Day 60, March 1

I suppose I've been in a reflective mood lately, looking back to my roots, to my family's roots, which is, perhaps, why I've been quoting from personal histories.

I'm proud of my heritage, of my parents.  As I've written before, they understood and appreciated work.  The following is, once more, from my father's writings:

"My first memory of life, as I recall, is that of sitting on a stool (a short, 2 by 4 inch board, which was nailed at the top of a board about one inch thick and aboaut 10inches square) milking a cow. We always brought the cows from the 15 acre field every night to milk them in the corral (pen). One of the jobs of my brothers and myself was the milking of the cows, feeding the calves (still on milk), letting them suck our fingers to learn what the milk tasted like, after dipping our fingers in the milk.

"Of course we milked the cows morning and night. After milking the cows, we put the milk through what was called a separator, a machine which separated the milk from the cream, the cream coming out of one spout and the milk, now removed of the cream, coming out of another spout. We saved enough milk before it was separated for our own use in drinking. We fed the milk with the cream removed to the young calves still on milk, and mixed the remainder of the milk with the cream removed with dishwater and other garbage, to feed to the hogs. In addition, we fed the hogs corn, and a weed in the summer, which we called pig weed, a sort of reddish-color weed, which the hogs liked. "

As you can see, my father was introduced to work at an early age.  He accepted work and the satisfaction that comes with it as a necessary and important part of life.

So, for today, I am grateful for the example of work.