Weeds - a plant out of place!

Today was my 11th day of the Master Gardener Class at the Alabama Cooperative Extension System office in New Brockton, AL. One more to go next Wednesday. Then after 40 hours of volunteer work using my knowledge gained from the 12 weeks of study, I can become a Certified Master Gardener. This all came about when I read the course content and discovered I could learn all about fertilizing, pests, proper planting techniques and landscaping. So I signed up and paid my $100. I have learned so much. I enjoyed the class on identifying weeds and what to do about them. I am well acquainted with weeds in our yard but didn't know the names of most of them. We were provided with a handout to help us determine how to get rid of the weeds. I didn't realize there are spring and summer weeds and then a whole new group of weeds that come up during the winter, and then die in the summer.

I was introduced to weeds at a very young age. We lived on a farm and my mother taught me how to pull up weeds in the flower garden and vegetable garden. As I got a little older, my dad taught me how to hoe the weeds and grasses from the peanut and cotton rows. Today there are so many herbicides you can use to kill weeds. We learned all about that in class.

I went about our yard looking for weeds to identify and came up with several varieties. Using my new Weed Book from Auburn

University I was able to identify all of the weeds. We try to control weeds that grow among the lawn grass using herbicides, but I just pull them up when they show up in the flower beds.


Bahia grass with the "v" at the end of the stems. I call it "peace" grass!
The runners (or stolens) that spread out on top of the soil get so thick you could almost gather them to use for firewood!! You mow your grass and in two days the little "v" signs are signaling all over the yard, ready for you to mow them again.

Snacks we ate when I was growing up

Today I was picking up some pecans, cracking them, and eating them on the spot. When I was young, in the fall when we came home from school we would pick up some pecans, crack them between two bricks or with a hammer, and pick out the pecans and eat them.

This was a great snack. We would find pecans outdoors from about October until springtime. Sometimes we would toast them in the oven with a little butter and salt on them.
In the fall we would also have peanuts to eat. First we would pull up peanut bushes, pick off the green peanuts and boil them. Yum yum. Not everybody likes boiled peanuts but I love them. Then when the peanuts were picked and dried, we would roast (parch) them in the oven throughout the winter. Sometimes we made peanut brittle, using cane syrup my dad made. So these nuts would take us through the winter.


In the springtime, we ate things from the garden, including green sweet onions with a lump of salt. Or raw turnip roots. Fruit trees including peaches, plums, and pears furnished us with fruit. We had apple trees but there were usually used for making apple butter since they were always too sour to eat. In May mother would take us blackberry picking to get berries for jelly and jam. In the meantime we would look for berry bushes near the house to pick berries for snacking. We had huckleberries (small version of blueberries) that we would pick in the summer to eat and make jam.

We had a big scuppernong (muscadine) bush that furnished such good berry fruit in the fall. There were some things I never did like, including persimmons. I ate chinquapins but didn't really like them as much as my friends did. In the summer we would dry figs, apples, and peaches to have in the winter. My grandmother made delicious fig newtons with the dried figs.

So much for fruits. Another good snack was to have a hot baked sweet potato in the oven when we got home from school. We would peel the potato and add a wedge of homemade butter. I still love hot baked sweet potatoes - with nothing on them usually. Mother would save left-over biscuits from breakfast and we liked to make a hole on the side of the biscuit with our finger and fill it with soft butter and thick cane syrup. Nothing like a good cold syrup and biscuit.
Another favorite vegetable for a snack was a big ripe tomato, with salt of course. Radishes, cucumbers and carrots were favorite snacks.


Cookies and cakes were for special occasions only. I loved "fruit cake weather". When it turned cold in November, we would start gathering things for fruitcakes for the holidays. I still love homemade fruitcakes soaked in wine or whiskey for several days before eating it. It just doesn't seem like Christmas without the aroma of freshly baked (and fermenting!) fruit cakes and lane cakes, and nobody in my family likes these delicious cakes. I always get slices from some of my friends to satisy my craving around the holidays. Other cakes we had at Thanksgiving and Christmas were "lemon cheese" cakes (a white sponge layer cake with cooked lemon curd filling) and a coconut cake (using freshly grated coconut). I didn't like having to puncture the eyes of the cococnut with an ice pick, draining the juice, and cracking the hard shell with a hammer, and then the hard part - cutting away the dark skin on the greasy while coconut meat. Then we would have to grate the white coconut and I always grated my knuckles and they would bleed and get sore.


I still eat a lot of these nutritious snacks when they are available. I like to drive out in the countryside in the summer and  look for the wild yellow plums in the summer that grow beside the road. They are so sweet and juicy.

Elba's flowing wells a thing of the past

This is the "new" fountain on the southeast corner of the Elba town square where the county courthouse is located. It's a far cry from the old flowing well that I remember as a child.

The old fountain was not in the center, but water bubbled out of cement posts and you just leaned over and got a drink of awful tasting water. I wonder what was in it that made it taste so bad. There was a small pond in the center with big gold fish swimming among the algae and water lilies. I think this is where I first saw gold fish. I remember thinking how beautiful they were. I think there was a wire fence and some shrubbery around the area. There were other flowing wells in Elba including one near the railroad track in New Town by Uncle Drayden Smith's store (Smith Brothers). I don't know what happened to all of the flowing wells.

A lot of school club initiations included something taking place at the flowing well downtown. I remember we had to do something in the Beta Club at night that involved going to the flowing well. It was spooky there at night. Maybe someday I can locate a photo of the old flowing well and add to this blog. I can probably find one in old school annuals at the library.

Blue Bell - best ice cream in the world

On our way home from Austin, TX recently we stopped by the original Blue Bell ice cream plant in Brenham, TX for a tour and sampling.


