In early spring, four men came to our farm to shear the sheep.   One of the men set up a machine with long poles and big clippers attached on the ends.   When he pumped a pedal on the machine with his foot, the clipper blades went back and forth.   The clippers were kind of like the ones the barber uses to cut hair, but much wider.

One of the men grabbed a sheep and dragged it into the barn and up to one of the machines.   The sheep shearing man layed the sheep right on its back and started clipping the wool from its tummy.   When he was done with its tummy, he rolled that sheep over and sheared the wool off the rest of it.   He held the sheep between his knees so it couldn't get away.

The sheep were bleating and wiggling.   The shearing man didn't hurt them, but I think the clippers tickled them and maybe the noise made them scared.

When the wool from the sheep was in a pile on the floor, the man let the sheep go and it ran outside, shivering in the cool spring air, without its coat.

My Daddy took the pile of wool and packed it into a special wooden box that made it into the shape of a square.   Then he tied it with brown string and put it into a nice pile in the back of the barn.

By the end of the day, there was a pile of wool many feet tall in the back of the barn.

Later, a man came and loaded all that wool in the back of his truck.   He gave my Daddy lots of money and took the wool to the factory in the city to make sweaters and coats for people.

It was my Momma's job to feed the shearing men dinner.   She had to pull the table apart and put a board in it to make it longer.   I thought it must be a special dinner because we ate in the dining room instead of the kitchen.

I liked to sit and watch the men eat.   They'd tuck their napkins under their chins, inside the front of their shirt collar, like a bib.   They ate really fast and they ate everything Momma had cooked.

One man used only his knife to eat with.   He took his knife, dunked it into mashed potatoes and gravy and then squashed it into the pile of peas on his plate.   Then he put the knife in his mouth lengthwise.   When he pulled the knife out through his lips, it was clean as could be.

That evening at the supper table, Momma laughed, "It's a good thing I didn't serve soup.   That man would have gone hungry."

I tried eating only with my knife, but it got into my mouth too far back and made me gag.

Momma reached over and took the knife away from me.   "Nice little girls do not eat that way," she said.   "Nice little girls use a fork and spoon to eat with."

Daddy looked at me with a look that said, "you better do what your Momma says."

I never tried that again!