STARTING TO SCHOOL

I was six and weighed 45 pounds when I started to school. I 'knew my letters', could count, read and spell a little. I had never been sick except for little colds. I walked up the middle of the country road by myself, a little over two miles. Conners lived a half mile up the hill south. And I walked most of the time, with John Ed, Anna Bell and Jay who was younger than me. I always had a good heavy coat with pockets and a toboggan. I never had a raincoat nor gloves Farmers or workers couldn't afford gloves. I don't ever remember getting wet. Anybody who passed, would pick us up. I would get in the car with anybody that stopped. I don't remember ever being afraid of anything or anybody.

If I was walking alone, 'the meter man' picked me up, two mornings a week. He was about as old as Daddy and we talked about the weather. He drove 50 feet into a pasture and recorded something at a big pipeline. I could get out at the road and walk on to school or set in his little open pickup and wait for him. I got to school about the same time. I remember over hearing Ludie talking to Mama, against me riding with him. It was me; that was riding instead of walking.

I always went around the road, in the morning.There were never more than 2 cars. In the evening I 'cut through' our neighbors pasture. They had cows but I was never scared. I dawdled along, looking for cactus berry bushes. About the end of the school year, they got ripe. They grew on a round cactus, never over five inches across, an inch high, kinda humped on top. The pretty little bloom was white and soon a white berry poked up. It turned pink and then red. There were never more than four or five on each 'cactus berry bush.' The animals liked them too, we could see where they had tried to rake them out, they didn't get many. We broke off a new mosquite thorn every day, to punch into them and lift them out, of where they grew, in their bed of thorns.

They are full of real tiny black seeds and taste like strawberries. One was never more than a teaspoon full, if it was smashed down. Sometimes I had a handful to take home to little brother. One good year, I gathered a little over a pint and Mama made a good cobbler. I never knew of Mama ever being worried about me being late.

One day it was cold, Conners didn't go to school, they missed a lot. I kept walking, there was just one other house on the road and it set way back. I remember that I got cold and I decided to stop and warm up. I huddled out of the wind in a narrow washed out ditch, by the fence. I went to sleep. A car come by and saw me. They took me on to school. I remember telling them to wash my hands in warm water, not that cold water. I don't know how they saw me in my brown coat. It was years before bright colors come into style. It didn't hurt me, Mama and Daddy felt bad about not checking with Conners. I loved school and didn't want to miss. I got perfect attendance, lots of years.

I went to spend the night at Aunt Hettie and Uncle Kelses house. No body ever spent the night at anyone's house. I never stayed with Minnie Alice, nor her with me. None of the others in schools ever spent the night. The next morning when I got home, I was astonished to find a baby brother, Eldridge Dean, April 6, 1929.

We were proud of him and everybody called him by both names or Brother.

He was three weeks old when Grand Ma Hess died, May 2, 1929. We were there for two days. He wasn't any trouble.

He first went to church when he was ten weeks old, he didn't like it. We went back the following Wednesday and he did very well, the Church of Christ in town.

Mama remembers, ' Two days before he was six months old, I found a straight pin that had passed through him. He swallowed it somehow, I don't know how or when, but he must have got it in his mouth nursing. He cannot pick up a pin. It did not seem to hurt him in any way. He has been well lately.

Seven months and has six little teeth and can crawl pretty good.'

There was a big oil discovery in Hobbs, New Mexico. Money can be made during an oil boom. Daddy went to look and the town was full of hungry men and no places to eat. He come back to get me and Annie Louise and Eldridge Dean and we bought the Airdome Restaurant in Hobbs,with the rest of our 'Mexico money,' in August. We didn't have a good place to live and Eldridge Dean couldn't play where he wanted to. His stomach and eye teeth were coming in and he didn't feel good. He quit talking and wouldn't say anything except, “Mama”and hang onto my coat tail. The restaurant and kitchen was crowded and I couldn't cook us biscuits. We got so tired of that store-bought white bread. Uncle Jim and Aunt Zenna Mae come to Hobbs to get in on it too.

Suddenly there was a bigger oil strike at Longview and every body left Hobbs.

Uncle Jim and Aunt Zenna Mae left first. The town dried up, just overnight. I come home Sept 24, 1930. We could not get any of our money back, we had the cattle left.

Ben worked for years at a little garage on this side of town, to pay off our place.

We come back to Breckenridge and I made lots of biscuits. It was years before any of us would eat 'bought light bread'. Eldridge Dean started saying lots of words and sings “la, la, la.” He likes to get something that you want and run with it. He will bring it nearly back, and run again.

One of the first things that he had to learn; was to leave the gas stove alone. Daddy got to talking to 'a pipe line walker' who was walking across our land, looking for leaks. A leak would cause leaves or grass to change color or die. Later they used small airplanes to fly low over pipe lines. Daddy found out that there was an underground natural gas line, just twenty feet from our house. He cut a hole in it and put a saddle on it. Mama and me just knew that there would be a spark and we would all burn up.

We had free natural gas in our house! It was nice for several years and then a state law was passed, that all gas used in homes; had to have a strong bad smell added to it, so that a gas leak would be noticed and repaired.

So we used wood again. Then Daddy bought a big butane tank that was half full. He moved it on our little trailer, I remember seeing it hanging off, nearly dragging the ground, Dec, 1947. Mama and me just knew that it would explode while it was being moved. We got linoleum for the kitchen and dining room floors in July 1947.

Electricity come in a line in front of our house in August 1,1946. Daddy put a 40w light bulb hanging on a covered wire with a pull switch on it, in the middle of each room. It hurt our eyes, it was so much brighter than the coal oil lamps that we had used. We had to carry the lamp from room to room.

We bought a Servell refrigerator June 26, 1947. It was wonderful, years later it quit getting cold. Daddy took the lid off the top. There was a little fan that wasn't turning. We had a little fan about that size and he took it apart and wired the fan into the refrigerator. That refrigerator worked for years. The new fan was a bit bigger and the big lid wouldn't fit back down. We could look up and see the fan turning.

Daddy knew nothing about refrigeration- but he fixed it. He fixed anything.

Imogene and James V moved and had no butane. Daddy swapped refrigerators with them. They both run fine for years.

An oil line run across our land, underground. It sprung a leak in our field and ruined about five acres of good farm land. The oil company 'made it good' and in three years it was productive again. The same thing happened to a neighbors field and they sued. Daddy testified for the oil company and a lot of people got mad at him. He said,

“I just told the truth.”

