Have you ever gone to a 4H auction after the stock show and seen some of the kids cry when their animals were sold? I suppose this is a natural reaction after practically living with the animal all spring and summer. The younger little ones are the ones most apt to get too attached to their pets. After they have gone through this experience a time or two they learn to not make such pets of their projects.

When we were little kids on the farm we would sometimes make this same mistake. I remember Bob had a favorite cow by the name of Secore. I never knew how she got a name like that. She had a pair of distinctive horns that were shaped like handles. Some times when Dad went to the barn to start milking, we would go with him and Jady and I would look at Secore's teats, select a clean one, and squirt milk in our mouths. But Bob, always the showman, would grab the teat just like a calf and suck on it.

Mr. Sitser, the owner of the farm, decided one day that he would change from cows to sheep and so began getting rid of the cows. He bought a lot of sheep fence and Dad and the hired man cut and split enough chestnut posts and fenced in 60 acres of pasture for the sheep. One afternoon when we came home from school, there propped up against the side of the barn was a cow's head with Secore's distinctive horns. Bob had a few sad days after that for while he knew what was taking place, I don't believe he ever thought it could happen to his favorite cow.

Later years, a lot later, when Ag and I had moved to Owego someone asked us if we wouldn't like to join the Grange. Originally this was a farmers' organization. We weren't farmers at that time, just lived in the country. 

Not long ago some one wrote a piece about the Grange and how it was a dying organization but due mostly to the efforts of Bob Thompson and George Montgomery and several of the faithful older members, the Goodrich Settlement is quite healthy. They recently spent over $14,000 on the building. Back in the leaner days, Peg Draper, Albert and Mary Thompson, and Helen Goodrich who I think is the only surviving charter member, kept it going. I remember one night during the Lecturer's Hour, another Goodrich, Burnett, told of an amusing incident that had happened to him when he was a small child. 

His family lived in town then and they had on old female hound and she had a litter of little puppies. Burnett's mother noticed that people would stop before the house they would pause for a bit then go on shaking their heads. She moved to another window where she could see the front steps and there was her son who had pushed on of the pups aside and was sucking his teat.