Читать книгу Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories. Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas онлайн

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In the meantime my mother had dumped a package of baking soda into a basin of warm water. She bade me put my foot in it — and two little fountains of green came oozing up through the soda-whitened water. And she gave me tea made from yard plantain—why, I wouldn’t know.

Also my Uncle Nick had arrived by the time the rider returned with the whisky. I didn’t like the taste of the nasty stuff and, boy-like, set up a howl about having to drink it. And my Uncle, desirous of helping in every possible way, said, soothingly, “Johnny, take a little, and Uncle take a little.” We both passed out about the same time.

I don’t mean to infer by this that my Uncle was a drunkard. He was not. And, mind you, he grew up in a country at a time when you could buy good old Bourbon at any crossroads grocery store as you would buy a jug of vinegar—and almost as cheaply.

My Uncle Nick was a soldier in the Mexican war of 1848. And he was a soldier in the Civil war—an adventurer, and in a way a “soldier of fortune.” He prospected for gold, and hunted mountain lions—with the long rifle—in the Rockies, just as he and my father had hunted panthers in Tennessee.