Passing Time

I can’t speak for the adults, but for us children it was the only life we knew and we had as much fun as any children today. We made our toys for the most part and seemed to enjoy whatever we happened to be doing at the time. With a few exceptions, like the time I went up early in the morning, while it was still fairly cold, to play with the Pridgen boy. His dad had all kinds of tools and machinery. I tired of sitting on the barrels filled with cool tar and went home. Carlton Pridgen finally lay down on one of the barrels filled with tar and went to sleep. The sun rose higher and the tar got warmer. Carlton slowly sank in the warm tar and when they found him, only his head was sticking out. I never heard of so many ways of removing tar as the neighbors suggested and none of them worked. It finally wore off, breaking off in little patches at times while we played. It was on one of these trips up to visit Carlton that I broke my arm. We had a favorite tree to climb so we could look out over the country side. This particular day I had climbed up and was on the way down the tree when a rotten limb broke plummeting me to the ground. When I got my breath back and looked at my arm I realized that it was bending the wrong direction at the elbow. Carlton went for my daddy who picked me up and carried me in his arms until we reached home. Papa took me to Dr. Charles Peete’s office in Warrenton to have my arm set. All broken bones were set then by simply immobilizing them. Dr. Peete manipulated my arm a little then hung it in a baby diaper from my neck. In a few weeks it was as good as new. Another favorite place to go was a waste dump about half a mile over the hill and surrounded by woods. There was no toxic waste in those days, so from that point of view it was safe to plunder. We found an old tricycle one day and drug it home. It wasn’t much but it had three intact wheels. We decided that it had to be brought up to date. The first thing to do would be to cut notches in the solid tires to give traction. It bumped so badly with the notches in the tires that we decided to put it back the way it was. Back then tires of solid rubber were put on vehicles and the ride would jar your teeth, so holes would be bored through the tires to soften the ride. We found some of this rubber and decided that we would build a fire, melt the rubber and fill the notches of the tricycle wheel. A fire was built in the back yard and scrap rubber sprinkled in a little pan. When the rubber melted enough, I dipped a big tablespoon full of liquid, bubbling rubber and eased it over the tricycle tire. My younger brother Henry watched as I poured the hot melted rubber on the wheel. He got real close to see better, so close that his bare toe came right under the spoon of melted tar. To date, seventy odd years later his big toenail is still split from that hot rubber. He was not seen by a doctor and the tar being hot, there was no infection. People didn’t have doctors often when I was growing up. I was six years old at the time when I saw my first doctor. (When I broke my arm) and the next doctor I saw was the one that examined me when I went into military service. Home remedies were used unless you had a death rattle. As I remember back then, when a person entered the hospital you could almost bet on a funeral. It could be though, that the hospital didn’t get a shot at you until all the neighbors had exhausted their remedies. We kids were building a tree house down below the Nance's in a wooded area one day and some one left a board with a ten penny nail sticking through it. The board was about a foot long with a rusty nail sticking up through the center. I jumped off the play house onto the nail barefooted and the nail stuck through my foot and came out into view on the top of my foot. We all tugged at that board but couldn’t pull the nail out so I had to walk home, dragging the board like a snow ski. When I reached home, mama held me by the waist and papa pulled the board with the nail in it, from my foot. Kerosene was poured liberally into the hole left in my foot and the next day I was out playing. No one considered calling a doctor. In the spring most of the kids were given castor oil or Calob tabs as a purgative. Calob tabs were discontinued in later years because they contained mercury after aging I was told. For coughs a little whiskey on sugar was used. If you got cut or the skin was broken, whiskey was poured over it or kerosene. Bandages were pieces of bed sheets or diapers which were ironed with a hot iron before applying. Some of the remedies have continued and are still used. One remedy for burns was to squeeze aloe leaves and place on the burn. Most families had an Aloe plant as we do even now. The very sick people would lie in bed in their homes while the neighbors took turns sitting up with them until the crisis passed. The best I can understand about the crisis part is that the bug got you or the high temperature got the bug and you recovered. Doctors did the best that they could, but you have to face the fact that the doctors didn’t have much to work with. There were no antibiotics so you faced the crisis test. No antidepressants, so you worked it out through physical labor with the friends help, or you succumbed to alcohol. Some day I think that work for mental depression will be recognized again as a good treatment. With the limited medical knowledge, people died earlier, of course. A walk through the grave yard with attention to ages on old tomb stones will tell the story far better than I.  

Toys of The Day

We made many toys. A stiff wire fashioned with a bend in the end to cup around an iron hoop about eight inches in diameter was a standard with every kid in the neighborhood. I might say that I rolled those hoops a thousand miles. We made two types of guns depending on your choice. A piece of wood similar to a pistol (depending on the artistic value of the builder) with a clothes pin tied to the butt in which you attached a piece of rubber inner tube and stretched it tight over the end of the barrel. When you squeezed the clothes pin, the rubber band was released toward your target. I preferred the other type, where a section of sour wood was taken and the pith pushed out leaving a smooth hollow. A round stick to fit the hollow was taken and used to push a dogwood berry to the end of the tube. A second berry was pushed in behind the first and the wooden stick pushed until the compressed air exploded the first berry out with a nice pop. We also used the sour wood to make flutes by pushing the pith out then cutting little finger holes for the notes. We made our kites out of crossed sticks with newspapers glued on from a paste made with flour and water. We didn’t have any trouble finding rags for the kite tails and used some discarded neck ties. Every one saved string, keeping it wound on a ball. Adults also saved string, tying each piece found to the end of the string on the ball. String was used for so many things that you never had too much. The little girls made dolls of corn shucks and dishes of bamboo leaves. In summer a may pop plant furnished dolls. Taking the bloom part of a may pop, you could peel back the first layer of green leaving a purple skirt. Lifting the skirt revealed three legs, ( I think they refer to them as stamen) so you pinched one off, leaving two legs and you had a doll. I got a terrible switching once for pinching only half of the third leg off, before giving the doll to the little Newman girl. I didn’t think it was right to get a switching for making a boys doll. I really thought that whipping was an injustice.  

School Days in Norlina

It was 1931 and my first year of school. The memories of that first year are still vivid. We walked to school which was only about a mile and a half, and usually arrived in time to play football. At that time of the morning the teachers hadn’t arrived so there was no supervision. This was bad for us little kids because the larger boys, especially Ben Lynch, would take our football. This didn’t seem right to me so I decided to do something about it. Now the playground was a low flat area with a terrace of dirt built up on the sides. When the larger boys took our football, they walked along this path below the terrace to reach their playing field. The next morning I arrived early and positioned myself up on that terrace. Sure enough Ben Lynch came along and wrestled the football away from my team mate and started up that path by the terrace. I waited until he was directly below me and let him have it right on the head with a brick. I hadn’t really counted on the results of a four-pound brick to the head. He went out like a light, and of course a teacher was summoned. This was first punishment at school and a lasting reminder. Wait until you are off the school grounds. We didn’t have violence, hatred or meanness in school back then. Most punishment came about due to an error in judgment (like with Ben Lynch) or innocent carelessness like when Buck Duke got his whipping. Buck had just got a new pocket knife and had to show it to the rest of us fellows. We were out behind the school and Buck pulled out this shiny new knife. He opened the blade and made a few gestures of knife fighting with it to impress us, only, one sissy kid thought he meant it and through up his hand, over his head, then slapped downward toward Buck Duke. I don’t think Buck even realized that he was holding an open knife, but the blade went right through the boys' hand. The principal didn’t wait to get the facts, he just marched Buck into his office, made him take off his shirt and put his hands up on the wall. The principals office door had a glass window which we filled with our heads to see what was going to happen to Buck. Well that principal took a long switch and whacked Buck across his back about four times and every whack left a red welt. Behavior was exceptionally good for the next few days. Back in the early years of school I was plagued with ear aches. I would get an ear ache and mama would go for the remedy. She would take a large piece of paper and twist it into a cone shape. My grand daddy would take a red glowing fire coal from the fire and place it on a piece of tin. Then he would hold the lamp while mama poured some sugar on the coals. The sugar would turn black and a little stream of smoke would float upward. She then set the paper cone over the sugar and stuck the small end of the cone in my ear. I don’t know whether it was the attention I got or the fascination with the procedure, but it worked.

