Does it seem reasonable, these days, to send a 12-year-old kid out in the dark on a below-zero morning to milk a cow? Apparently it did seem so to my parents, and actually it didn’t seem all that unreasonable to me, at the time. But since I was that kid, it turned out to be an experience I’ll never forget.
In the 1940s and ’50s, it wasn’t unusual for families in small towns in America to have at least one cow to provide milk for the family. They could rent pasture and shelter nearby very reasonably and could sell the milk they didn’t need for extra income. Also, each year, the cow would have a calf that was raised through the winter to be about a year old before being sold. For those who may not know, milk cows need to be
