Happiness and terror was being a child at my grandparents' house circa 1977. I was 7 years old, just tall enough that I had to duck under the kitchen table to play with their dog, Missy, and just old enough to be able to stay up for their parties and put myself to bed.

And fetch the beer.

My grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, great-aunts, and great-uncles would congregate in the farmhouse kitchen on the brown and tan, vinyl flooring. On Saturday nights my grandmother broke her cardinal rule and kept the television on, even with company there, because Hee-Haw was on. Then my grandmother would swing me around and pass me to the nearest relative to dance, while my grandfather would play his guitar along with Buck Owens and sing, delightfully off-key: “Where, oh-where-are-you-tonight? Why did you leave me here all alone? I searched the whole world and thought I found true love, you met another and...you were gone.”

But then invariably someone would tell me to pour them a beer from the keg.

Pouring beer was terrifying, because my grandparents' house was on their working farm - and their biggest parties happened after a slaughter.

To get to the beer I had to go into the garage that adjoined the kitchen. It was difficult in the winter to leave that warm kitchen with the grown-ups' laughter, singing, and jokes. I had to open the kitchen door that my great-grandfather had made — with its big, metal click-handle — and then hold my breath. And try to avert my eyes from the sight directly in front of me.

In the winter the garage doubled as a cooler for hanging slabs of beef. It was lined with dead cows that — 18 hours ago — I had names for. But when I opened the door they were “sides” on hooks, hanging from the ceiling. They slowly turned, still bleeding onto the cement floor.

“Don't let the cold air in!” one of the adults would yell merrily.

I always had to close the door behind me and the warmth of the kitchen was muted in the cold garage. I could hear the drops of blood hit the cement.

The way I avoided looking at the half-sided cows was to keep my eyes on my grandfather's sink to the left of the door and then to walk backwards. The sink was stained from years of dirt and blood, but my grandfather's washcloths were folded neatly on its side.

It was 15-steps to the refrigerator.

After opening the circa-1965-refrigerator door and then ducking my head in quickly to pour beer into the clear plastic cups, I could take a breath. The refrigerator smelled like beer, and opened jars of pickles. It didn't smell like blood, death, or terror. The bad part was that the open door made being in the garage even chillier — the winter cement would radiate up through my ankle socks, all the way to my numb nose. I had a toe-heel technique for getting back inside the house quickly, so that by the time the beer was poured and I hip-closed the refrigerator, I could make it back into the kitchen in seconds without spilling a drop of beer. Opening the door with my elbow and stepping up into the warm kitchen I would be rewarded by the sound of laughter again.

Sometimes I wondered if the adults were playing a trick on me.

But, once the meat was sorted into cuts, we would have beef fondue to celebrate. My grandmother and my mother would make homemade horseradish sauce for dipping and the 5 of us would sit around my grandparents' table with the red-checkered table cloth and take turns dipping the meat into the oil. There was music and laughter and beef.

It was fantastic.