Spring
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Occasionally
we did have some excitement. It could happen any time of year,
and mostly it happened around supper time. We might be busy peeling
potatoes or mixing cornbread, when, suddenly, Aunt Merica would
say, "I hear serenading!" She would instantly stop what
she was doing, take the dishpan down off its nail at the end of
the kitchen cabinet, pick up the wooden potato masher and go outside,
banging away. I would get a pan and a mixing spoon and join her,
beating as hard as I could. Down at the tenant house there was
laughing and yelling and a thunder of pans being beaten on. "It’s
the Hall girl and that town boy," Mama said. "She finally
got him!" and everybody laughed and banged even harder. That's
how we celebrated a marriage.
Then
Mama and Aunt Merica would return to their work and discuss who
his mother was and wasn't his grandmother so and so and didn't
her stepfather first marry…. The excitement lasted on into
supper when Daddy came home and got told all the details and the
connections. Afterwards, the next day or so, Mama and Aunt Merica
would find a present to send down. When Aunt Lillie came to visit
or we went down to Miss Cynthia's we learned where they were going
to live and how in the world they had enough money to set up housekeeping
at their age. They didn't talk about that on the telephone --
unless the family didn't have a telephone.
The
telephone, the party-line-telephone, was the great life line for
the country families. By listening in, you learned if someone
was sick, or having company or going to the bank for business.
Mama, Aunt Lillie and Grandma talked by phone every day. One day
each summer Aunt Lillie would announce that the thrashers were
coming. Grandma lived too far away to be included, but Aunt Merica
and Mama immediately started making plans for going to help Aunt
Lillie. What fruit or vegetable had to be canned before they took
the day off? What weekly work had to be put off or done early?
How would their going effect the work that was done daily? All
adjustments would be made, for making dinner for the thrashers
was one of the big events of the summer. The owner of the thrasher
might come from a distant part of the county, but the rest of
the men who helped were from the neighboring farms. Today they
all helped Uncle Charlie; tomorrow and the next tomorrows he helped
each of them. The farmer's wife supplied the dinner, and at Uncle
Charlie's the dinner was the best. First off, there was chicken
pie, big pieces of chicken baked in a golden brown crust. There
were platters of ham and bowls of cooked beef. There were cooked
vegetables of every kind. There were platters of sliced tomatoes
of all colors. There were big bowls of apple sauce. There was
light bread and rolls. There was butter and jam and jelly. There
were pies and caramel frosted cake that had given so much trouble
getting it to do right. There was water, milk and coffee. When
all in the kitchen agreed that everything was ready Uncle Charlie
brought the men in to the back porch and told Aunt Lillie to dish
up the food so it could be cooling off while they washed up.
We
played 42 out on the front porch, sitting in the swing and the
big caned chairs. When all the men were fed and had returned to
the barn, we and all those that cooked, ate. Later, much later,
after they had sat down for a rest, Aunt Merica, Mama, Joe and
I walked home and as we neared the house we could hear the pigs
squealing for the dinner they had not gotten.
Weeds
grew just as fast as did our vegetables. Each area of the garden
was hoed out at least three times and then laid by. As summer
lengthened into fall the weeds took over the potato patch, the
onion bed and all the pea space that had not been re-planted as
fall garden. Aunt Merica and Mama pulled the onions and spread
them out in the shed to dry. Daddy, after work, dug the potatoes,
one or two rows at a time. I followed close behind, watching to
see the shiny brown globes unearthed from the dark brown soil.
My hands would dart for a newly uncovered one as Daddy warned
against getting too close to the mattock. For me, each dug up
hill produced surprise and wonder. The potatoes were stored in
bins in the cellar twelve to fourteen bushels in all. Other bins
were empty, waiting for apples. •
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