It was a warm summer afternoon.
She grabbed her bag full of books and walked through the dusty streets
of town. Children were playing in the
streets and there was a lot of activity.
When it rained, and the street grew muddy, the children would play on
their porches and on the wooden sidewalks in front of the saloon and the
grocery store. Their mothers would watch
from the windows of the tea parlor or from the porches of their houses. Today with the streets so Dry she could see
several woman sitting on the front porch of the tea room and the grocery
store. They were all sipping a
concoction of Miss Marmy's. It was a
mixture of lemonade, tea, and herbs. It
was a favorite beverage of the women in town.
Ms. Marmy brought it home from
She noticed several men huddled around this saloon. She knew her mother didn't like her hanging
around there, so she never walked straight in.
She always went around the back to make sure her dad was there, and then
went in the back way. She always
wondered what the men talked about though.
She wanted to get in on the conversation. But she wasn't allowed. She swung up on to the porch of her house and
greeted her mother as she came in the front door. She set her books down in the parlor, and
walked to the kitchen where her mother was baking. " How was school today? " Her
mother asked.
" it was OK, " Clary replied. " We have some new kids, and Mrs. Edison
let me help them begin their primers.
" Clary Loved helping Mrs. Edison in the schoolhouse. She was one of the oldest kids there. And had been through all the lessons that
Mrs. Edison had. Now she mostly hung out
And helped the other kids.
" your dad says that there are a couple gentleman who would
like to continue their reading lessons.
" Mrs. Swift looked at her daughter and smiled. " Clary, I swear you are the most
wonderful child. One of these days, I'm
going to see about getting some reading lessons myself. " Mrs. Swift Laughed.
" mother, I would be glad to help you learn to read. If that's what you want. It's really not that hard. " Mrs.Swift laughed again.
" I'm sure you're right.
One of these days I'll have someone takeover all the cooking and
cleaning, and then I'll have time to do some reading. Meanwhile why don't you come help with these
pies. "
Clary helped her mom roll out some dough, and top the bursting
fruit pies with it. She set them in the
oven. " Mother, I will attend the
pies. I noticed that Miss Marmy was
entertaining the ladies over at the tea room with her concoction. I'm sure that they haven't heard from you in
a while. "
Her mother's sighed and looked at Clary. " I suppose you're right. I can take a few minutes to be sociable, even
though it's not Sunday. " Mrs.
Swift took off her apron flapped it out the back door, smoothed her dress and
her hair, and then walked out the front door to join the ladies at the end of
the street.
Clary grabbed her books from the parlor, and opened her favorite
book, the tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. 20 minutes later her mother
was back. " Mother what are you
doing back? " Her mother shook her head and smiled
" never you mind dear.
" She put her apron back on.
" The ladies were busy talkin on things that I was not interested
in hearing. "
" mother, what do you mean? " But Mrs. Swift was
silent. Clary helped her with of rest of
dinner, and that was all that was said.
Frank Swift Came Home about an hour later and the family ate
dinner together. After dinner, while her
father was sipping a beer and recounting his day at the saloon, Clary ventured
to ask her father what she always asked him every night. " Father, you need any help in the
brewery Tomorrow? "
" Clary! I'll think about it.
" Her father scratched his head and looked at her mother. Her mother nodded to her father. He sighed.
" OK. You can come over in
the afternoon after school and help me start a new batch of beer. "
" a new batch of beer! " Clary nearly jumped out of the
chair. She'd never been part of the
initial process of making beer. Until
now her father had allowed her to come into the brewery at the back of the
saloon and hold things for him as he added ingredients to the beer or poured
the beer from the fermentation tank to the oak barrels and which was stored and
served with in the month. Clary felt she
understood everything there was to know about fermentation and storage of beer,
but she really didn't know much about the process of getting the beer to taste
like beer or what started the fermentation process to begin with. She knew that it had something to do with
feeding the yeast sugar. She hadn't
gotten much science at the little schoolhouse so she really did know what yeast
was. This was a secret, a very important
secret, that her father knew and only one other man in town knew, as far as
Clary knew. And that was the secret of
making the beer. Something magical
happened when you pitched the yeast into a mixture of barley and water. And Clary knew that there was a plant called
hops that was added at some point but she wasn't really sure why
The next day Clary dropped her books off on the front porch of her
house, waved to her mother, and then snuck around the back of the grocery store
and the alley and approached the saloon from the back. There was of lot of noise at the front of the
saloon. The miners must have just got
off their shift. Her father would be
distracted. He needed more help. And she wanted to be the one to give it to
him. She would learn as much as she
could about brewing beer and then she would brew all the beer for her father's
saloon, and he would never have to worry about it again.