Eldridge Dean was follerin' his Daddy and went out the 'bob wire' gate. He hung the skin above his ankle on a barb; and he kept going, he wanted to catch his Daddy.

It made an ugly four inch tear. They wrapped it up and it quickly grew back, ugly.

Once he was lost and we had looked everywhere and were going to look again. We heard a noise in the brooder house, someone had shut him up in there and he was having a time with the baby chickens. He hadn't hurt them.

We found a baby chick with a foot missing, then another. Daddy found that our big old 'barn cat' could get under the brooder house floor and where there was a tiny crack, a little chickens foot would slip through. The cat would eat that little foot.

Daddy caught that cat and tanned it's hide. He sent off and got chemicals and instructions. It was so much bigger than we thought it would be and the hair was so soft.

(Years later Stanley shot a bobcat, off somewhere. Daddy tanned it, hair, head and all. Benny Thel liked to crawl on the floor and growl--with that head and skin, over him.

One day we were all eating candy and I guess he thought he wasn't eating fast enough. He laid his little piece down and got another one. Someone said, “Brother, you had a piece.” He said, “That one's for Mr Curry.”

Eldridge Dean kept bumping his forehead, in the same place, it looked like a little horn was fixing to grow. Then he would bump the other side. They finally went away.

Daddy always managed to get us to Mineral Wells for Christmas. Santy Clause had a chimney there, that he could come down, we always hung our stockings. It was wonderful. They always had a big decorated cedar Christmas tree. I was excited because one year,we found Santy's big long red cloth belt by the Christmas tree. We carefully kept it on the mantle until the next Christmas and then he took it back.

When Mama Gill was a real little girl they didn't know about Christmas trees. No one at Mineral Wells had one. Her half sister from 'the first family' in Illinois come to visit them at Christmas time and she asked them why they didn't have a Christmas tree. They had never heard of one and they asked her to show them one. She went out in the woods and showed them a pretty shaped cedar tree. They cut it and stood it up in the school house and she showed them how to make paper chains and decorations for it. Everybody liked it and next year, everybody in the community 'put up' a Christmas tree in their homes and had decorations that they made for it.

I remember that one year at Mama Gills, they bought individual metal clips for small candles. They were clipped on the tree. They were pretty, but by the time they were all lit, they were leaning and had to be blowed out. They never did use them again.

We went to Mineral Wells every Thanksgiving and cut us a cedar Christmas tree. We carried it to Breckenridge and saved it, settin' in a bucket of water. We didn't have cedar trees there. All her life, my Mama saved foil from chewing gum wrappers, any kind of shiny paper, she cut little stars for the Christmas tree.

Mama remembers, “When I was growing up, we celebrated 4th of July, it was almost as big as Christmas. The Hesses, Mamas folks, always tried to have ripe watermelons. They planted the seed early and covered them from frost. Then we would have a picnic on our place, just above Oaks Crossing. Dad would let our fence down on both sides. He would dig a pit and put limbs in it, he would butcher a goat or a calf and put it on top. Mama would mix a bunch of spices and Dad would rub them on and set a fire and cover it all up with certain tree leaves, and dirt. When he opened it up; it was ready to eat. All the family would bring food and we would have a time. Us little kids would have tiny 'lady crackers' to play with. The men would go across the road and shoot off some big loud fireworks.Their smoke was so big, that we couldn't see the men.

Cam, my oldest brother, would have our big white face bull there and he would really buck. Cam could always ride him. The next year big Johnny Glidwell wanted to ride him first. He got on him, but he got bucked off. He never wanted to ride him again.

We had a big old gray bull, Cam never bothered him.

One year, just as Mama was spreading her big white tablecloth on the ground; it started to pour down rain. Dad called for us to all go up under the big hallways in one of our big barns. It was about a mile. We all grabbed up the food and started. Dora and Donnie were my cousins, Aunt Sudie and Uncle John Oaks girls. They had come in their hack, that was like a buggy with just two wheels. I rode with them. As we started up the steep gate to to the graveyard, one of the horses slipped in the mud and fell. The other horse stood firm until he got up and had his footing back. We went on up under the barn.

Everybody got there and the food was spread and we were eating. Our barns were on the crest of the hill, high above the Brazos. Dad could look out west and see the Glidwell bend in the river. He had kept watching the river.

Dad called out, “I can see the river rising. Anybody who wants to cross it at Oaks Crossing, they had better get started.” Dora and Donnie had the hack and it was faster, they got across fine. Mr and Mrs Gabriel lived over there, and were in their wagon with Leona and Lorena. They were there because Black and Leona were getting to like each other. They hurried to the river and it was to high to cross safely. The Boone boys and the Gill boys, they rode their horses along side the Gabriel wagon and held onto it. They set in their wagon and the bed floated up a little, they crossed safely.

On the other side, the boys looked at each other, “Lets go home!” They jumped their horses into the raging water and swam them back across the Brazos, to go home. The ten boys were sometimes called 'the river rats'.”

The next year, people in town had heard about our celebration. They swarmed out there and most of them didn't bring any food. That was the last of those celebrations.

We started going to Lovers Retreat. It is a few miles west of Palo Pinto. Indians had lived and camped there for years and years before. Eagle Creek run through it and had a swimming hole, small coves and canyons. There were enormous rocks that had broke open. Aunt Etta called a big crack, 'fat man's mizery.' A smaller long crack was 'skinney man's mizery.' We would walk and wriggle through them, and laugh.

Grandad and Granmama had gone there to a big three week 'George W Truett, Baptist revival', years before. George W Truett was widely known. Grandad was one of the last big bunch that was baptized there. There is a big picture on the wall of the First Baptist church in Mineral Wells, of that group.

To have food, people brought chickens in coops. They led a milk cow behind their wagon. There were no stores for miles.

The owners tried to sell it to the county, in 1916. but taxes would have had to be raised. The people voted 1169 against 413, a tax of five cents on it. It is fenced off now and private, owned by Barney Carter.

Daddy tried to take us from Breckenridge, every year. His folks and Mama's too, would come from Mineral Wells, we had a big time. After dinner together, all our cars were parked in a big circle. The root word for 'rodeo' is 'rounding'. That was to be the rodeo arena. My Uncle Cam had a reputation, so he come out first. Car horns honked.

It was not our bull, but he rode it, and then he jumped off.

That bull was mad, he was looking for a place to go. Next to our car was a little wider opening. He was coming for it, bellerin', his head down and slinging slobbers.

I had helped my Daddy in the cow lot, I knew how to turn a cow. I jumped out, waving my arms and yelling. The place got deathly quiet.

