From the Improvement Era, July 1933 –

Bread and Milkweed

By Ora Lewis

Christine opened the door expectantly: “Mother — oh, mother! Are we going to have pungkin for dinner?”

“Why child,” answered the woman addressed, as she looked up from the old wooden chest where she was hurriedly folding away odd pieces of clothing, “whatever put such an idea into your head?”

“But are we?” insisted Christine.

“I’m afraid not, dear. Your father says we must save the pungkins for winter. It’s bound to be cold, you know, and there may not be much else to eat.”

“But couldn’t we have just one little one for Sunday? I don’t see why we have to wait until winter. We may all be dead by then!”

“Ah, Christina, don’t say that! We still have grain to make bread with, and we’re not going to starve as long as the cows keep on giving milk.”

“But what if the cows don’t keep on giving milk? I don’t see how they can with what little they get to eat. Why couldn’t father have let them have a bit of alfalfa when it was so nice and green out in the field?”

“Your father felt that he should save every bit of it for hay.”

“Well, he’s got it made into hay, hasn’t he? — and put into a stack out in the yard! Why can’t he let them have just one little wisp to see how it tastes? And why can’t we have pungkin for once? I watched father all yesterday afternoon while he brought the pungkins in from the field and then buried them out in the haystack. I thought sure he’d leave out one for dinner today. But no — we have to save them for winter! And the cows couldn’t have the alfalfa because it had to be saved for hay, and now they can’t have the hay because it has to be saved for cold weather. So they go on eating weeds — weeds — WEEDS! Guess they’ll be giving milkweed —”

But Christine stopped speaking very suddenly, for there were tears in her mother’s eyes.

“Oh, mother, I didn’t mean to be mean. Honest I didn’t! But it isn’t so much fun to be Pi’neers, is it?” And then suddenly: “I’ll tell you what let’s do, mother! Let’s make up a song about it.”

It was the one way that the two had discovered to make even the most tragic situations seem laughable.

“All right,” agreed mother, “but you’ll have to start it.”

And gaily Christine began:

“Milk, milk, soft as silk—”

“But Christina,” interrupted her mother, “there’s no other word in the whole language to rhyme with silk.”

“I’ll have to start over then, sure enough. How’s this?

“Some like new milk — some like old—”

With never a pause her mother added, “Some like hot milk — some like cold — ”

The trick had worked its usual charm, and both were laughing in spite of themselves. Christine picked up the jingle:

“Some like sour milk — some like sweet — ”

Mother hesitated a moment, and then catching the first inspiration without thought of where it might
lead:

“But as for me what can’t be beat — ”

Christine, beaming with excitement, exclaimed: “Wait a minute! I think I’ve found a good chorus! Let’s see if I can remember the first part.” And she repeated hurriedly :

“Some like new milk,
Some like old,
Some like hot milk,
Some like cold,
Some like sour milk,
Some like sweet,
But as for me
What can’t be beat, is

“Milkweed,
Milkweed,
Warm and white;
Bread and milkweed
Morn and night,
Night and morn
And morn and noon,
I’ll be made of milkweed soon!”

“Maid-of-milkweed, is right,” added mother significantly.

“Yes,” laughed Christine, “but the milk-made maid-of-milkweed had better be getting along her milky way, or my poor Mejicanos won’t even have “leche” for dinner today. I wonder how you say milkweed in Spanish.” Then as she picked up the buckets which stood waiting, she added, “I thought — or sort of hoped — that maybe father would deliver the milk this morning on his way to church.”

“I didn’t have the heart to ask him, Christina. The girls kept him waiting and he was out of patience when they finally got ready to go. You’ll be pretty tired when you get back.”

Tired when she got back! Christine was tired already. She had been up at six to milk the cows, strain the milk and prepare it for delivering to the Mexicans who bought it from them regularly; then she had taken the cows out to the hills, where she left them to nibble green weeds in lieu of something better, and had come back just in time to see her father and two older sisters driving away in the wagon to attend Sunday morning church.

Her father was kept very busy with church work, she reflected; always had been — she supposed he always would be. He was superintendent of the Sunday School. He had been a missionary, too. Everyone liked her father. He was a wonderful man. But Christine didn’t get to see very much of him. He was not often at home.

She came to Mexican town, and with the usual good nature by which everyone knew her, took the milk from house to house, bestowing with it a cheerful “Buenos dias” and a generous smile. She liked the Mejicanos. They liked her, too. She wondered what the Pi’neers would have done had it not been for the kindness of these dark skinned, friendly people. This pi’neering wasn’t so much fun, she reflected bitterly; and before she knew it was plunged into a deep pool of thought from which one usually emerges wet with tears:

If she had been a boy things would have been easier. But to be a girl and have to do a boy’s work seemed at times unbearable. She wore boys’ shoes, too. They didn’t wear out as soon as girls’ did. And she had borrowed a dress to have her picture taken in!

