FYI like grandpa used to do.....

[FrChuckW]

I was born in 1952, the 8th of 9 children. Even though we lived in the city, we always had a garden in the backyard every year. We had a winter pear tree(the made great rocks before they ripened) a peach tree, and an apple tree that my oldest brother had grafted 5 different kinds of apples onto as a Boy Scout project.

My mother's mother's family were farm folk, although her dad was a Dentist. During the summer's once I was old enough I would get to go spend a week or so with my Great Aunt Adele on her farm.

My jobs when I was up there were to help gather the eggs from her flock, milk the cow, and help weed her veggie garden. She had a hired hand that took care of the field crops.

I used to love to go through the fields with her collie dog following me around. One thing she taught we though was to watch out for the roos. She had one roo that was a real nasty bugger and she warned me not to go outside without the cane. The only thing that roo was afraid of was my Aunt, even her dog stayed away from it most of the times. That roo would flog anything that moved that was big enough. He got a few hefty whacks from me on occassion with the cane. But if my Aunt went out, her dog was right there and if the roo made a move towards my aunt she was after that roo. Why she never got rid of him was beyond me, except that he was fiercely protective of her farm.

Unfortunately I only got to spend very little time with my Aunt as she passed a couple of years after I started going to her farm. I used to listen to her sisters tell the tales of growing up before the days of Automobiles, electricity, telephones.

I guess that's where I get my love of animals and the land, because most of my brothers and my parents only gardened out of necessity until lateron in their lives

 

[redoak]

Today at walmart i saw they had 18 eggs for 1.38 cents. i told the stocker there that it was not worth the wear and tear on the hens ah er rear.

 

[A.J.'s]

Ruffle my feathers......

I would get hungry and couldn't get anything extra to eat as mom wouldn't let me so I would go down to my dads pig barn and he had big sacks of pig pellets and I feasted on them to quinch my hunger

what in the world is "pig pellets".. surely it does not mean..no it cant mean.. of course it cant mean what it seems to be????????

aj's

 

[Cason]

Probably more like eating horse feed.

 

[A.J.'s]

I was a child of divorce even in that age.. back in the olden days.. it was a time of poverty in my life. more on my mothers side than on my dadss.. he died in korea in a pow camp.. he was a medic and did much for the wounded.
He was captured at Ku na ri.. anyone even a little familair with the korean war will know about the capture of over 5000 troups on november 30th of 1950. The death march deep into North Korea and the treatment our men endured and died of there.
Starvation and freezing.. my dad had pneumonia and dysentry and in the first days of January 1951 someone brought to him slussy water from a hole they had chopped in the river. He had a high temperature from the diseases and he gulped it hard.. it froze the veins in his chest that go to the heart and he died.. dropped dead.
His check that came to my grandfather ..his dad.. saved our family. I think we would have starved back in the woods there in Tennessee if not for that check.
My mother left me there and went to Detroit where he action was. The music and the lights. She nearly starved to, until she discovered how to make it work. She found a man who gave her less of a life than she would have had in the Tennessee hills.
Anyway.. I was left in Tennessee with my elderly grandparents and a teen aged uncle. We raised chickens, hogs and cows. We had a garden for us and corn field for the animals. It was simple but good and clean.
My mothers parents were not so lucky. They lived the dirty kind of poverty. Good people but nasty. Granny would actually spit her tobacco in the corner. The house was so full of flies in the summer that they fought them for food. I say "they" because the few week ends I spent there visiting I did not eat a bite. I couldn't.
Ocassionally my mother would come down from Detroit with her new litter of kids and she would clean up the place some. I would help bring in water from the well that was about 100 feet from the house and we would scrub the floors with bleach water and then throw the water on it in a way that would flush the dirt out side the front door.
The walls were covered with newspapers and card board. The floors had cracks in them so wide we had to be careful when we handled things so as not to drop them under the house.
Granny would throw her waste water out the door and it puddled up to make a fly swamp there. It stank stunk. whatever and we had to be careful when walking not to step in the stinking stuff. We used the toilet in the woods. This was not a stink problem because the dogs came with us and ate up any waste they could find. I rememeber gagging at this.
True poverty. Not a thing that any child today that I know of have ever witnessed. Ignorance poverty. Granny did not know any better. She had scrapped and scavenged for her living all her life and this was all she knew.
She did keep herself clean. she always smelled of lye soap and ivory soap. I cant help but feel the judgemental audience here.. she was not bad. she didnt know any better she had not seen any better. OH I loved her so much. she sat me on her lap and warmed my feet at the stove and put my socks on and kissed my toes.. she creid when i had to catch the mail bus and go back to my other grannys house.
When I would get back home my other granny would take my clothes and put them in the black kittel in the back yard and fill it with water and lite a fire under it. The colors ran out in that boiling water and left me with gray pajamas and blue panties.. I would cry but it was either boil them or burn them. They surely would not be allowed inside the house.
ON one visit Granny was raising chckens for the spring laying season. It was winter and with no electicity and with no way to do better she had emptied a bed room and put the chicks in that room with a wood heater. The chicks were about 6 weeks old and were flying all over the place. Granny and I had a good time catching them and putting them back into their room. She would wrap them up in her apron and holdon to them until she could release them.
The smell was horrendous. The feathers and down and dander were flying all over the house.
Today or even some later I would have been able to do so much for her. I would have gone there and cleaned that place up and showed her how to live a better life. I would have gotten electricity for her and a water heater and a bath rom and a bath tub and a commode and i would have goten her a better bed and a fllor oh the list is endless..
She died of cancer when I was 13 years old and too young to be able to do much for her. There was no social security then. no food stamps no human services no help at all ... they had to do with what they had and ignorance was not stupidity. she had been raised back in the woods and was lucky that she could read.
oh its 4am and ive just sat here and let my mind go wild. Im sorry if ive bored you.. or sickened you.
I spent many nights just lately walking thru my home. barefooted in the winter time. no cold floor to freeze my feet and just turn on that shower and wash myself so easily. I dont have to hunker back behind a wood heater with just a pan of water to wash myself a bit. I can wash my hair anytime I want to ... lol summer or winter.
I live on the property now that I was raised on. the bus stop is by my drive way now..the same one I watched as my dad climbed on it to go to korea.. to die. and my uncle is still living on the propety where the old house was. he has a new one now and hes so proud of it. i am to.
The years have passed so fast. sometimes i think not fast enough. the kids now are so pampered and would not even walk into an old hosue like granny had. and not even for a sweet toe kiss on an early morning by the stove.


