SIMPLER TIMES: "Eggs, Cream, Butter and a MOUSE."

My dad's home was on a farm, one mile from a little country store in Moore, Idaho. If dad wanted a treat from the store, his mom gave him an egg. He would carry that egg in his pocket as he walked to the store. There, he traded the egg for candy.

It was a common practice for people to trade produce for store credit. A certain women in the valley churned cream into butter and sold it at that little country store. Each family had their own wrapper for their butter when they took it to the store. The merchant would then put his own wrapper on the butter to sell it.

This woman took her butter to the store one day, wrapped in her wax wrapper. She explained to the store owner that a mouse had fallen into her cream. Feeling that she couldn't afford to lose the cream/butter, she went ahead and churned it. Then she asked the merchant to go ahead and sell her butter, saying, "What they don't know won't hurt them". Since she knew about the mouse, she just couldn't use her own butter.

She asked him to trade it for someone else's butter. He went to the back room and re wrapped her butter in a store wrapper saying, "What SHE doesn't know won't hurt HER"!! He presented her with her own butter wrapped in the store wrapper!