Up next in 10
Voices of Heritage - Remembering the Old Days
25K views
Sep 21, 2024
This is the 6th installment in our Voices of Heritage Series. I’ve selected several stories and put them into one article because they had a general theme. Papa and Granny are reminiscing about past hard times and good times. They share about living in a barn, picking cotton, raising kids, and the cost of things back in their day. I’ll let them share it in their own words and voices. The link is in the comments.
View Video Transcript
0:00
Hi and welcome to a very special, very personal series here on the Farmers' Lamp, Voices of Heritage
0:10
Back in 1998, I assigned the boys a history project where they had to interview an elderly person
0:16
and get a historical perspective from that person, from their childhood to where they were now
0:23
They chose my maternal grandparents, and if you've been on the Farmers' Lamp, you know they are instrumental in my life
0:30
in me living this lifestyle. So over, we sent them one of those cassette recorders
0:37
Do you remember those where you had to push play and record? You put the tape in it and play and record to record
0:43
And some cassette tapes. And over a period of a few months, they would just sit and talk to the boys and record their stories
0:51
And so that's how we got these stories. That's the history of the stories
0:57
But a few years ago, my eldest son, gave me a tool that would take cassette tapes and put them into digital media, what we call
1:05
MP3s now. So that's how the Voices of Heritage series was born
1:11
I've had a lot of requests that this series be put into a book form, and I am planning
1:16
to do that. But right now, we only have six of the stories released on the farmer's lamp
1:22
And so we're going to continue to do that until all the stories are released until we get
1:26
to the end of the cassette tapes. but I am working on the book as we speak
1:30
so to speak, I am working on that. But we do hope that you enjoy listening and hearing my voices of heritage
1:41
as my grandparents shared their stories with you. And then eggs with a nickel of peace then
1:51
Now that was in 35, 1935, 34 and 35. And there was a nickel of peace
1:56
And Mama would sell her eggs, and we'd take them full in and get nickel piece farther
2:01
And Miss Haddy always come out there on a Friday and get eggs. And we hadn't gathered the eggs when she was out there
2:07
We didn't have the three or four. Mama wouldn't have them. And she said, I'll take some Jenny eggs
2:14
And the Guinness, you know how they had gang up and laid eight or ten in their nest as long as you didn't bother them
2:20
And we found a new nest, and we hadn't gotten none out of it. And Papa sent me out back to get the eggs
2:26
from his headie, and there's big old chicken snake in the next
2:30
Well, ice cream, Papa come out there, and he'd swore 10 or 12 guinea eggs
2:35
and we kill that snake, and we're gonna just throw the snake
2:40
and the eggs and everything away. And Miss Head said no you not and she pushed them eggs out of that snake washed them And wanted to pay for them Mama wouldn take no pay for them She just gave them eggs She cooked them eggs to use after that snake is
2:53
Well, they wouldn't as good as any of them. But you think that then and now, we think a dollar a dozen is a lot of eggs now
3:02
There was a nickel apiece back then. But you could take that nickel and buy a pound of coffee, pound of sugar and bar of soap with that one nickel
3:11
We cleaned out a barn one time. And then that moved out that old piece and it picked fun
3:21
Yeah, we went out. I was hard back in them day. You couldn't make no money
3:28
So we went out to old piece them out there and cleaned out a old barn
3:34
and floored the mule store. And we had it for a kitchen
3:41
It comes to rain, the whole thing It leaks for bed That's piled up all of the furniture
3:49
Or what little we had in the corner And covered up with quilts to keep it from getting wet
3:54
All the one My brother come out there And another guy was picking cotton out there
4:01
We were all staying there in an old boy Like, well, he's staying with us
4:06
Then another guy who lived up at the other house We called him Bud Massey
4:12
That was his name. Bud Massey, old Bud. And we'd pick cotton all day and come down there that night
4:19
We'd, uh, Bud, Bud, go somewhere. I don't know why he's getting them
4:23
He's stealing them some chickens. He'd steal two of the re-fires and bring them down there and we'd clean them
4:29
And with, alone he'd fry them. We'd make gravy and biscuits, hot biscuits, gravy
4:35
Gravy and chicken, fried chicken. And we said, well, we'd, had it up. First one
4:41
to say anything about the cooking, about the stuff it was cooked
4:46
after wash dishes. Herman, my brother, I made a bowl of gravy and I put about a teacup
4:55
of the salt in him. And Herman, he got him the place for when they passed it now
5:02
They all got some of it, and then he'd take a bite and they'd look at one another
5:07
Herman, he said, I'll tell you what. This gravy is sure salty, but that's just like I'll like it
5:16
You like it? Yeah, that's a gravy sure's salty, but that's just like I'll like it
5:21