That bull turned and the crowd cheered. They most all knew that Cam was my uncle.

I didn't know why my Mama run and grabbed me and shook me. I was eight years old and that's the only Fourth of July that I can remember.

On our way home to Breckenridge, there was a drunk man driving ahead of us, all over the highway. He would not let us pass him. There was not much traffic. When we got to Breckenridge, Daddy stopped and told the Sheriff, his license number. There was a trial later and Daddy went and testified. I was proud of him.

((There were no TELEPHONES around us at Breckenridge. Alexander Graham Bell invented the 'talking telegraph' in 1876. By 1900 there were more than 600 independant telephone companies. They were in towns where homes were close together. It cost to much to put up poles and wires, where homes were miles apart.

At Mineral Wells where Mama was raised, they all had party line phones in their homes, all of her life, by 1900. Each family bought a big wall telephone, 6x6x18inches from their Sears or Montgomery Ward catalog, and hung it up on their wall. You always had to stand up to talk. Maybe to keep the children from playing with it. There was something inside of that big telephone; that made it work.They used their barb wire fence for phone lines. A few places they stretched new wire on new posts.They stretched a line across the river. It washed out every time the river got up. When a tree limb fell across the line, it made a loud hum. It 'went dead' when the line broke. They had to 'walk the line' a lot. Each family was responsible for the line on his property. There were no bills, no 'central' operator, no long distance.

Each home had a different 'ring'. On the side of the phone up on the wall was a small crank. You took a solid grip and gave it a whirl.That ringing sound went to every phone 'on the line'.You answered 'Hello' if it was 'your ring', two longs and a short or three shorts, whatever it was.

Or a neighbor might answer and say, "I saw them pass this morning, going to town, and they aren't back yet."

You could quietly 'listen in' and no one would know it. But if to many listened in, it 'took power off the line' and someone said, "Some of you all, hang up, I can't hear."

When it stormed, everyone unhooked the wire line from their house.

The Hesses would speak French and others listening in' couldn't understand them,

Mamas sister, Etta was little and she had polio. Us kids waited to go to school, to see if she was going to wake up. One day they were alone and she had a 'bad spell'. Mama run to the phone and gave one long ring. That ment emergency and everyone was supposed to listen. "This is Julia, Etta is having a spell and I need help!" She run back to her and pulled the tub with her and two inches of water- onto the coals of the fireplace. Neighbors started coming in to help. Rubbing her with hot water was the only thing that helped her. Every one was amazed that Mama or Etta wasn't burned.

We did not have a telephone at our house at Post Oak untill after I graduated in 1940.

Uncle Henry was Mamas brother that moved to Claude and married. They had those telephones up there. I wonder if he brought that knowledge with him.

Enterprising Texans found another use for that 'wall telephone'. A fisherman would get on the river and put that telephone in his boat and he would dangle a long wire from it over each side of his boat. He would guide his boat over deep places and near big rocks. He set and cranked the telephone and it made no sound, But it passed a current between the two wires.A human could not feel the current, but a big catfish would float to the top of the water. A good swimmer had to quickly grab the fish, or it would swim away.

Mama had one brother who became good at 'telephoning up a catfish'. As he had 'fish fries' or gave them away to the family; word got out. New laws had to be passed. Soon a match box size instrument come out. I have a brother who got good at that too. His son carried on and his daughters have jumped in 'to grab that big catfish'. I don't think that they ever got caught.

Eldridge was four years old when we spent the night at Aunt Hetties again.

July, 1933 was the dryest month in the dryest year in the dryest state. The roads were all dry dirt. That night, it rained nine inches. The roads were axle deep in mud, nearly impassable. Daddy drove to town to get Aunt Zenna Mae and Doctor Webb. He finally brought them in, explaining to Mama, how bad the roads were.

“You go on, I just need the Doctor.”

The next morning me and Eldridge walked home, back over the hill from spending the night with Dora, Adell and Silas, at Aunt Hetties. We were surprised to find that we had a baby sister. I was happy to have a sister and on my birthday, July 15, 1933.

Ever since that time, when it gets hot and dry in July; Daddy would say, “Well I know of one time that it rained in July.”

There was no name picked out, someone suggested naming her after her two grandmothers Julia and Alice. Aunt Zenna Mae said,"Oh, No, don't tell Anne that, it's awful, she'll use it.” Her own first child was named Minnie Alice, after her grandmothers.

Well, Mama did like it. She had heard that Alice in French was Alicea. Mama was proud of her French ancestors and she said, “We'll name her Julia Alice and call her 'Alicea'. No one had heard of that name and they couldn't say it, much less spell it.

So Mama spelled it Alice; with an a, on the end, so we could at least spell it.

Daddy had rented a field, half way to town and had corn planted. It needed hoeing Daddy had to have a bailer part welded at town, he took Mama, me, Eldridge Dean and Alicea and let us out at the field. Mama put Alicea on a pallet on the ground, she was to small to get off. Eldridge was proud to help with his little hoe. We hoed a round and got back to Alicea and she was fine. We hoed another round and she was fine.

A young woman and her husband had rented the house, she come out to us and played with Alicea. She wanted to take her in the house. Mama let her, I didn't like it.

Mama showed me wild lettuce growing in the fence row. It tasted good with our biscuit and sausage and the water that we brought. Daddy come by and got us and we were proud the corn was hoed. That's the only time that we ever got to do any thing like that. Every time I see wild lettuce growing,I eat some and think of our good time hoeing.

Later, Daddy was getting paid for plowing the field, just north of there. He had got paid 300 dollars for a big bunch of hay that he had bailed. He lost his billfold while he plowed. He hunted and we all helped. It was never found.

Daddy always worked for neighbors and managed to get our work done too.

Early one Monday morning, Daddy went to work in the field. Eldridge was in the first grade and he and I had walked to school, carrying our dinner buckets. They were usually tin half gallon buckets that we had bought syrup in. We had a biscuit with a sausage or some ham. Another biscuit with jelly on it or a cookie.We never carried milk or anything to drink. We always found something good to eat when we got home from school. I liked to turn a cold biscuit up edgeways. I would poke- my finger into the side and put a spoon full of sugar in the hole. I liked it.

We had some neighbors who didn't like to work, they drank and they were on welfare. Their kids brought sandwiches to school made out of white bread and bulogna. Oh it smelled so good. I guess they thought that about my ham and biscuits.

