Alma Smith

REMEMBRANCES OF MY CHILDHOOD

Alma V. Smith

I was born on July 15, 1905 in the county of Union, S. C., the nearest town being Jonesville, S. C. My parents were Luther Lafayette Vaughan and Florence Imogene Mabry Vaughan. I was the second daughter and was named Leila Alma. This little story is about the things that stand out in my childhood. I can only remember two outstanding things when I was four.

The house where I was born burned many years ago. I remember how it looked for I visited there when a child. I can’t remember who lived there, but I believe one of my mother’s sisters and her family lived there. There was one large room with a fireplace at the end of the room. The walls were ceiled. A room led off from the main room which was another bedroom. People in those days usually used the large room as a bedroom and sitting room. Only the rich had a parlor and it was used when they had company. A kitchen was built off the main room and was used as cooking and dining area. A large porch was across the front of the house.

That was the house where my oldest sister, Helen, died at the age of three and a half. My mother and father were so unhappy there after my sister’s death. They bought some land just north of Jonesville. A cemetery is being established now on what was my daddy’s land.

The house was partly made of logs. The main big room was of logs, a large fireplace at one end. Evidently, in later years, the side room, as it was called, was added on. It was just a boxed up room with rough planks running up and down instead of cross ways, like the weather boarded houses of a later date. There was no ceiling and you could see the rafters and the tin roof.

This room was used only as a storage room. Also, in the winter my mother would keep the meat in there as it was as cold as outdoors. She would make sacks from cotton cloth, usually from flour sacks about twelve to fifteen inches long and about four inches wide. She would stuff her sausage in this and tie with a string. Then she would hang the sacks on nails on the walls.

At the back of the log cabin, joined on like the side room, was a long, narrow kitchen. It was also boxed up like the side room but I can’t remember if there was a ceiled wall and overhead in that room.

In summer, evidently the year I was four, I remember having a little china cow my Aunt Ollie had given me. I would play out beside the house with my cow, making a pasture from match sticks. Mama would save the match sticks when she made a fire in the wood stove she cooked our meals on. She showed me how to make a pasture for my cow.

The thing that stands out most in my mind was old Dr. Southard of Jonesville coming to see me. I was a sickly child while we lived there, due to dampness and the low place where our house was built. The old doctor would give me medicine while Mama held my hands.

My father’s parents lived just a short distance from us. We would go up a path across the field to my grandparent’s house. In getting to the house I would have to pass the barn lot, and I can remember how scared I was if the mules were out in the lot. I could imagine them jumping the fence and running over me. As I stayed sick all the time, mostly with what Dr. Southard told my parents was malaria, he suggested we leave that low, swampy place.

In the meantime Mr. D. B. Free, who ran a general store in Jonesville, was looking for someone to take over the management of his father’s plantation. His father was an old man and one leg was shorter than the other due to an injury in the Civil War. He had gotten too old to look after all the hands and supervise the running of the big plantation. My father talked to him and took the job. He sold our place and we moved about three miles further up the road towards Pacolet.

We had a brand new weather boarded and ceiled house, It was built just for us. It was painted white, with a fence around the yard. You entered the front door into a hall that was fairly wide, from a porch all across the front. To the left was a large room with a fireplace. A door opened at the other end of the hail onto a back porch. This was a porch built across the house and down the other side, what people used to call an ell porch. Then from the hall to the right was the other large room. This was Mama’s and Daddy’s bedroom and we sat in this room. There was a chimney built between it and the dining room, a fireplace on each side.

From this room, going to the back, was the dining room and kitchen. A door led from the dining room out onto this large back porch and also a door from the kitchen led out onto the porch. There was a large walk-in pantry built off the kitchen. It was larger than some of the modern kitchens of today. In there we had a large flour barrel and a smaller meal barrel. People bought flour by the hundred pounds and meal by the twenty-five or fifty pound bags. There was no such thing as bought bread, cakes or pies. Everyone did all their own baking.

Joining the large porch just off the kitchen was what was called the well porch. The well was bored right near the back porch and this porch was attached to the back porch. You walked right onto the well porch without going outdoors.

I have carried a scar on my head all these years from being hit by the windlass with which you drew the water out of the well. I was only five but wanted to draw water out of the well. You turned the handle over and over as the rope that held the bucket was wound up around a log where the windlass was fastened. Just before I got the bucket to the top my arms just gave out and since the bucket was full of water when my hands gave out, it of course, fell back into the well. The windlass hit me on the forehead cutting a gash in my head. As the years went by the scar grew up into my hair and was not noticeable after I grew up.

