About Winters Past 2009

Icicles hanging from the tin roof on this house were a very common sight in the 1930’s and ‘40’s; and another winter sight I don’t see much anymore is where the ground is frozen and it’s “spewed” up.  I use to marvel at how that frozen ground was frozen (“spewed up”) and made what looked like a work of art – I had to walk (1/4 mile) to meet the school bus and the frozen road banks put on the show.  Every house on this part of SandMountain had smoke curling out of the chimney, too.  Most people heated with wood in the early days, but gradually it was changed over to coal.  I remember how Daddy complained that coal was $14 a ton.  Wonder how much it is today.

These winter nights, as I snuggle down under the electric blanket (that we’ve had set on preheat), I remember how it was to go bed when I was growing up and slept alone.  On that “back room” bed was so many quilts I could hardly turn over.  Instead of sheets our beds had what we called “double blankets” which was one cotton flannel blanket long enough to go to the foot of the bed and turn back to make the top sheet, too.  On the coldest of nights, Mother would heat a smoothing iron at the fireplace, wrap it in a sack towel and put it in the bed with me.  Some of my school friends said they had hot water bottles in the bed with them; however, we did not own such a luxury.

Laundry was done the hard way in those days, as we had to draw water from the well, build a fire around the wash pot and do it all by hand. In those days, the clothes would freeze immediately as you hung them on the line. Needless to say the bedding was not laundered every week– those “double blankets probably got washed once or twice a winter. I had a Georgia friend, who grew in HabershamCounty, which was in the north GeorgiaMountains where they had really bad winters used to say, “During the pretty spell in February we always went to see Grandma.”  So maybe during that pretty spell in February we washed the double blankets.  In fact, I’m looking for that pretty spell this winter.  Quilts were not washed until spring and summer – if then.

There were no inside bathrooms and it goes without saying that somebody had to tote the necessary pots – such as slop jars and chamber pots.  My mother had the prettiest chamber and I’ve always wondered what happened to it.  It had a beautiful rose painted on the side.  We had a two-holer about fifty yards from the house, complete with a Sears and Roebuck Catalog.  We could look through the catalog while we waited for the blessed event – that is if it was not too awfully cold. My daddy said he kept three cobs to use at the barn (two red cobs and one white one) – he used a red cob first, and then used the white one to see if he needed to use the other red one.

Bathing was a chore that was done in front of our fireplace and we used a wash pan with a piece of fertilizer sack for the wash cloth. On Sundays a wash tub would be brought to the kitchen where the wood cook stove would have the room warm. Water would be heated on the stove and put in the tub where we could get a bath.  Oft times we did not go to church in the winter – had to walk and the weather was too bad.

Cooking was different in the winter time, too.  Lunch was cooked just after breakfast while the wood cook stove was still hot.  Sometimes it was pintos and cornbread, or if the hogs had just recently been killed, we might have boiled back bones and ribs.  Ugh!  We always had lots of home canned vegetables to eat in the winter – such as stewed tomatoes.  Many times cooking at our house was done on the open fire at the fireplace.

As I’ve told you before, we had what Mother called a “little oven” that she used to bake sweet potatoes – or cook cracklin’ bread in.  I still have it setting on that same hearth rock.  It’s a deep iron skillet with legs and a lid.  She would rake the hot coals out and set that oven on them, lay the lid up on the sticks of wood which were ablaze, put her bread in then set the lid on and cover it with hot coals.  Before you knew it the bread would be done.  It was pretty good with a glass of milk for our supper, too. The best thing I remember her cooking that way was the “sponge cake” that she made with sorghum instead of sugar.  Take that cake out of the oven, split a piece open and fill it with the homemade butter was just the very best.  Guess that’s the reason I’ve always been overweight.  Oh well, that’s another subject entirely.

Because of the lack of heat in the houses, occupants had to wear more clothes in those days.  Children wore union suits – as I remember mine had short legs (boys had long legs) and on the back was a flap with a button or two.  I hated that with a passion and my daddy always said people could take off that underwear and go barefooted the first day of May and it wouldn’t make them sick.  I couldn’t wait!  I remember ladies wore what they called “smocks” over their dresses and many times wore something on their heads as they did their housework.

Wood cutting and toting in was another big job for the winter as well.  John remembers that a big winter job for the farmer was to clean out the barn and broadcast the manure on the fields.  Of course, the cleaning and shoveling onto the two-horse wagon was done by hand and then when you got to the field a scoop was used to do the broadcasting – hard work for the males of the family.  It’s just a few memories of winters past with that style of country living.