The first time we ever had Blue Bell ice cream was in the 80's when we were visiting Ron and family in Tyler, TX. I thought it was the best ice cream I had ever tasted. I had banana pudding and Jim ate homemade vanilla. You could only buy Blue Bell in an area in southeast Texas. People would purchase ice cream and take it home with them on the airplane, packed in dry ice (it was definitely worth it). Today you can have 2 half-gal. cartons shipped to us for $99. And people love it so much they will order it for special occasions. We have a plant in Ala. and can find it in most grocery stores in our area.


I'm standing by the original refrigerated truck used to deliver ice cream to the stores nearby. In 2007 Blue Bell celebrated 100 years and had a special ice cream for the century of service, "Century Cordial". It is like an ice cream sundae. I sampled some on our tour. At the end of the tour you can stop at the country store in the building and sample any of the flavors posted that day. I copied the list of flavors below from the website.
Homemade vanilla is our favorite.

List of Year Round Flavors: Banana Split, Buttered Pecan, Chocolate Chip, Cookies 'n Cream, Dutch Chocolate, French Vanilla, Homemade Vanilla, Milk Chocolate, Mint Chocolate Chip, Moo-llennium Crunch, Natural Vanilla Bean, Orange Swirl, Pecan Pralines 'n Cream, Rocky Road, Strawberry, Strawberries & Homemade Vanilla, The Great DivideList of Current Seasonal Flavors: Banana Pudding, Birthday Cake, Buttered Almond, Caramel Sundae Crunch, Caramel Turtle Fudge, Century Sundae, Cherry Vanilla, Chocolate Almond Marshmallow, Chocolate Brownie Overload, Chocolate Covered Cherries, Chocolate Covered Strawberries, Coffee, Fudge Brownie Nut, Hot Chocolate, Hot Fudge Sundae, Key Lime Pie, Lemon Ice Box Pie, Mango, Mocha Almond Fudge, Peaches & Homemade Vanilla, Peppermint, Pistachio Almond, Strawberry Cheesecake, Tin Roof, Triple Chocolate, Ultimate Neapolitan, White Chocolate Almond


This is a statue of the little girl and the cow that was created in the 1970's as a trademark for Blue Bell ice cream.

Fredericksburg, TX - a German settlement

On our way to the Texas hill country and the Frio River last week-end, we stopped over in the town of Fredericksburg which was founded in 1846 by German settlers. Over 150 years later their influence is still evident throughout Fredericksburg. The buildings with the two story balconies and the Victorian gingerbread, the German fachwerk, and the older log buildings scattered throughout Fredericksburg remind us of the German settlers. The beautiful Fredericksburg churches with their massive steeples are a sight to behold. Main street reminded me of a minature Gatlinburg atmosphere. Jim and our son Ron toured Admiral Nimitz museum . Nimitz was a native of Fredericksburg and served in the Pacific during WWII.

While they were at the museum, James and I had fun shopping at the stores on Main Street. We saw these tiny wooden snowmen in the window of an antique shop. I took this picture to bring home to our friend Ralph to see if he could make some. James enjoyed the Christmas shop and we got some old baseball cards at another place. We sat in a German biergarten and had an ice cold coke and listened to the "om pah" German band.

Before leaving Fredericksburg, we went to an herb farm at the edge of town. The farm covers several acres. A garden house and restaurant separates the buildings from the farm. My friend Elsie wanted me to go check out this herb business. She had heard of the place and wanted me to see it and tell her all about it. I was surprised at how clean the area was. Lots of paths among the herb beds.

Trade Days site (open every 3rd weekend of the month). Had some good food at one of the little cafes and enjoyed seeing the various things people take to sell. Didn't buy anything. Just looked. I can't believe the things people take to flea markets to sell!

Good to be back home again!

This beautiful photo is the Frio River flowing down a canyon at Concan, TX in the hill country.

We spent last weekend there at Neil's lodges. The cabin we stayed in was located on a cliff overlooking the river. Our son Ron and his family spend a week every summer here and wanted us to go see the Frio.

On our way to the Frio, we traveled thru the Texas Hill Country and stopped at the LBJ ranch and Fredericksburg, an old German settlement.

The area is very rocky and lots of pretty cypress trees along the river bank. The water was clear and cold.

Jim is outside the cabin we stayed in which was on top of a cliff. The cement picnic tables are used for the bird watching groups that come there in the spring.

My sister Carolyn and her husband Dave from Black Mountain, NC were here at this same spot last April on a bird watching trip.

Inside our cabin in the kitchen. James is watching Liz as she talks to her dog Luna.

The cabin was very rustic with nice Mexican tiles on the floor. It was cold at night and we built a fire outdoors and sat around it and enjoyed the star studded sky.

Lizzie, Ron and Ally standing outside our cabin with the river deep down in the gorge. It was a long way down there. Liz is a student at Univ. of Texas in Austin and Ally attends North Texas University at Denton, TX. We were happy to spend the week-end with all of them.

Heading out West to Texas

I will be taking a break from posting daily entries on my blog. We are heading out to Austin, TX to visit our son Ronnie and family for a few days. Ronnie is our oldest son and he and his wife Cindy have two daughters, Liz at Univ. of Texas and Allison at North Texas State University . They will both be home for the weekend and we are spending 2 nights at the Frio River at a lodge near Concan, TX. They go there every summer for a week of tubing on the river and want to take us there to see the area. That should be fun. We have seen the sights in Austin since we've been there several times so this trip will be just to spend time with our family.

Texas Gilmers are the last 4 on the back row. Nov 2006 at our son James (red shirt in front) 50th birthday. Our youngest son Bill is behind James and the other 3 girls belong to him. And then there's Jim and me. This is our entire family. We don't get together at the same time very often.