One night about dark, one of them run his car into the ditch in front of our house. He was stumbling around, 'buzzed,' "I want to go home and go to bed, I want to go home and go to bed." Daddy got him back on the road.

Earl Akin was another neighbor. He was interested in gliders. he got with the army and helped them and gliders were used so much in the invasion of France. Stanley, in grade school, visiting with his sons at their house; remembers a big old metal airplane frame, rusting back of their house. It seemed big to him at the time.

Eldridge got big enough to watch the big boys as they flexed their arm and showed their 'muscle'. His little arm was so skinney. He would rare back and pooch his stomach out and say, "I've got a muscle like Mr Caldwell." He was a neighbor with a 'bay window'. Once Mama called him lazy. He had a heart attack before long and Mama felt real bad, she never called anyone lazy again. In our house, lazy was a bad word. We were not lazy, we proudly worked like our Mama and Daddy did.

What we didn't have, we made. When it broke, Daddy fixed it, and we used it some more. We did not say it. We lived it. We would 'make do'

Mama was washing. The tubs were on a bench just outside the screened in back porch. She was scrubbing the dirty clothes in the hot wash water. She could watch Alicea as she toddled around and played inside on the porch. The five gallon metal slop bucket, to feed the hogs, set there. One biscuit 'left from yesterday' floated on the three inches of breakfast dishwater that Mama had poured in it.

Mama couldn't see Alicea and went onto the porch to see what she had gotten into. She had wanted that biscuit and kept reaching for it. All Mama could see was one little leg moving at the top of the slop bucket. Mama jerked her out, limp and lifeless. There was no one to help. She run out to the road and not a car was in sight. She started running up the road, the little hill to Conners, our closest neighbors. About the time she got the half mile, Alicea started coming back to life.

When me and Eldridge got home that afternoon, and Daddy got in from work Alicea was toddling around. Mama couldn't make us see how awful it had been. Alicea never liked to hear that story told, 'that she had fell in the slop bucket.'

Me, Annie Louise, Eldridge Dean and Alicea spent the night at Aunt Hetties again, three years later. When we got home the next morning, our Mama was holding a screaming red baby, it scared Alicea.

It scared Alicea so much that Mama always thought that it had really affected her and made her more timid. Mama decided right then; that all children should be told when they were going to have a new baby in the family.

I told Mama that I wanted a hand in naming him. “He's already named,

Stanley Donald.” I tried to act grouchy but I always thought that was the prettiest name, and I was doubly proud when Stanley Donald Junior, come along. Aunt Hettie had a baby that was dead at birth, named Stanley.

"Stanley weighed 17 pounds whan he got his first colored dress. A few days past his first birthday, I started weaning him. He didn't like it. He didn't care if I did 'black it''.

Next spring Stanley come out, wearing the cutest pair of rompers. They were light blue with a tiny white stripe. Mama had made them out of a dress shirt of Daddy's that he seldom wore. He had two more. We were so proud when he wore them to church. When we got home, Mama took them off him and washed them and ironed them. He was ready to go again. We were proud that she was so smart to do that. She kept making his overalls, and underwear and shirts, the way that she had always made Eldridges, even in high school; untill they left home.

I always remember Mama having her Singer sewing machine. She sewed the best that she could and Aunt Hettie helped her any time.

There was no money for anything, for anybody else either, but we had as much as they did. Times were hard, but that was the only time that us kids ever knew.

Daddy had a job 'on the side', pretty often, he could do anything.We always had a car, plenty to eat and as much fun as anyone else. We were never 'poor'.

We liked 'mush' for supper. It was corn meal, boiled in water, seasoned with butter or bacon grease,and a little milk on it. Stanley said he knew that Daddy was a talker, and thought he sometimes said that he wanted mush-- because it was all that we had to eat.

I don't think so. We always bought yellow corn meal, 'it had more neutrition in it.'

Daddy could make most any kid stop crying. He say, "It's my time to cry."

He would lean over and pull his pocket open, "Come here and cry in my pocket."

Me and Alicea were always proud of our 'Easter Dress' that Mama made us every year. They were thin and frilly, our 'Sunday dress' all summer. So many times, it was cold on Easter and we had to wear our winter coat over our pretty dress.

I asked him why he wet his britches. He said, “I didn't wet them. I pee'd in them."

At church one night, as the preacher was praying, he hollared out' “Daddy, you got your shoes on.” Not his regular work shoes. We did not attend church regularly, Daddy worked late so much. We never ate a meal until Daddy 'asked the blessing'.

Alicea called it the 'Blessings Lordy'. I never heard a curse word at our house, anywhere.

A few years later, Daddy's Uncle Chock, needed a place to live and be taken care of. His speech was 'very colorful'. I would have loved to hear his stories and the words that he used. We had all loved Aunt Viney, she had been so nice, tall and slim.

She 'took a shine to me' She gave me her big heavy rose gold wedding ring that she couldn't wear any more. I never could wear it. Years later I talked Thel into wearing it. It just fit him and he had never had a ring of any kind. He was real sorry when he lost it before long. He was not allowed to wear a ring while he was working inside airplanes at General Dynamics. Later I found him a pretty Masonic ring, he soon lost it.

Aunt Viney 'quilted for the public'. She gave me a queen size 'double wedding ring' quilt that had such pretty pink colors. It was beautiful and I kept it at Mamas, up in her big closet. We took it out and admired it, every once in a while. There was another pretty quilt there too. I never felt worthy of the beautiful quilts, they are gone now ?

I gave the 'Dutch Doll quilt that Mama Gill made last, to Nancy, or Judy. And the big pretty china tea pot too. I thought things were divided equal.

Daddy always laughed about when he and Uncle Chock was racing their ponies, when they were kids. Uncle Chocks pony stepped in a prarie dog hole and they both went tumbling. He got up, “I'm not hurt, I just got a little 'eyes in my dirt'.”

He was was always 'cocky'. He was small and was a jockey, a good one-when there were races there in town. He worked at the Jockey yard in Mineral Wells. It was nearly in the center of town and the race track was just west. Papa Gill kept several race horses.

Mama said that she really liked to watch them race, everybody bet among themselves.

He liked to drink, and then soon there would be a fight. He thought that he was as big as anybody. He wouldn't ever 'give up.' They would bring him home, beat and scratched up. So when Aunt Viney heard that he was drinking, she would walk and go and get him. They didn't live far. She would fold a quilt into a square and put it on the floor by her chair. She would make him set on it until she thought that he wasn't drunk any more. He would beg and cry for her to let him get up. Both Aunt Hettie and George Everett told me that they saw that, more than once.

