History

Nettie Alvira McManigle Satterlee
by William James Satterlee

 

Nettie Alvira McManigle was a “One Of A Kind” person.  She was also my Grandmother.  She could be extremely kind, or extremely hateful, as the mood struck her.  As far as I knew, everyone in the farming community liked her.  My Mother, Nettie’s daughter in-law, was the exception, and the feeling was mutual.  This would have been a minor inconvenience in most families, but living on the same farm, in houses only 100 yards apart, seemed to cause tension too strong to describe. 

Nettie Alvira McManigle Satterlee, Teddy, James Morrow Satterlee

Nettie grew up in poverty, as most farm folks did in those days.  My grandfather, James Morrow Satterlee, grew up in worse circumstances.  I will relate his story at another time.  Through a lot of hard work, my grandparents had become financially comfortable by the time I came into my teens.  Though I did not know it until years later, a lot of the neighbors depended on them for low interest loans to carry them through the tough years. 

We milked about ten cows by hand.  Morning and night we would milk cows.  Rain or snow, sleet or hail we would milk cows.  Hot as hell, or cold enough to freeze it over, we milked cows.  Seven days a week, twice a day, we milked cows.  There was no electric in the barn, so we milked by hand by the light of kerosene lanterns.  After the milking, we put the milk through a hand-cranked separater to get the cream.  Grandma worked wonders with this golden, Gurnsey cream. 

The separated cream was taken to her basement where she had huge, meticulously scrubbed, ceramic crocks, with wooden lids.  The cream was placed into these to cure.  Some would say, “sour,” but that is too simple a word to describe the secret process that she never, to my knowledge, revealed to anyone.  The resulting product was sweet and flavorable, like no product I ever tasted in over 40 years working in the food industry.  How she controlled this process to produce consistent results in all kinds of weather and temperatures, amazes me more today than fifty years ago. 

When the cream was just right, she would carry it to her kitchen and pour it into a giant, hand cranked, wooden churn.  The hand cranked churn was a definite improvement over the old up and down barrel churn, that set in the corner of the kitchen.  First of all, the hand cranked churn held more.  Secondly, and more important, it could be powered by kids who were too short to power the up and down churn without standing on a chair.  That may sound like a negative statement to someone that never tasted my grandmother’s buttermilk.  For me, I would consider mayhem against anyone that got between me, and that churn crank.  I always got a glass out of the cupboard and set on the big kitchen table beside the churn, so that Grandma had no doubt what my wages were for the hour of hard cranking ahead. 

The wooden paddles beat against the cured cream causing the butterfat to bind together in lumps of butter, from the size of marbles to tiny specks.  When Grandma said the cream was done, she would remove the lid from the churn and scoop the butter-balls from the churn with a flat wooden ladle into a big wooden bowl.  She would end up with about five pounds of raw butter from each churn load.  Once the butter was removed, I would pull the wooden plug out of the bottom side of the churn, and drain the buttermilk into steel buckets, all except for the glassful that I caught on the way out. 

Rose, James, Nettie, holding Howard, William F.   facing camera, Carl B. Satterlee,  looking down

What happened next, I took for granted, but wish I could see it one more time.  Grandma would begin working that butter around in that wooden bowl to remove all of the moisture.  Her hands would move that ladle so fast it was like a blur.  Even when her hands and arms were deformed by arthritis, she still moved so fast you could not see the ladle.  The only concession she made was, that after the kids left the farm, she accepted an electric churn from my Dad.  She still went back to the hand crank occasionally, just to be sure the new-fangled thing was doing its job. 

The only thing she added to the butter was a pinch of salt.  She had a little platform scale that she placed the wads of butter on.  I never saw her take any off or put any on.  She seemed to hit the 1, pound, or 2, pound mark close enough every time.  You would not believe the next part if you saw it a dozen times.  One at a time, she would take a wad of butter into the big wooden bowl.  Again the wooden ladle would fly.  Suddenly, she would plop the wad of butter, now in a perfect egg shape, out of the bowl onto a square of waxed paper on top of the scale.  She would hit it on one end, go down one side of the top with the edge of the ladle, flip the ladle over in her hand, strike the other end, and repeat the process down the other side of the top.  All of this in less time than it takes you to draw a breath.  The result was a perfect, golden loaf, scored with her unique chevron trademark down the top.  You would swear that she had pressed each one in a mold, since they were all perfect and identical. 

On Saturdays we “huxstered.”    That meant we delivered the butter, eggs, fresh milk, buttermilk and whatever produce Grandma wanted to part with, to her regular customers in Falls Creek, about seven miles away.  It was a real treat if I got to go along when I was young.  Riding in the back of the ’32 black, Chevy short-bed pickup, with the boxes of milk, covered by heavy tarps to keep them cool, was a real treat to a kid that never got off of the farm in the summertime.  This routine continued even after my grandfather was too blind to drive.  Grandma would say, “There’s a car coming Jay.”  Grandpa would steer the right hand wheels to the berm and Grandma would say, "It’s all right now," and Grandpa would head for the middle of the road.  When I got my drivers-license, I took over the driving chore in my mother’s car. 

One thing never changed.  As we drove through the streets of Falls Creek, to deliver to the regular customers, people would wait on the street corners and flag us down.  They had tasted Grandma’s butter and buttermilk, and wanted to buy it.  All she could do was put their name on a waiting list, since her entire output was not enough to take care of her regular customers. 