oh im ashamed of the errors i made in that ... i can do better and i can spell and i can type and i can write better than that.. i dont know where my mind went i guess it had ato fashion itself to the subject thats all i can figure.. seriously.. ajs

 

[Cason]

Nobody cares ~ your spelling and/or grammar errors.
Your Grandmother sounds like she was a wonderful woman. I'm going to have to read this accounting again- slower- when I have a little more time to absorb.

 

[A.J.'s]

A.J.'s :

Ruffle my feathers......

I would get hungry and couldn't get anything extra to eat as mom wouldn't let me so I would go down to my dads pig barn and he had big sacks of pig pellets and I feasted on them to quinch my hunger

what in the world is "pig pellets".. surely it does not mean..no it cant mean.. of course it cant mean what it seems to be????????

aj's

OF COURSE>> silly me.. but our hogs did not get pellets or whateer just corn and slop from the kitchen.. mammy kept a 5 gallon bucket by the door and each afternoon pappy took it to the pigs.. and the dish water also mammy said it kept the worm s away..​

 

[walkswithdog]

Ignorance and poverty don't mean someone is bad. Over a lifetime some of the most honest, most loyal and most kind people I've known couldn't read or barely, lived in homes without bathrooms.

My great grandmother died in her nineties and was almost ninety before she LET her grand children put in a commode.

Some of them were ranchers, men who have fought wars for our country, who care deeply for their stock and their families and the occassional oddball like me.

Nah, I know poverty and ignorance and they aren't what people make them out to be.

And I share with you the regrets and grief of not being old enough to help a grandparent before they died. I was 18 when my Grandpa passed and so much about that time I regret because I just couldn't help and should have.

 

[NurseNettie]

Oh AJs, these are great stories, and nothing to be ashamed or judged for-- and spelling-- whatever-- nobody's writing literature for cash here

I just love reading stories like this, hearing about how it was "back when", even the stories of poverty, because so very many people live closer to the poverty side of life than the well to do side-- it's just that nobody talks about it.

I respect people that work hard, no matter the situation. Life for many now is almost too easy. Progress is a wonderful thing, but everyone could use a summer ( or better yet winter) at granny's to learn how to survive. Should we ever have a catastrophe on a grand scale, there will be a lot of people who won't even be able to find something to eat-much less make a fire to cook it over.

Have you ever thought of blogging?? Sounds like you might have a lot of stories to tell!!

 

[RIVERA69R]

Very interesting i have always been interested in the way of life it almost seems i was born in the wrong era a great fiction book i use to read was Laura Ingalls "Farmer boy" wonderful story about a boy and his family in the olden days and life on a farm. I grew up in a tiny town (pop. about 330 people in town) on the great plains of Colorado had chickens pigs horses ducks dogs etc. All grown up now with wife and great son and I long to get a place with some land to have a farm. I love country life, at 30 yrs old I started riding bulls, ive broke horses in the past but never bulls so i did it
lifes an adventure enjoy it! thanks for the stories