When I was little . . .

When I was little I had a stool at AJ's package store. He had an old-timey cooler in the back of the store—the kind you slid the glass top back and the bottles were held by their tops in metal racks that you had to slide the bottle to the very front before there was an opening to release the bottle and it had a slot in the front to pop the bottle cap off. There was a step stool there for me so I could climb up and get a Dr. Pepper because I was too short to reach the top without it!!! Then I would climb up on a stool a the bar (he did not serve drinks there, just sold beer and liquor but the bar was old and he had stools so people could sit and visit with him) and drink my drink just like I was a big girl.

When I was little my dad drank Seagrams 7 and coke. The coke had to be in a glass bottle and I knew how to mix it just right. Pour half of it into another bottle (until it was down to the first line from the bottom), add Seagrams 7 from there to the second line, hold the top of the bottle with the palm of your hand (b/c my thumb was not big enough), and shake until mixed (shaken not stirred!).

When I was little my dad and I would sit on the front porch, he with his coke and 7, me with my coke, eating rat cheese, summer sausage, ritz crackers and swinging our legs b/c neither of us was tall enough to touch the ground off of the porch.

When I was little my dad plowed up our gardens using a white mule named Kate. I would follow behind them with bare feet loving the feel of fresh turned dirt in my toes. We raised all kinds of peas (purple hull, zippers, cream, crowder) and picked them with snaps. We also had corn, tomatoes, potatoes (sweet and irish), cucumbers, okra, butter beans, watermelons, cantelopes, multiplying onions, regular onions, and greens. I hated picking peas. For years I picked and sold peas by the bushel to buy my school supplies and clothes. Talk about a lot of stinking peas!!! My grandmother would take salt shaker to the garden and eat tomatoes with salt right off the vine. I was not fond of tomatoes.

When I was little I also sold the pears from our orchard that was over 134 years old. They were sweet and juicy and some of them wouldn't fit in a 5 lb coffee can. We sold a lot. We also made fresh pear cakes, pear jelly and preserves, and ate them off the tree. My dad would take out his pocket knife and peel a pear in the orchard then cut off pieces for me and him to eat. Oh my! There is nothing better than a juicy pear, warmed by the sun, shared with your dad.

When I was little I split and hauled wood b/c we had an ashley heater. There would be a stack taller than me on either side of the carpet leading into the house. My dad would cut the oak trees up and we would work together to split it (lest you think it was child abuse, he had a wood splitter that worked off of the tractor, had a chain and grapple that would pick up the blocks off of the ground).

When I was little I learned to drive on a red 1974 international tractor. I raked and tedded hay, ran the post hole digger, ran the back hoe, hauled wood from the wood pile to the porch in the bucket, moved hay, and used the front end loader of it to hang deer (rope around the neck, rope around the front end loader, hydraulics do the rest, no fuss/no muss).

When I was little I hated deer hunting. Nothing against killing/eating deer but did not want to get up that early and be that cold for a chance at one. But I dearly loved the weekends when everybody came down to hunt. Uncle William, Uncle Ben, Uncle Oscar, John, Charles. Lots of work for my grandmother but tons of fun for me.

Uncle Oscar now and with a pic of him when he was in the army:

Uncle Ben, Kenneth (2nd cousin), Hulen (2nd cousin), Uncle Oscar:

When I was little, we spend many weekends at Uncle William's house doing whatever. John went through a phase of eating nothing but cheese. He went hungry a lot. He also cried when his show hog was too big to show and we butchered it and made sausage. I remember using a 55 gallon drum to boil water, scalding the hog and scraping the hair off. Then we cleaned out the intestines and made link sausage. Uncle William smoked it for days. It was wonderful.

When I was little I learned that not all girls refused to wear dresses. Who knew little girls were supposed to like fixing their hair and wearing girly clothes? I couldn't figure how they worked cows, fixed fence, bailed hay, dug ponds with bulldozers in a dress or stayed clean. I was in the middle of the people working on log equipment and came in the house at night looking like a grease monkey. Apparently they did not.

When I was little I thought I could do everything boys could do, and better. Guess what? I still think that!!