When Clary reached the back door of the saloon, and opened it, the
smell of beer hit her full in the face.
She stopped and took a deep breath in.
She could smell the barley that was roasting over the open fire, she
could smell the sweet smell of the malt that was results of roasting the
barley, and she could smell the alcohol smell of fermented malt and hops neatly
stacked in barrels marked " Swift.
"
Clary walked in to the brewery and closed door behind her. Her father was nowhere in sight. He's probably serving the miners their first
beer of the day. Some of them preferred
whiskey, which Clary really didn't understand.
She couldn't stand the taste whiskey.
Beer was it. In fact, she liked
to take a sip now and then. She made
sure she only took brief sips from a very small amount of beer at the bottom of
a cup that she kept in the brewery. She
never drank in the bar itself. She never
had asked, but she understood that this would be very bad thing. She didn't want the minister coming down on
her parents or herself telling her she was condemned to hell drinking poisonous
beverages such as beer. She had heard enough
of the minister's sermons on Sunday to get that much. But she didn't make a strong connection to
sipping beer in the brewery while she was helping her dad. Clary sat down on a crate, found her cup, and
looked for the open casket beer the her father usually left in the back room
for when he needed refreshment. There it
was in the corner she went over and UnCorked the stopper and held the cup out
for a second and quickly corked it again.
The beer rushed out very quickly a dark amber liquid. She held it to her nose and sniffed she
smelled sweetness and bitterness at the same time. She had over heard her father
tell Herbert the minister's
brother who helped in the brewing part of the business, that the perfect beer
had a good balance of bitterness and sweet.
Clary knew this sweet came from the barley, and she was guessing that it
was the hops that added the bitterness.
Just then the door from the saloon opened and her father came in. " O There you are Clary, " he said
wiping his hands on the his apron.
" Why don't you check on the roaster while I finish Serving the
miners. It shouldn't take me more than
15 minutes. If the barley is Dark then
it's done. So, just peek your head out
the door into the saloon and tell me whether its done or not. "
Clary understood that it is important that the barley be roasted
before it was added as malt to the beer.
The more it was roasted the darker it became. And the darker it became the darker the beer
would be. Also, depending on how long
her dad let it sit over the flames it could get a smoky character. When this happened, her father would make a
snort of annoyance. He seemed to think
that Smokey beer was old-fashioned. Not
very good.
Clary checked the barley.
It was golden brown. Her dad had
said black. So it wasn't ready yet. She opened the saloon door and stuck her head
in. her dad was at the bar. He glanced
up when he heard the door Creek. Clary
caught his eye and shook her head. he nodded.
The bar was full of miners hunched over a pint or a shot glass. The bar was Smokey with pipe smoke. There were no women there. Clary closed the door of the saloon again and
sighed. She grabbed her little glass and
poured her self a little bit more beer.
She swirled the liquid within her glass and watched the light from of
the window over the back door glint red in the murky liquid. This one isn't filtered, she thought
herself. Father Usually filtered the
beer that he was going to sell in the saloon.
But it did take extra time, so he only filtered it if he thought he
would sell the beer in the salon. Clary
had never noticed it before.
Clary walked over to the fire and put on a heavy glove. She reached for the iron tongs, and stirred
up the grain in its tray above the grate.
It was looking a little bit darker.
A few minutes later, her dad came back into the brewery. " How they lookin ' now, Clary? "
" they're starting to darken up father, " she said. Frank grabbed another glove and Clary handed
him the tongs. He stirred them himself
for a few minutes, then grunted in Satisfaction. He grabbed a second glove for his other hand,
and pulled the tray out of the fire. The
barley looked very dark brown. And it
was not smoking. It was perfection.
" lift the lid off of the kettle, would you, Clary? "
Frank asked. Clary reached for another
set of gloves, and grabbed the heavy lid handle and pulled it off the kettle
and set it on the floor. Frank carefully
poured the grain into the boiling water.
He reached over his head and grabbed the bag full of hops. He grabbed handful of leaves crumbled them
into his other hand, gloves off, and poured them into the brew with a large
wooden spoon. ".
Put the lid back on the kettle, Clary, " Frank said.
Clary returned to the lid to the top of the kettle. " We'll let that boil for an hour,
" Frank said as he pulled his watch out of his pocket and checked the
time. " It is now about 430. At 530, we need to to move the kettle from
the fire. Here's my watch, " Frank
handed the watch and chain to Clary.
" Tell me when it's 530.
Actually, give me five minutes lead time. " Frank Turn to leave, then hesitated
and turned back around. " By the
way, I've hired a boy from the orphanage to come help us out. He'll be here tomorrow morning. I plan to teach him the beer trade. I expect that you'll help answer his
questions when you're around. " Frank
looked at Clary expectantly.
