My Memories Of Thing's Around Me When Growing Up

My memories when i was growing up and what i learned about the past before i was born !

My grand parents bought a large piece of land back in the 40's . It had tree's all over it and Grandpa had to clear land for growing crops to sell to make enough money each year to carry them thru the winter . He cleared the land with an axe , two handed saw and two mules . Used the mule's to pull log's and stump's out of ground . It took a lot of painful work to clear around 30 acre's .

He planted cotton mostly and all the thing the needed to can and carry them thru the winter till spring time . Raised Hog's for meat . They would kill a hog and salt cure the meat and hang it out in the smoke house . Had their own milk cow and would sell milk and egg's from the chicken's they raised . They grew corn and had corn shuckin's . Some went to feed , some he took to flower mill and have ground into cornmeal and flour .

They would plant sugar cane the harvest it , take it to a horse drown press and cook the juice to make molasses .

The land they bought had a large house on it and a large basement . No running water back then . They had to carry water from a spring flowing from under a big bolder . Grandma give birth to 4 girl's and 3 brother's . That help a lot in the chore's that had to be done . The last girl that was born was almost the same age i was . I was born June 1950 she was born August 1950 .

I'm not sure where my parents lived when i was born . When i was 3 or 4 years old . We were living in the basement of grandparents home . Bye that time they were diggin a well by hand . They had this roof built over the top of the well where they would draw water up with a rope and pulley . Every once in a while you would bring a frog up with the water . Just throw it out and go on . Had a dipper made from a gourd hanging there and dip some cold water from the wooden bucket they used .

Grandma had awood burning cook stove , She would go out where the pine trees grew and look for an old pine stump that had rooted away . The core of that stump was very rich pine . She would chop off large pieces and use it by split into tiny strips and take a match to start her fire with . The stove has a place to keep water in so they could use the hot water to take bath's with . No bathrooms back then . Mom and Dad moved in the basement of their home for a while . In 1955 we moved to a brick yard that supplied a house of my family to live in while Dad worked there . Think they started him off with 95 cent's an hour . We lived at the brickyard till 1959 .

In 1957 or around that time , we were siting outside on the porch and in the distance we saw across the river , a glow was in the sky . Mom said it looked like it was near my grandparents home . We all god in the car and drove over that way . When dad turned in to the road cut thru the wood's , we saw it was their home on fire . It burned to the ground . They moved into a place near by . Grandpa got lumber from the sawmill (No treated lumber back then) With help from friend and neighbors he built a new home 3 bed rooms large kitchen and living room and it even had a bathroom in it .

In 1959 , Grandpa give mom a piece of land and help dad buy a very small mobile home . It was 8 foot wide and 37 foot long . September 1959 we moved in We lived in that cramped trailor till 1970 . I bought a 12X60 foot mobile home that had our first bathroom in it . That first shower i took was such a pleasure . I got real squeekie clean for the first time i can remember .

1959 was when i started exploring the land around us . One of our neighbor's was where my great aunt lived . My brother , my aunt and i would go and check out her trash pile . (Today they would call that dumster diving) We sure found a lot of good stuff that she thru away . We would go out in the big woods and sit and watch the critter's that were all around us . Go down to the creek and wade in the cool water was such a pleasure . We couldn't swim so no skinny dipping went on . There were hills to clime filled with larel bushes that would bloom in the summer , Holly bushes and trees with lots of red berries . Some even had yellow berries . Out in the field's you could see cotton growing that had row's so long you couldn't see the other end . On one side of their land were a large forest of tree's . That is when i found out there was a pond filled with foot lond bream and bluegill . We would sneak down to that pond and use cane poll's to catch fish for supper . Fill a bucket up in no time . Some times the owner would here us . He would yell at us and if we didn't leave he would shoot his shotgun in the air and pellet's would fall all around us . That was the time to leave . He didn't like us because he clamed we stole his watermellon's . Oh those were the day's .

Written By Wayne