Lay off.'s

My dads work with Carolina Power and Light Co. had been good for us. School was regular,we had shoes and clothes that didn't set us apart from other kids and every one was optimistic. It was late afternoon, following school one day when we saw papa coming across the yard. "Mama,mama," we called "Papa's home". "Quit teasing, your daddy won't be home until Saturday" mama replied. Papa had reached the steps by then and called out to mama "I'm home Alma" and continued on into the house. We followed right behind papa and waited for him to give mama the usual hug before talking. He hadn't reached mama before she asked "Charlie, there is something wrong. What is it?" Papa kept on across the room and put his arm around mama "Alma, my job has been cut out. The whole crew's jobs were cut out and they told us to go home" papa said gently. "Does that mean that you have to go somewhere else?" mama asked. "No Alma, we have all lost our jobs. They gave no warning and didn't even arrange for us to get home. I was lucky enough to find a freight train on which I knew the engineer. I have been riding all night and most of today to get home and haven't had a bite to eat since leaving Tennessee." Papa related. Pushing a chair toward papa, mama said "Sit down Charlie and tell me about it while I fix you something to eat." Papa pulled the chair to him and straddled the chair with his arms folded across the back. "Alma, times are bad. The engineer talked to me all the way home. He said that people were losing their jobs everywhere, banks are going busted and people are hungry. "I made a mistake when I left the farm." papa said. "You can't blame yourself Charlie. No one could tell that things like this was going to happen." mama sympathized. Papa looked at her and said emphatically,"tomorrow I will find a job,any job that puts food on the table and then I will find a way to get us back on the farm. The farm has it's faults but you can always eat and no one controls your life. I felt uncomfortable as I had never seen papa so bitter about anything. The next morning when I got up to go to school papa had already left in search of work. The school day was especially long as I wanted to get home and find out what papa was going to do. We were eating when papa came in. "Did you find anything?"mama asked." I did. papa replied,"" but I never would have taken it except my back is against the wall and the children have to eat. I don't want to spend a nickel of our money until we can get out of here and on a farm". The job that papa had to take was working at a sawmill,12 hours a day. He said that he was lucky to even get that and it only paid for groceries. To add to this meager income he would buy a beef cow on Saturday night and peddle it from the rumble seat of his model A ford during the weekend. 1931 and things were not getting any better. There seemed to be even more people riding the rails. One of the Nance boys had caught a freight train, but I don’t know where he was going. He didn’t either. He just did it. Hobo’s stopped daily by the house for food. Mama always found something for them to eat and sent them on their way. Papa came home one night in better spirits than I had seen him in for quite some time. "Alma" Papa said, "I think I have it”. I talked to Jack William's and he will let me farm his place. We will have to do the first year on half shares so that he can carry us until the crop is sold. I don't have the money to buy equipment, fertilizer and feed the family too for the first year." We moved out to the farm and my dad said he would never depend on anyone else again. He never left farming until he retired. The farm which we moved to was only about two miles from Norlina so I still had the same friends at school. The farm houses were further apart than the houses in town. The fields were much larger. In fact everything seemed larger, even the sky. Down the road from us lived my grandmother, and step-grandfather with his children. There was Floyd, Eleanor,Leonard, Norwood, Thelbert and Louise. Across the road from them was a black family named Algood. They had 28 children. Their oldest was a boy and the youngest was a boy. All the rest in between were girls. Now the oldest boy was named Brother, that’s all, no other name. The youngest boy was named John Henry Christmas Peete Hicks Algood. All 26 girls were named after flowers. There was Tulip, Pansy, Rose, Dahlia, Chrysanthemum, Petunia, Dandelion, Buttercup, and I can’t remember all of the names. We teased them so much using different names that now I don’t know which was correct. We would stand and holler across the dirt road “Oh such pretty flower blooms, a bunch of blooming idiots." Then the battle with green plums would commence. It was all in fun and would continue until their mother would call them in. I don’t recall any body really getting hurt from our fusses except the time Brother threw a single tree at Thelbert. A single tree is a piece of wood about two feet long with a metal cap and hook on each end. It is used to attach to a plow and then the mule is hooked to the single tree and pulls the plow. Brother picked up this single tree and threw it at Thelbert. Thelbert saw it coming and jumped into the air but he didn’t get one foot high enough. The single tree hit this foot, knocking his feet out from under him. He immediately jumped up and grabbed the single tree. Brother knew Thelbert was going to throw it back at him, so he turned to run. Well, Thelbert threw it and that single tree made about one complete turn in the air and lined up square with the back of Brother’s head. There was a clunk and Brother just fell forward on his face. We ran up and looked at him. He won’t moving a hair, just laying there. We shook him first, thinking he might be foxing us, but he wasn't foxing. We rolled him over and lord, where his eyes should to have been was just white balls. I said “ Thelbert, do you think he is dead”? Thelbert said “ shake him some more”. I shook him real good and he still didn’t move. Thelbert said “He’s dead for sure, I didn’t mean to hurt him. I was just going to scare him.” “Must I call his ma Thelbert” I asked. Thelbert said, “He’s dead and she can’t help him now. Besides she would call the law and they would hang us for sure”. I was really getting scared now, I hadn’t thought about being hung. I had heard about people being hung and how their neck just stretched out forever. Any idea that would save me from this would sure be welcomed. Thelbert said,”We’ll just go on home and make out like we don’t know anything about it, when they find him”. We got up, looked around and started home. When we crossed the road, he turned, going to his house and I kept on to my house. I went in, washed my hands and sat down at the table. I wasn’t hungry. but I had to eat, or some one might remember that I was different that night. After eating I couldn’t wait until I could get in the bed where I didn’t have to pretend that every thing was all right. I wondered what Thelbert was doing. I sure hoped he didn’t get scared and tell them I did it. If he told them this they might say,” I know you did it, because if you hadn’t done it, you would have told us about it”. Now, why hadn’t I told them? Well, it was too late now to change anything, I’ll just have to wait. That was the longest night of my life. I just knew Brother’s ghost was watching me. I wondered if Brother could have two ghosts and one of them watching Thelbert too. I tossed and turned in bed,not wanting to stay awake and afraid to go to sleep. I wanted to get up and peep out the window to see if it was getting light, but was afraid that ghost would beat me back to the bed. I still couldn’t understand why they would hang me when I didn’t do any thing. Thelbert said that since I was there, I was an accomplish, which he said meant that I would accomplish if he hadn’t and was as guilty as him. There was one thing for certain, I decided, if I ever get out of this mess and it happens again I’ll confess up right then, because I ain’t ever going to spend another night like this. The night finally ended and I went down for breakfast. I tried to eat leisurely, but I couldn’t wait to see what Thelbert was doing and if anyone had found out. When I thought I had been leisure enough I bounded out the door and headed for Thelbert's. As I crossed over into his yard, Thelbert pointed across the road. There stood Brother in his yard as alive as me. He had told his ma though and this was when I first learned that I was a white cracker. This made me proud until the older boys said they were making fun of me. Now I could go from feeling good to feeling bad just because they said I was being made fun of. I decided that if I liked being a white cracker that was good enough for me. Any way I won’t going to be hung.

