Category: Cotton Patch

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Cotton Patch – She’s My Curly Headed Baby

When a student’s father is the school principal, it can be either an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on circumstances. My father was my principal for most of my public school years, and it generally gave me a feeling of security, but there were a few times when I wished that he didn’t have to know about my less-than-perfect behavior. The following incident happened when I was in the first or second grade and my two sisters were in upper elementary or Junior High, which were all in the same school complex.

My hair was blond, very straight and shingled in the back. If I ever had a curl it certainly was not natural. There was a time when my sisters decided to either wave or curl my hair, and since it was before setting gels and hairspray, a mixture of sugar and water was used to do the “holding” job! Do I need to tell you what happened when they tried to comb through it? Anyway, all you need to know before my intended story is that my hair was unquestionably straight.

Recess at school was often unorganized and unsupervised. Children could play on whatever equipment was around, or there were balls and long jump ropes available for group activities. Sometimes, the girls and boys segregated themselves and did their own thing, and sometimes they would play together. On this particular day, we girls were trying to play by ourselves. We started out just walking around, talking, and we ended up in an old shed in back of the school building which we liked to make into a playhouse. The shed was partially open, but even in the walls that it did have there were numerous ‘peepholes’, or in this case, ‘holler-holes’.

As soon as we girls got together and began to organize our activities, one little boy decided it would be fun to follow me around singing “She’s My Curly-headed Baby”. The only other part of the song that I remember is, “She’s from sunny Tennessee.”

Well, whether the boy liked me or not, my hair was certainly not curly and I was not from Tennessee. The message didn’t ring true, and I was very irritated at the whole scene. My friends began to prompt me to pick up a rock and throw it at the pest, but it was not until he persisted in following us through the halls, around the playground, and even stuck his face in the crevices of our playhouse, singing all the while. Enough is enough, so I picked up a black piece of coal and let it go in the young boy’s direction. To my immediate horror, blood began to gush from his forehead, and the teacher had to know…then the principal had to know…and even my sisters learned about it!

I was thoroughly ashamed of myself and fearful. At first, the fear was for the injured boy, but when one of my sisters discussed the incident with me, my fear turned toward myself. She warned me that there might be a police investigation into the incident after school. Well, I was scared enough to go home and hide in a closet, but no policeman ever came, and I don’t even recall my teacher nor my principal being particularly harsh with me. Perhaps, it was my good record, or maybe they just understood human nature in little boys and girls… For whatever reason they did not punish me, I am grateful. I firmly believe that my punishment was sufficiently severe when I saw the blood gush from that forehead, knowing that **I **had caused it!

Fear is a powerful force that can be used for either good or evil. Fear of punishment could prevent wrongdoing, or it could cause one to lie and commit other wrongs in order to avoid being found out. Fear of hurting someone could be used to prevent abusive behavior, but taken to the extreme, it could increase the jeopardy of a threatening situation.

My sister, as many siblings have done through the years, used the threat of a police officer to create fear designed to prevent the repetition of a bad deed. In spite of this incident (or because of it), I managed to develop a rather healthy regard for law-enforcement agents.

I believe the security of having parents that deal justly and with understanding, when a child’s behavior is unacceptable, helps the child develop a desire to do well.

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From the Cotton Patch-Memories

We may truly believe in the accuracy of our memories, only to discover years later that our version of what happened disagrees with the versions of others who were there. This can be particularly true of children who blindly trust others and who tend to take things literally. Children whose older siblings tease or use scare tactics may have memories of what was told them or what was impressed on their emotions rather than what really happened.

Having two older sisters who sometimes worked together in creating impressions on me, I had some ‘memories’ that were later “put to the test” and found wanting. In laying the foundation for one particular story, however, it seems reasonable to relate things that they did to me before my memory kicked in. As you read this, please, keep in mind that all is told in sisterly love… for they have long since been forgiven.

