16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Tuesday, September 26, 1911: Was in doubts and fears as to how Mollie would act when I commenced to milk her. Pop milked her last night, but I had to do it after that, so I got up early this morning, resolving to come off conquering and I did. Hurrah. She didn’t kick.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
The calf of Grandma’s cow Mollie was sold the previous day. It sounds like Mollie is adjusting to the change.
The previous day’s issue of the Milton Evening Standard had a front page article about the death of John Sheep, the grandfather of Grandma’s friend Helen “Tweet” Wesner. It says that Mr. Sheep died at his home after a long illness.
I wonder if Tweet was upset—though I suppose that she probably was expecting it.
The article indicates that Mr. Sheep was buried on this date in the cemetery next to the McEwensville school.
My father says that when he was a child attending this same school that the classroom blinds were always drawn whenever there was an interment to keep the children from getting upset. It probably was the same a generation earlier when Grandma was a student.
It seems like it would be equally upsetting to know why the blinds had been drawn but not be allowed to see it—but I guess that people handled death differently back then.
In many ways death was closer to people a hundred years ago. Most people died at home —yet the community apparently tried to protect children from death by doing things like pulling the blinds.
