Kitchen Duty

Back to the story of life in the orphanage. When one was assigned to the kitchen that person was to be there after school during the week and in the kitchen on the weekends. I can remember buttering a huge electric roaster (that probably held a good sized turkey) and then cracking eggs forever to make scrambled eggs for breakfast. We had the best food in the country. Sister D, hands down, was the best cook I've ever seen. It also helped that we raised our own chickens that provided eggs, pigs for pork and bacon, cows for milk and grew most of all the vegetables we ate. There was always plenty of food to eat. Sister D made almost all of the bread and baked all desserts and there was quite a variety. We were fed extremely well. I can remember getting a 10 gallon can of milk out of the walk-in refrigerator that had 2 inches of cream on the top (that was after the milk had been pasteurized and separated). Sister D would sometimes make pies and when she did she always made the left over pie dough into cinnamon cookies for me.

We didn't work all the time, there was time for fun activities too. There was a huge playground between the main building and the barns that had swings, slides, sandbox and more than enough room to play softball without hitting any windows or obstacles. There also was a full sized in ground swimming pool that everyone could swim in. I can remember the first summer there when I broke my nose. I was in the swimming pool in the shallow section that had a slide. I had just gone down the slide but did not get out of the way fast enough when a second kid came down the slide feet first and his big old feet connected with my nose. Man, did that hurt I can remember seeing stars. To this day I have a crooked nose. I liked this time the best; my brother could swim in the little kids pool that was right next to the big pool and I could go over and play with him for as long as I wanted. I can remember my dad coming to visit and he would sit in the shade with the sisters and visit and watch my brother and I play.

I think there was the right amount of work along with time for play. We learned the work had to be done before we could go off to play.