Breakfast at grandma's

From under the covers Stacey peeked out to see if the sun was up. In the downstairs of the old farmhouse grandma was already up. She could be heard quietly moving around the old kitchen starting breakfast.

The farmhouse stood in the afternoon shadow of the Mound…Grandpa’s mound as it was known to Stacey and his brothers. The Mound was a place of great adventure and hours of entertainment for him and his brothers.

It was late in January and the cold of winter permeated the unheated bedroom. Stacey knew once his feet hit the linoleum floor it would be a mad dash to get dressed and downstairs into the warm kitchen.

Grandpa was coming in the back door from feeding the livestock and doing the morning milking. He was whistling his merry tune. Grandpa was a tall lanky man. Having lost a hand in an auger accident when he was young he could still outwork most any man.

Grandma was a short, plump farm woman. She rarely got off the farm except to go to town once a month or so to buy a few essentials and pay a few bills. Everything they needed they raised on the farm. Pigs, dairy cows, chickens, sorghum, fruit trees and a large vegetable garden provided food and the money from selling eggs; sorghum molasses, and milk gave them the small income they needed to sustain themselves.

On this morning there was a new snow which meant Stacey and his brothers would spend their day sledding. The sledding on the Mound was the best. A good ride would take you a quarter mile or longer. The boys would always compete for the longest ride.

Back in the kitchen the family began to gather as grandma made pancakes. There was nothing quite like grandma’s pancakes. Very thin and as big as a dinner plate. Made on an old cast iron skillet the room was quickly filled with a haze of smoke from the lard used on the skillet. Each grandson would wait their turn as the cakes came off the griddle.

The cakes were piping hot and made perfect with a lather of butter and the sorghum molasses which was squeezed and cooked from the sorghum cane grown on the farm the previous fall. One pancake would fill most adults but for these grandson’s it took two or three to give them the fuel they would need for a day of activity on the farm.