The plantation where we lived had many tenant houses that were occupied by negro families who worked on what they called the halves. Mr. Free furnished the land, fertilizer, seed, mules and plows. They worked the farms, and in the fall when the cotton was ginned, which was the main money crop in the South, and all the other produce gathered, it was divided and half was given to the landlord. The other half went to the share cropper, as he was called.

In November when the weather got cold, it was hog killing time. Mama always had from two to three nice hogs to kill. The hands who lived close by always did the work. Clarence Foster, a large mullato negro, his wife Florence, Lonnie Hughes (who was a real African, and very black) and John Fernandez, a brown skinned negro. They would kill the hog and dunk it into a big barrel of hot water to make the hair come loose so they could scrape it off. Then it was hung up by the hind legs on a crossbar and Clarence would slit it open and remove all the insides. He and John then cut all the hams, shoulders, backbone and ribs; also a piece Mama always called the sweet meat. It came from part of the backbone and was very much like boneless pork chops. I guess that was what it was. Lonnie always ground and mixed the sausage. Mama grew her own sage and dried it. She kept it in a large jar so that it could be kept air tight after it was dried to her satisfaction. She also strung her red pepper in the fall to have ready for the sausage making.

A big shelf large enough to hold the parts of the hog was built at the back end of the smoke house. Clarence and John would place the parts of the hog on this shelf, rubbing as much salt on it as they could. This was done under my mother’s watchful eye for she really knew how to cure meat. It was left on the shelf for at least two or three cold nights, then it was packed into a large box and again more salt added. After it had stayed in the salt mixture for the required time, she took the hams and shoulders out and washed all the loose salt off. She then put a mixture of pepper, brown sugar and other ingredients I can’t remember. She kept the backbone, ribs and fat back for cooking. They were kept there as there was no ice or refrigeration. Should anyone kill a hog and it didn’t get the right amount of cold weather and turned warm, the meat was lost. I can’t remember our ever losing any.

The hams and shoulders had a string run through the shank, after Mama had them well coated, and were hung on a pole across the smoke house. A slow fire was built in an iron kettle, using only chips from a hickory nut tree. This fire was kept going for several days until the meat was well cured. Then it was put in a sack and left hanging in the smoke house until we were ready to cut and eat it, which was usually in the early spring. This was the best part of the hog, I thought, and the way Mama cured it it was not tough like the cured ham we get at the stores now.

There was a big gin, where everyone in the whole country side for several miles around came to have their cotton ginned. The machinery picked the cotton from the seed and it was blown into what was called a press. It was an oblong box into which the cotton would fall. Then it was blown through pipes from the machines that did the separating. The seed was blown through another pipe and, if the man who was having his cotton ginned wanted his seed back, they went into the wagon. If he wanted to sell his seed they were blown into a warehouse connected to the gin.

To press the cotton into bales, a man had to stand at the press and, when the box was full of cotton, he would pull a lever and a large piece of metal would press the cotton down. When it had blown in and was pressed into a bale weighing from 450 to 500 pounds the man who ran the press pulled levers that wrapped the bagging, as it was called, around it and secured it with metal strips to hold it together. The farmer then carried it to market if he wanted to sell it. If he wanted to hold it, hoping for a higher price, he carried it home.

The plantation my daddy looked after usually put the cotton at the home of Mr. Free, Sr. They would lay down long poles and stack the cotton in rows. Daddy had to look after the gin and see that it was kept running. He had a ginner and other hands to run the machinery and fire the boiler that made the steam to run the gin. There was a small water tank to keep water on hand. This was filled by running pipes to a spring about a quarter of a mile away. In this spring was what was called a ram. It was a little gasoline engine that pumped the water from the spring through the pipes and into the tank. If my Daddy was asleep at night and the ram stopped, we could hear it running from the house, and he would immediately awaken. He and Mama would get up, light a lantern and go to see what the trouble was. Mama would hold the lantern for Daddy to work on the pump. Usually it would be some minor thing he could fix. Having this job, he had to be able to fix many other things as well as be somewhat of a mechanic.