News Bees

We used to catch yellow jackets (bees that bite and sting) in fruit jars. Yellow jackets nest in the ground. If you take the top off a jar, turn it upside down over the hole that leads to the nest and beat on the ground, the bees will come buzzing up into the jar. When the jar fills you slide the lid on very carefully. You remember this, after just one error. Brother (the oldest Algood boy) stopped by one day and wanted to know what we were doing. “ What you white boys doing poking in the ground like you looking for something” Brother asked. Norwood (my cousin) said,” Brother they are news bees and if you lay your head down beside that hole and beat on the ground at the same time, they will tell you the news”. Brother said “ Man, I sure do want to know what is happening” and placed his head right beside that yellow jackets nest and commenced beating on the ground. When his mother finished picking bees out of his hair, she wouldn’t let him play with us for about a week. Later we went back down there and got a jar full. Mrs. Algood and about a dozen of the girls were out in the yard watching us. Brother started down to see what we were doing. Brother’s mother called “Brother, you come back here this minute, them white boys gone to get you in trouble again.” Norwood was screwing the cap on the jar to put it in the apron of his overalls and the call made him drop the lid. The mad bees started pouring out. Now there was nothing for us to do when those bees started pouring out of that jar but to out run them. We took off running right by Algood's house because that was the only smooth path to make speed. As we passed Mrs. Algood, Norwood just shoved that jar of bees into her startled hands and we never stopped running. We could still here the commotion as we turned the curve into my grandmother's house, so we just kept going, around the house and in the back door. It was two weeks this time before we saw Brother again and the big bumps on his head had gone away. Brother would still jump every time a fly buzzed after that, so we just quit fooling with the bees.

Aunt Willie Davis

On the same side of the road and east of my grandmothers house lived a black lady that we called Aunt Willie Davis. She was the lady that told the girls about the butterflies. She told them that if you bite off a butterflies head, you will get a dress the same color. I didn’t pay any attention to this because I don’t wear dresses , but the girls just about cleaned out the butter fly bush that summer. Her house was a one room log house with a rock fireplace and dirt floors. Now there’s something that can be said for dirt floors. If something gets on the floor like grease, you just take the hoe and scrape it away. Strangely, the floors never feel cold in the winter nor hot in the summer. She carried her water from my grandmothers and usually got three buckets each day. She would carry one in each hand and one on her head as she crossed along the foot path some 200 yards across the field. We tried putting buckets of water on our head. It was not easy to keep a full bucket of water on your head and even harder to walk with it. You ended up with one step forward and three steps backwards. We peeped at the top of her head, thinking that it was flat, but it wasn’t. We all loved aunt Willie. She would speak to us as if we were adults, then listen intently as we talked like it was something important. We took her little goodies like pie, cake or meals on holidays. She did all of her cooking in an open fireplace. A metal rod fastened to the back of the fireplace swung out to hold her pot for soup. She baked bread and hoe cakes in the fireplace by pulling the hot coals aside, placing the hoe cakes on the hearth, then covering them with hot coals. I would politely taste of them, but I didn’t like getting the ashes in my mouth. The furniture in the room was simple. One old dresser for clothes, one chair and a couple of crates to sit on ( although we liked to sit on the dirt floor that was packed as hard as wood) and a large double bed. On the bed was a white counterpane ( we call them bedspreads, I think). This was her most prized possession and we would always comment on how pretty it was. She wouldn’t let anything be placed on the bed for fear of soiling her counterpane. Now Aunt Willie longed for a pretty hat to wear to Sunday meetings at church. She would remark on seeing a pretty butterfly “ Now that would be a pretty color for a hat”. Knowing this for some time, my mother and grand mother bought her a wide brim yellow hat with artificial flowers all around. We all tagged along with them to deliver the hat to aunt Willie. She ushered us all in, which took up most of the space leaving the area beside the bed and directly in front of the fireplace for aunt Willie. This was so aunt Willie could place the package on the bed to open it and still spit her snuff in the fireplace. She dipped Tube Rose snuff that came in little tin cans, with a twig from a black gum tree. She would stick her bottom lip out, tilt the snuff can over her lip and tap a little out. She could go ever so long before spitting. Then after considering a question or thought for a while, she would screw up her bottom lip and “spat” would go a stream of tobacco juice into the corner of the fireplace. Well, I never saw a person so excited as when she pulled that hat out of the box and held it up. Aunt Willie took the hat, held it up, beaming, but she had to get rid of a mouth full of snuff before she could say anything. She was so excited that “spat” went a big stream of tobacco juice onto her prize white counterpane and the hat sailed into the fireplace. I felt so bad for aunt Willie that I just slipped out the door and left. I never knew what happened after that.  

The Tornado

On the west side of my grandmother lived Georgia Boy . I never played with him. I don’t know if he knew how to play. When you talked to him, he would stand straight with his hands pressed beside his legs, his lips in a thin little line and primped with the corners down. That, with those black horn rim glasses , to me spelled leave me alone, which I did. Georgia Boy was never far from his mother and that turned out to be good, at least once, when a tornado came through. Georgia Boy and his mother were walking down the dirt road when this tornado came roaring through the tree tops. They escaped by crawling under a concrete culvert beneath the road. I was at home sitting on our roof, watching the wind strip shingles from the roof of a house up on the hill and didn’t see the full force of the tornado. My older brother Willard did, and ran all the way home, got on his knees beside the bed, said a prayer and jumped in bed clothes and all, pulling the sheet over his head. And this was full daylight. The tornado hit full force across the road from my grandmothers (a couple of hundred yards away) and wrenched up oak trees that I couldn’t reach around, by their roots. The black neighbors house was hit with most of the family inside. When the tornado moved on, we walked over and looked at the destruction. The father had been blown high in the air then dropped, blowing his work shoes off and leaving the laces' still tied. The mother was sitting at the sewing machine with her baby in her lap and the wind blew the house and every thing in it away, leaving her still sitting there with the baby. Then the tornado skipped along the dirt road where Georgia Boy and his mother were walking and lifted up to take only the chimneys from the next house. Floyd, the oldest of my grandmothers children, went out to the very edge of the yard to get a better view and the wind grabbed him. He caught a hold of a small tree, about the size of my wrist, and the wind took him straight out, held him out for a few seconds then dropped him to the ground. We later marveled at a fragile broom straw that had been driven through a fence post by the wind. Once you see something like this, you realize how awesome mother nature can be.

The Swimming Pool

This was a great time for us boys growing up. There was no such thing as snobbish. Everyone had the same as everyone else, which was nothing. We had a favorite pond in the middle of this cow pasture. That pond was guarded by the biggest bull I had ever heard of, much less seen. We would ease up to the fence, take off all of our clothes and gauge the distance the bull was from the pond. I know that bull was gauging the distance too and throwing dirt over his shoulders as he pawed with those front feet. We would prop the wire up and slide under the fence, still watching the bull. If the distance seemed adequate we would bounce up and take off running. Down the hill would come the bull, snorting every jump and end up about a hundred feet from us as we dove in the pond. Now you look a mad, two ton, bull in the face and a hundred feet is close enough. We would then turn, yell, and taunt the bull. The bull would circle the pond, stopping occasionally to snort and throw dirt over his shoulders with his front feet. We were safe in the pond but all the time in swimming we thought of the coming race back to the fence. Only, on the return trip there was no soft water to dive in and you had to trust that the barbed wire was still propped up. When we were ready to leave, part of us would get on the opposite side of the pond and attract the bull over there. The ones on the fence side of the pond, could then run to the fence. This would go on until only one was left (the hero for the day). Up and down the fence we would walk, waving our hands and talking to that bull. When the time was right, the last swimmer would race for the fence. On the return trip you went under that barbed wire fence rolling, because there was no way you had time to stop and raise that wire. We had our reward though as we slapped our knees and laughed at that bull while we pulled on our two piece outfits (shirts and overalls). Two piece outfits were standard in those days and we didn’t stop to find which shirt was ours because they were all alike. You see our shirts were home made. Our mothers would pool their resources and buy a whole bolt of cloth, divvy it between them and make us all shirts from the same cloth. All of the shirts were of the same identical color, so often we had to swap around to get one that fit. Only Georgia Boy’s shirt was of a different color.  

