Roses rambling

        I think I got "the cart before the horse" by telling about my mom  and

dad's love story first, if I was going to tell about her life.  I actually know more

about her from that time forward than I know about her childhood.  I

will try to back up however to tell as much as I know about it.  I believe

that her childhood helped to form the adult she became and the hard

times surviving during that era caused many of her actions and fears.

          Mom lived on a small farm as a child.   The farm provided enough

food for her family and the farm animals.  My grandmother also took in

boarders along with family members who ran into hard times, especially

during the depression.  Sometimes their board was helping to tend the

corn fields and vegetable gardens.  My grandmother and her children

were expected to help in the fields, harvest and can the food for winter.

They killed hogs and preserved the meat.   They made home-made

soap and rendered lard.   Fruit trees provided fresh fruit and was used,

as well as wild berries they picked, for jams and jellies.  It was a hard

life,  from sunup until sundown,  just to provide food for a large family.

         I can remember (barely) my grandmother and mother boiling the

laundry in a huge cast iron cauldron stirred with a wooden paddle, and

scrubbed on a wash board,   then rinsed in water drawn from the well

nearby.  The ashes left from the wood fire could be used for making

homemade soap but  they bought lye in cans to make theirs.  I can

remember the trays of soap cut into the thick chunks.  It would clean

anything. 

        I can remember hog-killing time anda pole triangle that was used to

hang the hog from to halve it and remove the entrails.  Boiling water was

poured over it first and the hair scraped from the skin with sharp knives.

It was not a pleasant sight but an exciting time for a child running in and

out of the cold .   Big skillets of fresh tenderloin were fried,  and huge

trays of homemade biscuits , eggs and gravy served all the workers after

the last of the meat was prepared for the smokehouse.  Then the women

began rendering the lard into 20 gallon cans.  Fresh meat skins were a

treat, a by-product of the lard making.  

        One time my mother had set a metal can of lard behind the kitchen

door.  It had  reached a solid state and she put it there to use for frying

in the kitchen.   The favorite game of my visiting cousins,  my sister and

myself that summer was hide and seek.  Once while searching hurriedly

for a hiding place I ran in the open kitchen door , hopped up on the lid

of the lard can and pulled the door back to hide me.  I was barefooted,

as we usually were in summer.  Suddenly the lid flipped, and I sank,

both feet going to the bottom of the can.  I started yelling and my angry

mother retrieved me from the greasy can.  What a mess,  but most of all,

we had suffered the loss of the lard and the hard work it took to make it.

I will never forget the feel of squishing down between my toes and the

smarting from the swatting on my backside.

          I told the above to illustrate the hard life my mother endured as a

young girl.  Money was so scarce and jobs so few that some in the area

turned to moonshining for a source of income.  I know one relative who

alternated between "sheriffing and 'shining."  Thanks to the farm, my

mother says they always had enough to eat and they tried to help others

because it was such a harsh time. 

         No wonder that she eloped to marry her sweet heart at age 16.  He

had a job mining coal and they were very much in love.  Unfortunately, she

was widowed before she reached twenty by a roof fall in the mine, which

took the life of her young husband.  After that , she worked a series of

jobs in dry good stores,  and a confectionary,  until she met my father.

They married the following year .  He had worked as a member of the

Civilian Conservation Corp., (whose members still hold regular reunions.

He was invited to come to one the year he died. )  He was fortunate to

secure a job after he married Mom with a large coal mining company,

the main employer in the area.  I know it must have been hard for her

to see her dearly beloved go underground after losing her first husband

to a mining accident.   They loved the mountains and wanted to stay

there,  and through the years he advanced as far as possible for a

Union man to go and retired after 38 years underground.  

         Mom often told me that I kept Dad from the war because I was born

when he was draft age,  but I suspect that his job had something to do with

that.  Anyhow, he didn't have to go but two of his brothers did and one of

them was killed.  I can barely remember hearing about it and they did not

take me to his funeral because I had loved him so much. 

        My mother was a wonderful homemaker.  I don't mean that she was

a perfect housekeeper.   She often had so much else to do that our small

house could wait.  She helped tend the animals,  worked in the garden,

and made our clothes.   She canned food and prepared the best meals

you could imagine.  She loved to cook and was an excellent baker.  Her

favorite pastime was reading cookbooks and catalogs.  She was always

planning a new cooking or sewing project.  She hated dusting and after her

girls got to be three or four, that became their job.  She always had fabric

and sewing scraps around.  And something on the stove cooking.

        I may be painting a "sweet" picture of my mother.  But my mother had

spirit.  She was a spunky little thing and she would have fought a chainsaw

over her kids.  When my father became a preacher,  she always went with

him and supported him in the church work.  They would joke about the

one time he came home tipsy after they first married.  His little fiery bride

took her weddingring off and threw it into the blazing fireplace.  (After her

temper and the fireplace cooled,   they both were rummaging around for

it .)   He never drank again,  whether the memory of those flashing eyes

prevented it,  I do not know.  They were both very frugal and saving, always.

        I know that all the years when we children were growing up, we had

the security of our parents love.  We knew they loved us, even though they

were very strict about our behavior, and we knew that they loved each other.

We had what we needed,  though it may not have been as much as we

would want, and we had our parents always there when we needed them.

One can't ask for much more than that.  I know that I am grateful,  always.

                                                                                       TO BE CONTINUED---