Early Memories in Rural Coffee Co (continued) - Part 2

This is the 2nd part of the Early Memories of Mrs. Averett from Enterprise, AL:


DINNERTIME
In Alabama back then, dinnertime was at noon. Mama went to the garden early in the morning and would have those vegetables in the iron pots, socked down next to the fire in the wood stove boiling away until about 11:30. Then, she would put on the hoe cake bread before going out and ringing the big dinner bell hoisted on top of a high pole to call Papa in from the field.


Now, Papa took out time at least until one o'clock, to eat dinner and to let the mules eat also.
As soon as he ate, he got his daily newspaper or his weekly papers, the Southern Star, or his
Progressive Farmer,  and read awhile before going back to the fields.


FAMILY CHORES
Everybody in the family had chores. Mama had eczema on her hands and didn't need to have
them in water too much so the daughters took over. Two daughters washed and dried the dishes, twodaughters milked the cows, two more cooked the bread for supper and set the table. In the morning, each of the girls made up beds, swept the floors with the broom-straw brooms, being sure to sweep under the beds. If there was a new baby, one girl rocked the baby in the cradle. That was one chore I really hated. When 1had to rock the baby, I would lie down on the floor and rock the cradle with my foot. Another chore I hated was churning. Papa always kept two or three good milk cows. In the summer, the milk was put into a large container and let down into the open water well to keep it cool. At other times, the milk would be placed into large pans and put into the kitchen safe with screen doors. By noon, the cream would have risen to the top and it was then skimmed off. Mama and Papa drank the
skimmed milk. The cream and the remaining milk were mixed with the warm night's milk and placed in the large churn and left overnight to clabber. If it was cold weather, the chum of milk was placed near the fireplace to make the milk sour quicker. The next day, the clabbered milk was churned by a dasher on a chum stick stuck through a hole in the chum lid. My arm would get so tired going up and down, up and down, but the reward was the good buttermilk which we children enjoyed every meal.  We mashed up the good yellow butter in syrup to eat with Mama's hot biscuits at breakfast.


One happy day, this churning chore came to and end. One of Papa's cousins from Enterprise
carne-and sold Papa on the idea of buying an electric plant. The plant was a gasoline-operated dynamo which produced electricity. The electricity was stored in large batteries which we kept in a specially built little house in the back yard. Then we had electric lights in every room in the house, one line hanging down from the ceiling with a light bulb turned on and offby hand. But the great news was the Papa bought an electric chum with metal dashers that went up and down.


HOME CONVENIENCES
We had an open well with a windlass and rope to let the bucket down into the well. The
windlass had a crank which unwound the rope as the bucket went down. We carried the water to the house in buckets. On the front porch, there was a shelf on which we kept the water bucket with a dipper in it. Everyone who wanted a drink used the same dipper. That shelf had a hole in it for the washbowl to sit so it would be steady when we washed. Nobody would even think of going in to eat without washing our face and hands. There was a flour sack towel hanging near the basin for drying. For the kitchen, we had a metal wash pan for the same king of washing, but at least once a week, usually on Saturday, we got our all-over bath in a wash tub. Every night, no one dared to go to bed without washing our feet.


As for an indoor toilet, the only one we had ever seen was once when we visited Grandpa and
Grandma Byrd in Ozark. They had one. We flushed that thing until I know Grandpa's water bill went sky high. Then rented that house from the Holmans, and in later years, one of the Holman sons told me a funny story about when they put the toilet in. When the plumbers came to the house to install the  commode, Grandma Byrd called Grandpa in town and said, "Curtis, come home. They are fixing to put the toilet in the house." It was a big event. Out at our house, we had what we called a "backy." I never knew why, but it must have been because it was so far back of the house we lived in. Inside the backy, we kept the Sears catalog and not for making an order or looking at the pictures. Sometimes, Mama put in a bag filled with small soft pieces of rags and a box of cobs from the com crib after Papa had shelled some com to take to the mill. Cobs that had been left in the trough when the mules had eaten the com were hard, but the shelled com cobs were soft.

ANIMAL FEED
Papa always had a good supply of corn in the com crib to be used for food for the family and
for the animals. He had a hand com sheller which was used to shell a large bag of com to be carried to Thrower's Mill for grinding into com meal. The mill was operated by water from a mill pond which turned the big rocks that crushed the com. The miller was never paid with cash but was given a toll of the meal for the grinding.


For cow feed, Papa carried com, hay, and velvet beans to a crusher and had it ground up
together. For the chickens, a bucketful of shelled com was thrown out and scattered over the chicken yard every evening. For the dogs, Papa made up two thick hoe cakes of com bread and cooked it on the back burners of the wood stove while Mama cooked breakfast. Then, he broke the bread into pieces and placed it into a large pan of buttermilk. His dogs, never, never got a store-bought meal. The cats ate the leftovers from the table.


PASTIMES
Papa always kept several fox hounds. He also kept Henry Steagall's dogs for him while the
representative was in Washington. When Congressman Steagall came home to Ozark, he and Papa went fox hunting with other friends. I went with Papa one night to fox hunt, but I could never become excited over hearing the dogs barking out there. One time was enough for me.
Mama enjoyed fishing in the creeks and branches close to our house. She had her own worm
bed and she had a catalpa tree which produced nice green fat worms that bream couldn't resist. She made a cushion to sit on at the fishing hole. It was a large croker sack filled with shucks and it served its purpose. It kept her seat dry. You talk about patience! She might sit there waiting for a bite for half a day and come home with three or four little perch or catfish. 


But, it was free and she thought it was good recreation. Every member of the family had some form of recreation. For the teenagers, we often planned parties either in our house or in homes of our friends. At these parties, we played parlor games like musical chairs. What we would do is line up two rows of chairs back to back and everyone marched around the chairs single file while music was played on the Victrola or the organ. When the music
stopped, everyone tried to sit down but there was one who couldn't find a chair, and that person was "out." Another chair was removed and this went on until there were only two left and one chair.


Then, we sometimes had a candy-drawing. Several boxes of stick candy of different colors were placed into a large box with a hole in the top. A boy and a girl would each put a hand through the hold and draw out a stick of candy. If the two sticks were alike, they could draw again until they drew two sticks of different colors. Then, another couple could draw.


During the winter months, we sometimes attended peanut shellings. The farmers had to have
their peanuts shelled by hand. Couples would shell peanuts from a large pan which they held together. After the work was finished, we would have a candy drawing, or cake and ice cream might be served. 


Sometimes, we played "hide and whoop," a game the city children called "hide and seek." One
child was the hunter. The child would close his eyes and wait until a "whoop" was heard. That meant that everyone was hidden. The first one found had to the hunter the next time.


To be continued....