Letter 4

For those of you who don't read my blog regularly: This is my memory letter #4. I'm writing these so that my children and grandchildren will have a record of some of the things I remember about my childhood, and to remind those of you who lived during that time of some of the things we did. Let me know if these bring back memories for you!

Dear Family and Friends,
We’ve had the strangest weather in Arkansas this spring. It got warm, really warm, and then cold, really cold. Warm, cold, warm, cold, back and forth several times. And rain – we’ve had lots and lots of rain, with hail and high winds that sent us to the patio doors to watch the trees sway and bend. One night when tornados hit in neighboring counties it sent my husband (I wasn’t home) to sit in the bathtub for a while, something he’s never ever done! But all is well. We always worry about trees coming down but so far only a few branches have hit the ground. And every day we get closer and closer to warm weather so this week Jerry will be cleaning up the boat and putting it in the water. I can hardly wait to go for a ride!
I’m living in my camper right now in Fort Smith where my son and his family live so that I can keep their newest baby, Andrew, while his parents work. I will stay until school is out and his mother is home for the summer. By the time school starts again he’ll be 8 months old and I’ll feel better about him going to day care. Staying in the camper has reminded me of our camping days when we were children. Oh how fun that was!
Since money was nearly nonexistent at our house camping was done in the most basic of ways. We went from Pine Bluff south to near Rison on the Saline River. My mother sewed up a “mosquito bar” which was where we slept and ate. She used some kind of netting to make a portable room that had a roof and 4 sides. On one side was a long zipper that made our doorway. Daddy had long poles that he somehow hooked it to with one in the middle to hold up the roof. We put a table of some kind in there with all our food, used an ice chest for the cold stuff, and slept on pallets on the bare dirt or on a tarp laid on the dirt. What cooking we did was on an open fire outside the mosquito bar but mostly I remember sandwiches. We had Coleman lanterns to hang from the trees for light at night. I remember long lazy days playing in the river – that was the only bath we got! Once I stepped in a hole in the river bed and nearly drowned. L My older brother, Freddie, hauled me out, thank goodness. But that little episode made me afraid of water over my head for the rest of my life! I’ve taken swimming lessons as an adult at least six times now. The last time I had lessons I jumped in the deep end, swam across the pool, treaded water for one minute and swam back. And it didn’t matter one bit because I’m still scared of the water.
It was on one of those camping trips that I got my first kiss. I was about 12 years old I guess and the boy involved in that little landmark is still a good friend. He and his wife have been friends of ours since college days and we still see them as often as possible.
In those days, whether or not we were camping, there was no air conditioning anywhere we went. At home we had a great big water cooler in the window. You wet down the outside and turned it on. It was just a giant fan that blew air over water so it felt cool when the temperature was in the nineties or hundreds. At night we turned on the attic fan and actually got cold even on the hottest summer days. When we were camping the days were long and hot but we could always go jump in the river to cool off. We played hard in the mornings, laid around in the afternoons, and played hard again after supper. Sleep came easily because by the time bedtime rolled around we were exhausted! I don’t remember our parents trying to keep up with us at all. We swam in an unsupervised river, and we played in the woods, and we might not see our parents for hours. They didn’t worry and neither did we. It was a different time and a different way of life than now.
We camped with other families who also had children. Our parents fished together in the daytime and played cards at night. And the children just played. If we fought we also settled it among ourselves. We didn’t go whining to the adults because they would have just told us to hush up and act nice. I remember the packing up to go and how excited we got because usually we were going for several days and it was a great vacation. And I remember the packing up to come home. There was dirt on everything, including us, the food was gone, we were brown as berries and we didn’t want to leave.
Now when I see parents taking their kids on vacation, whether it’s camping or to Disney World, I see the children being entertained every minute. That’s too bad. Imagination only develops if it’s exercised, and not if everything is shown to us or given to us. If we had a cigar box and some string they became a treasure chest tied up and buried and then dug up again, or a doll bed, or we glued sticks and rocks on it to decorate it and used it for a jewelry box. We could entertain ourselves with very little and we had to because there were very few store bought toys.
It’s getting late and I must go. I’ll write again soon.
Peace and Blessings,
Marlene

Letters From The Past - Number 3

Dear Family and Friends,
Well it’s been a while since I wrote to you and I know you’ve wondered what in the world I was doing. I’ve been busy here in Arkansas, making some quilt tops, going to physical therapy (arthritis you know), going to church, just regular stuff I guess. But it sure seems like there’s been more regular stuff lately!

I have to tell you about the most wonderful thing. Back in 1971 my Grandma and Grandpa A. (my daddy’s parents) were interviewed by someone from the University of Texas about the depression and how they lived during that awful time. Grandpa was 78 and Grandma was 71 when they were interviewed. I think the interviewers (there were 2) were maybe working on a doctoral dissertation or doing some research about the great cattle kill during that time but whatever it was they never published it. However, that interview was tape recorded on one of those little cassette tape recorders everyone used in those days and it still exists! One of my cousins discovered that information and the fact that the UofT Library would make a CD of the interview for $25. So of course my sister sent the money and we got that CD back pretty quick.

It’s so good to hear their voices! The main interviewer is talking to Grandpa but in the background you can hear Grandma answering the questions and elaborating on the answers to the other person there. She did that all the time – answered for Grandpa – and told lots of details about anything she was telling you. I remember that when I was growing up if you asked her a question you got a really long answer…and you didn’t even have to ask because she just loved to talk! My sister says that she is just like Grandma – she said that, I didn’t!

