Bicycles, Brown Mules & Boys

 

Growing up in a small town had many benefits especially in the years of my childhood. Neighbors looked out for each other and each other’s children. Parents could send their children out to play without fear of them being kidnapped or molested. Most children I knew were like us. They did their chores, ate their meals, and then stayed out of their parent’s hair until dark. The older ones looked after younger siblings to give the mothers time to do their work.

We weren’t supplied toys to keep us busy. At Christmastime we received our gifts from Santa and played with them until the next Christmas or wore them out. We had checkerboards, Chinese or regular, and learned to play the game with our siblings, parents, or friends. The girls played with dolls, the boys played with marbles. My brother was thrilled when he got his first new bicycle. My sister got hers the next Christmas. I rode theirs. Skates were a favorite for us. The sidewalks were paved and we skated there or in the gymnasium across the street. It was not inside the gym but on the cement area at the entrance. It was small but big enough for several people to use as a rink.

There was a tennis court located between the high school and south grammar school within a stone’s throw of our home. Although there was only one court it was enough for a singles or doubles game. A group of us gathered there during the summer to play. And play we did. We went to the court in the morning and played until lunchtime, went home and grabbed a bite to eat, and then returned to play all afternoon. We took turns and the winners played a second game. The rest of us watched and waited on the schoolhouse steps or the large slabs of cement on the sides of them for our turn on the court. It was fun just to visit with our friends while we waited. None of us had ever heard of sunscreen. We were as brown as acorns. Heaven help the fair skinned ones that blistered easily but they soon adjusted.

Mr. Crowe ran a small store across the street from the tennis court just above our house. We spent what little money we had there buying popsicles and drinks to keep cool. I ate enough Brown Mules and banana popsicles to last a lifetime. They were delicious if you could manage to eat them before they melted away from the hot summer sun. The drinks from the store were kept in Mr. Crowe’s big Coke box filled with ice water. They were cold and refreshing straight from the bottle.

There were no swimming pools around. We swam or waded in ponds located in our area. Kirkland's Pond was an old millpond not too far from Kershaw and we went there most of the time. You could dive from the porch of the old mill building or wade out from the bank in the shallow water. That’s what I did. I never learned to swim when I was growing up. It was fun just to go in the water to cool off. We floated on inner tubes when we were lucky enough to find one. We sunbathed afterwards in the area around the pond.

One day several of us played hooky from school and went swimming. We spent most of the day lying in the sun. When we got home all of us were red as lobsters. We thought that we were safe since we didn’t blister in the summer. Water blisters were forming by the time we got home. Our parents raised Cain but they felt that we had learned a good lesson already. They did make sure we were in school the next day. It was terrible having to wear clothing on top of the sunburn. Even worse was having someone give you a slap on the back or shoulders. We didn’t repeat that mistake.

Most of the boys our age rode bicycles. The girls did too but they left them home when we got together. It was more fun to ride on the bikes with the boys. We didn’t use the metal seat over the back wheel but rode sidesaddle on the bars up front. The boys loved to show off riding double on their bikes. One would be sitting on the handlebars while the other pedaled around us trying to keep their balance. We were invited to join in the fun but left that to them. It was too easy to take a fall and we were growing out of the daring tomboy stage.

At the end of summer we would all go our own way. The boys would begin practicing for football or basketball hoping to make the team. Several of our friends made the girls basketball team and were excellent players. As for me, I joined the tennis team that year since I was eligible as a seventh grader. The members of the team had dibs on the court on weekdays during the school year. A few of us still gathered there to play after practice. The court was available on Saturdays but most of us had other plans for that day. We were growing up, finding new interests, and beginning to drift apart.

As I look back on that summer so long ago I realize how happy we all were. We were young and adventurous, learning what life was all about. We were looking forward to high school. A few of our friends were already there. For the rest of us the years ahead held a promise of new horizons that we were more than ready to explore.

