I Can Remember — can you? 1991

The homeplace

Can you remember when…?

Travel was done by horses and buggy and/or mules and wagon.
Spend-the-day company came unannounced and often.
Sewing was done on a treadle sewing machine.
We striped syrup cane, cut it and hauled it to the syrup mill where the juicer was turned by mule power.
Fodder was pulled and a “hand” was hung over an ear of corn to dry.  At hauling-in time, three hands were tied together to make a bundle — easiest done after the dew had fallen on it.
Babies wore belly bands ’til the navel healed.
Babies were classified as “lap” babies or “knee” babies.
Toddlers – both male and female – wore aprons – a dress buttoned down the back with either a sash or a belt depending on the gender.
Diapers were square and made of “birdseye” cotton fabric.  Many times when they had been wet in, the diapers were hung over a bush or in front of the fire to dry and were “reused.”
We didn’t know about toxic waste.
People did what they said they’d do.
Politicians paid voters’ poll tax in order to have their vote.

My favorite scope of woods

On election day, ballots were carried to homes of shut-ins to be marked
Students walked to school.
There were no school lunchrooms.
Geraldine football was played in Dr. Parrish’s pasture and the fans stood along the sidelines.
Everybody in the country had yard chickens.  A fryer would get his neck wrung and would be eaten at the next meal.  We often had fried chicken for breakfast when company was in the house.
There was no electricity and no refrigeration.
We bought a radio battery in the fall, after crops were in, and it had to last all winter.  It cost $6.
Hay was O-Two-Ten Beans.  It was cut, raked and stacked around a wooden stake secured in the ground to cure for several weeks.  The mule-drawn baler arrived and the 100 – 125 pound bales were tied with baling wire.
We cooked for the “field hands.”
Stalks were cut with a homemade cutter pulled by a pair of mules.
Potatoes and turnips were harvested and put in a “hill”  made of dirt, corn stalks, cane pummies, straw, etc. in order to try to keep them for the family to eat in the winter time.
If you can remember these, too,you know something about this kind of living —  country living.

Wagon Train