What a Bunch of Old Cranks

 What a Bunch of Old Cranks

I wasn’t old enough to remember having a vehicle that needed to use a crank to get the engine started. The crank was located below the radiator and it took quite a bit of strength to twist and endurance to make several turns before the engine would catch and roar to life. The first car that I owned used two keys, one to open the trunk and glove box and the other to start the engine.

We had an old wall-mounted phone composed of a mouthpiece, receiver, and a crank on the side. By twisting the crank it generated a signal to the switchboard operator saying that you needed to make a call then she would connect you with the person you wished to reach. We were on a party line, meaning several people shared the same line. A person could only use the phone if no one else was using the line and when the phone rang, you had to listen to the number of long and short rings that notified you whether the call was meant for you or someone else.

I remember turning the crank on my Grandmother Rebecca Rugg Miner’s barrel shaped butter churn. Gram would pour the farm-fresh cream that Granddad Ray Miner separated from his cows into the top of the churn. She would replace the lid and the grandchildren would turn the side crank. At first the turning was easy. The sloshing of the cream inside made a wet splash that sounded as the inside paddles spun and mixed the cream. Slowly kids began to tire as the cream thickened into butter. The sloshing sounds disappeared and an adult would take over. Eventually, pale yellow butter and watery buttermilk emerged.

In the wintertime they would break out the ice cream maker then add cream, eggs, sugar, and vanilla to the canister. It was surrounded by crushed ice. Salt was sprinkled onto the ice getting it to melt and refreeze. That made the ice cream freeze faster. Paddles inside the canister continually mixed the recipe and scraped the ice cream from the sides as a person turned the crank. Many times a grandchild would start the process then an adult would take over as the mixture thickened.

I’m also old enough to remember mechanical hospital beds that had two cranks; one to raise and lower the head of the bed and one for the feet. These were devices designed by Satan himself. Too often one crank or the other weren’t tucked safely away beneath the bed and some unsuspecting nurse would be nearly crippled in the dark while making rounds.