The Watkins Man

J.R. Watkins Pain Relieving
Liniment, the original first product

     After Mommy and Grammy died, Daddy and Uncle Frank decided to sell the milk cows.  Our weekly income from selling cream stopped.  Until then, Daddy sold the cream at the creamery in town, took the cream check to the IGA grocery store, and bought food and supplies for the coming week.  Daddy could not boil water without burning it so given his limited sense of what was needed for cooking, we sometimes had a humorous variety of things to eat.  But we did have food.

    Daddy had chosen to stay on the farm with us children in order to keep our small family together.  Financially, it probably would have been easier for him to move to town where he could have found a day job.  But he rejected that idea because we children would have been alone at home for long periods of time while he worked.  Alternatively, he could have given us up totally to Mommy's relatives in New England, but he did not want to part with us permanently or to have the three of us split up among relatives.