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).