat down at the breakfast table. He noticed the crisp white tablecloth, the neatly folded napkins, the pretty dishes Sally had used. Then he looked at the breakfast fare and a frown gathered on his face.

“What, cracked wheat cereal and powdered milk again … oh, no!” Tom shuddered, looked at Sally, and shook his head.

“I’m sorry, Tom, honest I am.” Sally looked a little hurt.

“I’m not blaming you, Sally. I know you’re a super cook, and if I brought home the bacon and ham and sausage and eggs and things, you’d cook them. I’m fed up on this working my way through college, and living like … like this, and I’m quitting and getting a job!”

“Tom, you can’t quit now. Why, it’s already March, and you only have until June. We can stick it out, honest we can!” Sally said encouragingly.

“What’s a degree in pharmacy if it means you and Donny and Sally Lynn have to suffer?”

“Nobody’s suffered, Tom. Why, I took Sally Lynn and Donny to the well-child clinic yesterday, and they’re gaining steadily. I guess I’ve skimped on your food, rather than theirs,” Sally spoke apologetically.

“I’ve weighed the problem, and I’m quitting,” Tom said as he sugared his cereal and poured the powdered milk over it and started to chew and swallow his food with no outward sign of enjoyment.

Sally didn’t feel like eating now. She just sat at the table and watched Tom. She had been pretty proud of the way she had managed, and Tom hadn’t had one of these outbursts for a long time. She felt the tears gathering. She hoped she could hold off her cry until he left their little campus apartment.

But Tom had seen her. “Don’t take it so personal, Sally. A fellow’s got to pop off someplace. I guess home isn’t the proper place to do it, though, and, especially, when a pretty wife has set a pretty breakfast table. But, Sally, let’s face it, you’ve been managing on practically nothing too long. I’m going to give up and get a job and support my family decently. Monday morning I’m handing in my papers and quitting school!”

“But, Tom, we can manage on your … your job,” Sally implored.

“Say it, Sally, on my garbage collecting job. I’m not only tired of seeing you skimp, I’m tired of getting up at 4:30 every morning and collecting garbage, and eating powdered milk. A degree isn’t worth it. This is the finish!”

Sally Lynn, sleeping close by in the crib, started to cry. Sally picked her up, put her over her shoulder, and patted her little back comfortingly. She had to comfort Tom, too. Somehow she had to keep him going … put him through.

“Let’s go see your grandmother today, Tom. It’s Saturday and you need a change.”

“Sally, must I point out to you, the car doesn’t run without gas?” Tom ejaculated.

“I have five dollars saved for an emergency, and I think this is it,” Sally said cheerfully. “Granny’s getting old, Tom. She won’t be here too long.” Under her breath she said, “If anyone can cheer Tom up, Granny Crocket can.”

“Well, bless my soul!” Granny Crocket said as she held the door open and welcomed Tom and Sally. “My, I’m glad you brought the kiddies!”

“We take them most places, Granny. It saves sitter money!” Sally smiled, as she took off the children’s wraps and dropped into the comfortable rocking chair Granny Crocket offered.

“I never could figure why they started calling people who tend children ‘sitters.’ I’ve been tending children for more than sixty years, off and on, and I’ve never been able to sit long.” Granny chuckled. “You should bring little Donny and Sally Lynn here to me, and let me tend them while you two go on a little vacation after you get your degree, Tom.”

“I’m not going to get the degree, Granny,” Tom said determinedly. “Monday morning I’m turning in my books and finding a job and …”

“Not finish, on, no, Tom! You’ll regret it as long as you live. Just as I have,” Granny Crocket shook her head.

“I didn’t know you went to college, Granny,” Tom said, interested. “Tell us about it.”

“Well, it wasn’t called college. It had been a fort, and was later converted into a place of learning just east of Beaver City. It was called the Murdock Academy. We had excellent teachers. Brother Maeser taught there, and dear old Alfred Durham was the music teacher. My old brother Wilford and I traveled from Fillmore and had a couple of rooms in one of those lovely old brick houses. Our apartment was rather plain compared to modern living, but we managed, and we had fun and did a lot of good, down-to-earth learning.”

“That’s where you met Grandpa Lee, wasn’t it?” Tom asked.

He liked to get Granny talking about the good old days. Her eyes lighted up with happy memories. The years seemed to slip from her shoulders and she was youthful again.

“Yes, Grandpa Lee often said that the day I walked into the classroom he looked up and saw me, and turned to his friend at his side and said, ‘That’s my girl!’ ‘What’s her name?’ the student asked him. ‘I don’t know,’ Grandpa Lee replied, ‘I haven’t met her yet.’”

“Must have been love at first sight,” Tom chuckled.

“Well, Grandpa Lee always figured it was more than that. He said it was just as if he had known me in the spirit world.” Granny Crocket’s voice had a sacred tone.

“Tell us about your college days, Granny,” Tom coaxed.