There were no cars at first and when anyone come to town, they left their horse and buggy or team and wagon at the jockey yard. He fed and watered them. We had quit going to visit them when we went to Mineral Wells. So I still have 'tender ears.'

Uncle Jim got him from Mineral Wells but soon took him back. Trudy remembers being scared of him. His hair and eyebrows were coal black and they bristled, straight up, Him and his brother Uncle 'Dolf had 'enough Indian blood' that their hair stayed coal black. Stanley don't remember Uncle Chock, but he remembers us going to his funeral at Mineral Wells.

Mama remembers.“Stanley Donald got his hair cut when he was ten months old.

'It taken the whole family to do it.' Ben always cut the boys hair. We thought it looked nice but Stanley Donald fussed every time that his Daddy cut his hair. Daddy got his cut at the barber shop. When it started getting 'grown out'. He would have Mama 'shave his neck' in the back and he could wait longer to pay to have it cut.

His dinner was to hot one day, He said, “Pore water on it Daddy, pore water on it.”

At two, baby liked to go in the cellar and do what he's seen me do. He would move a lot of the jars of fruit. Sometimes he will take the jars of food from the shelves, and set them around on the dirt floor. When I miss him, that's where I look. He never broke a jar.

One day he started out the back gate, he was almost naked. I run to catch him.

He said,”I got my hat.”

He visited school one day when I was in club meeting. He was so noisy with the blocks that the teacher turned them all out to play, rather than send him out to me.

The government 'bought up' cotton to keep the prices higher. There was a program to give farm families new mattresses, through the 4H clubs. They showed us women how to make them.They furnished the cotton and the striped 'ticking' to cover them with. I remember the big long needles that went all the way through the mattress.

I, Annie Louise, remember seeing the big bale of cotton, at the school house. It was all used to make mattresses for the Post Oak community. Our family got two. We were all glad to get them, even though they were real heavy. All mattresses were heavy then. Many people are still using one of those 'home made' mattresses, we are. We have the open squeaking wire springs under them too; on Granma Hesses old bed.

Stanley Donald was in the garage with Ben and had his hammer. Ben said, “Give me my hammer.” Sonny did and then said,”Thank you Sonny.” Ben told that on hisself.

Once he climbed upon the library table and couldn't get down. He said,” Mama, help Sonny down, before he gets into something.”

One day he come in with a piece of fried meat with syrup on it. I said, “I don't want to find syrup spilled on my table.” He said,”I didn't. I done licked it up.”

He started out the door to play. He hollared back and said, “Sister watch Brother.”

Stanley Donald was lost. Mama hunted everywhere. She stopped cars out on the road. People were looking in our two tanks. Mamas folks at Mineral Wells were always afraid that 'Anne would loose one of her kids in one of those tanks.'

Finally here come, Stanley Donald walking toward the house, with his hand on Old Jack, our black and white collie. “I been huntin'.” Jack had stayed with him and they were coming back, along the inside of our fence.

Jack was about fifteen when he died. Stanley Donald thinks the mail man run over him. Daddy never would allow a dog or cat in our house. One cold winter, Jack was wet and had little icicles on his hair. I put a box for him, inside the back porch, but we never could drag him into it. He knew his place.We had a big doghouse but none of our dogs ever got in it. It was big and clean enough for four little kids to get in. They seldom did.

Stanley Donald remembers “When the Lindberg baby was kidnapped, we all hung on to the story, it lasted for weeks. Us kids were afraid of being kidnapped. The Watkins man pulled up to our house in his little car. Me and Alicea run out to his car. He waved both hands wildly, “I'm a Kidnapper. I'm a Kidnapper.” “We were so scared that we run and crawled into our dog house and wouldn't come out, until he drove off.”

We were always watching for 'mad dogs', we never saw one.There were no shots to give dogs. When something happened to 'our dog', another stray would come along. Thats the way that we always got our dogs.

We lived across the road from Stokers. They were two brothers, Ruel and Jap. They had just about retired from rodeoing, they were champion calf ropers. Jap had a notch cut out of his lip. It had been a cancer, right where his cigarette lay.They built a big stock tank across the road, from our house, just out of sight from the road. I liked to walk and prowl around it.

One bright Monday, Mama was washing and the clothes weren't ready for me to hang out. I walked across the road and around that tank. It had rained in the night and the tank had 'run around.' There laying in a trickle of water of the spillway, was the biggest catfish that I ever saw! I run home to get Mama, to look at that whale, she wouldn't come. She told me to put it in a bucket and bring it home. It weighed maybe ten pounds, we ate it.

Stanley roamed all the tanks and ponds. He got suspicious when all the little fish disappeared out of Stokers big tank. He set a catfish hook and was pulling out a big one; when Ruel rode up on his horse. “Nice fish you got there.” It had to have been stocked.

Stanley remembers when he was little, Ruel had some stock pens up on the hill.

He come and got Daddy and Eldridge to help him load a metal tank onto his truck. They couldn't load it. Daddy tried to tell him how to do it, he wouldn't listen. Daddy asked him if he could have it, if he could load it, he agreed. Daddy and Eldridge loaded it on their little trailer. Ruel got so mad that he didn't speak to them for a couple of years.

He knew that Stanley trapped and sold hides. The price wasn't much. Once he called for him to come and get a skunk out of Ruels trap at his stock pens.

Daddy raised some sorgum cane, to make syrup. We stripped the leaves off and hauled the stalks to Red Gap,the comunity west of us. A man over there had all the things to make syrup. They made it and it was bitter. They said the soil that it was grown in, had to much alkilye in it. We brought buckets of it home, but it was to bitter to use, Mama tried. The man that made it was about Daddys age. He went barefooted, the only grown man that I ever saw, that did.

Alicea repeated the third grade, it embarassed her and Mama and Daddy too. She always had to study. Stanley never studied and especially for tests. Alicea thought that wasn't fair, it didn't bother Stanley. They were always 'Sister and Sonny.'

She studied for her driving test. She set two short tree stumps out the back gate and practiced parallel parking between them for a long time. She passed her test!

When Stanley took his test, he set with his elbow out the window and was sure that he would pass it the first time, he didn't. We were all glad for her.

Mama was looking at the newspaper picture of Julia playing soccer. She said that she didn't think that girl ought to play that rough. I told her that Alecia played soccer and I had read that when girls played soccer that they didn't let boy friends or husbands, beat up on them. Mama grinned and said that Alicea told that she had to defend herself once.