Bird watching

I love to hear birds singing, especially the mocking bird. We have lots of these birds in your yard and I find nests in the low shrubs, the pomgrante bush, the rose bushes, and in the grape vines. The mocking bird is easy to identify with its white markings on its wings and the skinny black legs. I do not get credit for this photo which shows the markings that helps one identify this songster.


Mocking birds sing any time of the day or night, and at times you aren't too happy to hear them singing like at 4 a.m. outside your bedroom window! I'll never forget the mocking bird that sang all afternoon outside my daddy's bedroom window the afternoon he was dying from cancer. He kept hearing the bird and thought it was beautiful. That bird stayed in the grape vine all afternoon and sang until my dad died late that night. It was eerie!


My mother loved birds too. When I was 5, Christine was 3 and Sue was a baby, we would accompany mother to the cowpen each evening and sit on the grass while she milked the cow. We walked down a sandy lane with trees and bushes on each side to get to the cowpen in the woods. Mother would see birds building nests and as soon as there were eggs in the nest, she would lift us up to see the speckled eggs, and told us to never touch them or the mother bird would not return to hatch them. Then we watched every day to see if the birds had hatched. Then one day they would start breaking out of the shells and were fuzzy little things and their eyes would be closed and they had no feathers yet. Then one day we stopped and mother told us to be very quiet and she would show us how the mother bird fed her babies. The mother bird eats and the regurgitates the food into the mouths of her babies. Mother ate some berries, and put some on her finger and dropped in into the open beaks of the baby birds and they enjoyed eating the blackberries. As she neared the nest they could hear the movement and would start making noises and opened their mouths. I found a photo to show exactly what we saw.


We have a birdbath in a flower bed in the back yard and this summer when we had a drought and it was so hot, we enjoyed watching the birds taking baths in our birdbath. Before we moved to town in 2003, we enjoyed redwing blackbirds (they used to chase the crows), kingfishers, herons, swallows, wrens, quail (we called them Bob Whites), and a variety of owls, as well as the noisy jay birds with the tall combs on their heads.


It was fun watching the mother bird teaching the littles one to fly, often pushing them out of the nest. They would land on the soft ground and were so helpless. After a lot of struggling they would eventually lift their wings and take off, with the mother bird in the background protecting them.

We saw a lot of quail on our farm and they look like little brown chickens. Daddy would bring home quail eggs if the bird had a nest on the ground where he was plowing and would have to destroy the nest. Mother would boil the tiny eggs and we would eat them.

Where we live now once was a wide open field and we have a large variety of birds. My favorite are the pretty bluebirds with bright red breasts. Our bluebird houses were filled this spring and summer. We have a variety of birds migrating through in the spring and summer. But the robins and mockingbirds are with us most all year long. We enjoyed a lot of brown thrashers this year and had to get out the bird book to identify them. I had not seen them here before this year.


Bird watching is a great sport and you can find such a variety at any time of the year, anywhere in the world.

Peanut Picking Time

Peanut stacks in the field

It's hot, dry and very dusty and a lot of the dust is from farmers picking peanuts in this area. It brings back memories when I see the tractors in the field loading peanuts into the big trucks and dust so thick you can hardly see the equipment.

Peanut picking takes place in the fall when the peanuts are mature and ready to be plowed up and today they are mechanically picked and taken to the peanut warehouse to be dried. The peanut picking machine came along after I grew up and left home in the 1950's. I will explain how we harvested peanuts on our farm before modern times.

But I have to tell you that before the peanuts were harvested, we could pull up a few vines, pick the raw peanuts off the vines and boil them in a big black wash pot outdoors. A fire would be built under the pot to boil the peanuts. We would add a lot of table salt to the water to make the boiled peanuts salty to taste. Young people would be invited to a home for a peanut boiling and play party games while they waited for the peanuts to boil (cook). Peanut boilings were very popular in the 1940's and 1950's. Now people go to the grocery store and buy raw peanuts which are ready to be boiled. I think that's cheatin' a bit!  Or better yet, they stop at a roadside stand and buy "boiled peanuts".

Let me begin at the beginning. Daddy would always save a basket of raw peanuts when he gathered them and in the winter, we would have peanut shellings. Families would get together and shell the peanuts and they would be packed away to be planted in March. This is where they got their seed. The peanuts were put into a planter and either planted with mules or later by using a tractor. Some fertilizer was included in the planter with the peanuts. It was the children's job to load the seed peanuts and fertilizer in the planters when they became empty. And to furnish the person doing the planting with water to drink. I always liked planting time because it was warm enough to go barefoot and walk in the soft plowed dirt. During our spare time we would build "frog houses" in the dirt and decorate them. More about games we played in the field in another blog. Maybe I'll build a frog house and take a photo of it so you can see what I am talking about. When the dirt was "broken" or plowed prior to being planted, and after a good rain, we would remove our shoes and go "bogging" to see who could make the largest holes in the ground. I can still feel the dirt squeezing between my toes. What fun!!

Once the peanuts started coming up and filling the rows with little green bushes, the weeds would also start coming up among them. We had to go to the field and "hoe" the peanuts, which meant digging up the grass and weeds and try not to dig up the young peanuts. I really didn't care for this part of the peanut farming. This usually took place in hot weather, June and July.

We would go to the field early in the morning after having had a big country breakfast. But by 10 AM, it would be so hot and humid. We would stop to have lunch at noon and rest a bit under the big pecan trees before heading back to the field around 1 PM. And we would work until the sun went down. We didn't have to work on Saturday or Sunday. Our friends liked to work on our farm with us because my dad would bring us cold drinks from the store and maybe a moon pie or candy bar. And at the end of the hoeing season, he would take us to Pond Creek to go swimming. He knew how to get us to work. We didn't receive any money for working as kids do today. And if he grew cotton, we had to chop the excess cotton plants and hoe the weeds just as we did for the peanuts. I'm glad he wasn't much of a cotton farmer. He preferred peanuts.