In order for the hands on the place to have a place to buy what few groceries they needed, there was a store just below our house. Everyone raised their own meat and chickens, as well as their vegetables, and made their own lard, molasses, etc. The hands could buy what they needed, Daddy would put it down in a big ledger, and in the fall when all the crops were gathered and their cotton sold they would pay off their debts. Not only the hands on the place traded there, everyone within one or two miles would come for things they could swap for eggs or buy. My Daddy kept canned goods, cheese, sugar, coffee, tobacco and, best of all we children thought, candy and chewing gum. He carried many things people thought of as being luxuries. Canned salmon was 10¢ for a large can, but if you bought three cans you got them for a quarter.

He also had what folks called soda pops, but no ice. Yet people bought them and drank them hot, for we did not know what it was to have ice in summer. Sometimes my Daddy would go to Jonesville on Saturday afternoon and buy a fifty pound block of ice. We would hurry and wrap it in newspapers and bury it in cotton seed or hulls to keep it from melting until we could get the night chores finished. Then Mama would get the ice cream churn out, scald it with hot water after washing it and make up the ingredients for ice cream. Then we would really have a feast. We had a neighbor who seemed to know when we were going to have ice cream, for just about the time we would get it ready to eat he would come to sit until bedtime.

People in the country often went to sit until bedtime, as they called it, but that was usually no later than 8 or 8:30. My daddy never did visit at night as well as I can remember. My Grandpa Mabry would come often, also Mama’s brother, Uncle Howard. He was really a talker and we children used to love to hear him tell about his experiences while possum hunting with his dog, Bo. He really kept us spellbound.

Living in the country, we children usually had a pet animal of some kind. We would select a baby chicken and make a pet of it. You can make a pet of a pig if you start when it is small. A chicken or pig will follow you like a dog if you train them early. We had three big cats that we would dress up in doll clothes and have lots of fun with.

In the spring Mama was a great believer in getting us ready for the summer by dosing us with calomel, followed by castor oil the next morning. She would also make sassafras tea, but that was one thing I could not drink.

The year of 1918, when the flu was raging everywhere, she kept us close at home. We went to school and nowhere else. Luckily, we did not have the flu. One family of eleven on the place all had the flu. A neighbor boy went to wait on them and he got sick. My mother would make a big pot of soup of some kind every day, and my sister, Flora, and I would carry it to the porch where they lived. The one who was able to come out and get it carried it in and emptied our boiler. We would then bring it back home but Mama would leave it out overnight to be sure there were no germs on it. She sent soup every day until they were able to do for themselves.

During the summer Mama kept us busy working her garden and patches, as she called them. We had fruit of all kinds and really enjoyed it. I loved to get up early and take a knife and stand under the peach tree, picking peaches and eating them while Mama was cooking breakfast.

Cooking was really a chore for you had to build a fire in the wood stove. We had a big wood range. On the side was what was called the water tank. It was built next to the fire box so it would heat water. Of course the old black kettle was always on the stove. A lid was removed and the kettle set right over the fire to get hot water fast.

Nothing was any better than baked sweet potatoes or hot biscuits baked in a wood range oven. Mama baked pies, cakes and anything she wanted. There was no thermostat to control heat, but she knew just how much wood to put in the fire box to make the oven have the right amount of heat she wanted for whatever she was cooking.

In the winter we would all sit around the fire, and lots of times we would cook sweet potatoes in the hot ashes on the hearth. Mama had a pan she called a spider. It had three legs about two inches long. A cover fit down tight on the iron pan yet had a place on top where you could put hot coals. She would make up some dough, grease the iron pan and put the dough in it. First, she would put some hot coals under the pan so it would be hot. After putting her bread in she put the lid on and put hot coals on top. In a little while we had a nice pone of hot bread, and with plenty of good country butter, molasses and a glass of buttermilk we wanted no better supper. She would cook hot bread like that in winter to keep from having to make a fire just to cook bread in the stove.

In summer we usually ate what was left from dinner, the mid-day meal. We had no refrigeration and had to eat the food the day it was cooked. If there was any left it was put in the slop for the hogs.

In the summer children did not have to be entertained. They made up their games if they got tired of the old ones. We played hide and go seek and cat ball. Four could play. Two players stood about ten or twelve feet apart, facing each other, and each one held a bat. A catcher stood behind each batter. One catcher would throw the ball, and the one holding the bat tried to hit the ball. If he did, the catcher tried to throw the ball or roll it in front of the batter as they would run to exchange places. If he succeeded, he then got to bat and the other had to catch. We had our play houses where we would make imaginary furniture. We used broken dishes for our dishes. We would visit and act like grown-ups. When the weeds and potato vines matured in the early fall we had to pull the weeds and vines for the hogs.