Alicea told Mama that "he still carries my teeth marks' on him."

I never failed a class, but I didn't make good grades. I never could remember dates and numbers.I guess the teachers realized that I couldn't do any better, and passed me on I think it was my third grade teacher, "Annie Louise, on every record that I can find,there is a different date for your birthday. Why is that?" Well I wasn't about to say that it was because that I told it different every time. I couldn't remember it. I can now. (I can't remember the birthdates of my three sons. I am thankful that they can. Maybe that trait has been 'run out', after 90 years.)

Some of Mamas brothers couldn't remember dates or figures either. One time school was being held in their home. Mama Gill heard the teacher tell Dock that she was going to whip him for not being able to spell a word. Mama Gill told the teacher to not whip him for not knowing how to spell a word. The teacher closed the door and 'turned the button to lock it'. Mama Gill said, "If you whip him, I will beat the stuffin out of you." The teacher backed down.

I took typing, barely passing it. Our teacher told us that if we ever got a job typing; that we would not use what we learned from her. She said that the next year, all the keyboards would be changed. There was a better way to arrange the letters on typewriters so fingers could reach and type more efficiantly. The letters were originally arranged so what when the keys were struck; the metal arms that swung out, on the manuel typewriter, to strike the paper, they wouldn't hang together.

But when the time come to change-- all the older typists protested loudly that it would ruin their livelihood. So that good idea was dropped and forgotten.

I graduated in 1940 and times were hard, real hard. I went to visit Aunt Ettta and Vernon in Mineral Wells. I got a job at the Water Fountain on the mesanine of the big Baker Hotel.. They were building an army base there. Times were so hard and there was no jobs in Bckenridge

Stanley remembers, back at Breckenridge, “We had a little foot long radio, it run off a car battery. We listened to the news at night and Mama listened to “As the World Turns and Ma Perkins” in the evening. Mama watched those programs until Daddy couldn't work and was in the house all the time. Mama quit watching, “They aren't fit for him to watch, all those divorces.”

Daddy made a wind charger on the garage roof. It had one long blade about five feet long. It charged the car battery up. Stanley was the one to climb up and fix it, a lot. He remembers them listening to The Lone Ranger, Amos and Andy and other shows that run on to dark. Mama 'Told' them to go and do their chores; but if Daddy didn't come in to 'Make' them, they didn't get done until Daddy come in, after dark.

Mama cut the radio off during every commercial, to save juice. She set there in the dark hot corner of their bedroom, the closest place to the wind charger, with her ear down on the radio to hear it.

Thel come into the family and saw her with her head to the radio. He took the speaker out of an old radio and run a wire from it to the speaker of the good radio. He put the speaker in a plastic cereal bowl and sewed a top on it. He had holes in the top of the bowl. Mama could hold that speaker to her ear or her hearing aid. Mama thought that he was the smartest thing. He made them for other people, too.

Years later in Azle, she liked to lay on the carpet in front of her big television. She watched it and held her speaker to her hearing aid. She dozed off and a storm come up. Lightening blew out the tubes of her TV and several neighbors. I am so thankful that it did not run down that cord to her heart. God was watching over us again.

After I graduated and moved in with Aunt Etta and Vernon, Daddy brought Mama from Breckenridge. Aunt Etta drove us to Fort Worth and I bought her a hearing aid. I still have the ticket. It cost $59, $19 down and $7 a month. Mama didn't want me to buy it; but she sure did want it. She could hear us talking! It fit in her ear, a cord run to the battery in her pocket and one to the receiver, pinned on her chest. We didn't have to yell at her. I paid it out, I was making $20 a month.

Back in Breckenridge the next morning, she heard a sound that she hadn't ever heard. Daddy finally figured out that it was the coffee pot perking.

Years later they lived in Arkansas. The fancy tall wood heater in the living room needed stoking. She had a pretty big chunk of wood and she lifted it chest high and dropped it in the stove. It got tangled in the cord to her hearing aid. The ear mold stayed in her ear; but her nearly new hearing aid, it went into the burning stove. They cost a lot more by then and she felt so bad. Daddy come in and she told him that she just wouldn't wear a hearing aid any more. He was very kind and told her that they would load up a calf and take it to town and sell it. So she had a new hearing aid.

Benny Thel was in first grade at Washington Heights on the north side of Fort Worth. It was the oldest school building in Fort Worth, a two story brick. (2016 it was torn down and rebuilt) We were trying to get him used to calling them, 'black people', like they wanted him to. He would forget and call them 'painted people'. In a few years he and his friends were bothered when 'they' were built a new brick 'black school' just seven blocks west of their oldest school.

Benny was head of Little Dude boat trailer company. A clean looking black man come with a neat looking application and he hired him. When he got on the job, he could not read or write orders. He fired him. The NAACP took them to court. Benny showed the Judge his application and asked him to fill out another one, he couldn't.

Benny can't forget that.

Aunt Etta crochet Alicea a beautiful pink dress. She was about three and had it on. I was holding her hand, parading her on the sidewalk, in front of Woolsworth. Two well dressed black women stopped to admire her. I had never noticed any there before. They asked me if they could touch her dress. I squeezed her hand hard and decided,“Yes”. They touched and counted the beautiful crochet shells They thanked her and told her that she was beautiful. The first blacks that she ever saw and probably the first that I had ever talked to. I grabbed her up and run and told Mama how brave that she was.

Looking back, from 2015 to 1936-I can not remember ever talking to another black person. I never worked with one--never had any contact at all.

Mama was setting in the car, it wasn't long before Stanley was born. A pregnant woman was never seen in public. Mama stayed home a lot, she couldn't hear what people were saying, anyway. I went with my Daddy, anywhere, ever chance that I had.

Another Saturday, a store had a monkey and a little swing in their store window. There was a crowd, Alicea was fascinated. The monkey jumped off the swing and left his tail curled on it. Alicea cried, “Look, the monkey hung his tail.”Every one laughed.

Woolworth was wonderful, Adelle worked there for years. I never had any rayon or nylon, 'store bought' panties or hose until I got a pair for high school graduation. Mama made us good ones; out of thin white flour sacks. I could see so many other amazing things at Woolsworth. It was a real show place, for us.

Alicea was climbing up, to get something out of the top of the hall closet. Stanley Donald closed the door on her. There wasn't anybody else in the house. He wouldn't 'turn the button' and let her out, she thought she was going to die. She busted out the beaver-board in the bottom of the door. He remembers it.

