When Grandpa J got up at four-thirty, everybody got up. The women headed for the kitchen and the stove. At Grandpa’s orders, the menfolk headed for the barn to milk the numerous cows, bring the milk in, slop the hogs, and get the tractors and equipment ready for the day’s farm work. By six am, they’d have scraped their boots and cleaned up enough to gather around the large, rough table for breakfast. Grandma stood before the large wood stove , her face flushed with its heat, flipping pancakes and eggs on its many griddles. She served them cups steaming coffee, and pint jars warm rich milk fresh from the cows. The girls and women were kept busy, passing passing pancakes, eggs, bacon and molasses, and pouring refills on coffee and milk. The women didn’t even try to eat before the men got out of the way. It was the first item of business to get the men off to work before they could get the kids off to school and start their day of taking care of the milk, cooking, housework and gardening.
The busy farm couple had eleven kids between nine and twenty-one at this particular time. One brutal, icy day shortly after Christmas, the older boys decided they just weren’t getting up at four-thirty that day. There wouldn’t be any farming in that weather. It wasn’t fit for man nor beast. They cows could just wait. By golly, they were going to stay in bed, for once.
Grandpa had been working on some plow lines before the fire the night before. He called up the stairs to the boys a couple of times, before warning them he’d be up to get them if they didn’t get down in a minute. Feeling confident he couldn’t get them all at once, they lay abed.
Unbeknownst to the old man, just as Grandpa made his way upstairs, plow lines in hand, a deputy from town was about to knock on the front door to deliver a summons to jury duty for Grandpa. Grandpa commenced whaling on the boys with the plow lines, deaf to the pounding on the front door. The boys, most over six feet tall, tumbled down the stairs and burst out the front door, trampling the deputy on their way. Terrified, he joined the boys in flight, being flogged right along with them.
He refused to come back and deliver the summons.
Nutsrok 