*
After little Jesse was born, daddy decided to build a
two room shack on the back side of Grandpa’s place. Once it was finished,
Daddy, Myrtle, Sissy, Franklin, Jesse and I took up residence. Sissy and I
slept on the floor on a toe-sack filled with leaves, corn shucks, grass and bed
bugs. It wasn’t easy trying to sleep on
a bed of this nature.
We led a simple life, no radio, no phone. I remember
sitting in the evening on the floor shelling corn. As we sat there our hands
busy, daddy told us stories. Some of them he made up and they made us all
laugh. Before we knew it, we had shelled two sacks of corn. The next day daddy
would take the corn to the mill to be ground into corn meal. He would give the Miller
one of the sacks of corn in payment for the grinding.
Cowpeas, black-eyes peas, and Crowder peas were grown with
a dual purpose in mind. When they were ready to be picked, Sissy and I would carefully
put the dry peas in our tow-sacks, and then pull the vines. The vines we put
into the barn for the cows to eat in the winter time. Times were terribly hard.
I often don’t see how we survived. I’m surprised when I reflect back on what we
didn’t have, that there was ever any contentment at all.
Yet, if one has never known any other existence, how
can they know what they are missing? We accepted things as they were, knowing
there wasn’t any reason to complain.
*
We would dig wild roots. There were so many different
kinds and we knew them all. Once they were dug and dried, daddy would take them
also to Rogers to sell. I never knew what he got for them.
In the fall our attention turned to the chore of picking
up walnuts. They were covered with a green hull which we had to beat off with a
rock. Our hands were so stained with the green walnut juice that it looked like
we had brown hands. Once the wagon was piled high with the hulled walnuts,
daddy would take them into town to sell. He got Sissy a pair of high top
pointed toe shoes on one visit. He got me a pair of black and tan boy’s shoes.
I was so proud of my new shoes, I ran over a mile to show my best friend, Tommy
Renfroe.
Sissy wasn’t as proud of hers as I was mine though. She
took them out behind the house and cut the tops and toes off with the axe. I
think she invented the first toe-less shoes. Once re-styled, she wore them
proudly.
In the fall besides the walnuts, we picked up hickory
nuts, chinkapins and hazelnuts. When it was too cold to go out in the winter,
we’d sit by the fire and eat the nut fruits. Sometimes we’d parch field corn. I
thought it had a wonderful taste. It’s hard to believe there could be happy
times; we were so poor, unwanted and in the way all the time, or so it seemed.
Sissy and I had our own way of making life bearable, we found fun and joy just
being together.
*
Gooby and Grandpa Kirk had a dog named Frisco. One day
we were out in the woods and Frisco was with us. There was a ground hog up in
an old leaning tree. Sissy filled her bloomer legs with rocks, climbed the tree
and knocked that ole ground hog out. Frisco caught it almost before it hit the
ground. Sissy took the wounded animal from his mouth and drug it to a nearby
stream. There she held it under the icy cold water until it was dead.
We weren’t the only poor people in the area. We had
some friends who were just as bad off as we were. They were Lettie, Leona,
Verba and Elvira Metcalf. There were also two older boys, Elmer and Luz. When we wanted to play with them, we had a
certain way to holler. Our calls echoed in the mountains as we waited for their
answer. If they could play, they returned the holler, their reply merging with
our echoes. It was a mournful yet pleasant sound to our ears.
They lived high on a hill and we had to go down a long
hill, across the hollow wand up yet another long hill to their house. We played
in the woods, mostly.
Sometimes we would knock hornet nests out of trees. If
the hornets tried to attack us, we would fall flat on the ground and hold our
breaths. It must have worked as we never once got stung.
I remember fine stage shows we’d put on. We’d sing or
recite poems. We stood an old bucket upside down in the middle of the
smoke house, (that’s where the hogs were smoked after they had been butchered)
then took turns taking center stage.
We made our own Christmas gifts. It might be a corn cob
doll or a handkerchief made from a piece of cloth. We’d make fringe on the
cloth by pulling the threads from the ends. Once our presents were made, we’d
wrap them up in a brown paper sack or newspaper. We were always so proud and
appreciative of whatever we received on Christmas morning.
*
In the summer time, we would catch little gray, fence lizards to play with. They wouldn’t
hurt you and we naturally wouldn’t hurt them. We’d put twine string on them for
a harness and they would pull little sticks across the ground. We pretended
they were pulling logs to build a large mansion. When we tired of playing with
them, we’d turn them loose.
There was another family in the area we played with
some; not as often as the Metcalf’s, as these kids had a terrible mean streak.
I wonder sometimes why we played with them at all. Maybe they had to be so mean
to get any attention, as there were eighteen kids in all. It was told amongst
the community that they got a new baby every Christmas. Their last name was
Evans. I won’t try to name all of the kids. They lived in a two room house with
a porch and a little lean-to kitchen. There were four or five kids at each end
of the beds and at least two old hounds in bed with them. They were awfully
dirty!
We had to walk to school with some of the Evans kids. Sometimes
they would ride mules and they would try to run over Sissy and me. We would get
behind trees or climb one to keep them from running us down. One day they threw
hickory nuts at us. My head had knots all over it from where they had pelted
me.
One cold winter day Gooby had the wood stove oven
full
of baked sweet potatoes. Doney Evans happened to stop by. She had on an old
Army over-coat and it had big pockets in it. After she left, Gooby went to get
the sweet potatoes and because Doney had filled her big pockets, almost all of
the yams were gone. Boy was Gooby mad! I was so thankful it wasn’t Sissy or me
this time.
One of my fondest memories of time spent with Sissy was
when we would make a playhouse. We would lay out rocks for the rooms. Then we
would find pieces of broken dishes or jar-lids which we used for our dishes.
Green moss became fine carpet for the floors. Sissy’s name was ‘Lucille” and
mine was “Grace.” I thought that Grace was the prettiest name I had ever heard.
We would walk around on our tip toes with our mouths all pooched out. Strutting
so, in our opinion gave us an air of elegance, pure country-refined.
It was our job to gather all the wood we used for
heating and cooking. We had a sled with side boards on it and we would pull it
to put the wood in. The best kind of wood to burn was pine-knots. They were
made of rosin and would really burn fast and hot.
A light rain had begun to fall one cold afternoon as I
sat whittling on a spool. Myrtle told me to stop my whittling and when I didn’t
stop as soon as she told me to, she began beating me with a broom handle. Sissy
yelled at her to stop, but she just kept on hitting me. Sissy grabbed me by the
arm and out the door, into the rain we went. “You’ll not be beat again,” She
said as we ran through the woods.
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