The cow enterprice

The Cow Enterprise

The year 1953, we arrived at this hamlet called Socuello on the outskirts of Bembibre. In this new place all was unknown and strange, there was no river near by and there were no friends to play with. My brother cried in his cot and my sisters found good use for their entrepreneurial skills in the new village.


They stitched and sawed what ever came their way. Mostly it was turning collars to shirts or making new collars from the skirt of the shirt. This too is a lost skill, no young woman today would think of such an economic idea, making a collar from the extra cloth of the skirt of the shirt!!! Stockings were always placed over the glass waiting to be gathered.I attended school in a wave of insomnia as I cannot tell you anything about it. I have no recollection of this time at all. My only knowledge of this period is a scar that I have in my foot from stepping on to a broken bottle. I also remember being punished for something that I cannot recall, but the punishment I have not forgotten. I was told to kneel on two chick peas one under each knee and with my arms stretched hold three heavy books on each hand! It always amazes me to realise man's ability in discovering new ways of torturing their fellow human beings! What could a six year old have done to receive such a harsh punishment?


Not long after having settle down my father decides we needed to move into a larger house.

The house in Bembibre in the vicinity of Socuello, was on the main road, that was the motorway of the time.Huge lorries rallied day and night with the fresh fish that had been caught earlier that same day in the North of Spain, Galicia.Madrid being the capital city of Spain was four hundred kilometres away. Its purchase power was grater than all the cities these lorries passed by in between,poor,mainly rural, agricultural and undeveloped. Once we had some visitors from my father's family. They were accustomed to sleep soundly in the desolate mountains of the North. Their only disturbance was the cock singing the waking call in the early hours of the morning. They could not believe we could actually sleep in that place where the lorries never stopped passing night and day.

The house was divided into two flats.One upstairs and a bar with a small apartment for the people running the bar downstairs. The flat that we occupied had three large rooms.Number one room held four beds for the miners.Number two had two beds for my three sisters and myself. Two to a bed. Number three room was my parents bedroom and my brother slept in a cot by their side. We also had a larger room which was our dining room,kitchen and a complete bathroom. Soon the dining room became a factory of all sorts. My sisters started teaching pattern drawing and fashion design. Tina and I went to school and my brother did his own thing.

My father was behaving badly in front of our very nose. Our flat was over the bar and we could hear him saying another round for everyone. This created an atmosphere at home that we could all sense, for the needs of the family were great. My mother decided to buy one cow. We had no land or where to put it, but she would find a way.


My father was a man of many talents, when he was not at the pub. He could build a house, carved wood or be a farmer, apart from understanding rudimentary machines at the mines.Keeping the men alive in the pit was a relevant effort. The mechanical pumps circulated the air inside the deep galleries and work environment was greatly improved as well as productivity by these machines. (below my mother in 2008 she is 98 years old)








My parents decided that they would built a hut to keep this cow in a piece of land they had rented. The hay is stack for the winter, in a way that looks like an American Indian tent.


My father and mother built one of this in appearance and made it hallow in the interior. It was finished just on time on the day of the arrival of this new addition to the family. It is a survival instinct that makes man inventive. It worked very well and had no effect on the landscape for any one to complain about.My father would go off to work and my mother continued with her innumerable tasks apart from holding the rains of this cow, while it ate for eight hours at a time.

She had discovered that by the road side, the grass grew free and plenty. Cows spend most of the day grazing, and one cannot imagine how monotonous it must have been holding the lead of this cow for hours on end. She had to hold the rains to avoid accidents with passing vehicles and people.But she only thought of our survival.


Her needs always came last. Late in the evening she would take this cow back to the improvised farm and milk it. Buckets of milk would come out of this animal factory and she would come home delighted with a bucket on her head and two milk churns, one of each hand. She would do her innumerable tasks and then at around seven in the evening she would go out to sell the milk.


She built a good clientele, for people knew she was a decent and clean woman trying to look after her family. Other people were doing similar things in a big scale. But the milk was not as whole as the one my mother was selling. Adding water was known to be part of the profit making mechanism. My mother sold it a bit dearer but unadulterated.


I remember her coming home and emptying her apron pocket full of coins. What a delight it was for her and for the rest of the family.A cow will provide you with milk everyday of the year, it is like well fed hens they produce eggs on a daily basis and thus produce product and profit for the owner. I remember in those days hens were only given left overs and did not manufacture an egg a day, poor things... (when I am asked today which is my favorite pet, the answer is always a cow) This milk also gave us a good start in life by having as much milk as we wanted to accompany our simple meals. With all this entrepreneurial ideas going on in my house, the neighbours were amazed. My mother created her own hostel, for she continued having four miners, sleeping and eating in our house. She had four daughters and a 5 year old boy, a husband to upset her, and a cow.


My sisters were by now famous as the “Asturianas Dressmakers” . They operated an academy of fashion and taught up to forty female students from villages around the area.


My mother realised that if she had women instead of men, she could be freer to do her tasks without being concerned about my sisters reputation with the miners. After all they were both in their twenties. So she changed her hotel occupation from miners to future dressmakers that came from some distance to learn the trade with my sisters.


The house was full of excitement. Women in and out, clients choosing the next patterned cloth for their chosen piece of design, buckets of milk in and out, four small pots simmering on the cooker accompanying the larger one, paper, scissors, rulers,chalk, pins and needles as well as laughter and sadness was echoed in between those walls, while the country was suffering hunger, isolation, unemployment and misery.


My sister Tina and I attended school, my brother was by now fighting with the cock that took a special liking to him and playing with his neighbour friend. They were both very dark, they had dark complexion and sometimes they looked even blacker from swimming in the river that flowed black water from the non environmentally friendly mines.


My sisters and my mother often discussed issues beyond my comprehension, but looking at my mother's face I could gage the seriousness of the latest incident. My father had gambled a piece of land that they had bought to start building another house.My mother had already helped build two houses and lost them. This was the last straw, she thought. She could not believe it, when she searched her “aparador” where this document was usually kept and discovered it was no where to be found.


In those days men could do an undo without their wife's permission or knowledge. The law was on their side, one could even gamble one's wife as if she were your own property. I know some men who did just that.


The suffragettes are my heroines and I am very grateful for their courage and vision for a better world of future generations of women. A few of us do enjoy today the life that they would have wanted for themselves, our freedom and independence. We owe to their determination in freeing us from male patriarchy, where women were disrespected and abused.


My main concern was my mother and her hectic life, matrimony issues, money problems for rent and schools, and family needs. My mother or father, contrary to other parents, never used us children as earners for their benefit. On the contrary, albeit with huge difficulty, my mother sent my eldest sister to learn dressmaking professionally. She paid for this with her effort and extra income from all the enterprises that she involved herself in to bring us out of the gutter. She had known a better life,where she felt secure and could provide for her family, but alas, it did not last, and it was not meant to be the first or second time round.


However,as soon as she could, and with forward sight, she bought a sawing machine and made arrangements for my second eldest sister to follow her steps and have a profession of her own. It served them both well, and helped them both along their lives. Both worked from home raising their families supported by the extra income that their skills gave them. My third sister Tina was very bright at school and had remarkable talent for mathematics and academic work.