Bud Grossmann’s Words of the Week for the Week of July 29, 2012 Published as Family History in a Gramma Letter dated October 11, 1994. © 1994 by Bud Grossmann. All Rights Reserved.   Farm House Cellar, 1968 © 1968 by Bud Grossmann SINGING IN THE CELLAR Tuesday, October 11, 1994 Dear Gramma,       Twice a day we gathered eggs and twice a day we washed them. I am recalling one summer in the early 1960’s when you and Grampa raised something like fifteen hundred Leghorn hens. (Am I in the ballpark with that number?) Because the eggs were sent to a hatchery, you employed a few dozen very busy roosters. That is what I remember, but please set me straight if I am wrong about the ratio. You and Grampa spoke almost as guardedly of animal reproduction as you did of baby-making by human beings.       I might also be confused in thinking those were eggs for the hatchery. Would we have washed eggs that were not destined for someone’s kitchen? Well, wherever they were headed, we definitely washed eggs, many, many dozens every day that summer.       We—that would usually be you and Grampa, my cousin Terry, my brother Bruce, and I—gathered eggs in late morning and late afternoon in baskets constructed of vinyl-coated wire. When Grampa put the chickens to bed at night, he always found a few eggs more, but those he carried back to the house in the roomy pockets of his bib overalls. We brought the eggs into your cellar where we set each basket in turn into a special washing tub filled with water and mild detergent. After this electric-powered washer gently agitated its fragile load for a few minutes, we lifted the basket, let it drain, and set it on a chair. We placed another basket in the tub, and began wiping each washed egg clean and dry with a dish towel before placing it in a cardboard “flat,” two-and-a-half-dozen eggs per flat. We stacked the flats in strong cardboard boxes. Twice a week the Egg Man came to take them to the hatchery. Again I am wondering about my accuracy here—can chicks come from eggs so long separated from the warmth of mother hen or incubator? Well, that’s all right, I’m not teaching poultry science, I’m reminiscing about the egg washer.       Washing eggs was not especially hard work. Standing for hours in a cool cellar beneath the glare of a hundred-watt bulb was far more pleasant than heaving hay bales onto a slow-moving wagon out in the heat and humidity of a Wisconsin summer. Washing eggs was bliss compared to bagging oats in the blazing sun while prickly chaff settled into every crease and crevice of our sweaty skin.       Nevertheless, washing eggs was mind-dulling labor, and sometimes, when our conversation began to wear thin, the egg washing machine itself—with its incessant, back-and-forth-back-and-forth-back-and-forth grind—would start to speak to us. One afternoon, when we were about halfway through a few hundred eggs, I asked, “Grandpa, what is the machine saying to us?”       Grampa told us what he heard: “Rrrrr-rr-rr-rrrr! Shift it in gear! Shift it in gear!”       “Hmmm,” said I. “What it sounds like to me is Spit in your ear! Spit in your ear!”       At that point Grampa suffered a little lapse of judgment: he created a new rhyme by changing the word “ear” to “beer” and replacing the second consonant in the word “spit.” He sang it out, in perfect time with the egg washer. Although I could not help but giggle, you, Granny, did not find any humor in that naughty rhyme.       You were holding at that moment an egg in each hand, and, as if you were flapping your wings, you slammed both eggs onto the concrete floor. You stepped back from the puddles of shell, white, and broken yolk, and headed up the cellar steps, snarling as you went: “Do you want to talk like you’re in a tavern?” you asked. “Do you think I can’t talk filthy, too? Well, I can!” You paused partway up the steps, glared at us, and rapidly recited several expressions I had never before heard from your lips, words that I never again heard you say, anytime or anywhere. And then you went upstairs, slammed the door, and left Gramp and me and the singing egg machine to finish our work without you.       We were stunned, my grandfather and I. For half a minute we did not speak. We continued polishing eggs and placing them in the flats. Then Grampa quietly asked, “Do you suppose, Buddy, maybe the old girl was a little upset?”       You had left us with such a sufficient supply of dirty eggs, that it was quite a long time before Grampa and I went upstairs to apologize to you. By then you had cooled down, and when I hugged you, you hugged back and said, “I don’t know why you have to aggravate me so.”       “Well, I am sorry,” I said. “But, Gramma, can you tell me this? Where did you learn to talk so dirty?”       “Get on out of here!” you said. “Or let’s talk about something pleasant, can’t we?”       Write back to me, Grandmother. We’ll discuss any pleasant topic you choose.                       I love you and miss you.                       Love,                       Buddy         ARCHIVES         Click for a list of other Words of the Week I would welcome your thoughts on this page (or any of my others).  Write to me at the following address.  Please be sure to spell Grossmann with two n’s and mention what page you are writing about. Thanks!  BUD GROSSMANN Top of this page | HOME | Fine Photography | Picture of the Day | Writings | | Words of the Week | Mom & Pop Prop. Mgt. | FAQ |

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