Looking Back, Part I - I Was Born, Etc.
I remember well my grandfather’s house—the one he and my uncles built in Bryant on Sand Mountain in the years 1938 and 39. To me it was a place of love and protection. A house filled with people. I was well-along in years before I realized that some of those in that house did not perceive the same love and comfort that I did. My grandfather never told me he loved me, but I knew he loved me and never felt the need to be told.
The early years are shrouded in the developing mind of babyhood. I was born in July of 1938. In November of that year our house burned. Uncle Ralph, who was six years old, was put in charge of watching the babies: my Aunt Inez, who was seven months old; my Aunt Marie, who had just turned two years old; and me, four months old. When the flames were detected, someone dragged a mattress well away from the house and stationed Ralph and us there in his safe-keeping.
A sure way to get an outburst from Aunt Louise was for me to say that I remember the house burning. I can’t, of course, but I enjoyed saying it just to hear once again her reaction. Although the actual memory is not there, I’m sure that the event is deep in my subconscious mind, for I am horribly afraid of fire. So is Inez, and she is convinced that our fear arises from our watching the house burn. I am afraid of candles burning in the house. When we were first married, Gail would light Christmas candles in the house, and I would come behind her blowing them out!
The day the house burned, Granny, the three older girls and the babies were in the house when it caught fire. One of them notice the shadow of smoke on the yard outside the window. Grandpa and the boys were working on the new place the Pa had bought—they had the barn and crib built and had started framing the house. George Price, who had an automobile, drove over to tell Pa and the boys that the house was burning.
All the food that had been put up for winter was destroyed. An estimated 300 jars of canned fruit was stored in the attic with cotton seed over the jars to insulate them. Farming tools that were stored on the porch of the house were burned. The potatoes had been dug and covered with pomace (the remains of cane that had been run through the syrup mill). The fire burned the pomace and nobody thought about the potatoes and a hard freeze the night of the fire ruined them all. The family, numbering about 13, was destitute. And yet, a half-century later my Granny would say, “But we didn’t suffer. We had such good neighbors!” My Aunt Louise, however, in her old age was still complaining about all the dried beans she had to eat that winter!
The day after the fire, Uncle Ralph (remember he was only 6 years old) discovered the remains of the tools that had been on the porch, and one by one he dropped them in the well to hear them splash. No tools, no food for the winter, no clothes, no cotton seed for next year’s crop. I’ve often thought of the constitution of my grandfather and the courage it took to face the future. I never heard him mention the fire. That winter a farmer let them live in a vacant house he owned.
I don’t remember choking on a hot potato, either, but I did, and Grandpa saved my life. He forced his finger between my teeth and pushed the piece of potato down my throat. Perhaps that’s why I loved him so well! To me he was a stabilizing force in an unstable world, although the instability came later when I was three years old.
My mother and father had married when mother was fifteen and daddy was 23. Mother had gone to Granny and told her that she and Nathan Whitten were going to get married. She asked Granny to tell Grandpa. Granny said, “You can tell him yourself just like you told me!” Granny thought Pa would put a stop to the wedding for sure. Mother went to meet Pa coming from the fields, and she told him of the wedding plans. Pa reached into his pocket and pulled out $7.00. He gave it to her and said, “This is all the money I have in the world. Buy yourself a pretty dress.” When Granny would tell the story, she always added, “And that’s the way he stopped the wedding!”
So, they were married. They lived in a log house on the Long Island farm that Pa rented. The log house was in spitting distance to Pa and Granny’s house. They were married nine months, and Nathan was shot in a drunken altercation. He died from gangrene that set in from the gunshot wound. Mother was three months pregnant with me. A superstition was that a pregnant woman should not look at a dead person for fear it would mark the unborn child. Over the protests of some family members, Mother looked at Nathan in the casket—and who knows whether I was “marked” or not. Don’t answer that!
After Nathan died, Mother moved back into the house with Granny and Pa, and it was into this household that I was born, July 19, 1938. By that time Pa had moved his bunch from a farm at Long Island in the valley to a farm on Sand Mountain in the community of Bryant. I was the first grandchild and led the way for a whole passel of about 37 grandchildren. The year I was turned forty years old, the last grandchild was born, Rachael Hawkins, daughter of Raymond and Dimples Hawkins.
My early years with Granny and Pa are a blur of real memories and borrowed memories? that is, things that I’ve heard told so many times that I think I can remember the events. For instance, the house burning is a borrowed memory.
Another is a day when I was put on the bed to nap, something I didn’t want to do. I was told to be quiet and go to sleep. Presently a stack of freshly dried clothes that was on the bed tipped over on me, and I said, “Be quiet, clothes, you’ll wake me up.” I was too little to remember that, but I heard it told many times I can see it in my mind.
