1959
February
The first Sunday in February Dad went into work at the Chemistry Department to prepare for the students returning for the new semester that started the next day. Part of Dad’s job was to prepare all the student labs with the chemicals and glassware they would need in their experiments. There were several large chemistry class rooms with stations for twenty or thirty students. Each lab had its own supply room with a counter which the students would get the supplies they needed for the experiment they were doing that day. Dad would check the list of the supplies the students would need, get them from the main stockroom and put them in the lab supply room.
Bart again came over for dinner and then played Canasta for a while after which Mom and Dad went to downtown to the Florida Theater while Bart stayed with us kids. Mom and Dad saw “And Some Came Running” with Frank Sinatra & Dean Martin, Mom thought it was “real good”.
Valentine’s day, which fell on a Saturday, we went out to Grandma and Grandpa Mixson’s
and
Dad helped Grandpa plant eight rows of potatoes in the morning. It
was always a gamble when to plant potatoes, you wanted to get them
in early but after the last frost which would kill them. Grandma
always had a well-used Farmer’s Almanac hanging on a nail in the
kitchen which would provide the dates for planting, “Root crops:
February 17,18,19,24,25” it listed, so they were planting early but
they had been growing potatoes for years so they had experience when
to plant . photo Planting the potatoes involved plowing the row
into mounds using a hand plow photo then making small holes every
foot apart and planting piece of seed potato in the hole.
Before
the planting, David and I crawl under the house and dig a few
potatoes from out of the cool sand from where they were stored. Dad
then would be cut potatoes into four or five pieces with a sprouting
eye on each piece which were then planted. After we had lunch Dad
and Grandma took us kids down to Plantation Lake to go fishing.
Updated: 03-23-2022