MUSTARD 1937

     "Nothing says love, like  Mustard ..." -R. Raphe

Rain. She shook out the dishcloth. Rain at last. She wondered how the turkeys were faring. The farm hands had disinfected things. That fat  blasted  turkey got into it. Shame. Especially on this rainy day. Wasted bird. Three on 49 eggs. Five left. One gone. Eggs spoiled. And it’s raining. Plop plop.

She wondered if her friend, Helen,  had finished making her curtains. She bought cream fabric with brown squares all over. Helen said she was still getting over the measles, and would sew them.Nothing fancy. Good enough for the kitchen and north window. 

She went back inside the cabin to stir a pot. A pot full of mustard, flour and hot water.  She was going to send the remains  over to the local teacher. She was sick with measles.  A thick mustard plaster would have her right as rain. Rain. How they needed this rain. Even though it was just a  little. The dust had been so thick and wild.

Teacher was a nice girl. Young. Got her a schoolroom with 23 children, 8 grades and $800 a year. She deserved it, but so many said she should get less. She even started a Girl Guides in the district. But then the teacher got measles.

She plopped  mustard from a large spoon onto clean yellowed cloth. Actually old curtains she cut up and wedged together.  The mustard smelled like the county fair. Hot dogs and sausages. With buckets of ice cream to top it off.

Well,  she thought, that was before all this this.  Everyone on the farm, but herself, had just gone through them. The measles had escaped her. She heard her husband coughing in the room next door.He wasn’t quite out of the woods yet.  He was the last one to get better.

It did not miss one house. Not one. And some were left  with bad brains, she thought. Bad brains and deaf. Even the Doctor’s children got mastoids, along with  some of the other kids in the area. With the rain, things were bound to be better.

She lay out another  piece of cloth and smushed mustard  thickly on the surface, closing it up with another piece of old curtain fabric. Her husband  hollered for tea.

“You’ll get tea when I’m good and ready” she shouted back. 

The other farms must have their wheat in by now, burning the land for oats. Her friend, Helen, had been in a singing competition the other day. They didn’t choose her for the radio. Helen was disappointed. Most of the singers were out with measles.

Earlier in the year there had been a quarantine in January. It rained for a week,  like stink, back then. They Doctor in town  just purchased 14 acres, with a cow and 100 hens and 2 pigs. Fancied  himself a farmer. He hired out his land to others to work, and the grain was showing at last. Those cows would be fat yet. Especially with farm workers  out of quarantine and able to work.

Helen’s son bought the local Hotel. There was to be a dance tonight with the beach Orchestra.  She waltzed around  the kitchen table and the mustard plasters she was  making.  Her husband hollered for toast and tea.

“You’ll get  tea and toast when I’m ready, I told you!.” She eyed the seeping mustard plasters. “I must put up some saskatoons. And make sausages.”

She stirred the pot of mustard once more. There would be enough left over.

Outside came a  wail of a noise. She sauntered out to see her head worker, Mac, dancing around the cows and horses. Ten pigs had  escaped and were  running around. Squeal Squeal. Mac chased them like a banshee. She laughed. The rain began  again. Lightly. Quietly. The mustard smelled good.

Tonight  she was going dancing. For the first time in ages. Taking her son, Stuart, with her. To the Hotel run by Helen’s son.  She had new shoes….$20….she’d already skinned her heels on them, walking about the dirt  driveway. She’d have to wear  old ones. 

But first. Her husband needed one more treatment. One more blistering  of mustard before he would be right as rain.

“Here comes your tea!” She shouted, levelling the mustard plaster as she walked  back into the bedroom.

A yowl escaped as the mustard plaster found its mark. And the rain poured down washing the air. Making it clean.

Photographs 2022  * from a 1937 Letter my grandmother wrote to my mother about the measles epidemic on the prairies.