My birth weight was guessed by the country doctor who delivered me as he hefted me up in his hands….. twelve pounds! (As you can imagine, even if he were off by a pound, I must have been a very large baby). As my mother became strong enough to take on her household duties, she relied a great deal on my sisters to keep watch over me. They probably did as good a job as any six and seven-year-olds could do, but the imaginations of the two together sometimes led them to try things that one, alone, might not try.

A proposed fun thing to do was to put me into our rural mailbox. Here, my weight turned out to be a blessing. As they tried to stuff me into the box, I was too big…. but that’s not the end of the story! They weren’t satisfied to give up on such a neat idea, so they ran to tell our mother that they had stuffed me into the box and couldn’t get me out. Needless to say, Mother was not nearly so thrilled with their joke as they imagined she would be, even after she saw that I was not harmed.

Another before-memory escapade that must be told concerns two china-head dolls that belonged to my sisters. They had each received a doll, of which they were extremely proud, so there was no need for jealousy. Right? Well, so it was in the beginning, but dolls with china heads are quite fragile, and it was not surprising that one of them got broken.

The tragedy happened at the hands of the doll’s owner so she could not blame anyone else, but she could be jealous that her sister still had a doll. In fact, she was so jealous she plotted to have baby sister “accidentally” break the surviving doll. After laying the doll down on a hard surface, my envious sister placed a stick into my small hands and instructed me to hit the doll. She had not counted on my inability to hit the doll hard enough to break it, so she did what she had to do… she broke it herself! Naturally, the owner was told that I had broken her doll, and that account was believed for several years. I ‘learned’ of the wrongdoing when I was about ten years old, as we were riding home from the funeral of a young cousin. The seriousness of the occasion must have pricked an over-burdened conscience, for the guilty sister made a full confession!

Memories of ‘sister abuse’ all center around my fifth and sixth years. The reality of ‘mad dogs’ gave rise to scaring little sister over any strange dog that came around. Once a dog wandered into the school building where some of us were playing, and one of my sisters declared that the dog had rabies. I was duly terrified and clambered to safety where I remained until the dog had gone on its way.

Sometimes fears that are impressed on children make them overly fearful as adults, but I had the story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” to help me develop a “wait and see” attitude. I was also blessed with a very practical mother whose calmness allayed many fears that were self-induced as well as those projected by others.

It is with good feelings that I recall my family and our rural Alabama home. The cotton patch is one identity of those years, but for now there are several sister stories left to tell.

This is the eleventh basic article of “From the Cotton Patch”. As a grandmother, I have seen older siblings tease the younger ones in ways that sometimes seem cruel. I prefer to believe that teasing within the family can help buffer one against trials of teenage and adult years.

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30 Minute Cure

Whenever Mother knew that some of the children in school had scabies (itch), she was ready and waiting for one of her own children to start scratching. I’m sure she kept up with the latest treatments offered by the medical world, and even though sulfur and grease was considered a reputable cure, it took **time **to do its job. So when Mother heard of the “30 Minute Cure”, there was no justification for denying her family of this modern method of dealing with the problem.

The time came when we, or some of us, started scratching, and Mother was ready. No more days and days for her children to get rid of the little critters that were buried under their skin causing the red rash with its awful itching. Her children were going to be cured in thirty minutes…….. The only picture that I have retained about that memorable scene is that a #3 “bathtub” was in the middle of the room when Mother began treating her afflicted children. I do not know who was first nor how many of us were introduced to the “miraculous” liquid, before the howling became so intense that our dad jerked up the miracle cure and threw it out the door and into the yard (the same yard he had thrown the burning lantern into a few chapters back). I don’t recall that any of us were treated for scabies after that, nor do I recall Dad throwing anything else out of the house!

Several years later, however, Dad did come to my rescue again. It seems that I had a rash which I attacked with rigorous scratching, and Mother’s fear of scabies returned. To allay her suspicions and to save me from her threatened reaction, Dad took me to the doctor. Needless to say, it was not scabies, or I would not be telling this, and probably just as needless to mention is the gratitude I had for Dad’s sparing me the embarrassment of the old treatment with its telltale smell or the impossible pain of the “30 Minute Cure”.