They got married when Grandma was 16 and Grandpa was 23. Her daddy didn’t want her to have anything to do with Grandpa so they ran away in the night (she climbed out the bedroom window and got in his wagon and off they went!) They lived with Grandpa’s Granny for a while. He was raised by his grandparents because his parents separated before he was born. When they got married they didn’t have even one thing to set up housekeeping so Granny helped Grandma make a mattress. They went out to the barn and got some tow sacks. Those are burlap sacks that cattle feed came in. They took those rough old burlap sacks apart and sewed several together. Then they went out into a field and pulled up sweet grass and filled up that mattress. And that was what they slept on. When the corn crop came in they took the grass out of the mattress and filled it up with corn shucks. I think the corn shucks made it thicker and they lasted longer than the grass. Tow sacks looked kind of like the ones in this picture that I found on Flickr.

They only had a little bit of money and they ran out of soap but didn’t want to spend their little bit of money on that! So Granny said she could make soap. Grandma wasn’t sure about that because they didn’t have anything to make soap with (you need lard). But Granny went out into the far pasture and gathered up old bleached out bones from cows that had died or been slaughtered years before. She put those bones and some lye and water into a wash pot and boiled them. It turned into a jelly like soap that Grandma said was the best soap they ever had. It cleaned up those clothes pretty and white! Here's a recipe I found on Flickr for lye soap.

During the depression the government was trying to drive up the price of cattle on the market, I guess to “stimulate the economy” or something, so they offered to buy cows for $25 a head. You put them in a truck and drove them to the designated place and the government man paid you $25 for any cow that was standing. If it couldn’t stand up he wouldn’t pay for it. Good cows, bad cows, sick cows, didn’t matter because the price was the same for all of them. Once they were counted you had to take them off the truck and shoot them. That’s right, shoot them. At first they would let you skin them and keep the hide which you could sell for $1. But later they wouldn’t even let you do that. And no one could have them to eat. They just rotted in the fields. I keep thinking of all the soup kitchens and the hungry people and they made them leave that good meat laying there to rot. I bet there were lots of bones in that field that Granny could have used to make her soap!

Well I’ve rattled on and on today and now it’s time to go. I’ve got some sewing to do today and bread to make and I need to clean out the refrigerator. A woman’s work is never done! Till next time…

Peace and Blessings,

Marlene

Letters From the Past - The Beginning

Dear Friends,

It was a dark and stormy night outside of Lurton, Arkansas in 1946. Heavens, of course it was a dark and stormy night – what story worth its salt doesn’t begin on a dark and stormy night! You’ve never heard of Lurton, Arkansas? Why that little town in Newton County up in the Ozark Mountains was the sweetest little community ever there was. Mountain folk might seem stand-offish to others but to those who lived there they were the salt of the earth. My grandparents, Grandma and Grandpa L. lived and tried to farm there though, truth be told, farming in the mountains is an impossibility if you’re planning to make any money from it. You might make a living if you aren’t expecting much. In those days you could raise a family there and never leave if you were a mind to. And my grandpa was a mind to. I'm including this little picture of the General Store in Lurton. Most of my old pictures are lost but I thought you'd enjoy this one.

When my Daddy returned from World War II to Mama and my brother, Fred, it was there he came. The first thing Daddy did when he got home, well I’d blush if I told you that, but suffice to say that I was the result. And so we’re back to the beginning of this story. It was a dark and stormy night on October 1st, cold and wet and the doctor couldn’t have gotten there if they had sent for him, which they didn’t. Why would you send for a doctor when Grandma L. had delivered six of her own children at home and helped with a multitude of other births, including that of my brother? And so it was that I came into the world in a little frame house back in a hollow in the Ozark Mountains. My brother, Fred, and my cousin, Carol, couldn’t say my name so they shortened it to Marnie, and Marnie it was to most everyone else when I was growing up.

Just a little about my Grandma L. My Grandma was a tall, buxom woman; and I do mean buxom. I can remember as a small child standing in awe watching her iron, yes I said iron, her brassieres. And that was the word she used – she never shortened it to bras. My goodness with bras that large it wouldn’t seem fitting to shorten their rightful name anyway! They were made from heavy cotton that was thick and that wrinkled something awful when washed. Ironing was a necessity. I guess Grandma L. might have worn pants some time but I never saw it if she did. I’ll have to ask my cousin Carol about that. She always wore what we called shirtwaist dresses that she made herself, including the belts that were covered with the same fabric as the dress. They were always flowered fabrics and the leftover pieces went into the next quilt she made. She was a strong willed woman and definitely ahead of her time. When she got fed up with Grandpa’s shenanigans (he drank something awful) she up and moved to California to work in the fruit packing plants and left him in Arkansas. She took her sons with her and California was where they stayed. She and Grandpa never reconciled but neither did they divorce because they didn’t believe in divorce. Both wore their wedding rings till they died. At least that’s the way I remember it. In his later years Grandpa was in a nursing home in the town where my husband and I were living and when I told him Grandma wasn’t doing too well health wise he offered to go take care of her. It had been forty years since they’d seen or spoken to each other. If he’d shown up there that would have killed her for sure!

When I was a grammar school child we had a telephone but long distance calls were way too expensive to make unless it was an emergency. So Mama and Grandma wrote letters. Mama would write one and then Grandma would answer. Mama would reply to that one, and so it went. Every week or so there would be a letter from Grandma in the mail. I can remember her handwriting to this day. Oh, I do miss letters in this age of e-mail. That’s why I decided to write you this one….and a few others that will follow. I want to tell you my story but I want you to get it a little at a time just as we did in the letters of my grandmother. In my next letter I’ll tell you about our trips to California when we were small children and about Grandma’s trips to Arkansas. But for now I best get back to my washing and sweeping.
Love to the family and all,

Marlene