While growing up in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, I loved Sunday visits to Mother’s relatives down in the valley. There, mailboxes were boldly marked with farmers’ surnames—Wright, Dell, Ashman, Bumgartner, Cromwell, Corbin, Greenland—every one of them, it seemed, some relation of ours.
I especially loved visits to Great-Uncle Chalmer Dell’s farm, where Mom had grown up. She, a tomboy, had preferred helping her father in the barn with the cattle and Old Tony, the plow horse, over doing “farm-wifely chores” with Grandma.
It was obvious that Chal’s wife, Ruth, loved being a farm wife. The big house was always shining, and Ruth marketed her home-churned butter and other wonderful foods prepared in that immaculate kitchen.
But in the barn where big, smiling Uncle Chal reigned supreme, there were always kittens to…