Ah, peanut picking time. A large plow was used to lift the peanuts out of the ground, with all the peanuts hanging underneath the vine. The peanuts were covered with soft dirt. The family got involved again and this time we walked behind the plow, lifted the peanut vines (little bushes) and shook the dirt off the peanuts, leaving the peanuts exposed to the sun. You can only imagine what a dirty job that was. Once the peanuts were shook, the men came to the field with a wagon load of poles and slats, and dug holes in the ground, put a tall pole in the hole and filled it with dirt, and then nailed two boards near the botton of the pole with the boards crossing near the pole, like an "x". Then the peanut vines were picked up with pitch forks and placed high on the poles like in the photo at the top of this page. The children would drag the peanuts to the poles for the workers to stack them. We were not allowed to use the dangerous pitch forks.

Once the peanuts were stacked and dried for about 4 weeks, they were ready to be picked. My daddy had the only peanut picker in the area and he kept busy for many weeks, picking his and most of his neighbor's peanuts. The peanuts were separated from the vines as they passed through the picker. The dried sweet vines were baled into square bales with a baling machine that was behind the picker. This hay was taken to the barn to fed to livestock during the winter.

Peanut picking took place in late September and there was always the danger of tropical storms and gales (that's what they called hurricanes back then). Neighbors helped each other and worked day and night if they thought there was going to be bad weather. We didn't have weather radios, TV or any way except the newspaper to know about weather.

After the peanuts were separated from the vines (picked), they were gathered in big tubs and then poured in the back of my daddy's big red truck, and taken to the warehouse to sell. He put the money in the bank and this was what we lived on until the next fall. He found lots of odd jobs to do throughout the year, including lots of bartering.

I have a great respect for peanut farmers and really appreciate peanut butter much more than those who have no idea all that goes into getting it in the grocery store. Of course we made our own peanut butter and peanut brittle.

If you want to learn more about picking peanuts, go to this link, to page 4. I found the photo used above of stacked peanuts on page 2 of this website: www.rootsweb.com/~ncbertie/peanut.htm

The 22nd Curtis School Reunion was today

The Curtis school reunion was held today and approximately 100 attended. It was a beautiful fall day - not too hot and there were no lovebugs flying about today. The food tables were filled with delicious homemade dishes including fried chicken, chicken and dressing, vegatables, salads, and dozens of desserts. Plenty of sweet tea, as well as unsweetened tea, lemonade, and other drinks. People started arriving at 10 A.M., coming from FL, GA, north AL, and even Michigan.

Pictured here are two of our older alumni, Jimmie Lou Cowen and Dot Daniels. Jimmie Lou, soon be be 89, and Enoch Cowen(deceased) had 10 children and all of them went to Curtis School. Dot and her deceased husband Dick (one of our school bus drivers 

Dot (88) and Dick Daniels(deceased) had twins, Judy and Jim, and two other sons, Fred and Frank. Judy came from Scottsboro for the reunion today. Her twin Jim came to the reunion

also.



These are some of my classmates at Curtis. There were 18 in my graduating class (Jr High) and 9 were at the reunion today. Several are deceased. Most of us are 73 now.

Pictured, L to R: Fannie Lou Jacobs Cowen, Floyd Griffin, Sally Prescott Mitchell, Janice Cowen Hudson, Ralph Crocker, Nell Wilson Gilmer, Herschel Archie, and Mae Evely Grimes Hildreth. Not pictured: Marion (Junior) Anderson.

We all remained at the church after the reunion was over and visited for about an hour. In previous years we met on Sat. night but we're all getting older and those who live out of town don't like driving back home late at night. Ralph Crocker invited us to his new home next year for our get together after the reunion. Ralph, Janice and I are so busy with reunion duties that we don't get to visit with our classmates during the reunion. Each year we think the crowds will get smaller and smaller but they don't!

Anatomy of a country school - what was inside

Here I am in the 3rd grade at Curtis School. Miss Mollie Bell Cook was my teacher most of that year. Mrs. Doris Pickard finished out the year when Miss Cook moved.


I entered the new school at Curtis when I was in the 2nd grade. I remember being afraid that I would get lost and not be able to find my room. I would love to write about my second grade but will spend time today telling you all about the new Curtis school.

We rode a school bus to school. My bus driver was Mr. Grafton Young. He owned his own school bus. Upon entering the school at the tall front steps, you stepped into a large foyer. On the left was the principal's office. He didn't have a secretary or telephone. Just a large desk and some chairs. The closet in his office was always stacked high with things for school use. Later his office was used for a classroom when the 3rd grade classroom became the lunch room. On the right side of the foyer was the teachers' lounge and music room. There was a piano in the room and this is were we would go to practice during lunchtime when the teachers were not there. And Mrs. Ringsdorf taught piano lessons here when she wasn't teaching 7th grade history and some other subjects. This was a special room and you always knocked before entering. Mr. Griffin's door was always open. You still knocked to get permission to enter.


You went to your classroom after entering the building. We did most of our homework at school so we didn't have big bookbags to carry around. When I was in the 3rd grade, we had to bring our lunches. The lunch room wasn't built until I was in the 4th or 5th grade. They used the 3rd grade room for the lunch room. The students all had to bring their own plate, glass and silver for the lunch room. I guess there was no money in the beginning to buy those. My daddy helped build tables and benches. We had 2 cooks and they used student helpers during lunchtime to help serve, clean up, wash dishes, etc. The food was good most of the time.


We had outdoor toilets at the back of the school yard when the new school opened. We didn't have indoor restrooms until I was in the 5th grade. I don't know why they waited so long unless building supplies were scarce due to the WWII going on.


