The Butter Churn

 

Procrastinate.  Webster’s Dictionary says, “To postpone or defer taking action; to delay.  “Woodworth’s Dictionary” says, “To put off until tomorrow something you should do today.”  I ought to know because I’m an expert--been doing it for years.  Right now, just looking around me, I can see at least a dozen things that need to be painted, washed, cleaned, put in a frame, hung up, put up, or thrown out.  Not to mention repaired, replaced or finished.

Old habits are hard to break.  There are no two ways about it; I had a good teacher--my dad.  Now, he was a procrastinator “of the first water”.  There wasn’t anything he couldn’t find a way to postpone.  When Mom would complain about big holes in the back screen door, Dad would tell her that the little holes were to keep out house flies, and the big holes were to keep out butter flies.  Then he’d laugh.  Mom never thought it was funny.  After a couple of weeks, he’d come home with a roll of wire screen.  Then it would be another two or three weeks before he’d replace the old screen. 

Nearly always something kept him from plowing up a garden for Mom as early in the spring as she wanted.  We lost a lot of tomatoes that way, because a large percentage of them had not yet ripened when the first heavy frost came.  As a general rule, we didn’t have a good supply of firewood when winter came.  As a result, we often burned wood that had not been given time to dry and age properly.  It surely did not produce the maximum of heat, either.  Procrastination has a habit of causing more problems than it ever solves.  Dad meant well and so do I.  Tomorrow, I’m going to start doing better.

Somnambulism.  Webster says, simply, “sleepwalking.”  Somewhere I read that a person is most likely to sleepwalk during a period of worry or tension.  It also said sleepwalking occurs more commonly among children than among adults.  Most sleepwalking is harmless.  But a sleepwalker may injure himself by falling out a window or down stairs or by walking into an obstacle.  There’s one thing I’d like to add: Sleepwalking may be caused by an attack of bad conscience due to procrastination.

My Grandmother Todd had a wooden butter churn.  A lid covered the top and a rod ran down through it.  Attached to the rod was a pair of thin boards, about two inches wide, forming a cross.  Using a handle attached to the top of the rod, you raised this cross up and down, agitating the slightly soured cream until it turned to butter.

The time came when Dad bought my mom a “modern” churn made of glass.  It had kind of a gear box on top with a crank on the side to operate it.  Inside were blades, kind of like the ones in an ice cream freezer.  Through the glass, you could actually watch the cream turning to butter.

After this one particular churning, when everything was cleaned up, Mom told me to take the new churn down to the basement and put it on the shelf where it was normally stored.  I procrastinated!  Instead of taking it to the basement, I opened the cellar door and put the churn on the first step, intending to take it on down later.  You see, Dad had brought home groceries, including a lard boat of bulk peanut butter; and for the first time in a long time, we were going to have fresh bread, freshly churned butter and my favorite--peanut butter.  I couldn’t wait!

This was one time that realization exceeded expectation.  I hadn’t been able to even imagine how good the bread, butter, and peanut butter were going to taste.  It was truly delicious.  But, I completely forgot about the butter churn.

Some time after midnight, I got out of bed and walked down stairs, still asleep.  I had walked in my sleep before; but this time, it was because of a guilty conscience.  Now, the bedroom I shared with my brothers was on the second floor.  The stairway to the basement was directly behind the one leading to the second floor.  Actually, the upstairs stairway formed the ceiling for the basement stairway.  When I finally quit wandering around and started to go back upstairs, I opened the basement door instead of the upstairs door.  Rather than the step going up, it went down—and so did I!  And, so did the glass butter churn!

The bottom landing was made of stone and when the churn landed, it smashed into a thousand pieces with me right on top of it.  What a racket!  It woke everybody in the house.  I let out a scream like you’ve never heard!  Mom got there first.  Mothers always react in emergency situations faster than anybody else.  I was hurt.  My left hand was cut severely.  Mom doused the cut with iodine and bandaged me up.  

Procrastination and somnambulism didn’t kill me, but they sure slowed me down.  The moral to this story is: Keep a clean conscience and don’t put off ’til tomorrow anything you can do today.