Bessie and Henry Reed

We moved to Ithaca when I was about 3 or 4 years old and settled on a farm outside of the city in an area called Ellis Hollow. The neighboring farm was on a nearby hill and owned and farmed by Henry and his wife Bessie. He had a herd of purebred Gurnsey cows that had to be milked twice a day. When I got older, one of my jobs was to walk up the hill and bring back a can of milk for our use.

In my early days I would visit Bessie in her kitchen, and while she worked would make believe that I was a puppy or a kitten and run around barking or mewing. I suspect that my antics were a bit much but seemed to cause laughter from any adult. Bessie's house was cool upstairs since some of the rooms had foreshortened doors and these low doors were fascinating to a kid like me. We got invited to many of their activities, which included daughter Helen getting married in their living room and the funeral of Bessie's father with an open casket and funeral lamps at either end. I was quite taken with the unusual lamps and the open casket. I can hear me loudly asking, "Why is that man laying there in that box?" or "Why do they have lamps at either end of the box? Do they help him see?" "No honey, he is dead. Now shush." I kept them entertained anyway.

Henry had a built-in watering trough in his milk house and brought his horses or bulls to water there. The bulls had huge rings in their nose, and Henry and a hired man would hook sturdy wooden rods and direct the bull to the trough to get water. This was quite exciting to see and much enjoyed by me. The bulls were dangerous but necessary for his breeding stock if he was to keep his herd a purebred one.

Henry also kept beer in his milk house, and of course when you needed a cold one, it was quite handy. Now we were teetotalers since my mom didn't approve of drinking, and I had gotten the message that beer was bad. So when no one was looking, I put one of Henry's beer bottles down his milk house drain. Apparently this caused a lot of problems getting it out of the concrete floor drain. Was I punished? Probably! I have since learned that a cold beer is to be drunk not put down a drain, since on a hot day it cools your warm throat. I always denied putting the beer bottle down the drain; it must have rolled in.

Dad went hunting with Henry in the fall for deer and sometimes was successful. One year to improve their shooting they put up a wood target, and that year he did better and got his deer. The target got shot a lot by other hunters, too. Henry also liked to fish at night for smelt in the creeks feeding into Cayuga Lake. They caught the smelt with long-handled nets. There is nothing better that fried smelt. I would love to have some right now.

Henry and Bessie also loved to play cards, and many pinocle games were played in their kitchen after dinner. Henry always wanted to know the cards the other players held and would get up from the table supposedly for a drink of water and check out the hands as he went by. Mom always said that Henry couldn't help rubbernecking to check out everyone's cards.