She wished her father had married Anna, the rich lady who was In love with him when he was a young man in Copenhagen, Denmark. Then they could have had a fine house with servants to help do the work and a hired man to milk the cows; there would have been cakes and candies, too, and new clothes for holidays — .

But no — her father was ambitious and adventurous, and had preferred to listen to the “missionary boys” from America who had talked about “leaving father and mother and brothers and sisters and loved ones,” and of “fleeing to the tops of the mountains to build up Zion.”

Build up Zion! That’s what her father had been doing ever since he first came to Salt Lake City and married her mother. He had built houses and barns and wagons, and had been known as one of the finest workers on the big Mormon temple and round-roofed tabernacle. But just as he had finished building houses for everybody else and at last started making one for himself. President Young called him in to his office to talk to him about an- other town that was called Provo. Provo was just a couple of days’ team-drive away, he said, and the people were having a hard time to get established there. They needed some good builders— and would father go!

So father did go to Provo, and started again to build houses and barns and wagons and meetinghouses and tabernacles. But this time, even before he had got to the place where he might think of building a house for himself, there came another call. Would father go to some little-unheard-of town farther south; they needed him very much.

Once again he took himself and his family into “new worlds,” and once again started building — building — building. This time he didn’t wait quite so long as he had usually done to make a house for himself and his family; moreover, he built It with a perfection that had come with years of practice. It was a fine, two story white building with strange, carved-out-wood-things on the front porch. And he began to Imagine that he would live in it for many years.

But one day there came a letter. It was a letter from President John Taylor; in it father was asked if he would go across the border line into Arizona, to help “build up Zion” there.

Well, there they were — all of them — had been for six months — might be for six months more — or six years — or six centuries, as it sometimes seemed — living in an old two-room adobe hut built by the Mexicans who had settled there “before the pioneers came” — over a mile from town — nearly a mile to the nearest neighbor — and morning, noon, and night having nothing to eat but bread and milk, or bread and gravy, with sometimes a few strawberries for variation.

It was all so funny! She wanted to laugh, but the intensity of her misery was too perfect to be broken Into by a mere moment of passing merriment. She must give it death some other way — .

Of course things wouldn’t always be so bad. They couldn’t be.

Besides, she really had no right to be spoiling the beauty of an October morning with melancholy musings. There was a blue, blue sky, and there were white, white clouds; there was a swift, crisp wind blowing; and from the chimney of the old adobe hut came soft circles of smoke, swiftly disappearing into the blueness of the sky; and there were tiny sparks flying — flying. Yes — flying into the haystack! — and before she knew it, the haystack was ablaze before her eyes!

“Mother! Mother!” Christine fairly burst through the door. “Look, mother, it’s on fire!”

“What, child?”

“The hay, mother!”

“Christina. Christina — bring your father — quickly!”

Over a mile to town!

Nearly a mile to the closest house!

Christine knew nothing, saw nothing, remembered nothing save the weariness of her feet and the heaviness of her body; and when she stood breathless and exhausted in the doorway of the church, it was all she could do to gasp: “Father, the haystack is on fire!”

If a bomb had been exploded into the congregation the dispersal could not have been more immediate and complete. Men, women, and children picked up hats and fled into the yard, where they crowded into her father’s wagon and counted the seeming centuries that passed before they reached the farmyard. Swiftly then, women and children went with buckets and tubs for water from a nearby stream, while the men took pitchforks and made frantic attempts which resulted in the rescue of a few forkfuls of burned hay and six scorched pumpkins.

After it was all over, and her father had said the usual “I guess there’s no use crying over spilled milk,” Christine wanted to do nothing half so much as to bury her head on somebody’s shoulder, and whether there were any “use” to it or not, cry her heart away. But as they all walked slowly toward the house she thought she saw her mother wipe her eyes ever so quickly and then turn away. She went to her mother’s side, thinking desperately as she went.

“Say, mother, I’ve thought of a good one — a really good one, I mean. It goes like this:

“We hid our pungkins in the hay,
Alas, my poor heart ached;
The stack burned down, and do you know,
Those pungkins came out baked.

“And — wait a minute — here comes another —

“We fed our cows on fresh-burned hay,
How sad those poor cows looked!
And next day to our great surprise
The milk came out half cooked!

“You know, mother, it isn’t so bad after all, is it? — being pi’neers, I mean!”