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Oxford School – Cotton Patch

Revisiting the familiar territory around Oxford School where I had attended fifth and sixth grades under my father, brought back more memories of the years between 1939 and 1943.

We lived in the teachers’ home which had 2 small bedrooms, living room, kitchen, pantry, 2 porches and a “car shed”.

The bathroom was an outdoor building that also served the school. It was on a slight hill on the other side of our large fenced garden spot making it quite a distance from the house. Because such a walk was unthinkable in the dark, we used a small portable facility called a “slop jar” at night. The job of emptying it was not a favorite thing to do, but we each had our turn. Once, it had gotten dark when I remembered that I had not brought the “jar” in for the night and, being somewhat afraid to go get it, I mentioned it to my oldest sister and asked her what I should do. Well, she gave me an extremely effective answer; one that has also become a very popular saying among Christian young people today. She merely asked, “What would Jesus do?” I didn’t have to think …I knew…and it gave me the courage to accept my responsibility. Knowing that I was doing right empowered me to lay aside my fears that night, and that question has been useful to me many times since. When the WWJD bracelets began to be worn a few years ago, I was excited about the positive influence they could have in the lives of those who used them properly.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and we entered into World War II. It was a hard time for many families whose boys were drafted into armed services, but it was a time when patriotism was at a peak. We sang patriotic songs at school, and we were encouraged to buy ten-cent war stamps which, when enough were accumulated, could be exchanged for war bonds. The smallest bond cost $18.75 mature at $25.00. Gasoline, coffee, sugar, etc. had to be rationed, and communities worked together on many common causes.

In 1941-1943 I attended a Jr. High school whose principal had served in World War I and was a high ranking official in the National Guards. He incorporated army style marching (including presenting arms) into our physical education program. We learned to do right turns, left turns, about face, column march, march in place, attention, at-ease, etc. It connected us to the boys who were fighting in faraway places.

Aunt Ethel Bates, Dad’s sister, lived in a nice big yellow house about a quarter of a mile up the road in one direction and Aunt Vona Davis, Dad’s aunt, lived about half that distance in the other direction. Both families were a big part of the enjoyment of living in that community. Each family had a girl near my own age with which I shared some good times. Bessie was the youngest child and only girl in Aunt Vona’s family. Evelyn was the fourth child and the first girl in Aunt Ethel’s family of four boys and two girls.

Both of these aunts were good homemakers, diligent in providing for their families and in sharing with neighbors. Both husbands did well with farming and their homes reflected their prosperity. The homes still look good today because someone has continued to care for them.
Few tragedies have touched my immediate or extended family, but one which can’t be surpassed occurred in the Bates’ home. I seldom speak of them without the memory surfacing to haunt me still.

Aunt Ethel’s washing machine was on the side porch, and one day as she was busy with her wash, she had hot water in the washpot. Some of the children were playing marbles out in the yard and had been cautioned to be careful, but in the excitement of the game the youngest boy backed into the fire and fell into the pot of hot water. He was not killed immediately but died on the way to the hospital or soon thereafter. A sister-in-law related how Brice tried to comfort his mother on the way to the hospital saying that he didn’t hurt. Evidently, his feelings were gone and he felt no pain!

For months I witnessed the unbearable pain suffered by a parent in the loss of a child. The months became years before grief did its healing process well enough for that household to be restored to its former state of joyfulness.

Tragedies, though hard to bear, can teach us lessons that help us survive hardships that follow. They can also help form within us the softer qualities of compassion and concern for the feelings of others.

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Fudge Pie

For my friend Teresa’s birthday, I made her a fudge pie.  I used the recipe I found from :

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/12350/fudge-pie/

I recently bought this cute little 6-inch pie plate! Isn’t it cute? So I made one just for her and a larger one to share.

This is a very easy and quick recipe for fudge pie. I chose this one because I had the ingredients on hand and it was a great choice.

 

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Piney Chapel – Cotton Patch

Recently, I had the privilege of revisiting several of the places where my childhood memories have taken me in the stories from the Cotton Patch. It was a rewarding visit, complete with the nostalgia that we experience when we realize that those times of the past are only memories. The joy of the experience was made greater by the presence of two of my sisters, who have shared in my memories, and my husband who has encouraged me to write about them.

The Piney Chapel community was the place where we moved in with the bedbugs and waged an all-out war to get them out of the crevices of our beaded ceiling walls and where our mother persistently treated us for scabies every time we scratched. It was there that my anger got the best of me and I hit a first grade classmate in the head with a piece of coal for following me and singing, “She’s My Curly Headed Baby”. Of all the events that I have recounted that had nothing to do with cotton, most of them occurred in this little corner of Limestone County, Alabama.

As we drove around looking for familiar sights, we were dismayed by the changes in and the loss of many buildings, but we were equally amazed at the unchanged condition of others. Sixty-four years ago, I was running around playing on the swing sets and climbing on the monkey bars of the school that still exists. A small area of the schoolyard was familiar, but the addition of many buildings has displaced the teacherage in which we lived. The house had been about halfway between the school and the church building, and, although we missed it the first time we drove by, the church building is still there. It is not so magnificent a place as I remembered it, but it gave me a thrill to see it. Best of all, diagonally across the street stood the house where the Broadways lived.