My only claim to fame in this whole endeavor, other than to be able to consume a whole gallon of Grandma’s buttermilk on a hot day of hay-making, was my unique delivery of the jugged products.  I did not see anything unique about it at the time, even though my Dad said I always took “A Lazy Man’s Load.”  The double handled, glass gallon jugs weighed about a pound.  The contents weighed about 8 pounds each.  I could carry 5, gallon jugs on my left hand, one on each finger and the thumb, and four on my right hand.  That meant that I had 45 pounds on my left hand and 36 pounds on my right.  I never figured how to get that other one onto my right thumb  without banging the jugs together, and breaking them.  It just seemed the natural thing to do, and I could not understand until years later, why everyone thought it was some great feat. 

No luck.  I never got to drive the ’32 Chevy pick up.  It sat in Grandpas heated garage for years, leather seats and all, in perfect condition, even though many people tried to buy it.  My brother and me each thought that Grandpa would give it to us someday.  One day I drove past his garage and missed the big chrome headlight in the window.  I stopped at the house and asked what happened to the truck.  He said that the gasman had given him twenty-five dollars for it.  I hurried over to the gasman’s house, but too late.  He had bought this fine, antique classic to use to haul firewood out of his woodlot.  He got stuck on the very first load and tore up the rear-end and transmission.  Not to worry though.  He had taken the body and engine off and was in the process of making a wagon out of what was left. 

As I said, Grandma could be very kind in a gruff kind of way.  I remember when I was in my first year of school in 1942.  The war was on.  My Mother had gone to Pittsburgh, over one hundred miles away, to train to be a registered nurse.  Gasoline was rationed, and the old car could not have made it that far, unless a horse had pulled it.  Mom only got home every three weeks or so, from late Saturday night, until 3:15 on Sunday afternoon.  We would drive her to the bus station early, and watch the busses come and go.  Sometimes she got bumped off of the bus, since servicemen got preference on all transportation due to the war.  It was really sad to go to the bus terminal on Saturday night, and have the bus come without my Mother.  I am sure it was a lot tougher on my Dad, alone, at only 33, with four kids ranging from 5 to 14. 

One day when I was on my way to school with very cold hands, my Grandmother came out of her house and said, “Let me see your thumb!”  I produced my thumb and she quickly knotted a piece of string around it, pulled it off, and walked back into the house.  Two days later when I was coming home from school, she again came out of her house and said, “Here, put these on.”  She shoved a pair of double-knit, blue and maroon mittens into my hands, and stomped back into the house.  She had spent two days, probably most of the nights, knitting the mittens in her off time from the full time work of the farm.  I did not appreciate the fact that she was one of the few people that could do the double-knitting or knit a thumb into the mitten at just the right angle for comfort.

Nettie Alvira McManigle Satterlee,  James Morrow Satterlee

Grandma would not accept a gift graciously.  If her birthday or Christmas present were not delivered the night before the event, she would just lay it aside, and not touch it for weeks.  Finally, she would open it, but never say thanks.  I always suspected that she carefully opened the gifts when no one was around, and then rewrapped them,  just to drive the giver nuts.

She had a favorite milk stool that fell apart.  She lamented of how she missed having that stool.  I was only about seven years old, but I took the stool to my dad's garage and did a pretty fair job of fixing it up.  I was so proud to do this for her.  Grandma would have none of that.  She stomped to the house and returned with a wadded up dollar bill and shoved into my hand.  I was disappointed.  I did not want the money, I just wanted her to have her stool.  Looking back, it was a valuable lesson for my kids.  You have to let your kids do things for you.

Grandma would never give anything in good humor.  Through my high school years, as I would be walking home, she would fly out of her house and thrust a fresh baked pie into my hands.  “Here, I baked this for your Dad,” she would say, and stomp into the house as my “Thank You,” was carried away by the wind.  My Dad would smile when I told him of the exchange, because he knew, as I did, the pie was for me.

 

An example of my Grandmother’s kindness and stubbornness follows: 

I was raised with my parents in a separate house on the same farm with my grandparents.  My grandmother's mother had died when I was two years old.  Grandma never talked about her family, so I assumed that she had none.  One Sunday night, when I was about seventeen, as we did the evening milking she said, "Gertie came to see me today." 

Nettie McManigle Satterlee, center, Carl, My Dad, her Mother,  Mary Catherine Stewart McManigle, left side, William F. Satterlee,  front left, Maud McManigle, right, holding Nettie's daughter  Rose Satterlee's hand

I asked who Gertie was.  She told me that Gertie was her only surviving sister and that they had not spoken since their mother's funeral fifteen years ago, even though they had been very close growing up.  I was shocked, but my grandmother was nothing if not stubborn. 

She said that Gertie had apologized for being resentful of my grandmother getting all of their mother's insurance money when she died.  She said that over the years she had come to realize that my grandmother had taken care of their mother, fed her and nursed her in her final illness.  Gertie told my Grandmother that she now realized that their mother was destitute, and that my grandmother was entitled to the insurance money. 

Grandma did not say a word, but walked into her bedroom and returned with a cigar box and handed it to her sister.  Gertie opened the box containing two objects, a receipt for their mother's funeral , in the amount of  $399.95 , and a nickel. 

Gertie asked, "What's this?"  My Grandma replied, "Mother had a $400.00 insurance policy, with the funeral director as the beneficiary.  The funeral bill was $399.95.  This is the exact nickel that the funeral director gave me in change, and I have kept it for you all these years so that you would have something from mother!" 

Gertie could not believe that she had left fifteen of the best years of their lives go by over a nickel.