Foreword
Before World War II and even in the years that followed, women in rural areas didn't shop every week at the local mall or big box store for what they needed because there weren't any. Every town had a hardware store, what was then called a "dry goods" store that carried clothing, fabric and sundries, and a drug store that sold health care products in addition to filling prescriptions, but those stores required driving into town. Most farm wives were too busy to make that trip very often, and often didn't have the use of a vehicle. That generated a business opportunity for the Fuller Brush Company.
The Fuller Brush Company began by selling brushes, later added cleaning supplies and still later, cosmetics. A small army of men and women traveled the rural areas of the country with sample cases selling Fuller products door-to-door. Farm wives relied on the Fuller Brush man for what they needed to keep their homes neat and clean.
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Elizabeth had been overjoyed when Benjamin Mason asked for her hand, though she didn't know him very well and didn't know much about being married other than seeing how other married couples behaved. That was always in public, and usually after services in the little church in Mill Falls where she and her family attended. Benjamin's family were also members, and while her own family were true believers in the Bible, Elizabeth's mother told her there were no more devout Christians in Mill Falls or the surrounding area than the Masons.
They were married in the little church in Mill Falls, and Elizabeth had been beside herself with excitement from the day before the ceremony through the first week of being a wife. The ceremony itself had been what she expected as she'd seen many before. Weddings were a time other than Sunday services when the people of Mill Falls and the farm families who lived on the farms outside of town came together. The Mill Falls community was small and everyone was either family, related by marriage or at least knew each other very well. There were never any invitations to any wedding sent. It was just assumed everyone would come to wish the new couple well in their life together.
The people had come to her wedding, the women dressed in their Sunday dresses and the men tugging at shirt collars and ties that threatened to choke them. They brought their children too. All the little girls stared at Elizabeth in her white dress as her father walked her down the aisle. Elizabeth had done the same thing, and had dreamed of the day she'd walk down that aisle. She knew the little girls were having the same dream.
The boys weren't quite as excited. Dressing up on Sunday and having to behave was enough for one week. Weddings meant enduring that torture twice in the same week and not being able to rough-house or explore that hole under the barn sill or walk together through the woods and pretend they were Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett hunting for meat for the table.
The people had filled the hard, wooden pews, sat quietly through the ceremony, and then congratulated Elizabeth and Benjamin as they stood with their parents in the receiving line. They all had a small piece of the wedding cake Elizabeth's Aunt Emma had baked and decorated and also had a small cup of fruit punch. They showered them with rice when she and Benjamin ran the gauntlet of well wishers to his pickup truck.
Elizabeth didn't have a honeymoon, but that wasn't something she expected. While the people of Mill Falls and the surrounding area weren't poor, neither were they wealthy enough to afford a week in a fancy room in the nearest city large enough to have a hotel, that being Slidel. Instead, Benjamin had driven them to the small house where they'd begin life together.
Benjamin's father had started farming on a hundred and eighty acres he inherited from his own father. The house on that farm was where Benjamin had grown up. When World War II began, grain prices increased as American farmers worked to supply food for the troops fighting the war. Benjamin's father saved as much of his profits as he could, and as soon as Benjamin was old enough to be of real help with the farming tasks, his father bought the hundred and eighty acres that adjoined the original farm. The new land was for Benjamin though he and his father farmed both together. The house where Benjamin and Elizabeth would live was on that farm along with a chicken house and a large barn that had once been used for the horses everyone used for farm work.
The house Elizabeth would make into a home was still in good shape and relatively modern because Benjamin's father had installed a bathroom in the corner of one of the three bedrooms. She'd spent a week cleaning it before the wedding and though it wasn't fancy, the curtains she'd made and hung and the sparkling counters and table in the kitchen made the house look nice. She'd hung new curtains in the bedroom as well, and had made the bed with sheets from her hope chest and the quilts her grandmother had made from scraps of dress material.
Elizabeth was happy with the house for another reason as well. While it was within walking distance of Benjamin's mother's house, it was far enough away she and Benjamin would have enough privacy to learn how to become man and wife.
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Their first night together in bed was both exciting and frightening for Elizabeth. Elizabeth's mother had explained what was going to happen to her and why, but hadn't said anything much about what a man and wife did together. A week before her wedding, Elizabeth's mother had told her what to expect.
"Elizabeth, even though you'll be afraid, you should let Benjamin do what he'll want to do to you. It will be like you've seen the bull do to the cows in your daddy's herd. Benjamin will be stiff and hard and he'll put it inside you and move it in and out until he spends. It will hurt a little and you'll bleed a little the first time, but it will be over fast. After a few days, it won't hurt anymore.
"You might get pregnant on that first night, but if you don't, don't worry about it. Benjamin will want to do it a lot, so you will. Just remember, the Bible says a wife should obey her husband and that's what you'll promise to do when the preacher marries you and Benjamin. You must never refuse him. If you do, you'd be breaking a vow you made before God."
That first night had been about what her mother had told her. Benjamin raised the white nightdress Elizabeth wore and then knelt between her legs. Elizabeth had laid back and then closed her eyes.
Elizabeth felt the sharp stab of pain when Benjamin entered her and kept feeling that pain while he stroked in and out for the next couple of minutes. Then, Benjamin groaned and Elizabeth felt him throbbing inside her as he thrust quickly in and out three times. He pulled out then, rolled to her side and onto his stomach, and went to sleep. Elizabeth placed the small towel she'd put under her pillow between her legs, and then tried to fall asleep.
For a while, Elizabeth just lay there wondering if she might be pregnant. She didn't feel any different, but she'd heard her Aunt Emma talking to Sarah Fields, and Sarah said she was sure she felt something when it happened. Maybe Benjamin hadn't done anything inside her. Elizabeth felt between her legs to see, and when she touched the slippery wetness between her lips, knew he had. As she drifted off to sleep, Elizabeth was still wondering.
The next morning, Elizabeth and Benjamin were up before the sun because there was work to be done before Benjamin joined his father to work in the fields.
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Once Benjamin and Elizabeth moved to the farm, they needed their own cow and chickens, so Benjamin bought Bossie, a jersey cow who was a twin to Mabel, his father's cow, and that summer, bought fifty chicks for Elizabeth to care for. Elizabeth was happy to do her part and fed and watered the chicks every day.
She asked Benjamin to teach her how to milk Bossie, but he said when God made man, he put him in charge of the beasts of the field, and when he made woman, she was to be responsible for the home, cooking, and bearing children. Since chickens weren't beasts of the field, they were a woman's responsibility, but cattle were, so they were a man's responsibility.
