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got in that bathing suit, it would really
itch!
Uncle Jim, Aunt Ina’s husband,
was a Merchant Marine, and he got a
job with Standard Oil Company on a
ship, so Aunt Ina and Orvelle moved
up from Jacksonville to live with us.
Orvelle was in the 10th grade at that
time and used to take me and Dan to
school.
Aunt Ina did most of the cooking,
cleaning, and chores at our house. I
slept in the bed with her and Orvelle
back in those days. In the winter
time, Aunt Ina would get up before
sunrise and get the fire going. She
would have the kindling ready the
night before. As soon as she would
hop out of the bed, I would roll over
into her warm spot. She would get
the wood stove going and cook a huge
breakfast every morning – grits, for
sure, a stack of biscuits, ham, bacon,
coffee. In the winter time, Mother
would put hot oatmeal in a glass with
milk and sugar, and it was like a thick
milkshake. “Deeelicious.”
Daddy bought a 32-volt DC Delco
generator that provided electric
lights. They were sold for farms and
a lot of houses in town that didn’t
have electricity. We had a light
hanging down in each room. Often
the Delco would quit running, and
the lights would dim and slowly go
completely out. Orvelle had a party
once with friends from Lyons, but
the electricity would barely work.
One of the farmworkers came and
cranked on that thing half the night
to keep it going for the party. He’d
crank on it, and they’d brighten up,
and then they’d go dim again, and he
would crank on it some more.
Not long after, Daddy got a well
pump that ran off of the Delco. The
pump was down in a 6’ deep pit to
raise the water up out of the well.
There was a tank about 30’ up in
the air right by the pit, and that
was our waterworks. Daddy turned
a closet into a bathroom. There
was no commode at the time, just
a bathtub. The tub was there the
whole time on the back porch by the
well. Someone would draw water
from the well and pour it into the tub
for your bath. I didn’t remember any
grown ups taking a bath, so one time
I asked Mother how they took baths,
and she told me they just had to wait
until night, and they didn’t take baths
much in the winter.
In those days, the County Agent
would travel around helping and
advising the farmers, and they also
had a photographer that would take
pictures of what the farmers were
doing. On one particular rainy day,
Dan, who was eating a biscuit, and I
were sitting on the porch watching
the hogs being butchered, and the
photographer told us to come and
get in the picture. The photographer
pulled the black hood over his head
and the camera and took the picture.
The hog killing was an annual affair,
and everyone got involved. Every
part of the hog was used – everything
that didn’t go anywhere else went
into the sausage, and I loved it! They
would cook the fat down in a big pot
and get all the grease cooked out of
it. The grease was the lard, and what
was left was the cracklin’. It was like
popcorn. We’d put it in a bowl in the
kitchen, and everytime anyone would
walk through the kitchen, they’d grab
a handful.
They would take the intestines
and make the sausage casings. Daddy
was a farmer, but some things he
didn’t know how to do too well. He
wanted to make sure the intestines
were clean, so he washed them with
soap and water. When they first went
to stuff the casings, the meat slid out.
Eventually, they hung the sausages
in the smokehouse, using string to
tie them up from the rafters to keep
the rats from eating them, but I think
we kind of shared it with the rats.
Underneath the smokehouse door was
a little runway, and it was made so the
cats could get into the smokehouse
to catch the rats and mice. Every
morning you would go out into the
smokehouse and cut off a piece of
sausage and bring it into the house
and put it in the frying pan. We ate
some pretty rough stuff in those days.
TCM
To hear more stories, visit www.toombscountymagazine.com.
Part II will be on the website in September.
/www.toombscountymagazine.com