I was cleaning up the kitchen
just now and got to thinking about my grandmother. All us cousins called her “Mom”
because that’s what our parents called her. Our grandfather was “Pop”.
I came along as about the fifth
grandchild out of about twelve and Mom and Pop were getting older. We saw their
waning days, but I was there soon enough to get a glimpse of her normal life. I
spent several summers with them after my mother left home. Two families worth
of cousins lived close by and sometimes another “city cousin” would be there
with us too.
Charlene is washing clothes right
now and it pretty much takes all day, but she is using a washing machine and at
this moment she is addressing thank you notes while the clothes wash in another
room. Mom had no such machine. Her’s was a full day of hand washing everybody’s
clothes.
She provided all the vegetables for
all the meals from her sizable garden beside the house. Pop may have plowed it
for her with the old human powered push plow they had, but after that, it was
Mom’s garden. She planted and weeded, chased off the rabbits and harvested it.
Then she shelled the peas and beans and shucked the corn.
If we were going to have chicken
dinner on Sunday it started with chasing down the free-range chicken in the big
chicken pen behind the house. This was before anyone ever thought about keeping
them all in cages. After the chicken was caught, she wrung its neck and dipped
it in hot water to loosen the feathers a bit before she plucked them. Then she
cut it up in such a way that there was always a “pully bone” for the kids. Some
people called it a wish bone. You won’t see one today because the machine
cutters cut it in half, but it was the best piece of meat on the chicken and
left you with a bone two kids could pull on to see who got the longer piece.
The child with the longest piece had their wish come true. And you never
revealed your wish because it wouldn’t come true if you did. If you want to cut
a chicken up that way, see me. I can show you how.
Mom had an old treadle sewing machine.
That’s the kind where you had to pump it with your feet for it to sew. One
summer she put me to making pillow cases out of worn out sheets.
If Mom ever needed to use the “restroom”
it meant walking out to the chicken pen, turning right by the grape vines and
going to the old out house. The guys only had to go out there to do #2. They
could do #1 off the end of the wrap around porch. The ladies weren’t so fortunate.
To get water, whether for washing
or cooking, she stepped out the back door and lowered the tube into the well.
It wasn’t a bucket; it was a long skinny tube that would go down empty and come
back up full. Mom would then hold it over a bucket and pull the handle on top
to release the water. Saturday night was bath night and it took several trips to
the well to get enough water for the wash tub we all used. I don’t believe the
water was changed between baths.
On Sunday morning Mom taught all
the ladies on the left side of the auditorium while Pop taught the men on the
right. The little kids got their lesson in the back on the right side. The
pre-teens were in one of the two classrooms and the teens in the other. Once a
month, on what was called "Preacher Sunday", there would be a preacher, usually one of the students from Freed-Hardeman
College.
In the winter there was one coal
burning stove in the house. It was in Mom and Pop’s bedroom. That’s were we all
gathered in the evening. We would listen to the St. Louis Cardinals baseball
team on Pop’s old radio and talk. Sometimes we kids would play a card game like
Old Maid. There was one set of cards that had former presidents on them. I don’t
remember how that one went. At bedtime we would all go off to the one big, very
cold bed in the next room. It was just like John Denver’s “Grandma’s Feather
Bed.”
Mom’s life was not an easy one,
but I never heard her complain. She made the best fried chicken and chocolate
pie in seven counties. No one ever called her a “housewife” or put her down.
Those ideas were after her time. I don’t think she ever knew how special she
was. I plan to see her again someday so I can tell her.
