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T HANKSGIVING at Grandfather's farm was more than a holiday. It was a great date on the calendar, for it divided the year in halves as no other single day of the three hundred and sixty-five did. It marked the end of the outdoors, and the beginning of the indoors—the day when everybody came home; when along with them into the house came all the outdoors, too, as if the whole farm were brought in to toast its toes before the great hearth fire!
For the hearth fire was big enough and cheery enough. And so was the farmhouse—that is, if you added the big barn and the crib-house and the wagon-house and the dog-house and the hen-house and the "spring-house!"
Oh, there was plenty of room inside for everybody and for everything! And there needed to be; for did not everybody come home to Grandfather's for Thanksgiving? And did not everything that anybody could need for the winter, grow on Grandfather's farm?
And it all had to be brought in by Thanksgiving Day—everything brought in, everything housed and stored and battened down tight. The preparations began along in late October, continuing with more speed as the days shortened and darkened and hurried us into November. And they continued with still more speed as the gray lowering clouds thickened in the sky, and the wind began to whistle through the oak grove. Then, with the first real cold snap, the first swift flurry of snow, how the husking and the stacking and the chopping went on!
Thanksgiving must find us ready for winter indoors and out.
The hay-mows were full to the beams where the swallows built; the north and west sides of the barnyard were flanked with a deep wind-break of corn-fodder that ran on down the old worm-fence each side of the lane in yellow zigzag walls; the big wooden pump under the turn-o'-lane tree by the barn was bundled up and buttoned to the tip of its dripping nose; the bees by the currant bushes were double-hived, the strawberries covered with hay, the wood all split and piled, the cellar windows packed, and the storm-doors put on.
The very cows had put on an extra coat, and turned their collars up about their ears; the turkeys had changed their roost from the ridge-pole of the corn-crib to the pearmain tree on the sunny side of the wagon-house; the squirrels had finished their bulky nests in the oaks; the muskrats of the lower pasture had completed their lodges; the whole farm—house, barn, fields, and wood-lot—had shuffled into its greatcoat and muffler and settled comfortably down for the winter.
The old farmhouse was an invitation to winter. It looked its joy at the prospect of the coming cold. Low, weather-worn, mossy-shingled, secluded in its wayward garden of box and bleeding-hearts, sheltered by its tall pines, grape-vined, hop-vined, clung to by creeper and honeysuckle, it stood where the roads divided, halfway between everywhere, unpainted, unpretentious, as much a part of the landscape as the muskrat-lodge, and, like the lodge, roomy, warm, and hospitable.
Round at the back, under the wide, open shed, a door led into the kitchen; another led into the living-room; another, into the store-room; and two big, slanting double-doors, scoured and slippery with four generations of sliders, covered the cavernous way into the cellar. But they let the smell of apples up, as the garret door let the smell of sage and thyme come down; while from the door of the store-room, mingling with the odor of apples and herbs, filling the whole house and all my early memories, came the smell of broom-corn, came the sound of Grandfather's loom.
For Grandfather in the winter made brooms—the best brooms, I think, that ever were made. The tall broom-corn was grown on the farm in the summer, ripened and cut and seeded, and then, as soon as winter set in, was loomed and wired and sewed into brooms.
But the cured and seeded broom-corn was not the main thing, after all, that was brought in for the winter. Behind the stove in the kitchen, stood the sweet-potato box (a sweet potato, you know, must be kept dry and warm). An ample, ten-barrel box it was, fresh-papered like the walls, full of Jersey sweets that were sweet—long, golden, syrupy potatoes, such as grow only in the warm sandy soil of southern New Jersey.
Against that big box in Grandmother's kitchen stood the sea-chest, fresh with the same kitchen paper and piled with wood. There was another such chest in the living-room near the old fireplace, and still another in Grandfather's work-room behind the "template" stove.
But wood and warmth and sweet smells were not all. There was music also, the music of life, of young life and of old life—grandparents, grandchildren (about twenty-eight of the latter). There were seven of us alone—a girl at each end of the seven and one in the middle. Thanksgiving always found us all at Grandfather's and brimming full of thanks.
That, of course, was long, long ago. Things are different nowadays. There are as many grandfathers, I suppose, as ever; but they don't make brooms in the winter and live on farms.
They live in flats. The old farm with its open acres has become a city street; the generous old farmhouse has become a speaking-tube, kitchenette, and bath—all the "modern conveniences"; the cows have evaporated into convenient cans of condensed "milk"; the ten-barrel box of potatoes has changed into a convenient ten-pound bag, the wood-pile into a convenient five-cent bundle of blocks tied up with a tarred string, the fireplace into a convenient gas log, the seven children into one or none, or into a little bull-terrier pup.
But is it so? No, it is not so—not so of a million homes. For there is many an old-fashioned farmhouse still in the country, and many a new-fashioned city house where there are more human children than little bull-terrier pups.
And it is not so in my home, which is neither a real farm nor yet a city home. For here are some small boys who live very much as I did when I was a boy. No, they are not farmer's boys; for I am not a farmer, but only a "commuter"—if you know what that is. I go into a great city for my work; and when the day's work is done, I turn homeward here to Mullein Hill—far out in the country. And when the dark November nights come, I hang the lantern high in the stable, as my father used to do, while four shining faces gather round, as four small boys seat themselves on upturned buckets behind the cow. The lantern flickers, the milk foams, the stories flow—"Bucksy" stories of the noble red-man; and stories of the heroes of old; and marvelous stories of that greatest hero of all—their father, far away yonder when he was a boy, when there were so many interesting things to do on Grandfather's farm just before Thanksgiving Day.