We all loved Uncle Bill, Daddys' tall brother that lived at Mineral Wells. He was six feet, as was George Everett and his mother. He and Aunt Lula come often. She quilted 'for the public'. I remember a solid white one that had such pretty scrolls.

Once he brought his old phonograph for us. It wound up and had a dozen cylinder records, nearly as big as a soda water can. It was square, about four foot high and real dark wood. It looked nice and I especially liked the record, 'The Preacher and the Bear.'

“For goodness sake, Lord if you can't help me- -Don't you help that bear.”

But we all like to be 'modern', years later, after we didn't play it any more, Mama had Daddy saw it into and made a pretty little table out of the bottom half of it.

I sure wish that we had kept it.

I was working in Mineral Wells. Daddy come and wanted to borrow $20. He and Uncle Jim were going to help Uncle Bill, in east Texas. Mama told me later that he was living with a woman and they had to give her money before she would let him leave. Mama was mad about it. Daddy paid me back soon.

Uncle Bill had stomach trouble, a doctor wanted to put him in a 'goat' stomach. He refused, said that he didn't want to have to be 'chewing on tin cans.' Daddy and Uncle Jim were driving him in Oklahoma. He was looking for 'an old woman Indian Doctor.' She didn't like it when they finally knocked on her door and asked that. He went back and got medicine from her for years.

He always drove a Dodge and they looked new to me. Alicea wrote me that he come and they set and talked until twelve, midnight! It was a wonderful first for her.

Mama told that one day, Uncle Bill put his clothes in a little bundle, handed Aunt Lula the car keys and walked down the street, he left her and the house. Aunt Lulas last name was 'Day', us kids said that Knight and Day didn't mix. They didn't have children. She had income from her family, the land that Woolsworth set on, in Houston.

He married Aunt Nora, we all liked her, too. They visited a lot. At least once, Uncle Bill and Aunt Nora, living in East Texas, stopped in Mineral Wells and got Aunt Lula and brought her to Breckenridge to visit with us all. We always liked her.

In a few years, the Avon Lady come to see her. As Aunt Lula went to close the door behind her, she fell dead.

Aunt Nora had two married daughters that worked in Dallas. Uncle Bill and Aunt Nora had some land and cows in East Texas. As they got older, there was a good neighbor who helped them. Her girls didn't have to come and see about them so much. Later years they both had to go to a nursing home and the good neighbor helped them so much. They both died soon and the daughters come to take care of their property. There was no property. The good neighbor had 'power of attorney' and he had put it all in his name. They decided not to go to court and fight for it.

Many times a summer we had ice cream at our house, we called it 'for birthdays.' There were no presents. The ice cream made the party. Mama always made a freezer full of carmel. It was everybodys favorite. Mama would put dry sugar in a dry skillet and stir it over a slow fire, until it melted and browned. It was a slow hot job. She did it while she was cooking breakfast and 'had a fire going.' Let it cool and it got 'hard as a rock'. Then add milk and eggs and stir and stir it over heat again, until it melted and then got thick. She made caromel pies the same way, let them get a little thicker. Hers always tasted best. Maybe because she had more patience. Aunt Hettie and Aunt Zenna Mae brought vanilla, peach or banana, sometimes pineapple. We had happy times.

We ate till 'brain freeze' hit that spot on our head, and we ate more. Because we had so much at home,we never felt bad about not getting any at town. I don't remember Daddy ever giving me a nickle at town. He didn't have it. I was happy to get to go to town and see people and look into the store windows.

Saturdays Daddy bought groceries. We raised so much that only sugar, salt, flour, vanilla and meal was usually bought. He brought the big brown paper sack inside and set it on the table, before we could touch it. We were not to tear the sack. Inside would be six round sticks of peanut butter candy. Six for a nickle. We had looked forward for that all week. Alicea called it 'candy day'. Stanley learned to spell it, "I want some 'n d y". Sometimes he got peppermint sticks. Mama could make wonderful divinity, but it wasn't 'store bought'.

It may have been on my birthday, there were never gifts. Mama always got me two pieces of material for school dresses. And thread and buttons, maybe rick rack or binding, to match. I was so proud of them. When school started, she would have them made. If she needed help, she walked over the hill and Aunt Hettie showed her. Mama was very humble about asking.

I always got ''hand me downs' from Mineral Wells. As Aunt Etta and Ludie outgrew their dresses, I got them. I was always proud to show them off. And the rest of their lives I got them, I was proud to wear anything that they had picked out and worn.

Girls wore dresses, never pants or shorts. When I graduated I got a soft rayon 'pants set' from Aunt Etta. Ludie had a set and we brazonly wore them for the first time on the streets of Mineral Wells. But we first peeked around the corner to see if Papa Gill was on that street. He would have told us to "Go home and put a dress on."

'Feed sack dresses', we all had them. 100 pounds of chicken feed come in big colored, printed, linen-like cloth bags. Daddy picked them out at the feed store. Woman never went to the feed store, that was a man's place. Two of them made me a dress and it took three for Mama. She made the boys shirts too, and all our underwear. Daddy's underware was made out of the wild colors that no one else would have. He didn't care.

Our night gowns were always long, to the floor, with long sleeves.

Women and girls underwear was made out of white, lighter weight flour or sugar sacks. One time Aunt Hettie didn't have any light weight sacks. She sewed her some underwear out of the heavier ones. She didn't wear them until she had put them in the washing, week after week, untill they got thinner and softer.

It was a treat for me to walk and look around the big Stephens County courthouse block. It had an old heavy pretty cannon on the corner for years. They 'melted it down for the war effort', in World War 11. It has been replaced by one that is not near so heavy and real old looking. The trees, roses and the big raised flower beds around the courthouse were prettier than anybodies yard that I had ever seen. They were so colorful and well tended. I could tell that they had used plenty of water.

I heard that the song---In The Garden of Prayer, 'There's a place that is wondrously fair---' was written by a man that was walking around in the beauty of our courthouse square. The public library was upstairs in the court house. I didn't use it because I couldn't be sure that I could get the books back on time. It was seriously dull.

Mama taught us to never take the last food from the serving dish, on the dinner table. Alicea asked, “Why?” “Well, that is manners.” So after the others left the table, Alicea would sometimes ask, “Mama, can I eat the 'manners' now?”

