coming out of my shell

coming out of my shell

Sunday, August 27, 2017

Grandma's letter


--This treasure is a letter from my Tennessee grandmother (1905-2000) to my daughter, written in February 1981, for the occasion of my daughter's 9th birthday. My grandmother was a Pentecostal Christian, so there is a good bit of "Jesus" talk in this.  It is simply the way she talked.


Dear (M),

As I never see you to talk to you long enough, I just wanted you to know how we lived when I was a little girl.  I thought it would be nice to send you this for your birthday in February 1981.

I had the sweetest childhood a little girl could have. We were very poor. We didn’t have toys like children have today. We would always get up at 5 o’clock in the morning, because you see, we lived on a farm. I was about five years old when I can really remember. My mother would wake all of us up and we would eat our breakfast. Then there were cows to milk and horses to feed. There were seven of us children. My one little brother (Johnny) died when I was just about three months old or less (note from Colette – he died September 2, 1905, my Grandma was born at the end of May 1905). I can’t remember seeing him, but my mother said he called them to the bed and asked to see me before he died. He was about two years old when he went to be with Jesus. Well now, to get back to our farm and all the work we had to do. I just had the best daddy in the world, I thought, and he was so kind to us.  I never remember him saying an unkind word to us, yet he had a way about him that to look at him you just didn’t want to do anything, only what he told us to do. We would thin the corn out to two stalks in a hill after it was big enough and that I could do.  As I grew older I got a harder job like hoeing corn. In those days we had hand plows and mules or horses to pull the plow. I can remember my grandfather plowing with oxen with a wooden yoke on their necks. Then we had sheep. The little lambs were so sweet. When I think of them now, I think of Jesus with the lambs in his arms and around him. But I think he created all animals and the lamb was a symbol of his love – how he died that we might have eternal life.

We would cut the wool off of the sheep (I helped do that).  One day I was, as we called it, shearing them. I cut his hide till it bled. It went “ba,ba”. I felt so bad about that. Then my mother would send the wool away and get our blankets for the bed that way. Oh yes, she would keep some and she had an old spinning wheel. She’d make the thread to knit our stockings for winter. They were real warm. She taught me to knit. I was making a pair and I told her this was like going around the world and to the North Pole. Ha!

Now I’ll tell you how we played.  We had rocks that green pretty moss grew on and we would play like we were making beds.  And we did, too –real pretty.  We never worked on Sunday and we had friends come to visit us.  I think back about it now, it was really fun.  We had one little china doll – about 5 inches long.  It was handed down from the oldest to the youngest. We never broke it. I wish I had it now to show it to you. We would play ball and sit around a fireplace in the wintertime popping popcorn.  I remember one time my brother Wint and I got to go to town with my father and we got to go to a movie. We didn’t have radios or TV’s then, but my childhood is all sweet memories.  We were just one big happy family. We had a cave close to our house and at the entrance there were shelves my Dad made.  We would keep our milk and butter there –so cold.  We had one cave us kids used to have to crawl in. After we got in it was the most beautiful place, but scary.  We could see skeletons, maybe of animals, I don’t know.  It was so dangerous as I think of it now. Then we had a place we called the “rolly hole.”  You could throw a rock and you could hear it roll down, down, down.  Somehow the rocks would come to top rolled so smooth. It isn’t there anymore, they tell me.  

We walked 2 miles to go to school. There were no sidewalks, and there were rocks, etc.  We walked barefoot in the summer and when fall came we got new shoes. Like boys wear. We were so proud of them. I’ll tell you about our chickens later.

One day my mother and two oldest sisters went to pick blackberries and blueberries.   They would take a couple of big pails and go up into the mountains and would be gone all day sometimes, as they grew wild in the mountains.  They were delicious, better than what we get now from the grocery store.

Once, I asked my mom what we would eat for dinner. I was only about eleven years old and my brother and two little sisters were there for me to feed. There was no lunch meat like we have now. She said, “Well, you can have chicken if you will kill one and dress it.”  Well, that sounded so good to me.  I told my little brother if he would hold its head and my sister (then about seven) would hold its feet, I’d chop its head off.  We laid it on a block of wood and that poor chicken, I thought, I just can’t do this. But then I thought about dinner so I took an ax and cut its head off. Then we built a fire out of wood and heated a big kettle of water and dipped it in hot water, took all the feathers off, cut it up and washed it good. We fried it on an old-fashioned wood-burning kitchen stove. We did have a good dinner!

We used to have a ball to play with that mother made us out of rags; she rolled over the rags many times with heavy thread. We would play throwing it over the house to each other. We also used to tell riddles we would hear. Maybe your mom can explain that to you. My sister Bertha and I used to saw big trees down. I helped cut corn when in the fall the corn was ready to shuck. We’d cut it and put it in bunches and tie the top. Big bunches of the stalks it grew on and corn, too. Then we’d feed the horses and cows in wintertime. One day my father came to the field where we were working and said, “Ma is sick, you will have to go to Grandma’s house.” So we all went to Grandma Sharp’s house and in the middle of the afternoon Grandma came home. She said, “You have a little baby sister.” Grandma Sharp was the midwife who delivered the baby. You should have seen us run for home! The baby’s name was Neva, my baby sister. She will be 65 years old the 23rd of May. So you see that has been many years ago.