Clary was speechless. Frank
just nodded to her and turned back and walked into the saloon. He close the door behind him. " Huh.
Well, " thought Clary.
" I guess father doesn't think I can help them by myself. Well, I'll show him. ` Clary would run the brewery, cleaning up,
sweeping with a damp broom so as not to cause too much dust that might settle
into the open vat of beers that were fermenting. She took some of the used barrels out to the
back of the saloon where there was a hand pump for the well. She rinsed out the insides of the barrels as
she'd seen her father do, and set them on the racks at the side of the saloon
building facing west. She paused and
dusted her hands-off, took a deep breath, and looked out over at the
Clary went back into the brewery checking the watch. It was now 5:00. Time was moving very slowly. She felt alone. Her father really didn't want her to be part
of the saloon business. And her mother
did not care what she did with her time, as long as she didn't spend too much
time at the saloon. She was glad that
she could help out at the school. It
gave her a feeling of accomplishment that she got no where else. But what she really wanted to do was
brew. She couldn't get that smell of a
roasted barley and a bitter hops out for head.
After putting around and straightening up some more in the
brewery, Clary saw that it was now 530 and she stepped her head back into the
saloon. This time her father was nowhere
in sight. But Mr. Pickering, one of the
miners, who had worked with her dad before dad had to quit mining, saw her and
smiled. " Clary! " He
exclaimed. " How are ya, Girl?
"
Clary smiled. " Hi,
Mr. Pickering. I am fine. How's the reading coming along? "
" call me Cleo, Girl, " Mr. Pickering replied. " I haven't been doing much reading
lately, " he said. ` I haven't seen
you around the saloon much lately. When
can I have another lesson? "
` Mr. Pickering-I mean, Cleo, " Clary said and laughed. " I've been pretty busy at the
schoolhouse, and I've been helping my dad more and brewery. I am learning to brew beer to help father
out. "
" Ah!! " Cleo replied.
" Takin ' over the family business, eh? "
Clary was about to reply when her father appeared. " 530 already? " Clary nodded and
said goodbye to Mr. Pickering and returned to the brewery with her father. Clary helped her father remove the kettle
from the boil. She was only 12, but she
was tall for her age. Her mother had
indicated she was concerned that she was going to catch the eyes of the local
boys because she was so tall and proud and mature. Clary was not wearing about this at all. There were few boys her age or older that
stayed in town. Most left to work in the
mines when they were about 12. If they
didn't do that, then they went off to boarding school if their parents were
wealthy, or further west to work on new farming claims in California.
Clary and Frank set the new beer in a vat to ferment. They also took an old batch that had been
fermenting and poured it into barrels and sealed them up for storage. These barrels would be consumed in the saloon
in the next few weeks. After that, the
beer would not be good.
Fall was rapidly approaching.
The front range grew Windy and wetter.
The leaves blew off the trees and filled the streets. Clary walked down from the schoolhouse
kicking up the leaves and spreading them around. Some times she walked through the piles that
the custodian had raked together and scatter the leaves when he wasn't lookin '
.
Today, Clary would teach Cleo some more words. He was using the first grade primer from the
schoolhouse. He was learning pretty
quickly, and the only thing holding him back was how busy Clary had
become. Even though the orphan boy had
shown up at the brewery a couple weeks back, he was a little slow to learn
first. Clary had had to spend a lot of
time with him showing him the ropes and explaining her father's brewing
process. He couldn't read, so there was
no point writing anything down. Clary
just went over the process again and again.
By now she knew it better herself.
Clary tossed her books up on her porch. her mother stuck her head
out the front door when she heard the books drop, and said, " Clary! " Clary stopped
in her tracks in the middle of a pile of leaves. She looked up. " Don't forget that you promised to help
me put up some jams this evening. "
" I won't, " Clary replied. She kept walking. Then she remembered she forgot the primer
that was in her book bag with her own books.
She turned back towards the porch, her mother watching her
silently.
" Clary, I don't know what to do with you, " her mother
said. " You're not a woman yet but
you are certainly not a child. You are
obviously so bored with school. You
really ought not to be there at the schoolhouse Anymore, except maybe as teacher. I wish we had the money to send you off back
east to boarding school and maybe even to a woman's college. No one in our family has gone to
college. It would be a marvelous
thing. "
" don't worry, Mama, " Clary replied. " I've plenty to keep busy around
here. I'm helping Father. " Clary didn't call her mother Mama
Anymore. She kind of surprised
herself. She knew that her parents
wanted the best for her. It just seemed
that they didn't understand what she wanted.
Hack, she didn't quite understand herself.