Before leaving this story, I must describe that particular trip to the doctor. Most people today are aware that family doctors made house calls in the first part of this century. How common it was for patients to do as Dad and I did on that occasion I do not know.

It was on a Sunday, and Dad, as usual, had a preaching appointment in a neighboring community. I accompanied Dad to his appointment, and when it was time to leave, we returned by way of our family doctor’s private home. We drove into the front yard and Dad summoned the doctor to come outside, which he did. I remember standing on the lawn as the doctor looked at the rash on my hands, arms, neck etc. He believed that I had a food allergy and “prescribed” that I restrain my appetite for sweets. Whether he was right or not, I’ll never know, but after that, I probably restrained my urges to scratch more than my urges for sweets! Giving up sweets would have been almost as bad as suffering through the treatment for scabies. Besides, I have a suspicion that my weight had more to do with that “prescription” than the rash, and I’ve also toyed with the idea that the doctor and Dad may have had a conspiracy going.

Having followed several of my ancestors into becoming a public school teacher, I understand the fear of exposure to all the “bugs” that attack school children. I am thankful that scabies seemingly ran its course and became much less of a threat during the years that my own children attended school and during the years that I taught. The dread of those years was head lice! Medical technology has provided, however, for the development of a shampoo that works quite well for head lice without the embarrassing smell or other telltale signs that accompanied the treatment of scabies.

Families are better educated today in preventive measures, normal households are better equipped for the practice of personal hygiene, and visiting the family druggist can often save a visit to the doctor.

I will have to submit that the “good ole days” in medical matters was not “back when”!

This article is the tenth one.

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Cotton Patch – Bed Bugs

When an* Old Timer *like myself recalls “The Good Old Days”, the big, the bad and the ugly are often forgotten. I don’t want my grandchildren to accuse me of showing them my childhood through rose-colored glasses, so here is a chapter of “The Rest of the Story.”

It’s true that I actually enjoyed living in rural Alabama in a somewhat impoverished condition, and it’s true that I did not mind the hard labor of working in the cotton fields, or chopping firewood, of feeding pigs and chickens, of helping plant, weed, and harvest in the garden. Perhaps, of all the things that I had to do, the least enjoyment came from milking the cow (after I got over the thrill of learning how!) I loved the outdoors, and most of my work tended to be outside. Perhaps that is why my priorities, today, are noticeably not in keeping an immaculate house. In that time and that place, everyone pretty much experienced the same way of life. Our family was not at the bottom of the economic ladder, but it certainly was not near the top. Because our parents worked in education and in church ministry, we enjoyed a great deal of respect among most of our neighbors, and that made up for some of the financial instability.

Now, you will accuse me of painting the rosy picture in order to take the gray tinge out of the “not-so” rosy that I’m about to tell! The truth is, I don’t feel about the conditions and events that I’m preparing to relate as I expect most of you will feel as you read them. It was life…it was the reality of the times.

Much of what you have been reading in the last several articles took place in a community named Piney Chapel in the years between 1933 and 1937. Dad was the principal over a school that contained grades 1 through 12, and it was where I completed the first and second grades. My brother, J.H., was born just prior to our moving to the community, and a second brother, Will Ed, was born while we lived there.

The teachers’ home at Piney Chapel had walls made of beaded ceiling (rather narrow wooden boards with grooves running the entire length of the boards.)

The grooves made painting extremely difficult, but an infestation of little critters created the need for an even more difficult job than painting! It was not a shame to have a few bedbugs, but to allow them to multiply unchallenged was not considered appropriate management of one’s household. Besides, they had a habit of biting human beings as they slept!