There was a government program to build farmers a dirt stock tank or to make theirs bigger. Daddy used a two horse fresno to do the work on ours, that was below the cow lots. We thought that it was it was more like a lake. It had a nice big dam. We had a big garden just below it. We could let water from the tank, run down the rows, when it didn't rain. That wasn't often, in the spring it rained. Daddy plowed it but mostly Mama hoed it. She would get supper on the table for us, then she would go and hoe, until dark. Daddy didn't like for her to do that. She wasn't overweight but she didn't need the supper

Our garden was always pretty. Tall blue larkspurs and bright pink poppies, they both seeded theirself back, thick, every year.

The blister bugs got on the tomatoes and potatoes. We put ashes on them, but the best thing was to get three or four people and 'drive them out.' We would take a little tree limb and gently 'switch' and shake the plants. A blister-bug bite would sometimes cause a little blister on us, it healed up quick.

Tomato horn worms were bad. We would see where there were no leaves on the vines and put the horn worms in a can for the chickens. They were as big as our finger and looked wicked, with their one horn. But they couldn't bite or sting. The worst that they could do, was to leak their dark juice on you.

Mrs Munerland was an old neighbor, she gave Mama seed for English peas. She had the seed for 23 years. Mama kept planting them for nearly that long, too. She 'lost the seed,' in Arkansas, when there was three drouth years in a row. We saved seed for everything then. We looked through the colorful seed catalogues.Daddy ordered one new kind every year. One year it was 'vegetable peach', it was about like a gourd, sweeter.

No food was ever wasted. What we couldn't eat, Mama canned,or dried or gave away.

Every Saturday Daddy went to town and he went by Mr and Mrs Glenns. They had lived out by us until they had to move to town. He took them a little sack of fresh food out of the garden, that Mama had fixed up.

Mr Glenn planted the last cotton around there. Stanley remembers that when he would pick a tow sack full of cotton, Mr Glenn would give him a nickel. Me and Daddy picked too. I never did get to pick 100 pounds in a day, the cotton just played-out around there. Drouth, depression and bole weivels. I always tried to act sad about it. Stanley remembers the snuff always leaking out the corner of Mr Glen's mouth. After they moved to town, Stanley was prowling around their old place, he liked to prowl, everywhere. The cellar had caved in. There were lots of the old square snuff bottles, he used them for target practice.

The Whitworths were an older couple that Daddy 'saw about' too. Their house used to be a store and all kinds of things were still laying around in their yard. Stanley remembers how he liked to poke around the old things. They didn't have any visible means of support, old age pensions hadn't been started then. Daddy brought them corn, beans and potatoes in season.

And Aunt Hettie always got a bag. She had some kind of job, laid back for Daddy to do. Stanley remembers; she would hand them a plate of salty white beans for dinner.

She had one habit that I never could understand. She would do any thing for me but she never would let me or anyone else, 'lick a cake or icing pan' at her house. Everyone else would and it was always a big treat to us.

For a long time we 'sold cream'. A big cream separator that had to be turned hard and fast. And every time Daddy milked. None of us liked turning it.

I never could remember that 'two bits was 25 cents. Four bits was 50 cents

six bits was 75cents. That was a generation before mine.

We all looked forward to the first 'cold spell' it was 'hog killing weather'. No one had refrigeration, the nights had to be cold enough to chill the fresh meat that was left hanging outside. Usually neighbors or folks would 'trade out and help each other.' They could 'swap out' on the fresh meat. The hog would be shot or hit in the head with a big hammer. Next it's throat cut and hung up by its feet. That was so the blood would run out of all the meat. All meat that was eaten, was 'bled' quickly. Some nationalities had a culture that they would save the blood and eat it. No one we knew did that. There were never any different cultures, colors, religions or languages around us.

A barrel of water would be tilted over a fire and the water almost boiling. The hog would be tied with a long rope and let down into the scalding water. The men would 'test' the hairs to see if 'they slipped'. When it was 'right', the other end of the hog would be let down into the hot water. When the hairs on that end slipped, the long rope was swung to pull the hog on a big table to be quickly scraped. A dull knife was best, scraped over the hogs skin and the hairs come out by the roots. Us kids tried to help, it had to be done quickly, 'before they set'.The meat was left hanging over night, it was best if it was nearly freezing.We hadn't had 'fresh meat' since last year and almost made ourselves sick

There was always fresh meat at the butcher shop in town. We did not have the money to buy it. One time Daddy bought some steak on Saturday. We ate it for breakfast on Sunday morning. We had no cold place to keep it until Sunday dinner.

I was always barefooted in the summertime, I seldom had a bad sticker. If I did I used a rag and tied a piece of fat meat overnight on it. Then the sticker, come out easier. I had a bad sticker and it hurt so bad that Daddy couldn't get it. He got the thorn out after I went to sleep. I woke up, but I lay there and 'possumed' and he got it out. I knew that it had to be dug out.

The salt meat and hams had the skin left on them. Daddy would put "curing salt' and the meat on a big wooden box. He would 'hang' the hams after they had been in the salt for a while. That was our meat for the year. Mama knew how to save it along, it had to last, until the next 'hog killing.'

The intestins had fat around them. Mama stripped it all off and cut it in pieces. Mama knew how to do it because she had watched her Mother and both her Grandmothers do it. The skin and the fat behind it was cut off into inch squares.

Our big black wash pot was kept clean. In the winter, water was not to set in it, it could freeze and crack or rust. The pieces of skin and extra fat was put in the wash pot and boiled. A half gallon of water was put in 'to start it'. A clean wooden paddle stirred it. If it stuck to the pot or scorched, it would taste bad. We used that lard or butter, to cook and bake with, all the next year. We kept it in the coolest place, but it got stale with age before the next year. It could be 'freshened' by frying potatoes in the grease.

We watched it carefully. We kept a low fire and gradually the fat, 'fried' out of the meat skins, rinds. They turned light brown. The cracklins were dipped out of the boiling hog fat. When that fat cooled, it was our lard to use over the next year. Mama remembered that her big family always tried to get 50 gallons of lard for their year. If the temperature was just right, the skin bubbled and crisped. That was 'cracklins',we chewed on them. I liked to put some in my pocket when I walked to get the cows in the evening.

Usually the cracklins were hard as a rock and one lasted a long time. I never knew any of us to break a tooth chewing on them. We knew that we had to suck on them. You can buy them now as chicharrons or pork cracklins, don't buy the real soft ones, to cook.

Mama put them in a kind of water cornbread, cracklin bread, a real hot oven and it come out crispy. We loved it with our warm sweet milk that Daddy had just brought to the house.(2011, I cooked some for supper and Stanley enjoyed it. Like our supper of 'liver and onions' and the supper of 'poke salat' and corn bread and salt meat.)