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I am a bird lover and a bird watcher. This is a fairly new thing for me. That is, in the last twelve years or so. Birds are such beautiful creatures, especially the songbirds! These is no better thing for me to enjoy than getting up early on my day off, making a good pot of coffee and sitting on the front porch or in front of a window and watching them at my feeders. If it is warm enough to be outside their singing is as relaxing for me as anything I know.
As I sit there and look and listen, it brings me closer to God. I will never understand how anyone can look at a rose or a little chickadee, or snow falling and deny there is a creator! I am reminded that Jesus told his deciples to not worry about material things and to consider the lillies of the field and the little sparrow, he clothed and fed them and he values each of us more than these. He tells us not one hair ever falls from our head without him knowing it! How can we worry?
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If you like this then please subscribe to the I got in the bed to early tonight and my eyes got big as saucers. I got what we called the “big eye” when I was a kid. That’s where you turn over and over trying to go to sleep because you know that time to get up for work comes too early and you really need your rest but the harder you try the more awake you get! Your mind goes round and around and you get to thinking about all kinds of stuff.
Anyway, I got to thinking about how hard it must be for Beverly to have to worry about her baby having cancer and how with her red hair she probably looks a lot like Gladys did when she was little. Then I thought of how sad Maggie must be with losing Tommy and how she had made him such a good wife. I prayed for all my family and friends and hoped I never had to lose a child and thought of Dorothy Gail and Dorothy. Then I thought about Vance.
I remember when I was to little to go to school. I remember him bringing home Ina Jane Day once. They had walked up Big Branch and it was during the day. I guess mom or somebody told me she was his girlfriend because I remember knowing that she was. What I remember was they sat leaned up against the living room wall in two home made chairs side beside. I bet Vance wished I hadn’t stood there looking them both in the face until he walked her back home!
I remember when he brought Gladys home too! It must have been just about near the same time. It was after dark and there was more than just him and Gladys that came in. I don’t remember who all but I remember Gladys leaning up against moms sewing machine and she had on a long straight skirt, dark colored, maybe checked, a light colored sweater, bobby socks and long red hair! And, she was skinny!
Then I got to thinking about our log house on Big Branch and how that there was eight of us and mom and dad all home at once in two (maybe) 14X14 feet front rooms, about an 8X18 foot kitchen and about an 8X8 tiny room for mom & dads bed and a small canning room and unfinished loft. Man! Everything we had was used and useful! There was no room for frivolity!
The best I remember, the first room where the front door came in had two full size cast iron beds, mom’s treadle singer sewing machine and the chifarobe which was actually a tall cabinet with shelves that dad had made with a curtain over it for doors and that was it! The other front room had two full beds, one walnut that dad had made and one cast iron, the battery radio cabinet, a walnut dresser that he had also made, the heating stove and 3or 4 homemade, straight back chairs. A quilt rack hung from the ceiling.
In the kitchen was a coal and wood cook stove, a dish cabinet that dad had made (Shirley still has it) , a small table for the water buckets, a long, homemade dinner table with a homemade bench behind it and several homemade chairs around the end and front side. At the end of the kitchen was the 8X8 room with mom and dads sassafras bed on one side and the dresser and chest on the other (he made these too, I still have them). There was barely enough room to walk in and open the drawers. There was a long stick in one corner which held the hung up clothes. At the back of the kitchen was a little room with shelves all around 3 walls for the can stuff. A ladder went up into the loft. There was a bed up there for some of the boys!
We had cheap linoleum on the floors, flowered wall paper on the walls, plastic curtains on the windows and two coal oil lamps. The walls had one calendar hanging behind the heating stove and one picture of a little blond haired girl with red pajamas sitting in bed praying on the wall over one of the beds. Delphia and Bill had brought it to mom for Christmas.
We also had soft feather beds and beautiful handmade quilts to sleep under. We had gorgeous crochet doilies mom made and starched and molded around jelly glasses until the ruffles stood up by themselves until the next washing. We had country smoked bacon and ham and fresh eggs, milk and butter. We had green beans, corn, tomatoes, apples, blackberries, krout, chowchow, apple butter, jams and jelly, all canned by mom and the girls. We had strings of shucky beans hanging on nails behind the kitchen stove. We had potatoes buried in a hole under the floor with straw over them to help them to keep all winter.
We had a mule and cow in the barn, hogs in the lot and chickens anywhere they wanted to be except in the house or on the porch and steps. They always got shooed off there because they were to messy. We had a rooster that flogged me every time I had to go out to the toilet. Shirley would have to go with me with a broom to keep him from spurring me!
Well, I digress! Back to the point! The point is that I, like everyone, have 7 rooms of junk and 90% of it is useless. Maybe I need to downsize. Well, I am getting sleepy now so I will have to think about this another time. I sure do love all my stuff!!!
Burr Rabbit
When I was little we didn’t have all this material stuff like kids do today. There was no computer games, Ipods and cell phones, etc. Instead of ten or twenty gifts at Christmas we always got just one each and nothing expensive at that.
Mom went out to town about once a month for sewing supplies and such. She would go to Keen’s Dime Store. They had small toys for 10 cents each. She would bring me and Shirley back just one! It would be either a set of bobby jacks, a bag of marbles or a little bitty china cupie doll that had arms and legs held on by a rubber band. We were more tickled with these toys than kids are today with everything they have. We appreciated what we got! And birthdays, just another day.
We didn’t have television. We didn’t even have electricity! All we had was a battery radio that only got two or three stations: WKIC at Hazard and The Grand Ole Opery on Saturday night and maybe Whitesburg and that was with fuzzy reception.
When WKIC decided to put Uncle Remus Tales on every evening at three, that was equivalent to having Cartoon Network!
Now, I loved Burr Rabbit! Every evening I watched the clock. At three, everything else was put on hold because I had to listen to Uncle Remus. That went just fine until Elvis came along!
Now, Shirley is almost five years older than me so when I was seven or eight and loved good stories, she was becoming a teenager. All the bigger girls at the Big Branch school loved Elvis and the Jitterbug. Opal Baker and Jewel Callahan was always singing Elvis songs and trying to do the jitterbug when we had recess. Shirley wasn’t ever great friends with them because they were always kind of uppity to everyone else but she was just as bad over Elvis.
This is when the ghost of Cain and Able raised it’s ugly head; sibling rivalry. I would turn the dial to WKIC, Shirley would turn it to Whitesburg. We would fuss and carry on like all kids do. Mom was usually back in the kitchen getting ready to cook supper and didn’t know what was going on. She never would allow us to fuss and fight if she knew about it. Shirley was the biggest tattle tale! If she couldn’t convince me to let her listen to music, she would run to Mommy. I guess mom was diplomatic and would let me listen one evening to Uncle Remus and Shirley to music the next, I don’t remember that specifically but mom was always fair. All I remember was the consequences of Shirley’s tattling; Mom went back to the kitchen, I hit Shirley in the belly with my fist and knocked the breath out of her, she cried, mom whipped me with a little keen switch and I got sent to bed.
I have always been hard headed so I never gave up. Every day that was Shirley’s, I tool a whipping before I would let her get away with it. This trait got me in trouble many times. However, not being a quitter has been a blessing to me after I got grown. It has helped me be successful in everything I have tried to do.
If you would like to read these stories or introduce them to your children here is a web site dedicated to Uncle Remus Takes: http://www.uncleremus.com/