Back to my grand dad for a moment. He was my savior on occasion. Sometime about the age of five I had begun to formulate the meaning of things and being raised on a farm I knew my family would go to the fields and “chop” corn, beans or whatever. Cultivators on the tractor would only get so far up to the stems of the plants in the field, but it took a good ole hoe to get really close in to get those cockleburs. This plant was about the most life sucking plants that could infest a field. Then when full grown their “fruit” was these spiny little burrs that would stick to you when you walked through the field. But not to kill a rabbit here, I digress back to the five year old lad that I was. Since hearing that “chopping” corn was being done about this time of the year and all the family was in the house I decided to do my part and went outside to the cornfield right next to the house. I figured the best place to start was in the middle. So I proceeded to go out into the middle of the field with my hoe and I “chopped” corn, literally. Corn stalks fell to the left and to the right. Those tassels would wobble back and forth as I chopped and then they would fall to the ground. I was doing such a good job till my dad came out and from the porch he could see tassels wobble and fall. He ran out in to the field where I was hidden and yelled at me to stop. I couldn’t figure out why. I was doing such a good job. He grabbed me by the arm with one hand and the hoe with the other and drug me back to the house, set the hoe against the house and proceeded to tongue lash me about cutting down the corn. I assured him I was only doing what I had heard they had been doing. During this time my grand dad had appeared at the door and was listening. When my dad was removing his belt to give me a good ole fashion whipping my grand dad said, “Son, remember those roofing nails?” It stopped my dad in his tracks and put his belt back and all I got was the tongue lashing. See, I didn’t know what that question meant until several years later, but grand dad was reminding dad that when he was a kid he and his cousin, Eddie, had gone onto the tin roof of the pack house where they stored tobacco and removed the lead from the roofing nails. They were going to use them for skimmers. For those of you with no knowledge of what a skimmer is, it’s what kids would use to throw across the water in the creek to see how far they could bounce it off the water before it sank. It was a game. Well, it seems my grand dad made them fix the roof so it wouldn’t leak, but he didn’t whip him, so the comment kept me from a belt swatting.
Grand daddy Colie, Elsie, My dad, & his two sister Gerald & Marian standing in a tobacco field
I loved my grand dad very much. His name was John Colie Rowe. I was his first and only grandson for the first four years. I’ll have to finish this about my grand dad. He was a hard man from what I learned in later years, but he was also a sick man. He was dying from congestive heart failure as I said. He had his first heart attack at 52 or 53 years old. He managed for himself, but he wasn’t well. He loved me and I knew it. I was the apple of his eye. When I turned seven I started school and Aurora High School. Oh, you say? Uh, yes, back in the fifties all twelve grades went to the same school in the same building. The elementary was on the first floor with exception of the seventh grade, which for reasons of space where on the second floor with the high school kids. But I digress again. During my first year of school under Mrs. Cuthrall, I was sitting at my desk one day when my mom appeared at the door and she and my teacher whispered to one another and then Mrs. Cuthrall called my over and told me my mom was going to take me home. I was puzzled as to why the unexpected freedom from books and recess, but I was willing to go. We started the ride home, my dad driving. They had sat me between them in the seat and my mom said “Larry, your grand dad died today”. I lay my head down in disbelief yet sorrow and began to cry. I had lost my best friend, my grand dad. I looked up and said “Mom, really, he isn’t, is he?” She assured me he had died and I just lay there with my head in her lap and cried all the way home. Later she asked me did I want to go to the funeral and I told her that under no circumstances would I go. I didn’t want to believe he had died and I figured if I didn’t go to the funeral it would mean he wasn’t dead. I took this very hard. I would even dreams for months after his death that one day I would be sitting in the living room at grandmother’s and he would come walking in with a sombrero on and I would jump up with joy and greet him and ask him where he’d been. He’d tell me he had just been on vacation in Mexico. My young mind let him live on inside me like this for a long time. Eventually I accepted he was gone, but I would go visit his grave down behind the house in the family cemetery whenever I needed to be close to him. I still miss him.
Mr brother Danny
Well, I need to get back to something lighter. Danny was getting over his surgery now. He was two or three when grand dad died and has no memory of him, but he was coming along. One memorable thing he did one time during the interim before Mike came along was when my class at school was going on a picnic and Danny got upset that he couldn’t go to. He would tell me that I couldn’t go to this nicpic. Yes, I said nicpic. He was very adamant about it so much so that he told me when he got big and I got little he was going to beat me. He was very angry about it.
Then along came Mike. John Michael was born two years after Danny Ferrell. Mike was quick to become a character. The two-bedroom house we were living in was beginning to fill up. Mom and dad had the back bedroom and we three took up the front bedroom and there was a door between our bedrooms directly. Mike slept in a crib at the foot of the twin beds that Danny and I slept in. More directly his crib was at the foot of Danny’s bed. Our house was heated by a lone wood stove in the living room and during the winter it would die down during those cold nights, so we slept under two or three quilts along with the sheets. During the summer we had no A/C. To have that was unheard of. We just slept with sheets or just on the sheets. Well there was one morning when I lay half asleep when I heard Danny saying “Mike, stop it!” He would say it every few seconds and it eventually got me fully awake curious as to what Mike was doing to Danny from the crib. What was going on was funny to me. Mike was still in diapers, mind you. He was reaching inside the backside of his diaper and getting a little “ball” out of his diaper and throwing it at Danny. He’d laugh and it would only make Danny madder. I yelled for mom and after a few more lobs at Danny mom came to the rescue. It was a mess, but mom tried to contain herself while she scolded Mike and cleaned up his mess. It was clear the time was coming for the new house to be built so we could be separated.
Speaking of the house, it was a simple little four room house. Each corner of the house was a room with a small hallway between the back bedroom and the kitchen. There was no bathroom. Only facilities were a “Johnny pot” in that hallway, which by the way was cold on my butt in the winter time. It was a small pot about three gallons in size. It was enameled in white and had a lid on it with a small handle on it. If you wanted privacy you had to go to the outhouse a few yards out behind the house. Man, after that outhouse was torn down and gone that became the best place to grow tomatoes you ever seen in your life. It was good rich soil. Okay, I digress. When I was nine years old my dad and mom were studying building a new house in the field on the other side of where I “chopped” corn. It was about an acre. It was good ground for a yard for sure and a garden in between the two houses. They planned it out with three bedrooms and a bathroom. Wow, we were going uptown with a commode, tube, running water and everything. Oh, didn’t I tell you. The old house didn’t even have running water. Dad had been ingenious enough to somehow drive a shallow well in the kitchen and then built a cabinet around it with a sink. The sink drained to the outside where the water ran off into the field next to the house. Well if you didn’t mind keeping a quart or two of water saved over to prime it when you wanted to pump water up. My mom was happy to have a wringer washer out on the back porch. It was the kind some may remember that looked like a huge white tub on four legs with this wringer device on a swivel arm that would squeeze the water out of the clothes after it had washed the clothes. It was a dangerous toy to me. I stood by the washer once while the wringer was rolling and I played with the rollers with my fingers and it caught them and pulled my hand into it. It skinned the hyde off of the back of my hand before mom realized why I was screaming and came out to release the rollers. I never tried that trick again.
September 20, 2008 at 12:49 am |
Grandmama had one of those washers. It sat on the “porch” of the smokehouse right beside the clothesline.
Yep, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only kid who tried that stunt either. You know, that brought up another thing I maybe should add. Uncle Snodie had the only tractor I knew of that ran on a magneto. It always had to be hand cranked. I’m getting a small flood of memories here. Expect more to come.