Making Shoes

My step grandfather was a quiet, unassuming man, and talked very little. He made the shoes for all of my grandmothers children. He had different lasts to fit different feet and small hammers that didn’t really look like real hammers to me. He would take a piece of cow hide, that’s right, a piece of cow hide that had been skinned from a local cow. He would scrape the hide first,then dry the hide and pound on it with a leather hammer until the leather was nice and soft. He told me that the Indian women chewed the leather until it was soft, and made clothes as well as shoes from it. I can understand now why most of them were half naked. Well after he had the leather nice and soft he would use a big pair of scissors to cut out the patterns. Next he would take a piece of corded tire rubber, that’s right, from an old discarded truck tire about a half inch thick and make the soles from that. When he had it all together he would hammer and sew until he had a pair of shoes. Now he didn’t make any fancy shoes, but when he made a pair of shoes, those shoes were inherited by the next foot that reached that size. His shoes didn’t wear out, you just outgrew them. The strings lasted fairly well too as they were made from the same cow or bull, whichever was handy. The shoes that Thelbert (youngest boy) wore had been worn by his two older brothers Norwood and Leonard. Store bought shoes just didn’t have the class that Mr. Rudd built into his shoes. The ones of us, who were not lucky enough to get a pair of his shoes, got one pair of shoes each fall, after tobacco was sold, from the store. When you first put on those shiny new shoes, that didn’t bend, it was awkward walking. About a week of walking in them had them “broken in” or either you had got used to them. Moving rocks the size of your fist down the path with thirty to forty foot kicks probably didn’t help, I guess. From shiny new leather to scarred tops with character, the first month you wore them. I could recognize my shoes from fifty feet by the nicks on the toes where I had caught rocks with a hefty boot. Mr. Rudd's shoes always looked better because there was no shiny finish for rocks to chip off. When it snowed we always got up early and went rabbit tracking. We would get some guano bags and cut them into long strips. We took one turn beneath the shoe, then around our ankle to anchor the cloth firmly, and finished by winding it up our leg to the knee. We could walk through deep snow then without getting our legs wet which meant not having to go home early to thaw our feet. Rabbits moved around after a fresh snow leaving tracks that we could follow easily. From a short distance you can see where the tracks stop, then you start creeping up with caution until you see a little yellow hole in the snow. The rabbit has stopped under the snow and the yellow hole is made by its breath, melting the snow above it. Catching that rabbit is another story unless the snow is deep. If you do get lucky enough to catch him alive, you have to remember to hold him by his back feet. This way he will hang, head down and give you no trouble. When you pick up a rabbit by his front legs, he rakes you up and down with his hind legs and brother that can hurt, on frozen hands especially. Another game that we played that was hard on shoes, was “kick the can”. This is similar to hide and seek. A can is placed in a circle on the ground and one of the group is chosen as “it”. One of us will kick the can as far as we can and we all run and hide while “it” goes after the can. He retrieves the can, placing it in the circle, then is free to find one of us. While he is looking, any one of us can rush out and kick the can again. If he runs and reaches the can before that person gets there, then that person becomes “it”. Only one person has to be located and out run back to the can before that person becomes “it”. Store bought shoes never lasted over one year.  

Work Started Young

We children started work early in our life. We were given chores to fit our age from the time that we walked. Even at three and four years of age you could bring wood from the back porch and stack it beside the fire place or kitchen stove. Summer or winter, there were tasks that had to be performed. Some chores were year round events that were routine like bringing water from the well, stove wood for the cook stove, milking the cows and feeding the stock. Other jobs were seasonal. In the spring we had to prepare plant beds for tobacco, tomatoes, cabbage etc. Plant beds were always placed in a sunny spot but carved out of the woods. This was to insure rich dirt and no weed or grass seeds. It was hard work, digging roots and breaking ground with a grubbing hoe. When the seeds had been planted we stretched plant bed cloth over the entire bed to keep a more even temperature and protect the new plants from the sun. Some grass always came up, despite the new ground, so we sat on the edge of the bed and pulled the grass out, carefully, one piece at a time. This was a time for gossip and story telling. The plowing had to be done by the older boys and my father but the younger children carried water to the field for the workers to drink. I carried two (one gallon buckets with a gourd dipper in each) buckets of water each trip, when there were negroes and white workers. They drank from separate buckets at that time. I never remembered which was used when I refilled them for the next trip. Corn harvesting was a job that I disliked heartily. I had to wear a shirt when saving corn, which I generally didn’t do. The corn scratched and made you itch when it touched your bare skin. The ears of corn were stripped from the stalk (usually two ears per stalk) and hauled in the wagon to the stable. We generally cut the corn stalks and stacked it in shocks (round stacks upright to drain the water off and prevent mold). Later it would be hauled to the barn and stored for the live stock. The method was changed one year when my father decided to pull the fodder ( leaves of corn) instead of cutting the whole stalk. Leaves would be stripped from the corn until a little bundle was formed, which was then tied with another leaf and hung on a corn stalk to be hauled to the stable later. The corn was taller than my head and so dense that no breeze could get through to cool you. Perspiration soaked my shirt and dripped from my face as I pulled fodder and placed it under my arm until I had a bundle large enough to tie. At the end of the row I would open my shirt and flap it a little to cool then start back up another row. I gazed back down the row at the leafless stalks and knew that I would be sent back after they dried, to be knocked down with a stick. This was a job that would be done each afternoon when we got out of school, until the stalks were all down or a job with higher priority was found. I believe that the rhythmic stride down those corn rows, swinging a four foot hickory stick, day after day, resulted in a better golf swing in later years. The stalks had to be hit just above the ground, to get a clean break, and so you were forced to keep your eyes on the stalk. In golf par is usually 71 or 72 depending on the golf course. “Shooting your age” is taking no more strokes than your years of age. I first shot my age when I was 65 and have been able to continue to shoot my age since ( On good days).  

Country Libraries

This was the middle of the depression and I guess people were becoming used to having nothing or either they had adjusted. Most people , of course wished for more. Speaking of wishes, most families had the Sears and Roebuck wish book that they looked over, then took out to the outhouse or country library if you please. I guess the Sears And Roebuck catalog was the nearest thing to the first porno book. Boys looked for the advertisements with girls in under clothes and they were always the last pages to be used. Out houses were made in all models. There were one seater's, two seater's and even three seater's, but that is really getting too social. One thing in common, they were mobile, because sooner or later you had to dig another six-foot hole to set them over. I saw one exception to this. A fellow built this fancy, two-story house with one common drop hole. He then built an outhouse on the first floor and a second out house on the second floor that was offset slightly back of the one on the first floor, but directly above. I don’t know why I mentioned this, but it just struck me, at the time, as being too lazy to walk outside. I listened to two women in the mercantile store one day oohing and ahhing over a little piece of 3 feet by 3 feet piece of carpet. ” I am a great mind to buy that carpet” spoke the first. Hattie, where in the world would you put it.” asked the second. “I would put it in the outhouse,it would feel good to my feet” replied the second. “ What about spiders hiding under it” questioned the first. “ Lordy, I never thought about that. Let’s go look at some dress material.” finished the second. A danger with outhouses was being bitten by black widow spiders, which mostly happened to men, so I was always careful and kept a little stick to test and poke around with first. I heard a fellow say that they sent W.P.A.. workers out to build some of the outhouses for elderly people. “ What’s a WPA worker”? I inquired of the fellow. “They are people who work for the government” The fellow replied. “ Why do they call them WPA workers” I wanted to know. “ Why every body knows that WPA stands for “We Poke Along”. Where you been all your life” the fellow replied. “Oh” I said and you know, I didn’t know that it meant “Workers Progress Administration” until I was grown.