One other thing we children looked forward to was the day the Threshers came. In the summer the wheat and oats were cut. Now they have machines that go through the fields. The grain is cut and the wheat kernels are separated from the straw all in one operation.

In my young days the wheat was cut by hand. A man had what was called a cradle. On one side was a sharp blade. He took both hands and swung it around through the grain. Then he gathered the grain up in a bundle dropping it on the ground. Behind him would come another worker gathering the grain until he had a good sized bundle tying it with straw and leaving it in the field to be picked up and loaded on a wagon to be carried to the barn. Everyone worked hard to get their grain gathered before it rained on it after it had ripened. A group of workers would go through the country with a threshing machine. Grain was fed into it and the straw was separated from the grain.

People in the country did not buy flour from the store unless they ran out of flour before another crop was gathered. The wheat was carried to the mill to be ground into four. Also all our meal was ground from corn. Usually a farmer carried both wheat and corn when he went to have his grain ground. The wheat and corn mills were built by the side of a river. A water wheel was turned by water power, and this in turn, turned the large round stones that ground the grain.

We never had mattresses like we have now. A large bag the size of the bed was made with a slit in the center. After the threshing machines were gone Mama prepared to put fresh straw in our bed tick as it was called. All the old straw was thrown out. She washed the tick and when it was dry we children delighted in helping fill it with new straw. It was packed as full as it could be, for after sleeping on it for a week or two it would pack down. The first few nights after the new straw tick was put on the bed we had to climb up on a. chair to get in bed. That was fun for us. In winter we had a feather bed to put on top of the straw bed. That was soft and warm. My mother raised her own geese and ducks. She would pluck the feathers in the spring and save the feathers until she could get enough to make a feather mattress. She also made her pillows with the feathers.

During the summer, of course, Mama was canning and drying fruit. She and Daddy would sit under a big tree in the back yard and peel and cut the fruit for drying. Then we children would have to stand out in the sun where tin was laid across what were called horses. They were stands that were used to lay planks across to saw. After we children were grown and away from home, Mama learned that peaches would dry just as well if you quickly spread them out in the sun to dry as they did when she had us stand out there placing one piece at a time facing up to the sun. I guess it kept us occupied, though, and we didn’t have time to be idle. Neither the old folks nor their children had time to be idle, yet we had time to visit and be neighborly. Everyone knew each other for miles around, but now some people don’t know the folks living in the next apartment.

In the fall of the year we would get a twenty-five pound flour sack that had been washed and put away for many uses, and go to the woods looking for hickory nuts. That is a small hard nut but the meat is so good and sweet, what little there is of it. In those days there was no one to bother you in the woods and everyone felt safe.

Flour bags were made of cloth in my childhood days. Lots of people would wash them and make under drawers for their children. I don’t remember ever wearing any, but I may have.

Also in the fall covered wagons from the mountains would come through selling cabbage, Irish potatoes, apples and chestnuts. They would usually ask my daddy to let them camp in the gin yard. There was a long shed in which they could keep dry if the weather was bad. Mama always waited for the mountain wagons to come to make her kraut. She would buy several heads of cabbage. It was my job to chop it. She had a large wooden lard tub and a long handled shovel, and these I had to use. She would wash the tub and shovel real good, and I would stand and chop cabbage for what seemed to me like hours.

We children had our playmates, and when all of our work was done we could go visit for an afternoon. I used to love to go to Mr. and Mrs. Lawson’s when the goose plums were ripe. They were large plums with white or cream colored speckles on them and were real good. They had two boys and two girls; Frank, Paul, Annie and Julie. The boys were usually in the field working.

A little further up the road was my grandmother’s house. Since Mama was the oldest child, my grandmother and Mama had children near the same age. Gladys and my sister, Helen, were born the same year and Mama’s baby sister, Wilma, and I were only two months apart.

I went to a country school until I finished the eighth grade, then my parents boarded me at Pacolet so I could finish high school. The year I finished my parents moved up near Pacolet. I started to school in a one room schoolhouse. One teacher taught all grades. Of course, there were very few pupils who went for the country was sparsely settled. Between our house and Pacolet there were only about a half dozen houses. When I was in about the fourth grade, they built a new schoolhouse with two rooms and hired another teacher. One taught the first through the fourth grade, and the other fifth through eighth.

