PLATE 162 A picture displaying Lillie’s in-laws and their family. Back row: Ralph, Henry, and Earnest. Front row: Garnet, John (their father), George, Sally (their mother), and Marvin.
I enjoyed my childhood days. I was happy. Our parents were real good to us, but we had to mind them. Our father didn’t have to speak to us the second time because we knew to mind him the first time he spoke. That discipline meant a lot to me through all of the years. It helped me in raising my children. Of course, my children didn’t mind as good as we minded our father. I’m very grateful to my parents for the way they raised me. I can’t remember that my daddy ever whipped me. He didn’t have to. We was afraid not to mind him, but we loved him and respected him for that. That’s why I thank my parents now for the way they raised me. They raised us to respect them and to respect other people and especially our schoolteachers when we went to school.
We never had any trouble with our schoolteacher nor any of our neighbors. Everything was peace and love. We went and visited each other and talked with each other because we loved one another. Sometimes we would get out of meal or coffee, and we would go and borrow from the other. Then when we would get some, we would go and pay it back to them.
We had a little accident at our home one day. My two younger sisters was out at the woodpile, and one of them had the ax in her hand up over her back. They was barefooted, and my other little sister put her foot up on the chop block. My sister said, “If you don’t take that foot off,” she says, “I’ll cut your toe off.” And she told her she’d not take it off. So my sister with the ax came down with the ax and cut her big toe off and left it a-laying at the woodpile. Well, my grandmother was there, and she was the doctor in our house. She knew just what to do. She and my mother got my sister, took her in the house, bandaged it up, and got the bleeding stopped. Grandmother sent somebody out into the woods to skin a red oak tree to get the bark off of it. She boiled that solution and put alum in it. She would wash that foot several times a day. She had some kind of salve that she had made from herbs that she used on it. In a few weeks, it was well.
My grandmother says, “Now, that toe out there at the woodpile, if the ants gets on it and crawls over it, she’ll have the same feeling on her foot—just like ants are crawling on her foot.” So Grandmother goes, gets that toe at the woodpile, puts it in a bottle of alcohol, fastens it up, and buries it. There never was a doctor in our house as long as we lived at that place. There was a doctor in the community, and he went to other houses, but he didn’t come to our home ’til I was almost grown.
Sunday was our biggest day—going to church. Everybody looked forward to whatever was going on at church, and everybody went. They would come from miles around, and everybody walked, sometimes four or five miles, but they didn’t mind that. We all enjoyed it. The road would be full of people walking to the church. Sometimes we would go to Hale Ridge. They would have big days out there, church services twice a month. And sometimes we’d come to church up here at the Flats.
There was very little money back then. The only money we got would be in the fall of the year whenever my daddy would go peddling. He always made a late garden and set out lots of cabbage in order to have them to peddle. He’d take apples, beans, cabbage, and chinquapins. There was lots of chinquapin trees around our place. We’d go out and pick up gallons and gallons of chinquapins and he would take them to market, and they would really sell. He got about five cents a cup for them and that was good pay back then. Lots of the people in our community would take a barrel of kraut in the back of their wagon. They would dip out half a gallon or a gallon to each house. He peddled on Cotton Mill Hill where the people worked in the mill. They didn’t make gardens or didn’t have any vegetables or anything like that, so they were glad to buy from the peddlers.
Now, there is another place I would like to talk to you about. It was in the same community where I lived. It was a real pioneer home. There was an old couple that lived in this log cabin, a one-room log cabin. This old couple was a brother and sister. I just loved to go there and visit them when I was a child. I don’t know why, because they weren’t talkative people. They would just answer when you talked to them, but I loved to go there.
In front of the cabin was an old-fashioned zigzagged rail fence, and in the zigzagged places was beds of the most beautiful flowers you’ve ever seen such as bachelor buttons, fall pinks, Jerusalem cherries, Mexican honeysuckle—all kinds of old-time flowers that you don’t even see now. It was a beautiful sight to look at.
