Butter, Eggs, Ducks, Geese



It seems mighty convenient to telephone your grocer to send up a pound
of butter and have it come all squeezed tight into a nice
square-cornered cardboard box whose bright and multi-colored label
assures you that the butter has been properly deodorized fumigated,
washed, sterilized, antisepticized and conforms in every other respect
to the Food and Drugs Act, Serial 1762973-A. You read the label again
and feel reasonably safe at meals.

Huh! Precious little grandmother knew about that kind of butter!

Hers came in a basket - a great big worn-brown-and-shiny, round bottom,
willow basket, hand-wove. It didn't come in any white-and-gold delivery
wagon, either. It was delivered by a round-faced, rosy-checked,
gingham-gowned picture of health, whose apron-strings barely met around
the middle - for Frau Hummel brought it herself - after having first
milked the cows with her own hands and wielded the churning-stick with
her own stout German arms. She had the butter all covered up with fresh,
sweet, white-linen cloths-and hand-moulded into big rolls - each roll
wrapped in its own immaculate cloth - and when that cloth was slowly
pulled away so that grandmother could stick the point of a knife in the
butter and test it on her tongue, you could see the white salt all over
the roll - and even the imprint of the cloth-threads . . . Good? . . .
Why, you could eat it without bread!