Brother (Algood)

Herbert Hoover had just been replaced by Mr. Franklin Roosevelt as president back then and of course I didn’t know Hoover, but from what I had heard him called, I didn't think that he would ever amount to much. We had a Hoover buggy as a great number of people did. It was two wide boards nailed on an axle to which two wheels were mounted with those solid rubber tires. Two poles were extended out to harness the horse that pulled it. There were no springs to cushion you on bumpy fround. The Hoover buggy was better than nothing, but it was close. Of course, some people fixed them up real fancy with feathers and a coon skin dangling from the back. The slightest bump was felt all the way up your spine. Brother could tell you about Hoover buggies. Brother (The oldest boy in the black family across the road from my grandmothers) who was a kleptomaniac, stole a Hoover buggy one midnight, drove it five miles to Warrenton, stole two birds and drove the five miles back. The next morning he let the birds out in his yard to watch them and those homing pigeons flew straight home. My daddy had us understand that Brother had a sickness and couldn’t help stealing. I looked at that candy counter in the grocery store and sometimes wished I could catch it. We always left something laying around when Brother was there and Brother’s papa would bring it back later, but sometimes he couldn’t because he didn’t know where it came from. This happened when we were having hog killing one winter. Hog killing has to be done when it is cold. There was no refrigeration back then and you had to rush to get everything finished so that it could be either salted or eaten. Hog killing is not a quick easy job. A long pit has to be dug about three feet wide and eight feet long. A flat box about a foot deep and wider than the trench but slightly shorter to give room to build a fire beneath it is built. The flat box is lined with tin and holds water, which we add almost to the top. Then a fire is built under the box and the water heated to almost boiling. Next we place a long pole between two forked sticks nailed to a tree. After these preparations we are ready to get a hog. Everyone has to take part and work because it is a rush job to get the meat finished while still fresh. I didn’t see any job that I wanted. I took the job of shooting the hog as I sure didn’t want the job of cutting his throat. The shot had to be placed exactly right or the hog would go wild with pain and could hurt someone. You stand in front of the hog and set the rifle at about thirty degrees above the hog then shoot him in the little flat spot between his eyes. He would immediately fall and turn on his back when shot. Then the knife would be plunged into his throat so all the blood would drain from his body. Two chains placed under his body and held by two men on each side would lift the hog up onto the box filled with near boiling water. The hog would then be dipped into the water, pulled out and we would scrape the hair from his hide. We dipped and scraped until the hide was clean and free of hair. After the hog was clean we hoisted it up and stuck a heavy stick through the tendons of its leg, then attached the sticks to the pole. Papa always opened the hogs by carefully inserting a knife between the hog's hind legs and cutting the front of the hog all the way down to his chin. Organs were removed and carefully placed in a large pan with the chitterlings in a separate pan. Everything would be eaten. Lungs, heart and liver would be used to make liver pudding. The chitterlings would be washed over and over then placed in salt water over night before frying. Fried with a flour batter and a little vinegar added at the table made a tasty dish. A gathering to eat chitterlings was called a chitterlings strut. Hams, shoulders and side meat was salted down for a couple of days before being hung in the smoke house. The smoke house being a windowless building where a fire was kept burning, from hickory wood, beneath the meat hanging overhead until the meat was cured (preserved). Hog killing is no picnic. Your fingers freeze, blood gets spattered on you as well as other things. I told you it wasn’t easy. A lot of the help is voluntary so you try to make it sociable to say the least. To make it more sociable my daddy had bought a big bottle of bootleg whiskey to serve, which would dull the cold and put everyone in a holiday mood. You remember Brother, the neighbors kleptomaniac son? He was always snooping around when there was any action going on. He stole that bottle before they opened it and took it home. Every one was upset with Brother and as luck would have it this just happened to be one of the times that his father didn’t know where it came from, so he couldn’t bring it back.

Bringing Up the Children

I think children were easier to raise back then. Almost any thing made them happy. We used to find an old paste board box and kept the small children in this while we played. A line fastened to the box allowed us to drag them around wherever we were playing. This worked pretty good, only sometimes we would forget and the bottom of the box would wear out. They always let us know when that bottom wore through, and mama did too if she was in hearing distance. A black family across the road had the most efficient method of keeping a baby occupied. The mother would sit the baby down, out of the others way, pour molasses in each of the babies hands and rub them together so the molasses would be evenly spread. She would then take a long chicken feather and place it in the baby's hand. The baby would promptly take the other hand and pull the chicken feather away and of course the feather stuck to the other hand. That baby would trade hands with the chicken feather for hours or until hungry, before giving up.

My sister and all of the other white girls would tie their hair up in rags to curl it. Black girls do some things a little different. One of these differences made a good Saturday morning's entertainment, at least for me. Saturday mornings were for preparations for Saturday night and with that many girls getting prettied up, well it was entertaining. On Saturday mornings we would go over to the Algood's and get a seat as close as possible, but on the up wind side of where the preparations would be made. First a fire was built out in the yard and burned until there was plenty of red-hot coals. Next curling irons were brought out and placed in the fire. All the girls would sit in a row with their necks stretched out and head stiff. The mother would take a can of something greasy and rub every girls head with it. Kind of like anointing them, you know. Then she would pull a hot iron out of the fire and spit on it. If it sizzled just right she would grab the first girls head and clamp that hot iron on her hair. I was afraid to breathe for fear of that hot iron touching skin and sometimes it did. The hair would make a frying sound like bacon cooking, and a little blue smoke would curl up from the iron. That is why we sat up wind, because that little smoke from the burning hair had a pungent odor She would squeeze that iron for a minute then pull it out. The girls neck would shorten and she could breathe again (and I could too). This would be repeated down the line until all the girls had been prettied. The only difference that I could see was that they were a lot hotter than before, their hair was even longer and I was a nervous wreck just watching, but I couldn’t look away. It’s kind of funny you know. What with the white girls trying to curl their hair and the black girls trying to straighten theirs. I always wondered what they would look like if they just traded hair.  

