While Pa cleaned out the cow barn and put down fresh dry straw in each stall, Freddy washed out the bucket milkers. Pa had forty cows and it took him a long time to milk them in the morning and evening. Freddy was still too young to help with the milkingprocess, but he could stand on a cement block at the big wash tubs in the milk house and wash out the milking equipment.
Pa had showed him how to put on big rubber gloves, get the hottest water he could into one side of the tubs and wash the milkers with disinfectant soap and a brush. Then he rinsed the milkers, with hot water, in the other side of the tub and turned the milkers upside down to dry.
There was a knob under the tubs. When Freddy turned it, the water in the tubs emptied out onto the cement floor of the milk house. Freddy let the water flow across the floor into a drain and then swept the floor with a broom until it was dry.
Pa came into the milk house.
"Good job, Freddy," said Pa as he looked at his wrist watch. "It's almost noon. Time to go on up to the house for dinner."