Susie and Sammy

When Donald and John were in their early grade school years Dad set up the “Susie and Sammy” system for helping with the household and farmyard work. Susie’s job was to be “Mother’s little helper” and do anything to help Mother with all kinds of inside work. Sammy’s job was to help Dad with morning and evening chores and any other outside work. The boys traded jobs every Sunday morning and thus both learned at an early age to handle all kinds of work. As Donald and John got into their teens and able to take care of bigger jobs, Paul and I were brought into the Susie and Sammy tradition. It seems likely that most of today’s city kids would have a hard time understanding just how much work and responsibility was included in those Susie and Sammy jobs.

Some jobs were routine and we were expected to handle them daily without prompting or supervision. These tasks would include such things as: set the table for meals….make school lunches….gather the eggs, etc. Other jobs were occasional or seasonal, such as washing windows, picking raspberries or helping move pigs from one pen to another. Here, in random order, is a sampling of some of the jobs involved:

Susie

Wash dishes

Sweep, mop, dust

Make cakes, pies, cookies, puddings

Fill kerosene lamps, trim wicks, wash chimneys

Bring in coal, wood, corn cobs and take out ashes

Churn butter and “work it up”

Kill, pick, dress and fry chickens

Make and change beds

Help with washing and empty wash water. Bring laundry in from line

Help cook and serve meals

Wash cream separator (this was a big job)

Work in garden--plant, cultivate, pick

Sprout potatoes (take sprouts off potatoes stored in winter)

Set mousetraps

Run down cellar for this and that

Help prepare food for canning

Help Mother with whatever

Sammy

Feed and water pigs

Feed and milk cows

Mow yard (with old-fashioned push mower--no motor)

Take all care of brooder chicks

Drive buggy to Prairie Home for bread or supplies

Put hay down from haymow for cows and horses

Dry supper dishes (Sammy had to help Susie on this one)

Mend fences (the fences were old and livestock often made a hole)

Work in “truck patch”--mostly weeding

Pick apples, pears, plums, etc.

Hold hogs while Dad vaccinated for cholera

Help Dad with whatever

On bigger jobs Susie and Sammy often worked together. I can particularly remember the many, many hot days when Paul and I walked through the bean fields chopping out weeds. I also remember one year when a series of rains prevented finishing the cultivation of the corn. Dad rigged a little platform on an old planter wheel and one boy stood on the platform while the other led a horse pulling that wheel down the corn row, scraping out the weeds between the rows. That was a hot, dirty job.