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Volume 054-1 - January 2000 (8 pages)
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Page: of 8
NCHS Bulletin January 2000
“a
The Buttermaker’s Cottage as it appears today in the
Park at Penn Valley. (Photo by Bedford Lampkin.)
winter if the cream was too cold. Later a platform was built
for the vats, and a raised road on the outside got the wagons
up to vat level; then when churning time came, it went
through or over refrigerated coils to cool it.
The ice was kept in an ice house in the creamery and was
harvested in Truckee in winter. One of my first memories is
of the taste of the delicious sour, cold buttermilk kept there.
The butter was put on a big table and the water was
pressed out by rollers (wooden). Then it was pressed into a
molding table (oblong) then cut by tiny wires in a frame
into one pound “squares,” as we called them—they were
actually oblong. Then the squares were wrapped in paper
and hauled to Grass Valley and Nevada City. Every can of
cream had a sample removed, put in a test tube and later
tested for butterfat content. I can remember Mother and
Father out in the creamery in the evenings testing, while we
stayed in the house.
Aunt Anna (Grandma’s sister) lived at the toll house in
Rough and Ready. We used to drive up in the buggy to see
her, and I sat on a cracker box in the bed of the buggy.
When Aunt Anna died Uncle Raymond came up from
Marysville with a livery-stable team and a two-seated surrey and took us to the funeral.
Once Herbert Nile came up early in the morning and
took our mother and us to Grass Valley to catch the train to
Pacific Grove. Can’t remember anything about the visit,
however.
Ed and I roamed around the road and fields near the
house. There was a stream crossing the road and there were
lots of pollywogs there in the spring. We used to catch them
and impale them on the barbed wire and call that our
butcher block.
We were always on the lookout for gypsy wagons and
would run home if we saw one. In spring and fall the cattle
were driven from the Smartsville area to the mountain and
back. We always got to the house or over a fence when we
heard them bawling.
2
ground. (Photo by Bedford Lampkin.)
The Dikeman ranch (now a portion of Gateway Park)
was near the creamery. We went over there to visit. In the
summer we would go over the suspension bridge to the
other side of Deer Creek where yellow pear tomatoes grew
every year. Mother made preserves with them.
Our father usually kept a pig over there in a pen. We
used to keep a sack of pig mash in the kitchen and we
played in it with our baby spoons. Ed’s got left in one time
and the pig made a big dent in it.
One time my mother took us in the one-horse single-seat
buggy to Indian Springs to get the mail. We were in the
buggy and Mama went into the house to get the mail (I
presume that no one was home). The horse decided to go
home, and for some reason wasn’t tied. We went down past
the schoolhouse. It was dusk and she kept on going until
she got to the Middle Place and pulled up under a big oak
tree. I think that we fell down on the floor of the buggy and
yelled. Mama followed that buggy on foot for about a mile,
never knowing when she might find a spilled out child or
an overturned buggy.
One other time Mama went to town in the two-horse
two-seated buggy. On the way home (it was dark) I was
sitting in the backseat by myself (I was older than in the
other episode). I woke up and the horses were off the road
in a flat place before you got to Casey’s house. One tug had
gotten loose and the horses were going around in a circle.
Tom Casey heard us and came down and got things
straightened out. He got a horse and insisted on going home
with us. He was in the back seat and leading his horse. He
was holding a lantern to help see to the road, but it confused Mama, and some way the right horse got off the road
a little and stepped in an old rotten stump and fell down.
The jerk on the reins pulled Mama over the front wheel and
onto the ground. Ed was hanging onto Mama, so over he
went too. I was hanging onto the canopy upright, so I didn’t
go over. Tom Casey jumped out to grab the fallen horse and