Dog in the flour bowl.

My parents had it pretty hard growing up, but so did most everyone else so they didn’t really know how bad off they were. As an example, Mom said they usually got one small bag of sugar each Christmas and it had to last them all year. Had they known how bad the odds were against them they would probably have given up!

Another story she told was about their trip from DeCalb, Texas to an area near Caddo, Oklahoma. The trip was made in a covered wagon. I recall Mom telling the story of one cold night spent on their way.  They woke up the next morning to find their dog sleeping in the large, wooden flour bowl! They also said their matches had absorbed moisture so they had to go to someone’s house and borrow a few hot coals to start their own fire.

Hiding Under the Porch

My parents often told me stories. My memory has blurred so much that I don’t really know what I experienced and what they told me, but I remember this story from my mom.

My mother told me about the time when she was four or five years old. She was hiding under their front porch. Mom heard her mother call Mom's brothers and sisters to the front porch. Standing on the wooden planks above her head her mother was talking to them. She told them that she couldn’t find their baby sister anywhere.  She told them they should go down the road to their neighbor’s house and see if she had wondered off to visit with them. My mother immediately crawled out from under the porch to go with them!

Mom said she was pretty sure grandma knew she was under there all the time.

G

Great grandma hid under the porch as a child.

Cookin' Breakfast

I do have memories of my mother in the kitchen. We had a big, black wood-burning cook stove at which she always seemed to be standing. She would be frying, stirring, putting in wood, taking out large pans of beautifully browned fluffy biscuits, skillets of corn bread, and sometimes even pans of baked meats.

The memory of my mother making breakfast is particularly vivid. It was a mystery to me how she managed what she did. The meat she cooked varied by the season of the year and what was available. Sometimes it would be chicken.  She would get up early, start her fire in the stove, put water on to heat, go out to the chicken pen, catch a fryer, wring it’s neck and when dead, dip it in that very hot water, pluck the feathers and prepare it for cooking. She would fry the chicken, fry some eggs, and make biscuits and gravy!!

I know none of this was an earth shaking event, but to do all of that early in the morning before the men of the house got off to work, to me, was astounding. It would have taken me at least until noon.