Beyond the end of the house where the chimney was, there was a trough that had been hewed out with a foot adze from a pine log. It had the ends in it, but the middle was hewed out down deep. That’s where this lady kept her homemade soap. She kept it covered up good so nothing wouldn’t get in it. At the back of that cabin was an old-fashioned ash hopper, made in a “V” shape, where she put her ashes from the fireplace and dripped the lye to make her soap. She made it in a black washpot. She’d cook it maybe two days before she’d get it as thick as she wanted it. Then she’d pour it in that log trough and keep it covered up. That’s what she washed her clothes with.
Now, let’s go on to the inside of that cabin. About three feet from the wall in the back of that cabin was the old lady’s bed. She slept on a feather bed. In making up that bed, she would fluff those feathers up ’til that cover would just stand up as soft as it could be. The covers of that bed was as white as snow and looked like a snowbank. Everything in that cabin was just as clean as it could be.
Over on the other side on the wall was the brother’s bed. It was a homemade bed he made himself. He nailed the back of it to the log wall and he cut him some little poles and made legs for the front of it. That’s what he made his bed on, and there’s where he slept.
There was a little water shelf next to the front door on the outside; and there’s where they set the water. The lady’d carry her water from the spring in a wooden water bucket, and for her dipper, she used a long-handled gourd that they’d cut open and cleaned out.
There was a big rock hearth in front of the fireplace, and that’s where she did her cooking. She didn’t have a stove of any kind nor never had [one] in her life. She always cooked on the open fireplace. She had her Dutch oven and lid setting on the side of that rock hearth, and her pot hooks was hanging right above the oven and lid. That oven was what she baked her bread in, and sometimes she would bake potatoes in one side, bread in the other, all at the same time. She cooked her other food in black pots in front of the fire. If she fried meat, she would take out coals from the fireplace and set her frying pan on those and fry her meat. And her coffeepot was a black iron kettle with a long spout to it, and she kept that little spout corked up so nothing couldn’t crawl in her coffeepot.
Her chair set by the side of the fireplace, and she had a pocket from an old pair of pants tacked to the wall by the side of her chair. In that pocket, she kept leaves of dried tobacco. She smoked a clay pipe with a long cane stem in it. She’d reach into that pocket, get her some dry crumbs of tobacco, put ’em in her pipe, and pack her pipe full. Then she’d take her little fire shovel and reach into the fire and get her a little live coal. She’d put that coal on top of that tobacco in her pipe, take a few puffs, get the tobacco lit good, and she’d put the coal back in the fireplace. She’d sit there and smoke that pipe and talk to you if you wanted to talk. That was a real pioneer home.
Times were different then. There wasn’t any war when I was a child. I was born in 1905, and the first war that I ever heard tell of started out in 1914 and went on a year or two before the United States had to go over there. Things didn’t go too high during World War I. Because we made what we needed on the farm, we didn’t know what it was to go buy. Things might have been scarce somewhere, but not where we lived.
It was a happy time to live, far different from today. We didn’t have any crime, no hoodlums. You could travel miles and miles by your lone self, and you would never meet a human being. There w
as nobody to hurt you, and you could go where you pleased. It was a peaceful time.
If I could change anything in the world, I’d make the world different by people loving one another. People don’t love each other anymore. They hate each other. Before they’ll work to make any money, they’ll kill, rob, and steal. The main thing is if they would get right with the Lord, then they could see the right thing. They wouldn’t want to take this dope, and they wouldn’t want to drink and carry on like they do today. Love is the thing that’s missing in their lives. The reason a lot of them are in that condition is that they were children that were unloved and unwanted. Love is the thing that is missing today. That’s the main thing. If people loved one another, they wouldn’t want to harm each other, but would want to help each other, like they did back in my childhood days.
PLATE 163 “If people loved one another, they wouldn’t want to harm each other, but would want to help each other, like they did back in my childhood days.”—Lillie Nix
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Foxfire 11: Wild Plant Uses, Gardening, Wit, Wisdom, Recipes, Beekeeping, Toolmaking, Fishing, and More Affairs of Plain Living Page 36