A Sip of Wine

My dad worked hard on his farm, raising everything that we ate except sugar, salt pepper and nutmeg. Mama had to have her nutmeg for egg custards. Occasionally she made chocolate pies and she always lined the pies up on the window sill. It took a lot of pies for our big family and the hired hand. Once when she had a line of chocolate pies on the window sill, I helped myself to a whole pie. I knew if I took one slice she would know by looking at it, so I took the whole pie and slipped around behind the house. Well, I started eating and was getting pretty full before I was half finished but I didn’t want to waste it, so I ate the whole pie. I guess forty years passed before I could eat chocolate pie Sometimes it would be weeks before I saw my daddy except on Sunday. He would go to the field before sun up and wouldn’t be home until after dark. The hired hand was a hobo, named Robert Hamm, that stayed on to work. On Sundays, his day off from work, he would pick blackberries to make wine. He kept making wine and adding it to this big wooden barrel all summer. Henry, a younger brother and I, really wanted to taste that wine, but the barrel was so tall that we couldn’t see in it. Oh, we made a trip by some times twice daily to smell and plot on how we could get some. Then one day as we watched my daddy and the hired hand wedge a long pole under a stump and then tilt the stump out of the ground, we saw the solution. I think that we both got the idea at the same time. We knew how to get a sip of that wine. We took off running, heading to the tobacco pack house where the wine was stored. Slipping in the pack house quietly, and dragging a two-by-four board about eight feet long, we could almost taste the wine already. This was going to be simple, because all that covered the wine in the barrel was a little piece of cheese cloth. We carefully placed a big rock beside the barrel and slipped the two-by-four under the barrel and over the rock. We didn’t think to close the door behind us and the only thing between us and them prying on the stump was one little wooden step. Well we got on the end of that board and jumped. You know the rest. When the barrel quit rolling down that hill it was against the stump and empty. Do you know how discipline was administered in those days? You cut a long switch that had to be very slender, so that it wouldn’t bruise. You personally carried it to your daddy. He then took one of your hands with one of his hands and the switch in his other hand. You danced a circular dance until he thought the punishment appropriate. A psychologist would never approve of this, but I can personally tell you it was effective.

My Musical Talents

Summers were long and I could hardly wait each year for school to begin. School, to us, was a vacation because we worked at home during the summer in tobacco and cotton. At school we had all of these wonderful books that I could read and dream. We also had musical instruments, but I guess I had better tell you that they were home made. A wooden cigar box with a two-inch piece of wood through the end of it and wire pulled from a screen door for the strings. Depending on the number of strings you used, you had a banjo or guitar. A hand saw, bent just right and tapped and tapped lightly, was another instrument. The noisiest was probably the washboard that you stroked with something hard. Mrs. Dunn was our second grade teacher and she had one of those little round things to blow in to tune the instruments. She would blow in that little round thing and then go h--u- m-m-m. She liked to do this because she would do it several times and always say h-m-m-m after each time. The boys would pluck the string and she would go h-u-m-m . I never understood that part of music and didn’t think it necessary. I wanted to play something, not go h-u-m- m. Well she started me off beating a drum ( a little barrel with cowhide stretched real tight over it), but I didn’t have that job long. “ No, no, no”. she said. “You have to drum with rhythm”. Next she tried me with one of those little triangle things' that just say bing---when you tapped it. I had that even less time. The third time she got it right. She made me the director and gave me a little round stick. All I had to do with that little stick was go down, then out and up to where I started. The whole time they were playing, I never slowed down once, and she let me keep the stick. I practiced with that stick at home too. Down, out, back and down, out, and back. Shucks, I could do it blind folded. I practiced adding little things to it, like pushing one shoulder in, then pulling it back and pushing the other shoulder out. I tried patting my foot too, but that took too much timing. Just as I was really getting professional, the school year ended. I know the teacher will miss me next year because I heard her tell another teacher sadly, “that’s one I won’t have next year." Like I said, we didn’t have music in our schools, except the first thirty minutes of school each morning. First thing, every school day, we assembled in the school auditorium. We had a short prayer, said allegiance to the flag and after announcements sang a few songs, depending on how long the announcements were. I did our seventh grade graduation solo. No one would volunteer and that happened to be the only song I knew so I figured no use wasting the knowledge. I did find out later that I couldn’t carry a tune, or so the teacher told me. Prayers or religious songs are against the law now but I can’t see where they ever hurt us. We didn’t have all of these smart people back then that knew what was best for everyone else, whether they liked it or not. My public music career ended in the eight grade when my teacher told me flat out that I couldn’t sing and with my voice I would never be able to sing. I never sang after that, but I did get me a harmonica. Uncle Wallace taught me some songs, but I never could play like him. In later years I bought myself a fiddle from my brother for ten dollars. Not a violin, as I never learned to play well enough to call it a violin. The most useful thing about a fiddle is the peace and quiet. When I played, I was soon alone in the house. I guess they felt that I would enjoy my music more alone. Later in life I would play my children to sleep at night, but when they were old enough to talk they too told me that they could sleep better if it was quiet.  

Transportation

We walked to school because we were just inside the two-mile limit. You had to live over two miles to ride the bus. We could see Georgia Boy catching the bus just several hundred feet down the road, but over the two-mile limit. I doubt Georgia Boy could walk two miles. If he had, his mother would have come to. It wasn’t dangerous back then to walk down the road. In fact cars were still so scarce that everyone ran out in the yard to look when a car went by. The two-mile walk wasn’t bad as there were a fair number of us strung out down the road, playing on the way home. We did get a car the next year. It was a 1929 Model a roadster, and would do sixty miles per hour downhill on a straight-away. That was some kind of fast car and we named it Old Blue Heaven. We couldn’t all go at the same time as the car was too small and when I did get to go, I had to sit in the rumble seat with my brothers. We didn’t exactly sit in a rumble seat, rather we sat on the floor with our feet hanging out the back over the bumper. By stretching a little we could reach the ground and drag our feet on the dirt road. That was fun until your foot hit a rock in the road and took off a little skin from your bare foot. We never wore shoes except in the winter. We got one pair of shoes in the fall, after tobacco was sold. My brother and I always got shoes that reached up about six inches on the leg so we could walk in the snow. The shoes had a little leather pocket on the side that we could keep our pocket knife in. No boy was caught without a pocket knife and usually a sling shot draped around his neck with the handle in the apron of his overalls. In the spring our shoes came off with the first dogwood blossom found. It took a little while to toughen up the soles of our feet, but soon they were tough enough to step on a honey bee and not feel his stinger. School classes used to have grade mothers for each class, being of course one of the parents. They would get together some cookies or apple juice and we looked forward to this. I remember one grade mother being a little different when I was in the second grade. She mixed up Cocoa and sugar to the consistency of snuff, placed it in tube rose snuff cans after the snuff had been washed from it and gave each of us one for our own. She also brought the piece of black gum twig (frayed at the end) to dip the mixture with. We would hold that can up to our mouth with one hand and with the other hand pull our bottom lip way out, tapping just enough to make our bottom lip protrude like real snuff. We didn’t spit like people do with snuff because we didn’t want to lose any.  