Our class rooms were large and plenty of windows for lighting. A big pot-bellied stove was at the front of the room and the boys took turns keeping the stove filled with wood. We had a janitor that came early every morning and started fires in all the stoves. There was a big closet at the front of the room behind the blackboard and teacher's desk. It was called the "cloak room" and this is where we placed our lunches on a shelf over the coat racks. I remember in the 3rd grade that we had a long sand table at the back of the room where we could go after we finished our work and play. We cut buildings, etc. from paper and made a city, with streets, houses, etc and this was placed on the sand table. At Christmas time that year, we were making presents for our mothers and painting privet hedge berries red by dipping them in a pail of water that had red paint floating on top of the water. We put some silver paint in another bucket of water to dip cedar branches. We had painted a gourd green and cut the top of the gourd to use as an opening to put the red berries and some silver cedar into the gourd. Someone knocked over the red paint beside where I was working and it went down the front of my new dress. I had to stay in the cloakroom while the teacher took my dress to try to remove the paint. She found something for me to wear home. And I never got to wear my favorite dress again. We didn't wear pants to school until I was in the 8th or 9th grade, and we started wearing blue jeans.


Every Friday morning we marched single file to the auditorium in the middle of the school for "chapel". Each week a different grade was in charge. We sang songs, had a Bible reading and prayer, and then we usually had a play.


We had recess in the morning and again in the afternoon after lunch. We all ran outside to play while the teachers retired to the lounge to have a cold drink. There was no organized P.E. - just free play. Different age groups played together sometimes. Jacks were a favorite game of the younger girls. Or jump rope, hopscotch, throw the can, hide and seek, Red Rover, and many other games of the day. I don't remember the teachers ever coming out to check on us. When the bell rang, we all came inside to our classrooms.


After we ate our lunches, our scraps were put into a large can and someone would take them outside to give to Curtis, the big hog that was in a pen behind the school. I guess they sold him when he was fat enough and got another one to fatten. We didn't have garbage pickup so this was a good way to dispose of left overs.


I loved going to school and never wanted to miss a day. I remember that I couldn't wait to get to the 4th grade so I could be a 4-H club member, and  to own my own books. The state didn't provide books past the 3rd grade. We  picked cotton and bought books from students promoted to the next grade.


These are my memories of being in the 3rd grade and some of our activities, and what our school was like.

School Memories - 6th grade

Click to enlarge photo
5th and 6th grade classes at Curtis School, 1946
I am on 2nd row from top, in front of the principal, Mr. E. C. Griffin
My teacher, Miss Arvie D. Fuller, is on back row, 4th from the left

I thought about which year I wanted to write about and I selected the 6th grade. My teacher was Miss Arvie D. Fuller from Elba. I learned so much from her. First of all, she instilled in us a desire to learn about a lot of things. The first thing we did every morning was have a devotional time and a student could select a Bible passage and read it. Then we would say the Lord's prayer. Then we said the Pledge of Allegience. We would go to the teacher's desk and turn in our lunch money unless we paid by the week. My dad furnished the lunchroom with milk, vegetables, wood for the furnace, etc. so I almost never had to pay for my lunch as there was always credit.

I remember that we had to draw maps of North and South America and label the countries. We had to put in the states and capitals for the United States. I can close my eyes and visually recount all of the states and remember the capitals. We colored the maps (on poster board) and I kept mine for many years. I had to help several of the boys fill in the states. Some of the maps were really wierd. All we had to go by was a small map in our geography book. We had to each bring 5 cents to pay for the poster board which our teacher bought in Elba for us. We shared the crayons.

Miss Fuller was a great English teacher. She taught us the parts of speech and we would go to the board and diagram sentences. I loved doing this. It was so helpful in learning about adjectives and adverbs. We learned to write. She let me write a play and we performed it for "chapel" one Friday. It was about Doctor Doolittle and I made the costumes for the animals (heads only). I directed the play and that was exciting.

One thing I will always remember was our Easter egg hunt. She took us to some woods nearby for a picnic and egg hunt. She wore her black crepe dress or suit (she wore black every day) along with stockings and "old lady" shoes with a small heel. Her hair was light auburn and she wore it short and it was always frizzy. She was a large lady and not very attractive, but we all loved her. She led the way to the woods and there were probably 20 or more students marching along behind her, carrying our lunches and we each brought 3 dyed eggs from home. I can't remember who hid the eggs for us (probably some older students came and did that). We got hot walking to the woods, so she let us go to a creek and splash our faces with water to cool off. I spyed a tree filled with pretty white flowers and decided to pick some to take home with me when we were ready to leave. After hunting the eggs, we sat down on the grass to eat our lunch - and the Easter eggs. We saw a large black snake nearby trashing about and the teacher saw that he was swallowing a bird, alive. She told us to sit still and she found a stick and killed the snake. Then she did something I'll never forget. She found a piece of glass (we were at an old homesite) and she took that piece of glass and opened the belly of the snake, and the bird escaped and flew away!!! What a brave lady. Before we left to walk back to school, I got permission to pick a bouquet of the pretty flowers to take to my mother. Guess what! It was a plant called thunderwood and was poisonous. Soon I began to itch. I had to throw the flowers away and I had a terrible rash for several days.

For Christmas that year, she gave each of us a new toothbrush and we were so happy to get them. We made all the decorations for the cedar Christmas tree in our room. We had a Christmas play with a manger scene and sang Christmas carols. When we finished our desk work, we were allowed to go to the back of the room where there were some new library books and choose a book to read. I read every book on the shelves that year and some I read twice.

The 6th grade always had a graduation exercise and we were promoted to Jr High School. We had to wear white dresses and my mother made mine from one of her sister's dresses. It was so pretty, made of white dotted swiss and starched stiff. I was selected valedictorian of my class and had to give a speech. Our graduation was in the daytime and parents and grandparents were invited to attend. Only my mother came from my family and she brought my baby sisters Alice(8 mo.) and Judy (2). The Jr. High 9th grade graduated the same day, but in the evening.