Well, as “luck” would have it, the family or families before us had either done nothing or had no success in their battle with the bedbugs. The grooves in the walls were alive with those little critters, and Dad and Mother set about to get rid of them. I remember very little of that initial declaration of war, but I do remember that more than once our mattresses were hauled outside and inspected carefully. I think we applied kerosene to the crevices around the edges of each mattress and around the “button” tufts that kept the cotton stuffing inside the mattress from shifting around. I also recall fumigating the house by closing it up and burning sulfur inside. Mother was a very determined lady and such jobs were attacked with fervor!

Being closely involved in school affairs of all kinds, Mother was aware of every kind of communicable “disease” or condition that was making the rounds among the children. I’m sure there were times that we children were subjected to treatments for itch (scabies) when we had no more than dry skin or a harmless rash. Frequent bathing and applications of sulfur and grease were the common methods of treatment for scabies, and if you have never gone to school smelling of sulfur and grease, you can’t possibly know how humiliating life can get!

Next time: “The Thirty Minute Cure!”

This ninth article shows a “not so pretty” picture of the “good old days”. Life had its bad moments, and the problems with pests and diseases that were rampant then would be unwelcome guests in this modern world of my grandchildren. Bearing up under life’s struggles may produce great strength, but I’m thankful some trials are gone.

Reprinted with the permission of Redding Magazine.

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More From the Cotton Patch

Whenever someone in our community had a new “contraption”, it was an awesome thing and sometimes it was shared by the whole community!

In the previous article, I promised to tell about modern lights, radios, and washing machines. Well, it was still a long time before we would have the luxury of electricity, but when we graduated from kerosene lamps to gasoline lanterns, we were truly “uptown”! The intensity of the light given out by the lanterns was much greater than the smelly old kerosene lamps, but they were not without problems. Occasionally, a lantern could catch on fire and cause quite a stir. If my memory serves me correctly, my dad once picked up a burning lantern and threw it out the door into the front yard! Perhaps a blanket, or quilt, was not readily available, or the fire may have been so fierce that it would not have smothered very easily. Whether another way of dealing with the fire would have been better or not, we were safe, the house did not burn and nothing in the yard caught on fire!

Battery powered radios were available, and I have faint memories of our having one in the 30’s. Evidently, it held very little fascination for me. I do have rather vivid memories of another community and a gathering at a neighbor’s house one evening in which the grownups sat around a rather sophisticated radio to listen to Joe Louis and Max Schmeling fight it out for the world heavyweight boxing championship. While the big people were doing their thing of listening to the broadcast of a blow by blow account of a historic boxing match, we youngsters were having the time of our lives…..we had the run of the big yard and barn lot (barnyard), and we even had the barn to romp and play in to our hearts’ delight. Hide-and-Go-Seek was a fun thing to play by moonlight, and to top it off, we joined the older group to enjoy several bowls of homemade ice cream. Wow! Can anyone beat that for a wholesome, happy experience in neighborly togetherness?

Going back to the time period of the mid-thirties, there were several other significant events which helped to develop my attitudes, personality, and character. The community was very much involved in helping to raise money for the benefit of the school …..remember the hand-walking, cigar-smoking gentleman? Well, as he walked on his hands with his feet straight up in the air, the sound of money falling from his pockets and rolling around on the stage made as much a memory for me as seeing his acrobatic progression across the stage! Other people of the community and teachers worked together to perform plays, hold pie socials and box suppers etc., all with the intent of helping to provide a better education for the children.

One skit, acted out by some parents, consisted of a living room scene in which there was a lighted window and two elderly parents in their rocking chairs discussing their longing for a wayward son to come home. It doesn’t sound like something a six year old would remember, but I think its music was the power that moved me to tuck it away in my heart. A song which was evidently the basis for the skit was an emotional experience in recognizing the disappointments that children can be to parents, who, nevertheless, continue to love them and are willing to forgive and welcome them back.

We had a teacher who occupied one of our bedrooms during the winter months, and besides keeping me full of chocolate cream candies, she taught me to sing several songs. She decided that I could sing so well she wanted to show me off at one of our school functions. Between some of the grownup acts, she accompanied me in front of the big curtain, but no amount of prompting paid off. The only sounds that I made was to tell her she was hurting my arm in which I had gotten a shot that day! The songs are still in my heart and I have sung them many times to my children, but never to a big audience!