Marie, Inez and I played under the Little House, which is what we called the crib that had been used for living while Pa and the boys finished the house. Granny and the girls slept in the crib, and Pa and the boys slept in the barn. The Little House was high off the ground and made the perfect cool place to play. We must have rescued hundreds of doodle bugs: “Doodle Bug, Doodle Bug, come out from there! Your house is on fire!”
I remember summer twilight evenings on the porch. Pa in a cane-bottomed, straight chair, leaning back with the chair-back touching the house, his feet on the bottom rung of the chair. Granny also in a chair, and I held securely in the comfort of her love. Strangely I do not remember my mother at all at Granny’s house. I remember others being on the porch or in the yard, but Granny and Pa are the two I clearly identify in my mind.
There are three songs I remember Granny singing there on the porch. “The Boys in Blue,” a Civil War song; “The Letter Edged in Black,” a tear-jerker for sure, about a wayward son whose mother had died; and “Little Mary Fagin,” about a little girl in Atlanta who was murdered. Mother also sang the Mary Fagin song after we moved from Pa’s.
The porch was a place to relax and let the day wind down. For the adults and the children big enough to work in the fields, the days were long and full of hard work.
Pa and the boys had the farm to run, the animals, the fields, the upkeep of the machinery, and the upkeep of the barns, outbuildings and house. Rainy days didn’t lessen the work load, there were jobs to be done inside the barn. In the winter, ice storms and blizzards would slow down the work, but the work had to be done. Animals had to be fed and cows milked and eggs gathered.
The women worked equally as hard. The house must be kept running. Babies had to be tended and for Granny there was a baby every two years from 1918 to 1942! There was one miscarriage when they lived at Long Island, and between Inez and Ola, the last baby, there were 3 or 4 years instead of the usual 2. Louise probably got the most experience taking care of baby brothers and sisters. There were 4 boys after Louise before another sister was born.
There was clothing to make for the family, from underwear to shirts, dresses and sun bonnets. Sheets, pillow cases and towels were made from bleached fertilizer bags. When the feed companies came up with the idea of colorful printed cloth for their feed bags, they provided millions of farm women with pretty material for their dresses, shirts for the boys, and scraps for their quilt tops.
For a large family, and ours was large, a lot of food was required, and the vegetable garden was Granny’s responsibility. When Granny and Pa were first married, her neighbor, Mrs. Clyde Shirley, said to her: “Lonia, do you want to know how to always have plenty and some you can give to your neighbor?” Granny said, “Well, I don’t know, but I guess I could learn how.” Mrs. Shirley said, “Well, always plant a row for your neighbor and one for yourself and you’ll have plenty.”
Enough food had to be grown so that it provided for their needs during the summer and enough to be canned for the winter months when no fresh food was available. I once asked Granny about canned tomatoes, how she could tell if they were spoiled or not. I’d read about improperly canned tomatoes killing folks. Granny came as close to making a snorting sound as I ever heard. “They didn’t spoil!” she said.
In the summer during field work time for the men, there were meals to be prepared for the workers. This called for a big breakfast and a big dinner, noonday meal. As I recall, the wood stove was kept in use from the breakfast meal until dinner was cooked. Who can forget the string beans cooked in the iron pot. Potatoes rested on top of the beans and cooked along with them. Then the beans, seasoned with fatback, were boiled down to that perfect taste. Black-eyed peas simmered a long time, too, and on top of them steamed young okra pods. Boiled corn and creamed corn; sun-ripened tomatoes, cucumbers, cornbread, buttermilk cooled in the spring.
I was 50 years old before it dawned upon me one day that we were next door to poverty in those days! But everybody else in Bryant was in the same shape, and in many cases worse off than we.
Besides the clothing, there were sheets and quilts to be made. Bleached fertilizer sacks could be sewn into sheets and pillow cases. The seams of the sheets were felled so there were no rough edges. The pillow cases were sometimes embroidered and edged with crocheted lace. Quilts were pieced from scraps. Scraps from those print feed sacks made lovely quilts, and quilts from the ’30s and 40s are prized by collectors today.
Granny did not have time to piece fancy quilt tops, but her daughters Ruth and Louise pieced beautiful quilt all their active lives.
One of the things that has puzzled me about Grandpa’s house is that I don’t remember summer heat or winter cold. The house was thin as paper, I’m sure, with no insulation in the walls or attic. In the winter, the wood cook stove would help to warm the house; but it was fired up in the summer as well, and then it just added to the summer heat. Of course, every other family faced the same heat and living conditions. The house must have been cold during those mountain winters. There was a heater in the main living room of the house and the stove in the kitchen, but in the bedrooms there was no heat. We must have had plenty of quilts, because I don’t remember being cold.
As I remember, the house had 5 rooms. There were a lot of people per bedroom. I don’t know this for sure, but I would guess that Louise, Marie, Inez, Mother and I slept in one room, and that Newell, Eskell, Raymond and Ralph in another room. And Granny and Pa had a room.
It was a full house, and my little world was complete and happy there. But that would come to an end.
Joe’s Meanderings is a series by Joe Whitten.