I never saw Miss Fuller after I left Curtis and often wondered what happened to her. When our son James was born in 1956 in Opp hospital, they put me in a room with an older lady from Elba and it was none other than Miss Arvie D Fuller - my 6th grade teacher that I loved! She was recovering from minor surgery. We had so much to talk about.

Curtis School Reunion Coming Up

Drawing of Curtis School as Carolyn Wilson Johnson remembers it

This Saturday, October 13, alumni of Curtis School which was located 8 miles from Opp and 8 miles from Elba, AL, will gather for the 22nd reunion. Some of the older alumni wanted to have a school reunion in the 1980's and my aunt Mattie Lena talked me into organizing one. I was living in Winston-Salem, NC and had helped with my Elba High School 30th reunion and my aunt said I was "experienced" and knew what to do. I contacted one of my classmates from Curtis School, Janice Cowen Hudson, and she said she would help. Thus the Curtis reunion was "born". The school closed in 1967 and students started attending school in surrounding towns, mostly at Elba. A few years later the school burned, along with records of the school that had been left in the building.

An Alabama Historical sign was purchased with donations and installed at the site of the old building where the Coffee Co. Farmers Cooperative store is now located. When I was trying to get the historical sign approved, I was asked if there were any outstanding alumni from the school in order for them to approve the historical marker. I replied that there were so many that there wouldn't be room to list them all! So they used the narrative I sent, listing principals and date school opened, etc.

HISTORY OF CURTIS SCHOOL

The site of the first Curtis School is where New Ebenezer Baptist Church now stands on Highway 141 South, Elba (Curtis Community). The Coffee County courthouse discarded all records pertaining to Curtis School, therefore the exact date of organization cannot be determined. Interviews with some older residents indicate 1900.

Mrs. Lucy Grimes Donaldson, born in Nov. 1893, and interviewed just a few years ago, stated that she first attended school at the Foley Schoolhouse which was a one room school located about 2 ½ miles west of Curtis, on what is now Hwy. 84. The land was donated by William (Bill) Foley, and is now owned by Mrs. Enoch (Jimmie Lou) Cowen.
About 2 years after Miss Lucy started to school, Foley School disbanded and a new building was erected near the present site of New Ebenezer Baptist Church. It was named Curtis School. This was in the early 1900’s. There were other small schools in the vicinity; Mt. Zion, Danley’s Cross Roads and Rhodes School.

An increase in population required a larger, more centralized building. Mt. Zion, Rhodes and Curtis schools consolidated in 1926 and a building was erected at the present site of the Coffee Co. Farmers Cooperative, commonly called Curtis Coop. Danley’s Cross Roads school joined them in 1931.

Before the schools were consolidated, students walked to and from school. This was usually the highlight of the day. Friends were made, disputes of the day were settled and sometimes fights broke out along the way.

After consolidation, busses were provided to transport the students. The busses were owned by the individuals who drove them. Some of these were: Jim Cowen, Arthur Johnson, J. C. Jones, Grafton Young, Mixon Young, and Dick and Dot Daniels.

The school closed for a short time during the depression despite the efforts of parents and teachers. The teachers taught without pay and some families provided free board for the teachers.

In 1940 the building was destroyed by fire. It was rebuilt in the same location, and school resumed operations in the new building sometime in l941. During the construction of the new building, students attended school in surrounding churches. Grades 1, 2, and 3 used New Ebenezer Baptist Church; grades 4, 5, and 6 used the Church of Christ building at Danley’s Cross Roads; and, grades 7, 8, and 9 used the Bethany Primitive Baptist Church building located on Hwy 166, about 1 mile east of Danley’s Cross Roads.
The new school building was completed in time for the 1941-42 school term, but had no indoor plumbing or lunchroom facilities. Indoor plumbing was installed about 1944. During the school year of 1945-46, a lunchroom was established. Some of the

first cooks wereLena (Mose) Grimes, Bonnie Taylor, and Buna Daniels. Other cooks were Sallie Jacobs, Jessie Lee Donaldson, Fannie Foley, and Cora Donaldson.

The school also had music teachers during the 1940’s and 1950’s. Mrs. Mary Ringsdorf was the first teacher, then Mrs. Lena (Mose) Grimes.

Curtis School always had a good basketball team and good coaches. Mr. E. C. Griffin was coach and also principal. He held this position until the school closed. When the school first consolidated, there was also a girls basketball team and on Friday afternoons, they played other area schools. The smaller children looked forward to this.

The teachers worked hard for minimal pay during those years, and for that we owe our gratitude. They not only helped to educate us, but instilled character-building values. Some of those teachers were: John Grimes, Miss Maude Byrd, Viola Byrd, Lucille Campbell, Tex Kilpartick, Hazel Grimes Lee, Lena Grimes, Doris Pinckard, Jean Lee Johnson, Hilda Lunsford, Mary Ringsforf, Frances Taylor, Jean Meacham, Cammie Ballard Johnson, Arvie D. Fuller, Ora Kelley, Mae Morris, Syble Wise, Evelyn Hocutt, and others. The principals who served were: C. H. Byrd, J. E. Cheatam, Dan B. Nelson, F. T. Walton, R. L. Farris, and E. C. Griffin.

Father time took its toll on Curtis Junior High School, as it did many other country schools. The rural population slowly shifted to the cities and small towns where the factories, mills and other industries offered employment for the parents. Farming had become mechanized and many of the farm workers were no longer needed. Modern transportation provided students the opportunity to attend larger, more progressive schools. All of this meant too few students left
in the country schools.

Curtis Junior High School closed at the end of the 1966-67 school term. It was indeed a sad day. A few years later, the building was destroyed by fire completely erasing all visible evidence of the school. Nothing can erase the memories in the hearts and minds of the men and women who attended school at Curtis.

