GRANDMA'S SCISSORS

My grandmother, Viola Butler Trotter, was born in Henry County, Missouri in 1881. At age 19 she married John Albert Trotter on April 8, 1900 at Hutchinson, Kansas. They were married for 52 years and three days. Together they raised five daughters and one son.

Like all farm women of the time Viola had quite a list of accomplishments. Just to name a few: bread baking, soap making, and doing the family’s laundry on a washboard. After the laundry was washed, wrung out by hand, then hung on the line to dry, the fun really started. And there was no whisking out the steam iron and gliding through the chore while you sobbed over soap operas.

For Grandma it was a matter of first making sure the cook stove was hot. Hopefully, the wood didn’t need chopping first. If it was one of those broiling, dust-blowing Kansas summer days the heated stove helped to make the process miserable. But the stove was probably burning anyway with bread rising on the back of it and a jackrabbit stew slowly and succulently simmering in a pot on top. But more about how that ole strawberry-stealing rabbit came to be in Viola’s pot in just a moment.

Before you could press the wrinkles out of all those dresses, petticoats and britches you needed to heat your iron. If you were lucky you had two of them. You’d get them hot on the top of the stove then commence working your way through that never ending pile of cloths that were made of good serviceable cotton, the kind that holds wrinkles. When the first iron cooled you put it back on the stove to reheat and got back to work with the other one. You labored until the entire stack of clothing and linens were beautifully smooth.

When that chore was done you had hours yet, until it was time to put supper on the table, to get other things accomplished. And thinking about supper, maybe the idea of a big bowl of fresh strawberries to go with the meal sounded nice. So it’s off to the berry patch.

My grandmother always took her scissors with her when she went to snip strawberries and what ever else needed picking. But, occasionally Viola put them to another good use. And once they may have saved her life.

While she was crouched in the strawberries, snipping away, she’d keep a sharp look out, watching for one of those pesky Kansas jackrabbits that thought those berries were for its long-eared health and happiness.

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