But we had another bowl of gravy, made good gravy. And I said as well we took that bowl off and poured it out and pulled it out a bowl of good gravy We have a lot of fun You had great to pick more cotton than we could I never could get about a hundred pounds a day at all I could get
5:43
I guess I was too lazy or something. He pays off every week, every day, every evening
5:51
The old man, we was picking for her, whoever we picked out there. We picked for several different people out there
5:58
Get through picking for one. go to the past and give another
6:02
My children come in from school, we didn't know what it was to have bought cookies
6:07
and pizzas and all this good stuff, candy bars and everything. I'd have them some hot biscuit and fried potatoes
6:18
or take my cold biscuit and put some syrup on them in a skillet
6:24
and cook that syrup to the kind of candy. Or either I'd crumble them up
6:28
and put them in the oven and kind of brown them and cooked some chocolate till it be thick, make good chocolate syrup on
6:36
where they'd be sick, and they'd just eat them. They'd be so happy to get them, because we couldn't go to the store that wasn't in the store to buy
6:44
You just couldn't buy it if you had the money, because when they started making light bread
6:51
put in the stores, oh, that was the best stuff, and you'd get it for about eight cents a loaf
6:57
maybe a nickel of loaf. But my Lord, my children, and we all eat a loaf before we were stopped
7:04
It wasn't the big old loaf like it is now. It was smaller than the pan loaf
7:10
You look at what a pound loaf is at town, and it was smaller than that
7:16
We'd eat it without stopping, and we couldn't buy it all the time
7:21
and you'd hardly ever found it, because they just started making it
7:27
It wasn't nothing but wholesome then. Nothing but wholesome bread. Wonderbread, yeah, they had Wonder Bread
7:33
But they didn't complain about what they had because they didn't know it
7:38
No other children had it. I kept on cookies or cook them a gingerbread cake or cook them a blueberry cake or stir some huckleberry up in it and cook it
7:51
Or I'd pick some of those biscuits and something like that, you know
7:55
but they'd love to come home to hot biscuits and steam-fried potatoes and put them in that
8:01
If we didn't have anything for them to do, they'd go to their playhouse
8:05
I'd pick some of a jug of water or jug of milk or maybe Kool-Aid
8:09
and put some of them potatoes between the biscuit, put them in a little bucket
8:13
Oh, they had them on lunch. They went to their playhouse and had a picnic eat their lunch out of their buckets We never did throw away a bucket We kept ever a and every sack you get tall sacks we didn throw away nothing but they have a time
8:27
eating their lunch out at that time. They'd play house. But if we had anything to do, if they had
8:32
a whole lot of lessons, they had to come out in and get their lessons and do their homework
8:38
and things, they'd help at the house, get in the wood and the splinters, and get water. We always
8:45
had to carry water. We had to haul water from a little well down here that we called
8:50
Jacob's well and put it in a barrel, slide it up there with the horse, Aubrey and door, wood
8:57
you know, and I'd help him fit it up, but all the wood would work to slide, horse just
9:02
slide. And after we got all the night water in and watered the caves, if he was hot, he'd just
9:09
get down in that barrel of water and take him or bath down in it. Of course, we couldn't use it
9:14
for nothing but just to wash and the water they'd stock with
9:19
But he'd do that nearly every time. Papa come in one time and caught him down in it
9:23
and he, Papa didn't know that we had all of our night water what we thought would be enough
9:29
And he got on to him and the water, everything filled that was watered
9:33
and a bathtub or some in our number three tub. We all took a bath in
9:38
It was hard, but I look back on it now. We were happy
9:42
We didn't have anything. When you got a dollar, you could buy so much more with it
9:48
It went so much further, and he couldn't go to a doctor, and there wasn't the doctor ever 15 or 20, maybe 50 miles
9:55
and you couldn't hardly get to a doctor. I can remember back to how I love to pretty gardens
10:01
and love the pretty crops and love the pretty quilts that I've quilted
10:05
and my pretty scrub floors without rubs or anything on them, trouble them with the shut mop
10:11
and it just smells so pretty and clean, you know, and everything. It was, I thought, I thought that everything was just, just fine
10:19
But nowadays people laugh about it, but I didn't. I liked that
10:24
Everything was clean, and every time I would wash, I'd take my washing water and scrub my chairs and scrubbed my porch in the kitchens and scrubbed all my floors
10:34
We didn't have no rugs. Nobody had rugs then. And that's the way I liked it
10:38
I liked it clean. I like a house, clean house now. But I'm just barely not able to do it no more
10:44
Life is good to us, though. Now, when we was raising our children going off in a wagon, we'd wrap them up in a quilt, you know
10:55
and they'd go to sleep on their way back from Mamas and Mama Ford
11:00
Then when Papa got us a car, well, we'd go to church in the car
#Arts & Entertainment
#Documentary Films
#Family
#Parenting