The land on which the building previously stood, was purchased by Charles Cowen in 1974 who erected the present building and established Curtis Seed and Feed business. Cowen sold the business to Coffee County Farmers Cooperative in 1978.
(This article was researched and compiled by: Jimmie Lou Smith Cowen and her daughters, Janice Cowen Hudson and Mary Cowen Flagg, for a previous Curtis reunion.)

Sugar Cane and Syrup-Soppin' tales

Today a friend told me they were going to a "Syrup-Sopping Festival" near Auburn next week-end. My, how the memories start coming back to me about syrup making days on the farm.
                                              
My dad always had a cane patch at the edge of the field. We had to help plant the cane, which was cut in short lengths, and then laid end to end in a trench and covered with soil. In the fall, several stalks of cane had been placed in a hole dug in the ground and covered with pine straw and sand to keep the cane from freezing in the winter. Little green shoots would come up and become cane stalks during the summer. I copied a photo from the internet to show a cane field.


Around Thanksgiving time, and often on Thanksgiving day, we went to the cane field to "strip" the cane. I really dreaded this chore because I was short and the cane leaves had sharp edges and would always cut my arms and face as we walked thru the field, stripping the leaves off the stalks of cane with sharp knives. Daddy would come along and cut the stalks, then chopping off the top leaves and stack the cane in a big pile to be picked up later and taken to the cane mill near "the spring". That part I always enjoyed - picking up the cane stalks and feeding them through a machine to squeeze out the juice. We loved drinking the foamy cane juice, especially after it was chilled. Many people used mules to turn the cogs on the press to squeeze out the juice. Our dad was a good inventor and he rigged up a gasoline motor to turn the wheels on the press. In later years he hooked up his tractor with a belt to the cog machine.


The juice followed a sluice from the machine to the vat where it was filtered through a piece of burlap before going into the syrup pan to be heated. The material collected in the filter was dumped into a large wooden barrel called the "Pummings" barrel. This was collected for several days during syrup making (daddy make syrup for all the neighbors). After a couple of warm days, it started fermenting and was covered with honey bees. One day we went to the area where the cane mill was located to milk the cows nearby at the cowpen, and the hogs were rolling all over the place and squealing and acting funny. They were drunk!! They had gotten into the pummings barrel. They started chasing my granddaddy and one actually bit him and he had to go to the doctor.
While the cane juice was cooking for 4 or 5 hours, a large dipper was used to skim the foam off the top. When it became dark syrup, daddy would remove the "stopper" at the end of the vat and fill tin buckets with the thick syrup. It was so good on cold winter mornings, and we ate it with hot buttered biscuits, sausage, and I really like pouring it over salmon patties (which I still do today). We would put a hole in the side of a biscuit, add a little butter, and fill the hole with syrup and this was a delicious snack when we came home from school. I must show my granddaughters how to make "syrup and biscuits" when we get together again. It's difficult to find pure cane syrup anymore. And when you do, it's very expensive. The empty syrup buckets were put to good use. Many were used as lunch buckets for school. They came in handy for picking blackberries and huckleberries. After a few months they would start to rust and new ones would have to be bought for the next syrup making.


When we retired and moved to the farm in 1996, the old syrup cooking vat was still there and we cleared away the vines, etc. to expose the brick fireplace where the vat sat on top. The old fire grates were still inside the brick structure, and the old metal chimney rusty so it was taken down. The metal pan had rusted and fallen apart so we removed the remnants and made a flower bed inside the structure. I'll post a photo when I can locate one in my collection.

The cane mill was sold to my Cousin Coleman Redmond when my father died. He set it up near his home and every fall would grind cane and make some cane juice. He gave us some and I liked it but Jim had a hard time trying to drink it. Maybe it's because he never had any as a child and it wasn't a special treat for him. I'll admit it didn't look very appetizing!

People I've met along the way

In July, 1984, I went to Los Angeles to attend the American Home Economics annual meeting as a delegate from NC. I took some extra time to tour Disneyland, Universal Studios, Knotts Berry Farm and some other sights. It was Donald Duck's 50th birthday and also mine in 1984. I had my photo made with Donald for James. Right away he wanted to go to the "real" Disneyworld. He had been to the one in Florida but knew there was one in Calif. long before there was on in FL. Later we took him to Disneyland and that is another story for another time.

On a VIP tour of Universal Studios, we were taken "behind the scenes" and got to see things and people the public doesn't normally get to see. We were traveling in a trolley when we stopped for traffic and guess who was walking to the studio right beside our trolley. None other than Arnold (from Different Strokes TV show) and his pal Michael Jackson. They were on their way for Arnold to tape one of his programs. I had seen Arnold on his TV show but I had no idea who this Michael Jackson fellow was. That is until I showed James this photo, and he said, "Michael Jackson!"This was before he became well known. We were told by our tour leader that Michael and Arnold were best friends.

While living in Haleyville in 1986, I was a Chairperson of a national committee and attended the Amer. Home Economics annual meeting in Kansas City, KS. Senator Nancy Kassebaum sat at our table at a luncheon one day. I had lived in Kansas in the 1950's and enjoyed talking to her. She was at the meeting to speak on behalf of the Equal Rights Admendment. She was the first woman to be elected to the US Senate without succeeding her husband into the job. She was a Kansas Republican Senator for three terms. She told me that her father, Kansas Gov. Alfred Langdon, ran for Pres. against Franklin Roosevelt and was badly beaten. He was proud of her for winning her senate seat. After graduating from college and working awhile at Hallmark as a receptionist, she stayed at home and lived on their farm and raised her children. Then she decided to enter politics and she separated from her husband and left Kansas and took the kids to Washington, DC. I was fascinated with her ambition. I have followed her political life with great interest since that day. She later married Howard Baker and is now Nancy Langdon Kassebaum Baker. She left the senate in 1997. She is only 2 years older than I.