The Family Moves Again

Discussions of moving again was heard occasionally at the breakfast table. Papa had left C.P.& L. (Carolina Power and Light Company) due to a cut down in work force, from the depression. He had gone to the present farm, where we now lived, to work the farm on halves. With such a growing family he had not saved enough money to buy equipment and supplies to rent a farm. There were various ways that farms were worked at this time. You could work a farm half shares, which meant that the land owner furnished everything (including groceries) and you worked the crop. With this method the land owner received half of everything raised. Farms could be worked on fourths as we were doing, whereas the land owner furnished fertilizer and received a fourth of the crop. If you had the equipment and team, along with enough money to run you a year, a farm could be rented and you received everything raised. You only paid a yearly rent due when you sold tobacco or any other money crop. According to the talk around the table and whispered discussions between my parents, they had saved enough to rent a farm and be more independent. Around Norlina, where we lived at present, there was electricity and stores only a couple of miles away. The place being looked at was a farm some three miles from Macon,N.C. in an area so sparsely populated that the electric company would not put electricity in the area. Roanoke river was about six miles from the proposed farm with a ferry boat to carry passengers across the river. The man that ran the ferry lived in a house beside the river and when anyone wanted to cross he went out and pushed the boat across with a pole. A long cable stretched across the river to which the boat was fastened loosely, kept the ferry boat from being swept down river. The pole was long and the bottom of the river could be touched,so the boat with passengers or vehicle could be pushed across. Miles of woods with sparse houses, connected by dirt roads, made up the area. The dirt roads could get pretty muddy with wagon ruts in the winter, making it tough for any motorized vehicle. In the summer wash board bumps, from rains, caused a continuous shaking when traveling. We wouldn’t have an automobile if we moved there, I heard papa say, because we would need all the money that we could scrape together to get started. This meant that we would go back to the trip to the grocery store once a month in the wagon. This was all right as few people had cars anyway. Slow transportation along with the standard six day work week kept travel to a minimum. A work week was 72 hours. Much later this was changed to 68 hours then 62 hours and finally to the present 40 hours. To illustrate this I will use my great grand father’s situation. He and his young wife, along with a baby less than one year old lived in nutbush (which is now just out of Henderson, N.C.). He had a position managing the government horse supply depot in Clarksville, Va. It was only 20 miles from his house, yet he could only return home at Christmas or a holiday that had three consecutive days. On a wagon it was one days journey each way, which of course is two days. With the 72 hour work week he had Sunday only and that was not enough time to make the trip. He could only sit alone at the place he was employed and think of his wife and son at home. We finished getting the crops in and all loose ends checked. We were ready to move. I was in the third grade that year. When I finished the third grade, we moved to a farm two miles out of Macon, N.C. Not because I finished the third grade but because my daddy had saved enough to buy teams and equipment to run a farm. He rented a farm of some two hundred acres with a house large enough to hold all of us. The area had no electricity and no other house within sight or hollering distance either. It was one private retreat I can tell you. Out houses, candle light and the whole bit. Now the numbers in the family were steadily increasing. His yearly rent was two hundred dollars. I said “hold” all of us because no body had enough money to rent a house giving separate bedrooms. My grand daddy slept in one room, my parents in another room, the girls in another room (all down stairs) while the boys slept upstairs. The boy's bedroom was large. We had a double bed in each of the four corners of that room and still enough room left to shoot marbles on rainy days. Contrary to what most people think, a lot of children is an incentive for neatness. You don’t dare leave anything of yours out if you want it back. That house had four fireplaces and you know who carried the wood in. We stoked the fire or we froze. It was as simple as that. When I get grown, there’s one thing I’m not going to have. A fireplace. We kept a big pile of wood in the back yard with an ax sticking in the chopping block. Now in the cold winter, you get up and see white frost every where. The wood is covered and the ax frozen. If you touch something moist and warm to the ax it will stick tight like glue. My brother Williard found this out one morning. He was going to trick me into touching it, but he wanted to test first to see if the ax was cold enough. Well, he eased that ax up and carefully touched his tongue to the blade. It stuck so tight that he had to sit with his head over the cook stove for half an hour before his tongue came loose. All the time trying to explain, with his tongue stuck, and no one understanding a word. People were much closer to nature when I was growing up. Reasonable I guess, when you consider that we didn’t have anything else to occupy our minds. Stop, and think about the conditions at that time. You got up in the morning and you heard birds chirping. A rooster crowed announcing himself king of the yard. A cow would give a long sad moo and you could hear the horses kicking the side of the barn, waiting for feed. You pulled on your overalls and padded downstairs barefooted to smell breakfast cooking on a wood stove. Entering the kitchen you would pick up a couple of pieces of wood and stick in the stove. Walking out on the back porch where a bucket of water sat beside a pan, you would take the dipper and pour some water in the pan. Lathering your hands with home made soap then rinsing them in the pan before you turned and took the towel (made from a cloth bag) from the nail on the wall, to dry your hands. Picking up the pan of used water and pouring it on the ground before setting it back for the next person. Looking out the window I could see an older brother with a pail of milk in each hand coming from milking the cows and hear papa whistling as he returned from feeding the horses. I would go back inside and set the table while mama poured breakfast in bowls. A big breakfast was a must because dinner time (it is called lunch now) is a long time off. Breakfast varied with such food as fried chicken, brown gravy, fried potatoes, red eye gravy ( made from ham grease with a little coffee poured in to give it body) served over sliced tomatoes, rabbit, squirrel ( in season ), country style steak, eggs, red eye gravy over cantaloupe, and all ways hot biscuits with butter. Even with this big breakfast, you would get hungry before dinner. Not many folks had watches but almost anybody could come within fifteen minutes of the correct time by looking at the sun. At noon the dinner bells would begin to toll. Different families could be identified by the sound of their bell which you can hear for about a mile. We had four neighbors within hearing distance (not by voice but by the dinner bells) although none close enough to be visible. Every one had a large iron bell mounted on a post which was rung to call the people in at lunch time. It was also used in case of an emergency, which I don’t recall ever happening. Dinner was vegetables and hot buttered biscuits followed usually by dew berry dumplings in the season. Other deserts would be; apple jacks (made from apples dried on the tin roof), preserves, canned fruits, quince pears in sweet syrup, and tea cakes. Dinner was the big meal of the day. Supper was the evening meal and a lot like breakfast only we didn’t eat as much at night. I was too tired. Everything that happened almost was tied in with nature. We waited for rains for the crop, we watched the lightning and storms when it drove us indoors, we listened to the screech owls and hoot owls at night and we certainly lived off the land. Trees, bushes, birds, and animals were called by name. No one said “that tree”, but called it by name such as that black gum tree or that mocking bird, so everything in nature was more personal to us. If I tried to call a doodle bug from the ground, as we did when we were children, some one would call the man with the long white coat to take me away. Squatting down for hours to watch ants build and fight, getting up in the middle of the night to see a horse give birth to a foal are some of the things that children today will never do. The long walks at night when you visited neighbors. Walking down the middle of the road, because there was less chance of stepping on a snake, with only the moon to guide you. I always managed to stay in the middle of the group. I didn’t want to be the first in line, particularly on dark nights when there was no moon to see by, and I certainly didn’t want to be last. I was deathly afraid of mad dogs (rabies) and if some one got bit I didn’t want it to be me. Vaccination was not as prevalent in those days and although mad dogs were rare, just one occasionally was too much for me. Fear was increased by dogs that had fits, slobbering at the mouth and running in circles until they collapsed. When you first saw a dog with a fit, you really didn’t know whether he was mad or not, so you watched until he collapsed and made the jerking convulsions. Then you knew it was a fit and harmless (not to the dog). Fits by dogs were common occurrences, caused by feeding the dog white flour bread, papa said. After a law was passed and flour had to be enriched with vitamins, or whatever you enrich with, dogs were not seen with fits anymore. I guess papa was right after all and I wished then that I hadn’t shared my buttered biscuits with my dog. Suppose you built a house with roof, walls, and floor. You then put a wood stove, a table, chairs and bed in the house. Now you have everything that we grew up with. We did have a built in walk exerciser in that the outhouse had to be a distance from the house. And if the doctor, on examination, asked you if you had to go to the bathroom at night, you had no trouble remembering Wake up at night and have to go to the bathroom? That meant scrambling around for shoes in a cold room and feeling the walls to guide you downstairs, because there were no lights. Then stepping outside in the freezing cold, looking around to see if some monster was ready to grab you, and taking off on the run for the outhouse. You get in the out house and feel for your little stick to run around in the hole for spiders. I know there are not supposed to be any spiders in winter, but after hearing about what happened to boys that were bit, I’ll not take a chance. A cold seat, the sears catalog and back I head for the warm bed. Yes doctor, I not only can tell you if I got up at night to go to the bathroom, I can tell you whether the moon was out or not on that night. Now, looking back, I wonder why closets were not built in most houses. Clothes were hung on a clothes horse with a sheet draped over it to keep out the dust. We did have a huge pantry for canned fruit etc. and they don’t build those much any more. I guess people didn’t have enough clothes to need a special closet. I know I didn’t. Now people have scads of clothes and closets but no food pantries. They buy their food as they need it, so I guess the house fits the times. I got my first suit of clothes when I was a senior in high school. A green suit that cost a total of twelve dollars, including a vest. About the only suit seen then was blue serge, but some how I wanted something different. I wore this suit at high school graduation then placed it under the sheet (hung on the wall to prevent dust) for a special occasion. I never wore the suit but once more and that was when I applied for college. There was never an occasion special enough to get me in a suit again and when I turned eighteen Uncle Sam gave me all the clothes I needed. In fact more clothes than I had ever had before and they were real choosy on how you took care of them. I joined the navy and was then assigned to the marine medical corps. I had two complete outfits, navy and marine. I wore the marine out fit most of the time. Who wants to undo thirteen buttons to go to the bathroom, then button thirteen buttons back before you leave the bathroom. I heard that the thirteen buttons represented the 13 original colonies, but can you imagine such an honor for the front of a boy’s pants. Everything had to be stored in a particular manner in the military. Even spare shoe laces had to point a certain direction. You were subject to being monitored any time and if any thing was found wrong,you were punished in some manner. Some ingenious punishments were dreamed up. You might have to duck walk around the drill field with a pack on your back,or you may have your liberty week end taken away etc.  

