Our Daily Bread and Butter

Our Daily Bread and Butter Marjorie M. Bixler The C & O Railroad cut my dad's farm into two parts. On one side of the tracks were pasture and woods, on the other, fields of corn and soybeans. The boundary line, according to the old survey, began and ended at an iron stake above the train tunnel. The Runnel family lived in a rundown tenant house at the tunnel end of the farm. My sister and I like to rhyme Runnel and tunnel whenever we mentioned them. Aunt Hattie had evicted the Runnels from one of her houses because they failed to pay rent for two months in a row. "All Hat cares about is the almighty dollar," Dad said. He and his sister were forever bickering about something. He felt sony for Millie Runnel, belly sticking out, three little ones hanging onto her taggy skirt tail. He had taken his old cattle truck and moved their few belongings. His own charitable feelings were mixed with the enjoyment of making a point about Aunt Hattie, even if it meant biting off his own nose. The Runnels served in many ways. The day the new baby arrived, my mother came home from helping a midwife with the delivery and told us that Millie couldn't think of a name for the child. I was having a slumber party that night and, of course, my friends and I rose to the challenge. We thought it would be, oh, so cute if the baby could be named after the star basketball players in our high school. Dale Phillips, Bert Jones and Randy Allen were the objects of our crushes. We juggled around parts of their names and, by the time the roosters crowed at midnight, had the only workable recombination: Philbert Randale. Millie Runnell loved it. Our three idols were less than thrilled when they heard about their namesake. A few summers later, home from college, I became aware of the butter surplus in Eastern Kentucky. When I went to the refrigerator for a pitcher of milk, I found several cartons of U.S. Department of Agriculture Grade-? Butter. We'd never had geometrically shaped butter in the house that I knew of. I lifted the lid of the glass bowl next to it, and there was our usual mound of pale yellow home-churned butter with its soft swirls on top. Besides, I could glance out the window and see our own milk cow grazing in the pasture. "Good grief!" I said. "What's going on here?" "We're storing the butter for Millie Runnel," my sister, Ida, explained. "Without a fridge, she can't keep it from spoiling. All the 16 people getting commodities are griping about too much butter and nothing to go with it." "The dairy farmers hogging the public trough," I said. A couple of sociology courses had bolstered my naturally cynical nature. That afternoon we noticed the two middle Runnel children walking up the railroad side by side, their little heads bumping up and down in a choppy rhythm as they measured their short strides to the distance between cross ties. They left the railroad at the cattle crossing and cut through the pasture to the garden, taking care to close the big gate behind them. The boy was called "Ras," short for the nickname Rascal, the girl "Angel," fitting for a child with watery blonde hair and translucent skin. Her full name was Angelinda, perhaps the product of some other slumber party. They soon appeared at the kitchen door—shyly smiling at Ida and me, then at each other. Angel did all the talking. Rasjust went on smiling. "Mommy's going to make gingerbread," Angel said softly. "She wants us to bring her a pound ofbutter." Ida started to the refrigerator. "And she wants to know if she can borry a cup of molasses." Sugar rationing during World War II had made sorghum molasses Dad's best cash crop. We had more than enough to lend, though we never expected to have any "borrowed" items returned. Ida took a pint jar from the pantry shelf and set it by the butter. "And Mommy said she needs some...