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Rememberings
You know, the "good
ol' days" are only remembrances of a
childhood....
Life for an adult
was hard work with nothing to show for it
but the love of
their family.
These are my rememberings
of the "good ol' days",when I
enjoyed it all.
Come with me and
see, smell, taste and hear this wonderful
time in my life!
I f you haven't
already guessed, I grew up in the
country....I'm
still there.
I love to remember
the smell of the wood cookstove in the
kitchen.
The coffee perking
atop the stove, and ham or sausage frying
in an old iron
skillet. Hot biscuits and cornbread. Mama,
sitting in a old
homemade ladderback chair, churning
buttermilk, after
she had milked the cow and let the milk
clabber by the
fireplace. Nothing tastes better than
buttermilk and
cornbread!
We did have electricity
in our house, but no plumbing at all.
There was the well
by the back porch. A dipper, that
everyone used to
drink from, hung on a nail in a post near the
well. We
didn't think about germs. Our favorite joke to play
on our city kinfolk
was to tell the kids, who had no idea how a
well worked, that
we had to take turns staying down in the
well to fill the
bucket.....they believed us.
I elected myself
'Chief, in charge of drawing water' with no
objections from
any of the family members. The well was
very deep, and
because of that, drawing water wasn't easy. I
loved the job,
and I had the muscles to show for it, although I
was skinny as a
rail. I didn't realize at the time, but it was
wonderful exercise.
I probably wouldn’t have done it if I had
known it was good
for me.
Mama had to boil
the dirt out of our clothes in a big black
iron wash pot over
a fire in the yard. Then she would pick
the clothes up
with the big stirring paddle and put them into a
galvanized wash
tub. She would scrub them on a scrub
board, then on
to two other tubs of rinse water.
And I can't forget
the "Johnny", or out-house. Ours was a
two-holer.
That was supposed to mean that we were on the
upper end of middle
class country folk. Actually, I think it
was necessary,
because there were so many in our family. On
a regular basis,
there were Daddy, Mama, and we four kids,
two bachelor uncles
and one old maid aunt. Our neighbors,
just up the road,
had a three holer.......we thought they were
rich!
Most country homes
had grassless (dirt) yards…..if a sprig of
grass grew, it
was immediately snatched out. The yards were
swept with cane
brooms. The canes had a few limber limbs at
the top, so six
canes made a pretty good broom. One of these
canes would also
make a wonderful horse to ride playing
Cowboys and Indians.
This was the favorite playtime for my
younger sister
and brother and me. I don’t know whether I
was a cowboy or
and Indian, but……I always won. I was the
oldest…….and the
biggest.
I’ve always had
a special fondness for chickens. I loved the
beautiful red rooster
crowing and strutting around the yards
with his hens,
as if he were king and this his domain. We
went barefoot all
the time in the summer, and we tried to be
very careful where
we stepped. Needless to say, we had to
wash our feet a
lot. I guess it was this fertilizer that made my
feet grow so big!
There was no such
thing as store-bought candies and cookies
and such.
We had seasonal snack items. In summertime,
they were peaches,
plums, wild strawberries, watermelon,
cantaloupe, and
especially….green apples. In the fall and
winter, ripe apples,
parched peanuts, black walnuts, popcorn,
and baked sweet
potatoes. Our year-round goodies were
Mama’s tea cakes
and her fried apple pies. We didn’t have
cobbler or pan
pies or cakes often, but at Christmas
time…..cakes were
something we could always look forward
to. Recipes
were handed down through the family. The
favorites were
coconut, chocolate fudge, and lemon cheese
(chess) icings
on yellow cake layers, and the black walnut
cake (my Daddy’s
favorite). Then the traditional fruitcake
soaked with muskadine
wine. Each fall, my Daddy made
some wine just
for the fruitcake. After he died from cancer at
the age of fifty,
my mother kept up the tradition for maybe
four or five years.
I have a cousin,
a couple of years older than me, who visited
on weekends every
month or so. We were constantly in
trouble.
If we didn’t do something, it hadn’t been thought of.
When I was ten
years old, one day we decided to smoke. We
couldn’t find the
Prince Albert tobacco and papers my two
uncles smoked.
We knew we’d have to disguise ourselves and
go to our uncles
and ask for the fixings. We thought of the
perfect disguise.
With our eyes crossed and walking
bow-legged, we
approached the uncles with the story that we
lived up the road,
our father was sick and he needed
something to smoke.
While one uncle sat there and chuckled,
the other played
along with this act, asked all sorts of
questions, then
finally said smoking was the worst thing our
father could do
if he was that sick. Of course, we didn’t get
the tobacco, but
do you think that deterred us? When worse
came to worse,
we used some newspaper and rabbit tobacco to
roll and smoke…………nastly
tasting stuff!!
Although we were
poor country people, almost everybody else
was, too.
Life was so simple….for us kids. I wouldn’t change
a bit of it!
