Mama’s Story

Mama was 89. Logan was 17. She was his school assignment.

That’s mama in the middle. That’s me covering my eyes from the glaring sun. It was summer, and it was Vacation Bible School at Bethlehem Baptist Church. I was tired and annoyed. Who has time for this photo?

What year were you born?

April 21, 1912, Jackson County, Georgia, near Athens. My parents married in Union county. My oldest brother Ivet was born in Union County. Imma, Clinton, and Benny was born in Banks County. My parents bought a 34 acre farm in Jackson County and all the rest of the children were born there. I was the first baby born in Jackson County.

What was life like when you were 10 years old?

We were living on a farm. We made our living on a farm by picking strawberries and cotton, making syrup. We walked a mile and a half to school to Archie's Grove schoolhouse. That's where I got my elementary education. Two-room schoolhouse. The first-thru-third grades was in one room and the other grades, four-thru-seven, was in another. They would ring the bell then we would march in. It was heated by two pot-bellied stoves, one in each room. We would have to chop the wood and carry in the coal. We had no running water. We went to the johnny outside. Turn our butts up to the cold! We would go to my uncle's house and get water, carry it in buckets. They would assign so many students a week to carry water. Everyone had their own little drinking cup. One that would squish up.

What was the house like that you grew up in?

We had a four room house. The kitchen and dining room was together. There was two bedrooms on one side and the other two on the other side. We never lived together as a family in that house. We were only together one time. My older brothers we in the Service and my older sister was off in school. We were together one day. We spent about 12 hours together as a whole family. My brothers got leave. The day my older brother had to go back to service, my younger one got to come home that same day.

What were some of the rules?

I don't know that we had any hard rules. The main rule was to get off our school clothes and put on our old clothes and go to the field. We respected our parents. We wasn't made to respect our parents, we just knew that we were supposed to and we did.

How did you celebrate birthdays?

We didn't know when we had a birthday. There was no celebrating. There was so many of us.

What were your favorite foods when you were a child?

We were raised on milk and cornbread, sweet potatoes and syrup. We eat anything that was put before us. We raised peanuts, corn, strawberries, and had a big garden. All kinds of garden stuff - we grew it. The only things we had to buy was sugar and coffee. The kids were not allowed to drink coffee. The only ones that were allowed to drink coffee was mama and daddy, and they had one cup in the morning. Strawberries and cotton were our money crops. There were so many of us that we would pick all of our cotton, then we'd would pick others. One dollar for a hundred pound of cotton and a penny a quart for strawberries. We would earn enough money to buy our school clothes. We would buy pencils. Penny pencils - five for a nickel! We would get up and milk cows, maybe two before we would go to school. We would walk a mile and half to school. If it was bad weather, we had a two-seated carriage and a one-seat buggy. Our daddy wold let us drive the two-seat carriage to school. We had a good ole' horse named Sal. We kids could treat her any way. Our uncle lived right next to the schoolhouse. We would hitch her at his house. We could pick up others on the way to school and we would have a wagon load.

What did you have to do everyday?

We would get up and milk the cows and go to school, come home and change our clothes and go to the fields, pick the cotton, chop the cotton, strip the syrup cane, pick the peas or whatever was needed to be done. Cut the wood, bring in the water. We didn't have an icebox for a long time. We would have to draw water and have to cool our milk in the water. We would let the milk half-way down in the well to keep it cool.

What was Christmas like?

Sometimes, we would get a little gift. I remember one time getting a little dinner bucket to carry my lunch to school in. It was a square box with a handle. Most of the time we got an apple or an orange or a Brazil nut. We were just happy as if we had gotten a million dollars.

What was the biggest fight you had with your sisters or brothers?

The only time that we had any fights, if you call them fights, we would get cross with each other in the cotton patch. We would pull off green cotton bolls and throw at each other. We would come up upon the may-pops in the field. They were good and rare. We grew lots of watermelons. My daddy would haul them up and feed them to the cows. We would sometimes get in a watermelon battle. When we would milk the cows, we would squirt milk on each other. No one ever did anything bad.

What was the worst trouble you ever got into?

I don't remember the last whipping. My dad gave us a switching. My neighbors would plant the watermelon patch early and we would go to their patch and eat one. Instead of just busting one, we busted a bunch. My neighbors came over and had a talk with my dad. There was a peach tree beside the patch and it had keen hickory's. He picked a good one!

What was it like to live through the Great Depression?

It was hard. We had a hard time of living during the 20s. We never did go hungry and we never did grow cold. We always managed to get by. There was a drought in 1925. We scarcely made anything on the farm. We kept chickens and hens and they laid eggs. We ate them. We had cows, and we drank their milk. Not too much to eat.

WWII?

That when all of the men was drafted. Kim (Papa Hill) didn't have to go, but we did have to go to Marietta to work in the war plants where they built airplanes. Everything was rationed. We couldn't buy gas without a token. We were allotted so many tokens. Sugar and flour was rationed. Sometimes we could swap something with somebody else if they had more than they needed. We could trade something.

What was your first paying job?

My first paying job was when I went to teaching. After I went to grammar school, I went to high school. They issued a license to students who graduated from high school with a good grade to be a teacher. I went back to the same two-room school that I went to. i taught there for a few years.

How did you meet Papa Hill?

I met him at church. He came to me. You don't go to boys. If you want a good one, they always came to you!

What was your first date like?

We always went on dates in buggies or walked. We would have a date to walk to church and back. If we were lucky, some of the boys would have a buggy. Two of us gals would have two sweethearts and we would all go around in buggies in the afternoon. Sometimes the horse would stop and poop. I remember one afternoon we were riding around and the old horse pooped and someone was sitting close up front and the poop flew and hit him! Children don't know what a good time is. Sometimes when we were walking to church, we would stop by someone's watermelon patch and steal watermelons.

Tell me about your church.

We always walked to church - anywhere from a mile to two miles. Every one of us. We would only have revival meeting in the summer time. Every one of us were baptized in the summer. The baptismal pool was under the pulpit, and they had to haul water in to baptize us. Haul water in barrels. A record of a family of ten children to be baptized in that same pool, not at the same time, but in the same place. When we would have revival meetings, they would bring blankets and let the kids sleep while the revival went on. In this church, there was this one woman. They used to shout. She would scare me to death. I would cry when they would make me go because I was afraid that woman would start shouting.
We would always have a visiting preacher and he would stay in some of the homes during the week. When he came to our house, we would have to wait for the grown people to finish eating and then we would eat. All the good parts of the chicken would be gone. All the chicken feet would be gone. We'd scald the foot, prettiest white meat you ever saw. Not much on it, but it was good.

What was your mother and father like?

My mother and father were good, honest, hardworking people. They taught their children how to work. We know how to do most anything that comes our way.

What advice would you give young people today?

Young people today need to stay busy. The idle mind is the devil's workshop. I think this is the biggest sign of trouble today is that they don't have anything to do. If they are busy, they don't have time to think about things that will get them into trouble.