--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:
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| Grandma and her brother, about 1914? |
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| My grandmother is the one in back with the big bow in her hair. Taken about 1918? |