My grandfather gave the land for the school to be built as he was a great believer in education. He and my father were trustees. I can’t remember who the others were. The school was named Mabry School for my grandfather. I remember teachers writing my father asking for a job as teacher. A teacher was paid $30.00 a month. They boarded at our house for several years and paid $10.00 a month board. That left them $20.00 a month to clothe themselves and buy little luxuries.

At Christmas time we always put on a play and had a Christmas tree, with one of the neighborhood men dressed up as Santa Claus. Out of that teacher’s meager salary, she always gave each child a 10¢ toy wrapped in Christmas paper.

I remember one good switching I got when I was six years old. The teacher asked Mama to help her wrap the gifts. The girls all got something alike, and the boys the same. I wanted to get in the room to see what the teacher had bought everyone, so I stood in the hall at her door, crying and begging to come in. My mother took it as long as she could. She came out and grabbed me by the hand and led me to the outhouse, breaking off a limb from a peach tree that grew by the gate on her way. When she had finished, I wished I had never heard of a Christmas gift. My mother did not believe in sparing the rod and spoiling the child. I’m glad she didn’t for I know I’m a better woman for having been disciplined. She believed in making a child mind, and we certainly knew what we would get if we didn’t.

We used to have box suppers and cake walks at the school to raise money to buy little things we needed for the school. There was no such thing as money being appropriated for anything except teachers’ salaries. A box supper was when a girl packed a lunch for two and trimmed her box in crepe paper with bows of ribbon. Each girl hoped her box would be the prettiest. The boys and the single men would bid on the boxes. Mr. Jeff Ward would usually auction them off. They would start at 25¢ and if, by chance, a boy happened to find out which was his girlfriend’s box, he would bid as far as his money would go. No one had over a dollar and a half as a general rule, so that was usually what one brought, unless someone ran the price up. After all the boxes were sold, the boy who bought the box would get to eat supper with the girl.

Then they would have a cake walk. The women of the community would bake cakes and donate them, Someone played the piano and a couple would pay 10¢ to walk. The cake was held up for everyone to see, and if you wanted to gamble or take chances you bought a ticket. The couples would march round and round. One man held a stick, and as you went by you would touch the stick. If the music stopped while you had your hand on the stick, you won the cake.

In the summer we had a picnic at the school and everyone came for miles around. My grandpa always furnished a good sized calf to be made into hash. Kelly Thomas, who lived on my grandpa’s place, prepared the hash. The women would furnish pounds of country butter and plenty of onions to go in it. The Mabry school picnic was always a yearly event and, as I said, was well attended. Trays of hash were placed all along the table and people brought food of every description. It was really a grand and glorious day which everyone looked forward to. As a usual thing, some of the boys who wanted to make a little money would get together with ice cream freezers and make home made ice cream to sell. They would also buy ice and put it in a large tin tub to chill soda pops to sell. This was sold out under a large oak tree, which was the most popular place, until the picnic lunches were spread on the long tables that had been built out of rough lumber for that purpose.

Teachers really took an interest in their pupils in those days. There were not many of us, as I have stated, and a teacher wanted us to learn all we could. Although they only made $30.00 a month, they would stay after school and have classes in sewing and crocheting, also making tatting, for any of the girls who wanted to stay. I can’t remember when I learned to crochet and make tatting for I learned at an early age. As our school was on the edge of some woods, in the fall of the year we would gather leaves, trace them on paper and color. In the spring, when the wild flowers were blooming, the teachers would take us walking in the woods to pick wild flowers and learn the names of them. This was an event we looked forward to, for it meant getting out of school for a few hours.

We usually had to go to school for about two months in the summer as all the children lived on the farm and had to gather the crops in the fall. School was July and August, then it closed down for September and October for crops to be harvested, then back again the first of November. School was out again in March for it was time for crops to be planted and, again, the children were needed in the fields. We were lucky for Daddy worked for a salary and we did not have any field work to do.

We had a little garden in the corner of the big garden. Mama would let me make my rows and plant seed like she did. I guess that is where I learned to garden. We went to school early and stayed late, for we had to cover nine months of schooling in seven months.

We had what we called little recess about 10 o’clock, for fifteen minutes. This gave us all time to go to the outside toilet and to get some fresh water to drink. We had a large toilet with a place for about five people to sit at one time. The boys had theirs on the other side of the schoolhouse in the woods. Then, at 12 0’clock we had what we called big recess. This was for an hour. We girls all gathered in a bunch, if the weather was warm enough, and opened our lunch boxes to eat.