On being the first grandchild

I was the first grandchild for both sets of grandparents. I was born at home on November 25, 1934 in the Curtis community between Elba and Opp, AL. My parents were living in a small frame house next door to his parents. Not long after I was born, we moved in with Mama and Papa Wilson.

They then rented the frame house to sharecroppers who helped on the farm. One family was the Stewarts, parents of Alberta Martin, the last surviving confederate widow, who is buried with her parents at New Ebenezer Baptist Church (Curtis) cemetery. Her father played the fiddle. I don't remember them living there. I just remember people living there but don't know much about them. When I was around 10 years old, the house was torn down and my father built a sawmill on the site.

My dad was one of the few people in our area who owned a car. He was a good mechanic and kept all the neighbors cars running. When I was a baby, I was told that he and mother would put me in the car and ride around in the evenings when it was so hot, so I would go to sleep. The roads were not paved so it must have not been a very smooth ride.

My mother was one of the oldest in her family so she had lots of siblings at home when she got married. The younger ones were very jealous of me (they told me this). They did not want their mother (Mama Smith) to leave home to help take care of my mother and me when I was born. My Aunt Ida, was was 15 when I was born, tells me that she had to prepare Thanksgiving dinner when I was born and she didn't really know how to cook. Mama Smith was not a good cook and didn't teach her daughters how to cook either.

I was not the only grandchild for very long since Christine was born on Christmas Day, 1936. Eventually there were 6 girls and 1 boy in our family, with the boy in the middle. I ended up with 25 first cousins and I was #1 (the oldest that is)!!

My First Christmas Memory - 1937

Nell and 1-year-old Christine - Dec 1937

When I was 3 years old, I received a "Little Mother's Laundry Set" and I remember that so well. I remember setting up the little folding ironing board and mother heating the little tin iron (I wonder what kept it from melting) and I would iron and iron. And we considered that fun? There was a clothes line and some little wooden clothes pins in the box and mother would tie the clothes line between some posts so I could hang out my "laundry". Kids would not be happy receiving an ironing board and iron in these modern times!

We were living in this big house with my paternal grandparents. The two big arborvitae bushes (evergreens) at the edge of the doorsteps were also useful when ironing. Mother would break off the end of a limb about the size of her hand and place it near the end of the ironing board to smooth her hot iron when the starch started sticking to it. She would place the iron on the greenery and I can still remember the

fragrant odor from the hot evergreen limb. These irons were very hot when she would take them off the stove or from in front of the fire in the fireplace. They were called "sad irons". One meaning of sad in nineteenth century dictionaries was "heavy." Although many of these irons were small, they were very heavy. Thus the name "sad irons'. I used to think they were called "sad irons" because people were sad to have to iron! So you can see my fascination with owning my own iron and ironing board! I was mother's little helper.

My mother's ironing board was a board about 12 inches wide and about 5 feet long, tapered at one end and wrapped with an old sheet for the ironing board cover. She placed the board between two ladder-back chairs or placed one end on a table and the other end on the back of the chair. She would lower the ironing board for us to use as we got old enough to handle the hot iron. We used a folded cloth to hold the red hot handle. Some irons had wooden handles but they were more expensive. I always burned my hand or arm when I had to iron. I DID NOT like to iron when I got older and this chore was assigned to me. I was the oldest of 7 so I had to do a lot of ironing. We didn't get electricity (REA) until I was in the third grade. And much later we got an electric iron.

Probably that red wagon was a Christmas gift also. We always had a red wagon around when I was growing up, but never got one with wooden "sides" on it - and I always wanted one of those. I guess they were too expensive. Looking back at the photo, those shoes I was wearing had buttons for the straps, not buckles. I remember how hard they were to fasten and I was glad when my new shoes were not "high tops" and had buckles, not buttons. When I was 4 or 5 I got some black patent leather Mary Jane's and I loved my new shoes. We would use a left-over biscuit to "shine" our patent leather shoes (I guess all the fat in the biscuit made the shoes shiny).

Riding an elephant

I had always wanted to ride an elephant (loved Rudyard Kipling's Jungle stories) and I got my wish in the summer of 1982 at the Cincinnati Zoo. I was attending the American Home Economics Association annual meeting and one evening we were treated to a picnic at the zoo.

Zookeepers were on hand to answer questions and to give tours. I saw the elephant and asked if I could have a ride. For some reason, there wasn't a line formed for this ride. I wonder why?  You climed up the steps and the elephant handler moves the elephant near the steps. Then you sorta jump up to get on the elephant seat. It's a little tricky with the rail around the seat. It is much easier to get on than to get off! My legs are so short that once seated, they stuck out on the elephant's sides. I felt very awkward. The trainer took the rope and led me all over the Cincinnati zoo - what a view from up high. We were going along and the elephant stopped and was looking around. I was so scared. I didn't know what he might do. He saw a pool of water and decided to walk over and get a drink. I just knew I would roll over the top of his head and fall in the pool when he leaned over to get a drink of water. Fortunately the seat was fastened to his back and I held on as tight as I could to keep from falling off.

I decided to pat the elephant's head and found the little hairs on top of his head were like thin steel spikes sticking up.


I got a lot of stares from the people in the park. Except for being a little nervous, I had fun and it was a new experience for me.


I drove from Winston-Salem, NC to Cincinnati, traveling along the Ohio River for a long way. The scenic drive was beautiful. I came home via interstate highways and that was a little boring.
I was an officer in the NC Home Economics Association and a delegate from NC to the AHEA annual meeting. Another highlight of the meeting was a dinner cruise on a big steamship on the Ohio river going northwest from Cincinnati. I remember the beautiful sunset over the high cliffs along the river. And the good German food we had that night, and German band.