We had a spring near our house and carried our water by pails full to drink and to wash clothes. It was fun. The water was as clear as crystals. It was pure water that God made; no chemicals of any kind were in it. I went to a little one-room schoolhouse. My Dad took me the 1st day and I cried to go home with him. I was six years old. The teacher had a watch on a chain around her neck and she took me to one side and showed me the birds on the watch to get me to stop crying.

I just wanted to tell you how different it was when I was a girl your age. Of course that has been over 70 years since I was 5 years old. I wish I could take you and your Mom and Dad to where we used to live. Our house is torn down now, they tell me.

The saddest part I left till last. My father died when he was only 39 years old. He was sick quite a few years and it left my mother with 5 of us to raise. But that didn’t help her as far as missing him. We all worked together and we never went hungry. But that didn’t ease the aches in our hearts for a father. He died in Louisville, Kentucky in hospital in 1919. He never got to see his 1st grandchild. She was born May 18, 1919.   He died June 1st, 1919. But you know, someday we will all be together. Jesus went away to prepare a home for us. And then if we live a good life he will see that we all be together someday. I know you are a good girl. You have a good mother, so always listen to what she tells you to do. You also have a good father. I wanted a little girl so much, but God gave me two sons instead. Now I have two daughters (in-law) and oodles of grand daughters and a great grand daughter to love. And I love each of you. And my great grandsons, too. I hope you enjoy just a part of this letter – how we used to live.

Love you,

Great Grandma

Here are some early photos of my grandmother and some of her siblings:

Grandma and her brother, about 1914?

My grandmother is the one in back with the big bow in her hair. Taken about 1918?
 

14 comments:

  1. That is the most beautiful treasure of a letter. A truly stunning gift of time from your grandmother to her great-granddaughter. It makes me think we should all be writing letters to our loved ones that they will be able to hold in their hands a lifetime. Thank you for sharing this.

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    1. Yes, I think we should all write these letters for the next generations.

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  2. What a treasure. And what a labor of love for you to transcribe it and share it with us. Thank you.

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    1. I have so much love for this woman, it was no labor at all. Thanks.

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  3. That is a wonderful loving letter. It will be a remarkable treasure to keep for the family to read. She sounds like a fantastic woman.

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    1. I knew you would like this one, Emma! She was a wonderful person.

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  4. I know this must have taken ages for you to type out here but I am so glad you did. It is a fantastic letter! It's good that you have it saved online now in case anything ever happens to it.

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    1. Exactly! And I was an office worker in my former life, so typing someone's handwritten text is no big deal for me. It is kind of meditative.

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  5. This is so beautiful to read. What a wonderful letter to have and to know how happy her life has been, like a seed that was planted for your own happiness and that of all her offspring.

    Although this is ages and a whole continent away from my life, there are many similarities, we played in the woods and made beds out of mossy rocks and the whole family would go and pick blueberries and wild cranberries in the woods every year. One elderly aunt had a spinning wheel and I was allowed to do the carding and I also got socks made from that wool - although it came from an itinerant shepherd.

    Colette, I just love that letter to pieces!

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    1. I'm so happy you do, Sabine. I also loved hearing about the similarities with your upbringing.I wish you could actually have heard her speak. She had the most beautiful Tennessee accent.

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  6. That letter written by your grandmother is a treasure. I can hear her love in a Tennessee accent. I love the accompanying photos. Sad to learn that her father died young and to understand the heartache that caused her and her family.

    Your grandmother is closer to the generation of my mother (b. 1916). My mother never wrote about her childhood in that way, but when she was in her 70s, she did put together a photo album that told the story of her life in photos. It concluded with her marriage to my father. She left out the part of being married and divorced before marrying my father. Right now, I'm wondering if there is a photo of her first husband, but that he was not identified as such. I can imagine my mother doing something like that. My mother carried secrets through her life. She found it difficult to trust people at a deep level. My grandmother on my father's side (b. 1879) wrote out the story of her childhood for all of her grandchildren. She was born on her grandparents' farm not far from Red Wing, Minnesota, but her father was not interested in farming, and moved the family to Red Wing when she was older. Her childhood on the farm was much like your grandmother's. I'm so grateful that our ancestors took the time to write down what life was like for them when they were growing up. When I think of how much life in the United States has changed since I was born in 1949, I'd like to write down some memories of growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1949 to 1967 and conclude with the present as your grandmother did. I went away to college in 1967 at age 17.

    Although I don't have children, I have 1 nephew along with the many cousins who are the children and grandchildren of my first cousins. They might like to know what life was like growing up in the second half of the 20th century for me. If not, it would still be good to write something in the spirit that your grandmother wrote her letter.

    Thank you, Colette!

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    1. I would like to see the story you would write! Living in the Bay Area during that time is equally as American and historic as growing up on a farm in Red Wing, Minnesota! Just a different story. I am quite sure your nephew and young cousins (the amateur genealogist in me can't help but say they are your first cousins, once removed for the children of your first cousins, first cousins twice removed for the grandchildren.) I'm sure when they are older they will treasure it and the memory of you writing it for them.

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  7. I only ever met one of my grandmothers twice in my life. I wish I had something like this letter as a keepsake. My father's mother was an alcoholic and died seven years before I was born.

    You're a lucky woman to have had such a lovely family:)

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So, whadayathink?