What I Remember of Summers at Grandma Burton's House

Grandma Burton's house.  You can see the raspberry bushes on the right side of the photo--by the side of the garage.

Mom standing by her front door.

Mom, again, in front of her home.  This time dad, Susan, Martha, Rob, Nathan and I --her own family.

When I was a little girl, our family would spend every summer visiting extended family. My mother's favorite place was her own home in Afton, Star Valley, Wyoming.  

Mom again, this time posing on the steps of the side porch.  

Susan, me and Martha feeding the lamb (Lamby) that Grandma bought one summer.  She intended to have it slaughtered at the end of the summer to provide meat for the family.  After having all the grandchildren feed and love it--the lamb turned into a pet that she could not kill . . . so she traded hers with the lamb a neighbor had raised . . . and had that one slaughtered.  They could not bear to eat their own Lamby.
We are sitting on the steps of the side porch.

To get to Grandma Burton's, we first drove south into Iowa from where we lived Edina, Minnesota, and west across Nebraska and all the way across Wyoming to the western edge of the state.  We drove up into the Rocky Mountain range, twisting up and down and around the individual mountains.  There were no lights along the two lane road--but during the day, you could look across the valley to the face of the opposite mountain and the light tan line zig zagging back and forth.  

Switchback road leading down into Star Valley, Wyoming.  My sketch.

Mom drove slowly--there were semi-trucks sharing the road.  Every once and a while, the road would be extended straight up the side of the mountain as the road continued on a level path.  Mom told me that those were for the semi-trucks if their brakes failed.  Instead of running wildly down the mountain, the truck driver could steer his out-of-control vehicle straight up these narrow roads . . . allowing the trucks slow down safely.  

The thought of that happening always sent a thrill of terror down my spine: so much weight and speed let loose on a road where families like ours were on their way to visit their grandmas and grandpas for summer vacation. 

Arthur Dixon Burton and Kathleen Powell:  Grandma and Grandpa Burton

Mom drove carefully up and down the mountain sides, slowly cutting along the narrow roads--until we began our descent into Star Valley itself.  At that point, we could have been a run away semi-truck.  As we hit the floor of the valley, mom would name of each little towns as we flashed through the short lengths of their main streets. Most didn't even have a stop light--but they all had a city hall and a post office, a grocery store and a general store.  

Some even had a one-pump gas station.  None of these could compare to the gas station in Afton:  Burton Gas.  My Grandpa Burton owned the first gas station in the Valley--opened before the Depression and still in business as we arrived in the summer months of the 1960s and '70s.  If we arrived during the middle of the day, our first stop would be to see mom's father.  He always gave us free candy bars--a "poison" Grandma preached against.  (She also forbid face cards in her home--they were used for gambling and she wanted to avoid "even the appearance of evil.")

I still have a window scraper from Grandpa's gas station.  It is white with a clip on the back of the handle.  That clip secures it out of the way, on the back of the sun visor, until it is needed to clear ice from the windshield during winter months.  

When we got to Afton, we fit ourselves into the flow of activities of Grandma Burton's household.  We were each assigned a towel that we used for a week before it was washed.  (At our home, towels got used once and then were thrown into the chute that went from the upstairs bathroom downstairs to be washed.)  And when Grandma washed the clothes, there was a huge metal tub that sat next to the machine and the same water was reused for all of the cycles--it got grayer and grayer as it was spewed out and sucked back in. (I tried not to think of that water when I dried myself off after my bath.)

Grandma Burton made bread from wheat that she ground in her home.  She had a professional sized mixer that allowed her to mix up six loaves of bread at once.  The bread was wonderful.  It wasn't like any bread I had tasted before--or have tasted since.  It was light brown, heavy and moist.  She covered the bottom of the bread pan and the top crust of each loaf with butter and then sesame seeds.  After the bread came out of the over and cooled, Grandma would loosen the bread and then tip it out onto a wood cutting board that slipped under the kitchen counter like a drawer.  When the loaf came out, half a handful of seeds would be left behind.  She would scoop them up into her hand and return them to the container she kept the seeds in, so that they could be used on the next batch of bread she made.  

