My Dad and I came to live with my Grandmother Cates in spring of 1926 after my mother’s death and lived there until he re-married September 20, 1928. I was a little less than 2 years old when we came to live with Mama and between 4 and 5 years when he remarried.
As young as I was, I can remember much about the circumstances of Mama’s life and things she told me then and later. Things she told me as well as other people. Mama said my grandfather knew he was going to die after he had the flu in 1919. Mama had two small girls and my father who was a teenager. My father had to go on his own but my grandfather was worried about Mama with 2 little girls.
My grandfather on his death bed planned and had had built a house in Alamo and had my grandmother and family moved from a farm on the Norville Cemetery Road to the house on what was and still is known as “Goat Hill”. However, Mama disliked the nickname very much. The house was about a block and half west of “Little Kings” business. The property consisted of the whole front of the block it was located on except the lot on the east side of the house.
Mama was as the old saying goes ‘you can take the girl out of the country, but not the country out of the girl’ and did not like people too close to her. On the west side of the house, she had a space for a barn and a space for a cow and hog. In her backyard she had a chicken house and some small chicken houses for little chicks just hatched. These little chicken houses only came out once a year. I used to set mud pies on top of them. One time Mama sent me out to collect my mud pies as she would turn these little chicken houses over to air and clean. Behind the backyard, she had a rather large garden with an outhouse just inside the gate to the right, which had a peach tree next to it. When I did something bad, she would not say a word but head for the peach tree. Then she would take a limb, strip it of leaves and I knew what was coming. I would start screaming although she just swatted my legs.
Well, Mama did not like living to someone else so she rented the lot to her East of house, which she did not Own, planted it in cotton, which she and the girls picked and with the proceeds bought the lot and used it for a cow pasture. This was the situation when I arrived.
I can never forget people’s ingenuity in those days.
I forgot to say in the back yard, there was a well-house which consisted of an open space with a roof and in which was a long handled pump. Dad put me a rope swing here but attached to this sheltered space was a smoke house with rock salt for preservation of meat and a place to hang hams and then another room used for other different purposes. In the yard, there was a coal storage building, which was west of the well house and more to the front. (I have to mention that everything looked much bigger in those days than what was actually the case.)
Now, remembering above, I thought the front yard was huge, which it was not. Nevertheless, there was big oak tree to the west of a front porch that went all across the front of the house. Dad put me another swing there and then there was a vacant yard in front of the barnyard.
The house had several steps to climb before reaching the porch level. Then there was a big swing on each end of the porch. In the summer, Mama would bank pots of flowers all across the front porch and I was alerted if I began to get too close. There were also bush trees in front of the porch in the ground.
I faintly remember one year Dad digging a room like hole in the back yard with shelves around it. Mama put her flowers there for the winter with glass over the top so sun could get in.
In the fall, she would take apples, cut them in pieces, place them on an empty flour sack and spread them on top of smoke house to dry so we could have dried apples for different purposes. I might add that in the Fall, Mama always had a bowl full of baked sweet potatoes on her kitchen table which we could eat any time.
As Mama had a cow, she fixed her own milk and sold some to neighbors. She had a small well outside her kitchen window with a cover. But inside, there were narrow boards around the top with nails protruding. She or sometimes me if a small bucket would lower little buckets with lids on them into the well, which had a string, attached. Then we would fasten the string to a nail and when we wanted one, all we had to do is untie the string and pull the particular bucket up. The milk was always cool when pulled up.
We could only get ice on weekends and had to place signs in the window as to how much we wanted which usually used for making ice cream. I sometimes turned the freezer when the turning was easy but when the turning got difficult, someone else would and I would take turns sitting on the freezer top to hold it down.
Mama churned her own milk into buttermilk and separated the butter. I would churn for a while but would not last long. She put the butter into round molds that had designs for the butter.
Another thing in those days was that wash day was Monday. There was a big iron kettle in the back yard where fire was lit around it after it was filled with water and clothes. Clothes were boiled. Another use for the kettle was making lye soap. I can’t remember all the ingredients. After it was done, it was poured into pans and cut with a big knife. This was strong soap.
Mama had a big screened in back porch covered with a wild rose vine and that was where we kept our drinking water with a gourd or dipper. It was always cool. At Christmas, mama would put buckets of boiled custard out there when all the family came home.
Inside the house, we had a family room in the front. Mama quilted a lot of quilts but all the neighbors would come in and help. Dad made her quilting frames attached to ropes 4 poles like that fastened on each corner. These had ropes on each corner and when the women weren’t quilting, the quilt could be pulled to the ceiling and locked someway. As the women quilted, they could roll each side as it was finished to the next place to quilt or work until they would have only the middle of the quilt. Once in a while I would want to help and Mama would tell me I could work in a particular corner. (I am sure she pulled the stitches out later as all the women were good in stitching.)
Also, there was a carding process for the cotton that went between the quilt and lining. Two paddles about the size of Ping- Pong paddles had nails driven through the top to protrude a certain length. The raw cotton was placed between these nailed paddles and worked until the cotton was soft and the seeds were gone. It must have taken much work to get enough carded cotton for a big quilt! These nailed paddles were kept from me.
The fireplace in this room was somewhat small but what I remember was her banking the fire at night. The ashes would fall beneath the grate and Mama take the ashes and cover the top of the blaze. This would give some heat off all night and then she would rake the ashes off the next morning where there would be live coals and she just added more logs or coal.
In the room behind that, she had a dining room in the early days where she had a jelly cupboard. The front doors were all glass and her jelly could be seen so clearly and was so clear with their contents. She always tied cloth over the top, which added beauty.
I have to tell you this. Papa had a long barreled pistol. Mama slept with it under her mattress and we all, without exception, knew we were not to go near her bed. And if we even looked like we would like to!!!
When I was older staying with her and maybe had done this before, she went out on the porch and was shooting at night, all by herself. When she came in, I said, Mama, what were you shooting at? She replied “nothing”. I was letting people know I have a gun and will use it, if necessary. This time period had followed the Post Civil War, World War I and Depression Time, which were far different than today in the South.
There are two stories that Mama told me but it was before my time.
One was about log rolling. When fields needed to be cleared, all the men in the Community would come together at a particular person’s place and work to clear the land. Their wives and families would come to help with preparing dinner. It was a real Community Project.
Another was about the cotton bolls. The farmers would get more money if the cotton had been picked but when the weather got too cold and the fingers too stiff to pick the cotton, they would clear the living room of all furniture, pull the bolls and dump the bolls in the middle of the floor into a big heap. Then all the neighbors would come in and sit on the floor and pull the cotton out of the bolls so they could get more money. WHAT A COMMUNITY SPIRIT!
If anyone can add to this story, I would enjoy it and sure others would too.
2002 – Sister Mary Francis (Rachel Cates)