“I told you brother Wilford and I lived together and kept house. People lived in families more then. Nowadays girls and boys live in separate dormitories and have their food all prepared for them. Well, Wilford and I did our own cooking. We brought lots of good food from our home in Fillmore, and we managed quite well. But when winter set in, the roads were bad and Pa couldn’t get down and bring us more flour and cereal and canned fruits and vegetables and things. And our money was gone and …” Granny took a hanky from her pocket, and wiped her eyes and apologized. “I haven’t related this often, and never without a tear or two,” but she continued bravely.

“When we saw the food getting low, we did ration, we cut out one meal a day completely, and we skimped and tried to manage, but try as we would, the food ran out except for potatoes.” Granny paused.

“Well, you can do a lot with potatoes,” Sally smiled.

“Yes, if you have something to go with them. But toward the last we had no lard to fry them, no butter to put on them, no milk or meat to make gravy, just plain boiled potatoes … for days just boiled potatoes. It looked like the finish.”

“Why didn’t you ask for help? Why didn’t you go to the store and get credit?”

“Wilford did humble himself and go to the store and ask for credit, but in those days things were strictly cash, more than now.”

“Why didn’t you tell Grandpa Lee your troubles?” Tom asked.

“Grandpa Lee has often asked me that same question.” Granny Crocket smiled. “But I guess it was pride that kept us silent. My brother Wilford was his best chum, too, but neither of us breathed a word, not to one single soul.

“Then the weekend came, and Grandpa Lee invited Wilford to go home with him. Grandpa Lee lived on a lovely beef ranch just a short way from the college. I begged and begged Wilford to accept the invitation and go. He was a big fellow with a growing-boy appetite. It was harder for him than for me to … to go without.”

Tom and Sally found they, too, had pulled out their handkerchiefs and were wiping their eyes.

Then Granny Crocket continued: “That was such a good chance for Wilford. It meant a whole weekend of good eating. It meant roasts and gravy, vegetables and fruit, cool milk and rich cream on the cereal for breakfast, and good desserts like carrot pudding and vinegar pie. But dear old Wilford was too … too loyal to go and leave me. He turned that wonderful invitation down. He said he had to cram for tests.”

“What did you do? Did the supplies get through from your own folks?” Tom asked.

“No, the supplies didn’t come, and the mail didn’t get through, either. We had hoped every day for something from Pa or Ma, but nothing came. We just went on eating boiled potatoes. Finally, I couldn’t look a potato in the face. That’s the honest truth. I sort of started just living on water.

“It was the next weekend that Grandpa Lee asked me to go home with him. It was a big temptation. I would have said ‘yes’ too quickly to be polite, but then I remembered Wilford who had sacrificed the same chance for me only a week before. I started to say I had to study, but Wilford came along and said, ‘Of course she’ll go with you, Lee.’

“Somehow I just had to be loyal as my brother, even if I died, so I said, ‘But I have to cook for Wilford!’

“‘Cook for me, that’s a laugh!’ Wilford said. ‘She’ll have her clothes packed the minute school’s out!’

“It was a wonderful trip in the old whitetop buggy. If I hadn’t been so hungry, it might have been romantic. I wasn’t thinking so much about being with my best boy friend and meeting his folks as I was thinking about what his mother might cook.

“Grandpa Lee was the youngest of ten children, and his mother always cooked things special for him when he came home Friday nights. As we jogged along he wondered what his mother would have cooked up. And my mouth watered just listening to him. I remember so well how we drove into the lane and his folks came out to meet us. Soon as we were in the house and had our wraps off, Lee’s father said: ‘Now Ma’s fixing an early supper but, while we’re waiting, have a glass of Ma’s grape juice.’

“I was glad for anything offered me. But I had no more finished the grape juice than the stairway at one end of the big living room started going around, and then I fainted completely away.

“It didn’t take your Grandpa Lee’s mother long to find out what was ailing me. She was of pioneer stock and had been through life’s mill herself. She fed me well and loaded the buggy with all kinds of supplies for Wilford and me to start housekeeping properly again.”

“How long did you go to school at the Academy?” Tom asked.

“That’s what I started out to tell you. I didn’t finish. I married Grandpa Lee. We stayed on at the Academy, however. Grandpa Lee was taken on as the shop instructor, teaching woodwork. So, instead of being a student, I became one of the faculty member’s wives.

“Now, Tom, I want you to go on and finish, as I didn’t. I want you to take this dab of money as a gift from me. You know, Tom, I’d like to be a little part of the finish with you.” Granny Crocket winked.

Tom looked at the crisp ten-dollar bill Granny Crocket had extended to him. An hour ago he wouldn’t have been too proud to take a ten-dollar bill from anyone. But now he looked into her sparkling blue eyes and said, “Granny, I appreciate your thinking of me, but honest fact, we’re getting along just fine. Why, you should see what a pretty table Sally manages to set. We have cereal and milk, and most everything we need. And look at Sally Lynn and Donny. Why, only yesterday, Sally took them to the well-child clinic and they’re gaining right along.”

But Tom’s speech hadn’t fooled old Granny Crocket. “Tom, when a smart fellow like you talks about not finishing college, it’s the lack of money that’s behind the talk. Take it!”

“Granny Crocket, just talking to you has made me change my mind about quitting school. So you buy yourself a new bonnet with this money and be to the graduation exercises in June. When they hand me my degree, I want you there to be part of the finish!”