When my Great Great Grandma Olevia Clay was a young girl growing up in Williams County, Ohio, her family was very poor. It was the custom among less prosperous rural families of her time (about 1873), to take their children out of school at the age of 15, and hire them out to a neighbor who might need help.

Ladies of Olevia's day didn’t have all the appliances and conveniences that are available now to make their work easier. They’d have to wash their family’s clothes on a washboard, churn butter, make their own foods from scratch, scrub the floors by hand, and iron everything from bed sheets to clothing…all in all, it was an exhaustive amount of work.  Many women needed someone to lend a hand in taking care of their kids, working in the kitchen, or any number of other tasks.

When Olevia reached her 15th birthday, a family living on a nearby farm hired her as house help for the summer in exchange for room, board and a small salary.  She hadn’t had a lot of experience yet, but her new employers were willing to teach her what she needed to know. 

Olevia had been at her new job for only a few weeks when the family she worked for made plans to visit another nearby family for the afternoon. The farmer’s wife had prepared bread dough and placed it to rise in the warming oven above the stove. Olevia assured her that she would know how to finish the baking, so the family left on their outing.

At the designated time, she removed the dough from the warming oven.  But something distracted her as she set it down on the table, and she forgot all about it. 

By the time she remembered the dough it was cold and flat. To be on the safe side, she decided to make more and put it in the warming oven to rise.

Then, she was confronted with what to do with the bad dough. 

Knowing she faced a “waste not want not” scolding from the farmer's wife for being careless and ruining perfectly good food, she had to come up with the safest hiding place imaginable where no one would ever find the bread. 

Of course.... the manure pile!

A few hours later when the family returned, the farmer went out to the barn to do his chores, and his wife came in to see how their protégé had gotten along in their absence. The second batch of bread had turned out beautifully. Olevia had pulled off her deception, or so she thought. The story of what really happened to the bread didn’t come out until the farmer came back to the house at suppertime, laughing.

His wife asked, “What’s so funny?”

The farmer chuckled,  “I’ve got the biggest mushroom puff in the manure pile that you’ve ever seen in your life!  It’s larger than that kettle, and I can’t figure out how it got there!”

Then, he cast an amused glance at Olevia who quickly averted her eyes, blushing with shame.  
 

The farmer's wife raised an eyebrow and asked, "Olevia is there something you'd like to tell us?"

Her flushed cheeks had branded as the culprit, so there was no way to hide her blunder. Olevia blurted out a confession and begged for forgiveness.

Stifling her own laughter, the farmer’s wife said, “It sounds to me like the sun beat down on the manure, and the yeast began to rise in that dough. Olevia, of course you shouldn’t have done it, but we’ll overlook it this time. Now eat your supper before it gets too late, because I’ll need you to churn some butter for me before bed.”

After dinner, Olevia went out to the barn and began the churning.  When she was almost finished, she turned her back for a few minutes to fetch some cold water from the well to throw onto the butter, so it would gather up out of the buttermilk. In her haste she forgot to put the lid back on the churn. When she came back with the water she discovered Rusty, one of the farmer’s big barn cats helping himself to some buttermilk.   

The farmer was very fond of Rusty.  He was a pleasant old orange and white kitty, who often kept the farmer company while he did his solitary chores. He would follow him from place to place, meowing amiably as he ambled about while his master worked. In exchange for his companionship, Rusty was given the best seat in the barn during milking time. He would smack his lips expectantly and then open his mouth for a stream of warm milk that the farmer squirted straight from the cow’s udder.  Rusty and the farmer were great pals. 

By barn cat standards, Rusty’s nine lives were charmed indeed.

By contrast, no one had a greater aversion to cats than Olevia.

She believed cats to be sly, unhygienic creatures, even though she knew they were necessary part of keeping the barn’s mouse population under control. But she certainly didn’t want them rubbing against her legs, or expecting favorable attention after gobbling down the rodents that scurried through the barnyard.  

So understandably, Olevia was horrified when she returned to her work and found a big orange and white striped feline licking out of the churn. She picked up a broom, and swung it at the cat screaming, “SHOO”! 

And in that moment, Rusty's eyes bulged, and he lost all of his nine lives by the whoosh of the broom that whistled over his head.  He landed on the floor with a thump.

Gasping with horror, Olevia picked up a nearby stick and gave the cat a timid poke in the chest.  
 

No response.

She poked at him again.

Nothing.

Now she was really in serious trouble!!!!!!  Oh dear! What could she do??!!!  If she told her employers that she had killed their favorite barn cat after ruining the bread, she’d lose her job for sure. Her family desperately needed her income.

With her mind in a seething panic, she had a fleeting thought about concealing his body behind the woodpile.  No, that wouldn’t do. If anyone saw her move him there, they’d think she’d killed him for sure.  Oh why had she swung the broom at that blasted cat????????

Then she heard the farmer calling Rusty.  Olevia’s heart leaped into her throat.

“Olevia, have you seen Rusty?” the farmer asked from the doorway.

“Yes sir,” she replied with a quavering little voice. “He’s right here, but I don’t expect that he’ll come when you call him because he’s dead!!” 

And then she burst into tears.

The farmer trudged in and inspected the fuzzy lump on the floor.

“Yep. He’s dead all right. Olevia don’t cry. It’s good of you to feel sad for ole’ Rusty, but he’s been a bit off of his feed for a few days now. I was afraid he might die on us, and it looks like he has. Poor old fella. I’m gonna miss him.”

And choking back tears of his own, the tenderhearted farmer gently lifted the cooling body of his furry orange and white companion and removed him from the barn.

Olevia weakly sank down onto a hay bale and buried her face in her hands, flooded with relief that she wasn’t blamed for the cat’s death. It wasn’t really her fault that Rusty died after all…he was already sick. She might have helped him along a bit by scaring him with the broom, but she would have only made matters worse by hiding the cat and the truth. 

Then she remembered what her mother always said. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.” 

Mysterious indeed!  He was certainly looking out for her that day!!!  Through her honesty, she was able to keep her job and her integrity.

After Rusty's death, Great Great Grandma Olevia tried harder to like cats. She owed the effort to the poor kitty, who she fervently hoped was chasing fat delicious mice in that great barnyard in the sky. 

And honesty became one of Grandma Olevia's greatest virtues; one that she insisted that her children adopt as well.  
 

She knew first hand that the truth really could set a person free, but that lies could mushroom like bread dough in a manure pile.

One of those per lifetime was quite enough for Olevia Clay.

Michelle Close Mills ©