A Talk with an Acle Patriarch

“Why, I can remember when wheat was four pound a coomb."

“Yes, put in the widowed daughter, an’ your father kep’ a donkey - “Howd your tongue” said Harrison, taking the reins of the story into his own hands. “My father used to set me on the donkey, i’ me a guinea tied up in his pocket hankerchief, and send me to Moulton Mill for a bushel of wheat meal. My father had seven on us at home-how we all lived God A’mighty know-an’ he got fourteen pounds into miller’s debt at Strumpshaw. “He had six acres o’ land, and all his own, my father had. When the harvest was over he troshed three acres o’ wheat an’ wi’ this he paid his debt off. He made four pound a coomb of his wheat, an’ that set the ole man right on his legs agin. I couldn’t ha’ bin more’n four years old when I rode on top o’ the sacks to Strumpshaw Mill. I can remember my poor mother had white herrin’ for her supper when I got home, an’ my father he threw the money on to the table an’ he say ‘There, Sairey, bor, we’re out o’ debt, thank God.'

“I can call to mind right well that when I rode on top o’ the corn sacks to Strumpshaw there were flags on the church steeples. What for? Why they was to be took down if Boney kem. But ole Nelson wouldn’t let him come here, ye know. Ah I can remember Nelson’s funeral as if it were yesterday. My mother went up to Norwich and bought a picture. I was only about five years old then.”