We could not believe how little this neighbor’s house had changed. The cellar, with its sloping tin door, was there, validating my memories of sliding down the cellar door and singing, “Come Out My Playmates, come out and play with me…and bring your dollies, three…climb up my apple tree..shout down my rain barrel….slide down my cellar door, and we’ll be jolly friends forevermore….”! Windows that opened out over the roof of the front porch reminded me of times Rebecca and I had played “dress-up” in that upstairs room.

We left Piney Chapel and went west of Athens to the very rural community of Oxford Elementary School and Pleasant Valley Church. On the way, we tried to find an old favorite spot for swimming and fishing. We almost despaired of finding it, but eventually, we got our thrill of knowing that we had located it. The “end” of the backwaters from the river and two streams through which we had driven before they put culverts across the road were foolproof evidences that it was “our” spot.

A few miles from the river we located the old homeplace of one of my dad’s aunts. Some of her children and grandchildren established homes on nearby farms, and we were able to recognize a few. One that I was most interested in was Ross Holland’s home that had sat among some big shade trees and had a porch that went around two or three sides of the house. The porch always intrigued me and I thought the house was handsome. Well, it has changed a great deal and if houses could shrink, I would say it has shrunk to about half of its original size!

I saw fields where I had picked cotton and the barn looked the same as I remembered it. There were cows in a pasture and the country store building across the street is still useful. Except for the house itself and the paved street, the place looks as if life has continued in the same way for sixty years.

Oxford school no longer exists, but the concrete bell tower that I watched being built is still standing, and the teachers’ home where we lived looks very much the same. It was here I had the great Halloween scare and in turn frightened my parents by hiding so successfully. It was here my father taught me in fifth and sixth grades. It was here we lived between an aunt and a great aunt whose houses appear so wonderfully unchanged.

Time is forever moving forward, never backward, and so our experiences come and are gone. We will never relive a moment of time, but our memories enable us to vicariously play pleasant scenes and emotions over again and again.

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Halloween Cotton Patch 14

I have decided to keep the articles in their original order. Even though Halloween is not in July! Sit for a spell in the cool and enjoy a story of long ago. -Reda

Whenever our rural Alabama schools celebrated a major holiday, it was always a special and joyous occasion for me. Not only did the holidays contribute to my joy, but the seasons themselves, each with their own unique beauties, were just as delightful..

The autumn season in which Halloween and Thanksgiving are celebrated was especially impressive to me, as it is today. The beautifully colored leaves stirred up a wonder in my soul, and the fresh, crisp air renewed the physical energy that had been sapped by the long, hot summer. An abundance of acorns lay everywhere inviting me to step on them in order to hear crunchy, crackling, delightful sounds. Gathering scaly bark hickory nuts, pecans, black walnuts, beechnuts and just plain old hickory nuts, gave excuses enough to take long, lazy walks in the woods, either alone or with other family members. Celebrating a holiday, however, was most often a public experience that centered around school functions.

Pilgrim costumes, complete with black top hats for the boys and big white collars and aprons for the girls, made the acting out of the first Thanksgiving feast an impressive extension of our reading and history lessons.

Halloween was announced, as it is today, with figures of ghosts, witches, bats, skeletons etc. hanging from wherever they could be hung. The teachers and parents of the community usually took advantage of this season to make money by staging a school carnival.

Very little money was spent on preparations for the carnival. A “fishing pond” containing cheap, but neat, trinkets allowed those who paid a fee to throw in their fishing lines to go “fishing”. People behind the scenes attached a prize to the line with a clothes pin and then gave a strong tug on the line as a cue for the fisherman to pull out his “fish”.

The “haunted house” was full of all sorts of things to create weird or icky feelings and sounds. A rubber glove filled with oatmeal, attached to the end of a stick, became a dead man’s hand to be shaken. An “airplane ride” for blindfolded customers jostled and shook them around on a board which was never more than six inches off the floor! (Such was the simplicity of it all ). Fortune-telling, cake walks, and other fun-filled activities rounded out the evenings of fun and fellowship with neighbors, both young and old.

We did not go “trick or treating” in those days, but people made a lot of strange noises in their attempts to create a scary atmosphere. One homemade instrument that produced a horrible sounding noise was made from stretching a cowhide over the open ends of a metal cylinder. After punching a hole in the middle of each stretched hide, a cord or heavy string was pulled back and forth through the holes in the hide. What an **awesome **sound it made! That sound was a major force that precipitated the events of the following story.

On this particular Halloween, we were living in the teacherage which was located between Oxford Elementary School and the country road below. The secret “rooms” had been set up at school, ready to thrill and perhaps frighten those who would pay to be thrilled and frightened. I was chosen to stay home with a young sibling that evening, but from the front porch and living room of our home, I could see all the lights at the carnival, and I could see silhouettes of the parked cars and of people going in and out of the building. In the beginning I felt pretty secure, yet as it became darker and darker and the noises got louder and louder, my secure feeling began to feel shakier and shakier.

I turned out all the lights in our house so that I could see into the darkness better, but eventually the din of noises (which included some cow hide contraptions) reached a level that was intolerable. I had had enough Halloween “fun”, so I took the baby to the car and locked the doors. We were not long in feeling safe enough to fall sound asleep.

When my family came home to an empty house, it was not long before neighbors joined in a desperate search for the two of us. Someone even peeked into the car and missed us, but eventually we were found, and my most memorable and frightful Halloween was over.

Unfounded fears are not limited to children, and the fact that they are unfounded does not make them any less real to the fearful individual. If a child’s unfounded fears are dealt with realistically, his mental perception will probably develop so that he is better able to distinguish between real and unreal fears as an adult.