Stories From My Grandmother

My Grandmother was born when the cotton was being harvested, during War World II, on September 25, 1942. She was the second youngest child of 13 , children of sharecroppers. Her parents were also children of sharecroppers. These are some of her memories of her childhood.

She remembers that when school started in the fall she was held out of school because they had to help harvest crops. She recalls that when the bus drove by, her and her siblings would fall down in between the stocks so that the other children on the bus would not see them because they were embarrassed that they couldn’t go to school. Now she chuckles and says, we didn’t think about that the bus was high up and the children probably could still see us. She recalls eating “ garden food” which the family raised themselves which included potatoes, collards, cabbage, tomatoes, eggplants, carrots, onions. Anything that came as a seed her mother would grow and then can for the remainder of the year. Her favorite meal would be hot homemade biscuits with canned apples or peaches. Her mother would pickle watermelon rinds with sugar and spices until the rinds would be tender and pour brine over them in jars. In the wintertime, her father would kill hogs and keep them in the smoke house for the rest of the year. The children would watch , my grandmother’s job would be to turn the handle on the meat grinder to help make sausage. The family always ate together at a long wooden table that her father had made. All three meals, Breakfast, Dinner, and then Supper had to be eaten together. In the mornings, they kneeled down together and said the Lord’s prayer before breakfast. At the other meals her father would say grace. “Dear Lord , Make us true and thankful for these blessings we say in thine name, Amen.”

Clothing for school was once a year- going downtown to a retail store. Her father had an account at Bigg’s which was the family he sharecropped for and he was able to get some clothes on an account which he could use his harvest money to pay off later. When her daddy quit farming her sister would sew her skirts out of feed sacks and her mom would make her slips out of homespun which is a cotton fabric. Hand me downs and patches on clothes was common. Shoes were also bought once a year, when they weren’t in school in the summertime, the children were mostly bare footed.

Being the only girl left at home at the time with 5 older brothers, she was also spoiled in a way. In order for her older brothers to be able to use the family car they had to allow her to go too. She recalls that her Daddy would make sure she was the one who got the paper out of the mailbox to have the first turn at looking at the “Funnies” or cartoons in the paper. Her brothers would chase her but not catch her cause her Daddy would call out, “let her get it”...her brother’s would later try to get revenge by scaring her on the walk through the woods from their older brother’s after watching TV. When her older sister began “courting” or dating she was allowed to sit in the parlor of the family home. My grandmother recalls going into the parlor and sitting until the boy would give her a piece of money, sometimes a quarter or a nickel for her to leave. She said she would do it every time..and adds that she was the mischievous tag along or a brat.

Her parents would hardly ever leave them but on the rare occasions that they would ‘they would tear the house down”, by jumping on the spring beds and letting loose. She laughs as she says “ as soon as we would hear the car coming, we would say, here they come”, and we would have to get back in order and straighten things back up. She recalls other childhood antics like testing out superstitions. One she remembers is on May 1st, holding a mirror above well with water in it, this was supposed to reflect the man you would marry. I asked if she did it, and she said “probably cause youngins will do anything.”

Although my Grandma was born is a tough economic time she recalls her childhood with love and admiration. Being the baby of her family she received a lot of love and attention. She is the last living sibling of her family. Sometimes I can see the sorrow in her eyes and I know she misses them, many of them I never was able to meet. My Great-Grandfather passed when my Mother was 1 month old. It is a bridge between my Grandmother's experiences and my understanding of who she is when we share stories like these.