A few times over the past couple of years of writing for the Slo Coast Journal, I referenced Norco, a rural unincorporated area in Riverside County, California during the mid 1940s. That time period in that locale, during my early adolescence, opened up many an unforeseen door for me. My life slanted in a different direction than one that might have taken place had my family remained in the Panama Canal Zone throughout WW II and beyond. When my father joined the U.S. Merchant Marines toward the end of the war, we had to leave the Canal Zone. My mother elected to take herself and her four children to one of her sisters who lived in California. In Norco, I learned about horses and cows, plus the caring for a range of domesticated fowl and rabbits. That 'country' education continued even after my mother moved her family of five out of her sister's home to subsequently rent elsewhere in Norco.
In our final rental, a small wooden frame cottage of about 500 square feet boasting an indoor bathtub and a chemical toilet (and an outhouse), we at least had hot and cold running water, a small refrigerator, and a gas stove. The house set on a large corner lot about fifty feet in from the street and close to a hundred feet from the intersecting side road. More importantly, behind the home sat the remnant of a small chicken coop. Without that land space and that coop, I might not have made the acquaintance of Suzy.
My mother watch-dogged the family budget ledger no less than a bank loan officer. A good thing that her teen-age son found part time work picking crops, but who also chopped weeds and cleaned chicken coops, salary running from .35 to .50 cents an hour. Moreover, we didn't have personal transportation. A city bus ran every half hour along a major street a country block away. Corona, the nearest city, lay six miles distant. We four children drank a lot of milk. I thought, "well, if we can't buy a cow, why not a goat?"
Over two (walking) miles away, a man raised and bred goats. A classmate told me about him and let me know in advance that the man charged ten dollars for a nanny ready for milking. With no objection from my mother, I walked to the man's farm, and took him at his word that the newly purchased goat had been recently separated from her two kids and was thus able to deliver three to four quarts a day.
True, while living with my aunt and uncle I learned how to milk a cow, and became quite proficient in draining an udder with four teats. I even enjoyed putting my cheek against the right flank of the Jersey cow while squishing the flow into the milk pail to form a foamy topping. However, a nanny goat has two teats and gets milked from the rear. Thus, inconceivable to rest a cheek you know where.
Whence came the name, "Suzy?" No memory lights a bulb, but she quickly accommodated herself to new quarters and my milking. The first major problem arose over her feedings. Every day, I made the rounds of the neighborhood with a hand sickle to cut and gather a mix of weeds and volunteer Johnson grass that proliferated along the roadways. No oat hay or alfalfa for Suzy, who never objected to whatever I threw into her pen.
Her mammary gland's two spigots provided over a gallon a day. A local farmer told me that I could order a pamphlet from the Department of Agriculture for ten cents. When the booklet came, I eagerly scanned the info, learning that the milk came out naturally homogenized and offered a percentage of ash higher than that from a cow. Fortunately, none in my family complained about the flavor slightly different from that of a bovine. Around this time, the war concluded, and my father returned to the family.
The months rolled along, and gradually Suzy produced less and less milk. The day came when I collared her for that five block walk to the goat breeder, and paid five bucks to have her serviced. If you're unfamiliar with the odor of a billy goat kept forever penned in a barn, don't volunteer for the experience. Soon after Suzy's milk production shut down, the husband and wife landlords living next door evicted us. In that this tale stems from goat ownership and not familial dysfunction, I'll omit the particulars of that eviction. Before the deadline of our having to leave Norco, we relocated to the eastern edge of Corona onto a small lot that my father had purchased months earlier when he had a few dollars. Unfortunately, by the time we moved to Corona, he was then unemployed and we subsisted on my mother having salted away a few dollars.
Times were tough. Good thing we lived in territory where plentiful weeds kept Suzy decently fed. Shortly after our eviction, she had twin kids. Also by then, I put the full blame of our poverty state on my father, who spent most of his nights cadging drinks and coming home drunk. In early summer of 1947, my 16-year-old tensions heightened my resentments over his behavior to where I moved in with my maternal aunt and her husband, who soon relocated to Colorado, taking me along. (See my article Stones in the November, 2012 issue.)
By the time I returned home a year later my father had returned to the U.S. Merchant Marine. Moreover, my mother had sold Suzy months earlier to a man who also butchered her two kids – giving one to Mom, who welcomed the addition to her larder.
Here, three-quarter's of a century later, I can still see old Suzy, hear her grunting neighs, and appreciate those many days when her milk played a part in our family's nutrition. Consequently, when I hear someone say that so and so "got my goat," the negative phrase triggers a positive mental picture of my Suzy – a good ol' nanny.
