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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.

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Bluebirds 2 – Cotton Patch

Whenever I see Father Bluebird sitting on top of a nesting box flapping his wings and “singing” in a low raspy voice, I know that there is a Mother bluebird out there watching and listening. The prospective father will go in and examine the proposed home and return to his singing and wing flapping on top of the box until the female comes onto the scene.

Lady Bluebird may go into the box to look around, or she may go into another box first. It seems as though Father Bluebird tries to sell his lady on a particular building site, and if one doesn’t suit her, he carries his amorous display to other boxes. Eventually, the finicky lady decides which one suits her special needs or tastes, and a new family is about to begin. (My husband jokes over the female being so particular in choosing her house, that she gives the male a hard time over details that only women understand. If the plumbing is not in perfect order, or if her kitchen doesn’t suit her fancy, she will have no part of it). She evidently knows what her contribution to this proposed venture is worth, and can well afford to make such reasonable demands! This choosing process can go on for days before any actual building begins.

This spring, we began observing bluebirds in March, and by March 19, a pair had indicated that they would nest in a new blue box by our pear tree. The box is in the same place that an older popular box had been. I am always thrilled when birds choose that spot because it can be easily seen from our kitchen window and from the sliding glass doors that lead to the backyard. Without the aid of binoculars, we can watch and keep up with a series of events that was set in order at the creation. When God ordained that every living thing would produce after its own kind, the beautiful russet-breasted bluebird must have been there obediently taking its orders. That you and I today can enjoy the sound and sight of the eastern bluebird (as well as many other wondrous creatures) is a gift from God for which I am truly thankful.

By April 12, our nest had 5 little greenish-blue eggs in it, and we began watching for anything that might threaten the pair of birds in fulfilling their mission. By April 25, all of the babies had successfully hatched out, and the parents began their feverish work of feeding the hungry nestlings. As usual, I began digging around in my flower beds and in and around old rotting wood in search of big juicy grub worms. For some unknown reason, the “pickings” were slim this year, so I finally resorted to buying mealworms, which the birds love. I placed them in a shallow pan near the nest, and it was not long before the birds knew that when I “visited” their area they would find a good supply of food in the pan.

Bluebirds like a big open area in which to feed, and they prefer the grass to be short. They make use of low perches from which they can look for insects without the danger of being on the ground. 3 to 4-foot stakes driven into the ground make excellent perches, but of the three that I put up, our birds almost exclusively used the one which was placed about 8 feet in front of their nest.

On May 7th, the parents were hauling little white “diapers” out of the nest. According to the books, the parents begin hauling away white bags shortly after the babies are hatched, but we have not been able to observe this activity until a few days before the babies fly. A bag, which contains body waste, is collected immediately after a baby is fed, and then it is removed and deposited away from the nest… Even the birds, living in such humble abodes, are not exempt from housekeeping chores!

Our bluebird babies flew from the blue box on May 13 and 14. We do not know if they all survived, but we have hopes that they did. We heard the special call that parents make to their fledglings for several days, and then what we believe was a new pair visited the blue box, started a nest, and by May 21 when we left on an extended vacation there was 1 egg in the nest.

By the time we returned on June 30, the nest was empty, so we don’t know how many babies there were. We have boxes up at two of our rental houses, and one of them produced five babies even though the children had taken the scarcely-feathered birds out of the box and played with them! We wired the box shut and monitored it often. The little birds miraculously grew into fully feathered fledglings and flew to a new home as they were created to do, despite their early abuse.

Besides the possible 15 bluebirds launched this year, we had 5 black-capped chickadees get their start in one of our bluebird boxes. The parents dove at me each time I opened the box…but I got a great picture of the five little black caps with the white rings around them.

My space is gone, and you haven’t even heard about the Carolina wrens…However, they built on an old dirty shelf in a dark corner of the tool shed. Now, if they find our bluebird boxes in 1999… I’ll just have to write about our birds again next year.

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Making Plain Old Fashioned Lye Soap

Lye soap

I started my soap making adventure back in the early 1990s. My first batch was plain lye soap. Back then I could make a year’s worth of soap for about $8. I have continued to make soap for many years.  A few years back I took some of my soap to the flea market where I was selling books. I sold a lot of soap. People especially liked my soap in the spring when they were clearing undergrowth or cutting down trees and had the possibility of coming in contact with poison ivy. They told me they would wash in lye soap and they would not break out. I have never broken out from contact with poison ivy so I do not know if it works.

I am not sure where I got this recipe but the first recipe I got came from a magazine called Gentle Spirit. 

Plain Old Fashioned Lye Soap

1 can Red Devil lye (10 and 3/4 oz.  can)

2 1/2 pints of distilled water in a glass jar

10 cups lard or beef tallow (I have always used lard for this recipe)

Slowly pour the lye into the water (remember it will get very hot) Do not breathe this!!!

Set in the glass jar into cold water to cool down or set aside away from children.

Measure the lard and melt slowly on low. It will be easier to cool to the right temperature if you do not overheat.

 

After these are both done you need to check the temperatures.  When the temperatures are between 95 and 98 slowly pour the lye water into the fat and stir until trace. (Or use a stick blender)

If it is not getting thick after stirring a while then leave it alone for 10 minutes or so and stir some more. Usually, I have no trouble with this one it traces very fast.

After it traces pour it into your mold (I use a box lined with plastic) and cover with a board and blanket and set in a warm place for 24 hours. Uncover it if it is set then turn it out on a protected surface. It will eat up your table if you do not protect it well! Cut with a sharp knife and allow it to cure for two weeks. It will now be ready to use.

Lye soap
Lye soap
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Perennials

You may remember my sanity garden from last year. ** Well, my herbs are growing again. I actually had the oregano all winter but it is growing and spreading with spring. So happy to see my mint again too. Old friends. Planting perennials is a gift that keeps on giving. Plant perennials herbs, strawberries, apples, grapes, etc.

 

**In case you missed my post about my sanity garden last spring here it is!

Sanity Garden

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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.

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Campaigns Northwest – Part 1

In 1979 I had my first adventure to the Northwestern part of the United States. I traveled by car with a group of college students from Freed-Hardeman College and Harding University and the Obert Henderson family who had started Campaigns Northwest. The idea was to bring Christian college students to work with small churches in the Northwest for their summer break. Students who might want to settle there eventually and strengthen these Christians and churches. Many students brought their own cars. So we loaded up and No we didn’t head to Beverly but we headed to the Northwest. Obert arranged for us to be hosted by churches along the way who would house us for one night and feed us dinner that night, and breakfast the next morning and pack a sack lunch for us.  (Years later I would realize what a HUGE undertaking this was). There were about 50 students if my memory serves me correctly. The plan was to go to three congregations for about 3 weeks each. We also had a training session on the trip out while staying at a camp in the Colorado Rockies. Mid-Point we met up at  Camp Yamhill in Yamhill, Oregon.  (Is there a more glorious place?) Many experiences from this trip are seared into my mind. This trip and group of people as well as those we met probably impacted my faith and life more than any single event I experienced in my young life. I would be forever changed. I did not know this at the time.