 ONE
DAY I WAS REMINISCING about my childhood and now I question some things
that seemed so logical at that time.
Can any of you identify with these experiences? If you grew up in the county, you probably can. Before the days of electricity, my family used kerosene (we called it coal oil) lamps. Mama also put coal oil on cuts we got; and if we had a cough in the winter, she gave us a spoonful of sugar with a few drops of coal oil on it. I wonder why it didn't kill us? However, it did stop the cough --- your breath --- and your pulse rate for a while. And another thing, my mother always saved string. She would ravel the string out of flour sacks and sugar sacks and roll it into a ball. We always had a ball of string about the size of a softball and I don't know why. The only thing I remember she used it for was when we ran out of paper sacks, she would wrap our lunches (mine and my brother's) in a piece of newspaper and tie it with string. We'd take our lunches to school in that newspaper. Being from the country, riding a school bus, being redheaded and freckle faced, and then having to carry your lunch in a newspaper tied with string was TOTAL HUMILIATION. Another recollection --- my brother and his friends always played the neatest game with pocket knives. It was called Mumble Peg. I always wanted to play, but mother said I would cut my finger off. Now why would I be more apt to cut my finger off than my brother would? Still another remembrance --- everybody's dog in the community had "running fits" (remember those). Nobody ever questioned why the dogs had fits --- they just did. It never killed the dogs and they wouldn't hurt you. Mama said they were blind during the fits (how did she know that). And the fits only lasted about a minute. Ain't that weird that nobody was concerned. It was just part of our existence. We drew our water out of a well. Everybody had a wash stand in the kitchen. There was a wash basin on the stand and a bucket of water with a dipper in it. Every time you were thirsty, you just got a dipper of water and then put the dipper back in the bucket. Nobody ever got sick from drinking out of the same dipper. I guess we didn't get sick because we didn't know we could get germs from drinking after each other. And now another topic that is privy to the discussion --- everybody had an outdoor toilet. They came in all styles. Most of them had two holes. However, there was one affluent family of farmers in the community and theirs was the penthouse of outhouses. It was very well constructed, and it had FOUR openings. Two large ones for the parents and two smaller ones for the children. I was very impressed by this epitome of privies. But, in looking back, I wonder why it had four holes? I cannot imagine any family's regularity being such that they would all visit there at the same time. And even if they were so inclined at the same time, why would they all go at the same time? It's not the type of thing that a family sits down and does together. Now I suppose to most sophisticated folks it would appear that I came from a deprived background. But, looking back, it was not depriving, it was great. Have you ever eaten a watermelon on the front porch; gone crawfishing with a piece of fatback; sat inside a cool bridge culvert on a hot summer day; eaten snow ice cream; played "Piggy Wants a Signal"; eaten peanuts parched on the top of a wood stove; walked a creek bed; or eaten fried pies that your grandmother made? Our parents never heard the term "hyperactive child." They didn't know about 'quality time with children." They never realized that paddling our behinds would be considered 'child abuse' today. They just fed us, sent us to school, raised us the best they could, and we seemed to have survived just fine. ~~~ Peggy Bruce Tioga History Susan Hawkins © 2024 If you find any of Grayson CountyTXGenWeb links inoperable, please send me a message. |