We usually had about the same things, baked sweet potatoes and biscuits with sausage or ham. Sometimes Mama would not have anything much to pack for our lunch and she would butter a good hot biscuit and sprinkle it with sugar. This made good eating. We never thought of taking milk to drink. People would have laughed at us. One boy and his cousin brought milk in bottles to drink with their food and all the other children, including me, thought it was so funny. As I have stated, we did not have a refrigerator, and if we had had one there was no ice. To keep our milk cold to drink, we set the earthen jars of milk in tubs of cold water in summer. We did not drink sweet milk, for without ice we could not have kept it from getting sour and milk right from the cow was warm. We usually drank buttermilk.

Mama would strain her milk up in a large churn, the milk from the morning milking and the night milking together. The cows were milked night and morning. In warm weather the milk would be soured by the next morning. Then she would scald the dasher and, by splashing it up and down in the sour milk, the butter would begin to form from the cream that rose to the top. After the butter began to be firm and would hold together, she would take her hand and scoop it out into a large bowl. She would work it with a wooden paddle, then rinse all the milk out of it with cold water. She then packed it into a butter mold and turned it out onto a large saucer. She would dip a knife in warm water and smooth out all the sides. If it was summer, she would put the butter in a large bucket of cold water to make it firm. In the winter, in order to make the milk sour so she could churn the butter, she kept the churn by the open fire. This made the milk sour so she could churn the next day.

One of the things we liked for supper was a good bowl of milk gravy, hot biscuits and a good glass of buttermilk. Mama would make a fire in the range and then go milk the cow. By the time she got through milking, the stove was hot enough to fry out some fat back or the fat from a ham to make the gravy. She would make up her biscuits from scratch as no canned biscuits had ever been heard of. She would put the biscuits in the hot oven and proceed to make her gravy. That was what we called a good supper, especially if it was in the fall and the days were getting cool.

Alas, we do grow up and the years pass by so swiftly it seems now, but as a child it seemed an eternity from one Christmas to the next. Mama used to grow large pumpkins. She would plant them in the corn field just below the house. What fun it was to gather them in the fall. She would make pumpkin pies a lot. We would have far more than we could use, so she would cut them up and put them in the big black wash pot to cook for the hogs.

The sweet potatoes were dug, and after drying for awhile they were put in what was called a potato kiln. Pine needles were spread in a pile and the potatoes were heaped on the pine needles and straw. Corn stalks were fixed around this like a teepee to keep out the cold, with dirt heaped up on the sides. Along about Christmas time they would be so sweet when you baked them the brown juice, as sweet as sugar, would run out of them. There is nothing better than a sweet potato that has been kept in a kiln and baked in a woad stove. The potatoes we get now are all dried out from being kept in a potato house.

With the modern day of washing machines and dryers a child does not know what work is. We used to have a big black pot that you had to fill with water. Into this was put what was called gold dust, a powder similar to our washing powders of today, only stronger. Also put into the pot was lye soap that my mother made herself. On a bench under a shed were three large tin tubs. The clothes were then put in cold water to soak. When the water in the pot started to boil, some of the soapy water was poured over the white clothes soaking in the first tub. While we children were drawing water out of the well to fill the other two tubs, Mama was washing the clothes in the tub of hot suds. She used a rub board to help clean the clothes. That was a board with ridges and she would rub the clothes up and down on the ridges.

As she washed and wrung the water out of them they were put in a pot of boiling suds to boil for awhile. The colored clothes were washed like the white ones. Most clothes were made of cotton and would not fade. If anything was thought to fade it was not boiled. The white clothes were taken out of the pot with what was called a battling stick. It was a flat board about four or five inches wide, and the bottom part had been trimmed into a handle. They were put on a table built for that purpose and beat with the flat part of the stick. They were then put into a tub of cold water and rinsed through three waters, the last tub being slightly colored blue with what we called bluing. This was to make them extra white. The colored things were carried through the same process. Clothes were really clean when you hung them on the line to dry.

Lye soap was made with lye from ashes, meat grease and water. We had what we called an ash hopper. It was made of wood and set in a log with a trench cut in it. You had to pour water in the ashes and the drippings made the lye. This was put into the big black pot with the meat grease and boiled until it was of the right consistency to jell. This was then soap that we washed clothes and dishes with.