The bread's flavor was nutty and just the right company for her special blend of butter.  She mixed real butter, softened to room temperature, with sunflower and other light oils.  This meant that the butter was always smooth and easy to spread--even when it was just out of the refrigerator.  The combination of the heavy, moist, lightly-sweet bread and the clean, barely-salted butter eaten together remain one of my most cherished, vibrant childhood memories.

If we stayed until early August, there were raspberries!  Grandma would tie a quart glass canning jar around our stomachs and we would be assigned a place along the stretch of bushes.  When we filled our jar, we would bring it in to the kitchen to be emptied.  I do not remember filling many jars--although I do remember being full of raspberries most of the time we were there.  

Grandma went to get milk right from the dairy.  She had huge glass jars holding two gallons (at least) of milk each.  There was a small wooden room between the place where the cows were milked (we never did see the cows) and the milk was pasteurized.  The cement floor was always damp and clean.  We would hold the jars under the large spigot and fill them to the top with cool, foamy milk.  Grandma would screw on a lid, mark in a book how much milk she had taken, and we would carefully carry the jars home with us. 

The jars stayed in the refrigerator over night so that the cream could separate and be skimmed off.  Sometimes she just stirred the cream back in--but when she didn't I loved looking down at the top surface of the jar's contents and seeing the cream's yellow, swirled strings on the blue-white background of the skimmed milk.

Once we brought home three jars and I poured myself a big glass as soon as we got to the kitchen.  It tasted AWFUL.  It tasted like the milk room smelled . . . kind of like milk and kind of like cleaner and water.  I made myself drink it, though, thinking that it was just my imagination.  About half an hour later, Grandma got a call--we had gotten our milk from the spigot during a system clean out.  What we got looked like something it wasn't.  I didn't throw up, but the taste in my mouth and the feeling in my stomach is as awful in my memory as Grandma's bread and butter is delicious.  

The evenings were cool enough that we wore sweaters.  The sun came up later and went down sooner than it did in Minnesota.  In Minnesota I slept in the basement; in Wyoming everyone was relegated to the second floor.  Minnesota had squirrels in the back yard with a sand box and a swing set.  

Winter image of the Minnesota sandbox and tree where the squirrels lived.  I think it Susan here, making something out of snow.

Wyoming had a fenced field with two horses in it next door; a ring of bushes around the house where I could hide and pretend I was invisible; 

Susan, Rob and Martha in Grandma's back yard.

an old hand-turned cement mixer that had long ago been "frozen" by rust and which filled with water when it rained;

How I remember the cement mixer.  We would fill it with handfuls of grass and berries from the bushes around Grandma's house, pretending that we were mixing something wonderful to eat. My sketch.

a platform and revolving clothes line that screaked when you hung laundry on one section then pushed it around to hang more. 

I loved hanging the laundry out.  I could only reach the inner lines, but I filled them as full as I could.  My sketch.

Years later, I saw the horse walking machines that stables use to cool down two or three horses at a time after a long ride.  They are the same size and shape as Grandma's clothes line.  Seeing one of those reminded me of hanging out wet clothes in Wyoming and then pulling them off--stiff as boards because of Grandma's washing machine use and re-use of wash water--when they were dry.

In Minnesota, Mom taught us how to feed squirrels (there was an albino squirrel that lived in our back yard for a few years) so that they would take food from your hand--if you were quiet and patient enough.  In Wyoming, Grandma taught me how to scrub a kitchen floor--using a knife to scrape off stubborn bits of food rather then my fingernail so that my nails would always look nice.  In Minnesota, I cut the grass with a gas-powered lawnmower that mom or dad would first start by pulling the starter: a long, thin rope with a small, T-shaped, black plastic bar at the end to hold on to.  In Wyoming, I sat upstairs, alone and quiet for hours on end, and read years worth of old Reader's Digests. In Minnesota, I would hold a book in my teeth and climb the oak tree across the street--from there I could be away from my brothers and sisters and all the neighbor kids and pretend I was invisible--settle myself in a comfortable crook and read until the sun went down.  In Wyoming, we would hike high up into the mountains behind the house and take off our shoes and put our feet into the freezing water to cool off--the fast running stream was fed all year by snow high up in the mountain peak and would give you an "ice cream headache" if you drank it too fast.  

Another photo of Grandma's home--you can see the bushes that surrounded the front and left side of the building.