Family Eating

We had a new brother or sister every two years and we knew when another was due. Our daddy would start adding a new board on to the end of the kitchen table and my mother would ask us smaller ones “How would you like to visit grandma soon?" Eventually there were twelve children, my mother and father, my grandfather and a distant relative that lived in a trailer some distance from the back of the house. Plates were counted as they were placed on the table to assure the correct number. When we sat down to eat, if a plate had no one back of it, we would stop and call names from the top down to identify the missing person. We had plenty to eat because we grew it , we harvested it and my mother cooked it. Physical work required heavy food and we ate fried chicken, fried potatoes, eggs, ham, steak fried with gravy (not the same meal) and always home made biscuits. Now this was for breakfast, which was before sun up, and you had already fed the horses, and taken out a barn of tobacco if in tobacco season. You wasn’t asked if you wanted white meat or dark meat of the chicken. Mama wrung those chickens' heads off (usually two) with her hands, picked the feathers off and cooked them, and I never saw two chickens with twelve breast. If you got a breast one time, you got a wing the next time. Now it was a little different with rabbit. You got your choice piece of meat if you made the kill. Game was plentiful then because this was before D.D.T. and other pesticides destroyed so much wildlife. Turkeys were there but hard to kill. Ed Robins and I decided to kill a turkey the easy way. He baited the turkeys with corn for a couple of weeks and then we were supposed to meet and kill one. I went down to the spot in a large grove of oak trees not far from the river bank,but Ed never showed. I climbed a big oak and pulled the gun up behind me on a string. The sun had not come up yet so I had to wait. Well I waited and waited and the mosquitoes ate and ate. I decided that turkey hunting was not that great after all, so I let my gun back down the tree by the string until it touched the ground, then I let go the string. As I swung my leg over the limb to climb down, three turkeys flew out of the tree I was sitting in. When I saw Ed the next day, he asked me if I saw any turkeys, and I said nah, you didn’t bait them right.

Mr. Cole's Car ( T model ford)

I was growing up now, almost twelve. I had seen my first picture show. Mr. Cole, who lived across the way, had the only car in Harris Town ( the area I now lived in). We had one before but some how we didn’t have one after we moved. Any way ,my daddy borrowed the car. No one in Mr. Cole's family ever learned to drive. It was he , his wife, and son, who was grown also, but wasn’t worldly. If Mr. Cole had to go somewhere , which was seldom, he would get my daddy to drive them. Anyway my daddy borrowed the car that fall night to take us to our first picture show. The car didn’t have enough gas to drive to Warrenton and back. Warrenton was the only place with a picture show around and it was five miles away. We added some kerosene that we had for our oil lamps and off we went to see “Steamboat around the Bend” starring Will Rogers. There was no heat in the car so I lay on the floor boards coming home and they covered me with fertilizer bags to keep me warm. A “T” model ford car is a car that you had to crank from the front and you had to be careful or it would break an arm. You set the spark and gas lever just so, then you placed your hand on the crank with your thumb out. If you didn’t have the thumb out and the car kicked back, the crank would break your arm just below the elbow. These cars didn’t have batteries, they ran on magneto. I don’t understand exactly how this worked but if you touched the spark when the crank was turned a jolt of electricity would shake you to your teeth. Since the car was used so infrequently it was hard to get it started when you needed it. Floyd, my mothers half brother, would turn the crank while my daddy set the spark and gas. Mr. Cole's son who didn’t know any more about cars than Carlos, my dog, would come down to watch and ask questions. The Cole's were all very religious Baptist and this bothered Floyd because he firmly believed that a few choice words between cranks helped get the car started. I don’t know if it helped but he could use some words that would almost make me start. He couldn’t use them with the Cole boy there, so he vowed he would find a way to keep him away. There came a wet, drizzling rain, morning when the car had to be used. Floyd started to crank and here comes the Cole boy. When he reached us Floyd said “Brother,I need your help or I’ll never get this thing started. "Brother said,”Mr. Floyd, you just tell me what to do and I’ll do it. "Floyd replied “we have to get a little more juice in this car for it to crank. If you will stand by the car and wet on the spark plug when I crank, I think that will do it. "If my daddy hadn’t been closed in the car from the rain, he wouldn’t have let it happen. When Floyd turned the crank, brother leaned over and wet the spark plug. The shock jerked him straight as a stick and when it let go he took off running home. Floyd grinned, let out a stream of curse words and said “I guess I can crank it now. "After that incident, anytime we even started toward the car Brother would run in the house.

Annual School Picnic

Twelve years old and I was going into high school. It was the last day of school with a big picnic and base ball game to follow. I was the pitcher and really looking forward to a day of fun. Mama had bought me my first white ducks. White ducks were long white pants with sharp creases in the legs. I had my girl friend with me and every thing was right. Richard Carroll had a hoover buggy pulled by a steer and he invited me and my girl for a ride. Now a Hoover buggy’s seat is placed so close to the steer that pulls it, that you can reach out and touch the back of the steer. My girl and I climbed up on this seat and I lay the banana sandwiches that I had brought with me for the picnic, beside me. I sat down on this seat, slipped my arm over the back of the seat next to my girl, and propped my feet on this bar right behind the steer. Now this is really living. What I didn’t know was, that steer had been eating green corn which causes diarrhea in animals. We were just leaving the crowd on the ride when I heard a little noise and looked down. My new white ducks were turning corn green right before my eyes and I couldn’t move. That steer sprayed me from my feet to my knees. I didn’t say anything, I just took my banana sandwiches and went home. I don’t know who they got to pitch in my place at the ball game. My whole life was ruined by that one steer. When I got home my mama was sympathetic, after she quit laughing. I had to remove the pants and put them in water right away so the stain would come out. I guess it wasn’t soon enough, because the green never left those pants. Those pants were a problem because nothing was ever thrown away at my house and I couldn’t wear them in public. I dreaded having to go back to school. I knew every one would be snickering behind my back. I didn’t try to get out of going to school because it would have been fruitless. I knew my Daddy would say “son, you face your problems and solve them. You never try to hide”. That would have made me feel even worse so I left for school earlier next morning so that I would arrive ahead of most of the students. I figured that way I could take them one on one and get it solved. Strangely, my worries were for naught as no one mentioned it all day.