There are so many memories of my childhood, I wish I was able to put them all down. My daddy always made the coffee. We had an old coffee mill or grinder that was nailed on the wall by the window. When you bought coffee, it was in bean form. You put the amount it took to make a pot of coffee in the grinder and turned the handle. A little cup attached to the bottom caught the ground coffee. You then emptied it into your pot with water and boiled it until it was as strong as you wanted it; no instant coffee. People in those days had no modern conveniences. Everything was done by hand. There was no electricity, no kitchen sink or running water, no T.V., radio or even record players; nothing except books or magazines to read for pastime, or go out and play games.

As I said, Mama usually kept us busy with different chores. At about four o’clock we started our night work; gather the eggs, feed the hogs, feed the chickens, get in wood to cook with and, if it was winter, wood to put in the fireplace to keep warm by. Since we had no electricity we had to keep the oil lamps clean and filled with oil. To take a bath in winter you brought in one of the big tin tubs and put it beside the stove in the kitchen. In summer you could bathe in the bedroom, or anywhere you could have privacy. There was no running water, or bath tubs.

I used to love to go to my grandmother Mabry’s to spend the night or even the day. My three younger aunts seemed more like sisters to me. My mother had a sister, Lois, who was about six years older than I. She was beginning to date some and loved to get in the kitchen to cook. I remember on her sixteenth birthday, which was in June, she cooked two blackberry pies. She took a knife or fork and wrote 16 in the top crust. It is strange how certain events from your childhood will be so clear after you reach your senior years.

Another event I remember was on my mother’s baby sister’s eleventh birthday. We had made molasses candy and had poured it into a platter to cool. Unless you have made molasses candy you don’t know how hard it can get when cold. We were trying to get it loose enough to remove from the plate and break it into pieces to eat. I took a knife trying to break it loose and the knife slipped, cutting my middle finger on my left hand to the bone. Today I also carry that scar.

My grandfather had a big grape arbor and it was my plight to eat all I could when they got ripe. He also had two mulberry trees and I guess we children ate about as many bugs as we did fruit.

In the summer we would go to the branch that ran through the pasture and make a dam so we could wade in the water. We would also go to the water melon patch, gather a melon of our choice and put it in the water to cool. Being children, we didn’t realize we had to leave it for several hours to get completely cool so, after playing for a few minutes, we would feel the outside and decide it was cold. We would burst it open on a rock to find it very warm on the inside. That didn’t keep us from digging in with our hands and enjoying it. In the fall we would hunt muscadines growing wild in the woods. Mama would make preserves, which were delicious.

My Grandpa Mabry also had bee hives. In May he would rob the hives of the honey, always leaving enough honey for the bees until they could gather and make the hives full again. He would come down and tell us to bring a bucket the next day as he was going to rob the bees. We children knew to stay out of the way for the bees got very angry and disturbed when they were robbed. We usually went home with a peck bucket of good fresh honey. We looked forward to a supper of hot biscuits, honey and butter.

My grandfather and Uncle Howard were great hunters, especially for opossums. Grandpa had a row of possum boxes where he fattened his ‘possums. It was a long row of boxes with a partition between each cage or box. They were fed sweet potatoes and fattening foods until they were considered fat enough to eat. They were then killed and cooked surrounded with sweet potatoes. That is one dish I never tried, though.

As I stated, after finishing the eighth grade at the country school, I went to Pacolet when school started in the fall. I boarded with my daddy’s baby sister, Aunt Evie Coleman and her husband. When they moved to the country the next year I then boarded with Mrs. Bryant, who was a stately old lady. She always wore blouses with high necks and stays in the material to make the collars fit around her neck. She had the finest home in Pacolet and had a real bathroom. She had a tank in her yard and a pump in her well to furnish water in the house. I guess Mrs.Bryant, at that time, was the only one who had running water in Pacolet.

In the fall of 1921 our new house was about ready to move into, just one mile below the center of Pacolet. My father had bought land just outside the town limits and had built a new six room house. That summer he ‘taught me how to drive our T model Ford so my sister, Flora, could start to school when the fall session opened at Pacolet. We had a little brother, Luther, two years old. My parents were married for seventeen years before he was born. When each of us came along, I guess it was a disappointment because we were girls. That fall we started to Pacolet to school, and in December of 1921 we moved to our new home.

I graduated from Pacolet High School in 1922. I entered nurses’ training later but married before I finished training. I won’t go into my years after marriage as that was the beginning of a different life. I was really grown up then.