My life as I remember it - Part 2

(Continued from last week)

When we were in school, we usually had a cedar pencil each, with a little sharp eraser stuck in the end. This usually go chewed off about the first day. The cedar wood tasted and smelled good. But once I remember, I guess I was unusually good or had somebody fooled, I was allowed to go to the company store and buy myself a long blue pencil - it cost a whole nickel. The next day it disappeared. A little girl sitting next to me looked suspicious, so several of my friends helped me get her out back and circled her, feeling her clothes. We found the pencil, but all the blue had been scraped off. I could have cried if I had been a cry baby, but I just let her have it. This girl had something wrong with her eyes, and I had been carefully taught to be careful not to hurt the feelings of anybody with an affliction. But after the pencil, every time she looked at me with those weak, watering eyes I kind of wanted to “spit”.

We saved our pennies all the year for the 24th of June Masonic picnic and barbecue. It was a must to have a balloon on the end of a reed stick and a bottle of red soda pop. If we were lucky, we might get a little rubber ball on the end of a long rubber string, so if you just happened to throw it at anybody the ball would bounce back. Another nickel would get a saucer of ice cream. I would stand around “courting couples,” and the young men would tip me a nickel just to run and get some ice cream hoping I wouldn’t come back.

We tried to be kind to everybody, but sometimes it was kind of hard. We hoarded the best of everything at Christmas, then we celebrated from Christmas Eve till New Year. One Christmas Eve, Mama was putting the finishing touches on the rows of cakes and pies, and a neighbor boy just happened to drop in and take a gander. He ran all the way home. Christmas morning in walks his father, mother and all seven of the kids. The mother said, “Sammy told us you wanted all of us to have dinner with you.” Mama just took them in and let them eat up the rest of the week’s supply.

I had a prized possession, a little tin cup that I lived, ate, and slept with. It was more useful than a teddy bear, which I never had. When this family was leaving the girl my age had a peculiar bulge under her dress, and when I protested, her mother pulled out my cup!

Another Christmas Eve, a widow woman with three children came strolling in and announced that since they had nothing else to do, they thought they would just spend the night with us. We doubled up in our beds to make room for them to sleep, and when time came to go to bed, we found three extra stockings and wondered all the time how Santa Claus would know they were there. There was some candy and fruit in each stocking, but not a toy (till after the company left). That blew up Santa Claus for our family!

There was a little church in the community. Everything was named for the Lewis brothers, one of which was my grandfather (John Lewis). There was the Lewis Chapel, Lewis School, and later we got a Star mail route. The post office at the end of the line was Sauls, Texas. My uncle Morgan Lewis carried the mail by horse back from Lewis to Kildare and back three times each week. The woods caught on fire and the church burned. Everyone ran and pulled out a bench, which they took home with them. We had two on our front porch for years afterward. After the church burned, all meetings were held in the school house. We had preaching once a month, Sunday school each Sunday and prayer meeting on Wednesday night, also Christmas trees, box suppers and school programs in the school house.

Mama drove a horse and buggy, but the rest of the bunch just walked, ran, or got there any way we liked. It was just about a mile. Sometimes I would fold up in the box on the back of the buggy. Once after we had arrived back home, a hen sprang out of the box leaving a fresh egg.

Mama did most of the errands with the buggy. It was under a shed and the harness was never taken loose - just bring down a couple of hooks from above and under a couple of buckles and “Old Buck” walked out. She also learned to back herself in between the shafts. Any seven-year-old could take loose the hooks and fasten the buckles and here we would go.

John decided he wanted to stay at the boarding shack at the mill with three other boys. They were so full of pranks it was dangerous. The shack did catch on fire. Their favorite past time was sticking a lighted match to collars while still on the wearer’s neck or making somebody’s flat top straw hat “go to seed.

Somehow, they got small pox. The doctor decided it was too big a job to have. everybody comes to his office to get vaccinated, so he gave Mama a vaccine for our whole family, and she administered it and did a good job too, for every one of us had a scar as large as a dime.

Frank (Francis Alexander) was different from the rest of us. Papa told Mama she must have gotten the babies mixed up on the pallet at the brush arbor meeting. We were a blonde bunch with blue or gray eyes. Frank looked more like mother, and we all acknowledged that he was her favorite. He had dark wavy hair and brown eyes and he also had a fiery temper. He didn’t want anybody bothering anything that belonged to him. He would fight at the drop of a hat, and to make it good, he carried his own weapon - a tiny pine knot, keen on each end, just long enough to stick out an inch or so on each side of his fist, and he would strike going and coming. Nobody would bother him much. Otherwise, he was a fine boy and young man. Frank had an old dog he called “Pup.” This dog had a way of fainting if hit for any reason. One day a boy from the mill threw a hickory nut at him and he keeled over. My brother Preston said, “Now Burt Bivins I think it’s time you went home - you have come over here and killed brother Frank’s dog.” The dog soon came to, and everything was forgotten. Another day “Pup” came from the kitchen with a whole pan of cornbread - I imagine it was our supper. Sister (Mary Lou) grabbed the broom and threw it at him, and again he passed out. Sister bathed his head and got the bread and put it down by him so he could have it when he came to. “Pup” guarded the wagon and team. Wherever it went, he went too. But I don’t remember that he ever bit anything or anybody.

We always had the place cluttered with pets. The most interesting was the Jay Bird raised from a nestling. He remained around the house and yard long after he was grown. Every little article that came up missing was laid to him, and we began to look for his hiding places. Once mama’s sewing basket was literally emptied, and the contents found under an old coat hanging over the back fence. Mr. Jay didn’t stay around much longer.

There was a community of Negro families a mile or so back of us. One day a little Negro boy wandered in. He said he didn’t want to go home and wanted to stay with us. His folks, if he had any, didn’t seem to care. The boys took him in, gave him bath and clothes. When we went to church, they made him sit up front and drive, and then they took him in and sat him on a back bench. Everybody had an errand for him to do. Once Mama sent him out for stove wood. He disappeared for two weeks, then Mama looked out and there he sat on the chopping block. She said, “Roosevelt, bring that wood in like I told you.” He did.

When I was eight, Sister Janie (Jane Evans Rosser) died from a contagious virus. Nobody had ever heard of the “flu.” She was twenty-three and engaged to a local boy. After this our family seemed not so happy and carefree, be we kept going.

I still dislike appliances that must be turned by hand. Our family had a thing of accumulating time savers. Papa got a corn shelter, Mama a churn that had a wheel and a crank that was supposed to make butter in six minutes but seemed like an hour when I had to do the churning.

Then came the washing machine and wringer, to say nothing of the sausage grinder and old coffee mill nailed on the back of the smoke house that somebody had to turn every evening to grind the grain small enough for the baby chicks to peck up. I always seemed too available for all of these. I am sure there must have been others for it seems I put in a lot of time turning cranks. I’m sure thankful for electric buttons now.