This sixth article is written for my grandchildren who are enjoying the blessings of homeschooling. Public schools were much less damaging to innocent young spirits in my day, but I had my parents with me all the time. I learned not only from books, but from the way people interacted and worked for common causes.

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From the Cotton Patch

From the Cotton Patch
by Someone’s Grandma

We awoke early, had a good hot breakfast of biscuits, butter, sausage, eggs, gravy, and jelly, all of which were homemade or home processed. There was also good, fresh, wholesome milk to drink. The biscuits and gravy contained flour and a few other ingredients that were “store-bought”, but everything else was made from things grown or raised on Granddad’s and Granny’s farm. I *could* have milked the cow, churned the butter, gathered the eggs, picked some of the fruit (apple, grapes, cherries, blackberries or strawberries) for the jelly, turned the sausage grinder by hand and stuffed the sausage into a “stocking” cover. I *may* have washed and peeled fruit washed the canning jars with water that was drawn out of a deep well with a contraption called a windlass. (A windlass was a big cylindrical wooden drum with a handle). A rope, attached to the windlass, went up and through a pulley in the ceiling of the well-house and down into the well. When a bucket attached to the rope filled up with water, the windlass was turned by hand to bring the fresh cool water up out of the well. It took a lot of buckets of water to make sure the jars were clean and rinsed, but the windlass was fun to let go flying round and round as the bucket fell into the water. The flying handle could be treacherous if you got in its way, but we all learned that scientific fact rather quickly! …But, back to my story…

After breakfast, the adults busied themselves with various chores, while we younger ones watched the sun creep up over the treetops, revealing a very beautiful dew-drenched earth. It was rather cool and damp out on the front porch as we waited for the signal to load up so we could get to the cotton field for a day of work and fun. We youngn’s each wore a straw hat and a long-sleeved shirt to protect us from the hot sun, and we each had a garden hoe, and some of us may have worn cotton gloves so the hoe handle would be less likely to rub blisters on our hands as we chopped at the weeds in and around the young cotton stalks.

Often there was one last ritual before we climbed into the wagon to head for the field. That was hoe sharpening. One or more of the older folks would take a metal file and sharpen the cutting edges of the hoes. In the process of thinning the cotton stalks and chopping out the weeds, our hoes would often strike rocks. It was kinda neat to us youngsters to see the sparks fly when the metal struck against the rocks, but the veteran cotton choppers knew sharp hoe blades would work faster and more efficiently than ones that had been dulled. Hoe sharpening was essential to getting the job done better and more quickly.

Well, the sun, which was finally up, was causing the dew all around to turn into a vapor and rise into the air. Little low lying patches of fog were just as beautiful as the dew-covered plants. No one needed to tell us how beautiful God made the earth…we not only saw it….we felt it!

At last, it was time to climb into the wagon pulled by a team of mules. We bounced up and down on wooden seats as we were carried along the long country lane edged with sweet-smelling pink hedge roses, and not one of us had a thought about being discontent nor deprived of the luxuries that may have belonged to somebody…somewhere….There were songs waiting to be sung, butterflies waiting to chase, and cool shade trees at the end of the long rows of cotton waiting to be enjoyed by hot, sweaty, tired bodies as they shared a gourd dipper and drank from a cool bucket of water.

 

This is the first article of a series in an attempt to give the younger generation a glimpse into the past that belonged to and helped to shape the ideals and principles of their grandparents and great-grandparents. Not every one belonging to those generations had the privilege of working in a cotton patch, but they all shared a closeness to nature that has all but been destroyed by our modern lifestyles.

Windlass at Cannonsburg Village Murfreesboro, TN

Special thanks to my wonderful mother-in-law, Jo Redding, who agreed to let me share these articles. Thanks to the editors of Redding Magazine for letting me reprint them here. This article was first published in Redding Magazine in 1996.