The Old Black Buggy

Its strange how a word can trigger a memory. We were cleaning up after breakfast yesterday and my sister Et asked if I ever thought of the old black buggy that Daddy bought when we were teenagers. I hadn’t thought of that in years but just the mention of it brought back so many memories. Nowadays they come in droves anyway and I welcome every one with open arms. They are reminding me of happy times when I was young and carefree with my whole life opening before me like a rose beginning to bloom. There will always be sad memories too but they are welcome as well because they are the most tender of all. It may be a song that I hear on the radio, a voice in a crowd that sounds familiar or when I see a young couple walking along holding hands and smiling. They make the day seem shorter. When I close my eyes I see the images in my mind as clear as a movie playing onscreen and I can enjoy them all over again.

The time line of the buggy escapes me but it must have been in the early forties. Most people thought I was older than Et.  Daddy always expected me to be the one who took care of us when we were away from home. It had nothing to do with brains or brawn. It was just the fact that I was more assertive. Et was shy back then but she had a mind of her own and let us know when we crossed the line. She still does.

School was out for the day. I rushed home, carried my books to the bedroom and threw them across the bed. They wouldn’t be needed again until the next morning anyway. While walking down the hall toward the kitchen,  I looked out the back door and there, pretty as you please, was a black shiny buggy with the top pushed back over the seat. I ran to the back door as fast as I could to see if my eyes were deceiving me. It was still there but now there was a beautiful black horse standing near it. Daddy was holding the horse and one of his friends was standing there with him. The horse reminded me of Black Beauty only his mane wasn’t flowing down his neck. It had been cut and was standing up about four inches all the way from his head down his neck like the hair of a Mohawk Indian. I didn’t slow down until I reached the barn. Daddy raised his hand in a “stop right where you are” gesture and said, “Be still, don’t spook him.” I don’t know what he thought I intended to do. I just wanted to watch.

I inched in closer. It looked like Daddy might have reached into an old western movie and stole the doctor’s rig.  By this time they were hitching the horse to the buggy and soon had it ready to go. Wilson, the friend, rode horses a lot and sometimes rode the ones Daddy owned to exercise them.  He got in the buggy and rode out toward the field beside our house. Daddy and I and watched as he went around and around turning left and right to see how the horse responded. Then he came back to where we were standing. Daddy asked if I wanted to take a ride and helped me up on the seat. It  thrilled me to death. He told Wilson to show me how to hold the reins and guide the horse around the field. I was so proud I could hardly sit still. After making a few rounds in the field we went back to where Daddy was standing and he and Wilson went for a ride. They went out on the highway and were gone for a good while. When they returned they unhitched the horse and put it in the stall Daddy built for horses he kept from time to time.

At suppertime we heard all about the horse and buggy. Daddy told us he traded with some man for both and thought he might hold on to them for a while. He would see.

After seeing how gentle the horse was, Daddy let us take him out for a ride after school and on Sundays. I had to practice in the field for a week or so but that didn’t matter. We couldn’t hitch him up but I could handle the horse and buggy. We didn’t venture far from the house at first but after a few weeks we felt more confident and would ride down Matson Street, around the field or over across the main highway to my cousin Lucille’s house. Three of us could sit on the seat and two or three could stand behind the seat when the top was folded down. It was a bit hard to squeeze into that area  but we managed by standing the whole time. We always chose the roads where we could turn right or left. I didn’t feel too good about trying a U-turn.

One Sunday afternoon five of us started out from home for our Sunday outing.  We went south on the bypass until we reached 601. We turned left and rode down through town on Main Street. Most of the young people driving their family cars would park along the street and visit there on Sundays. It was like a one man parade. Everyone was waving at us and we waved back. We continued on toward the mill and up to the area where we would turn back on the bypass. There were more people out driving that day and we pulled into a side road to wait for the heavy traffic to pass before crossing the main highway. The road we were on was a short drive through that connected the main highway to the Fork Hill Road running parallel to 601. It wasn't paved and had a lot of white sand and ruts left where the cars used it to make U-turns back onto the highway.

A car full of young people went by and began waving and the driver pushed down on the horn just as he reached the spot where we were sitting. It spooked the horse and it reared up suddenly and scared the life out of me.  I jerked on the reins and the horse turned and reared again. The front left wheel went up under the bottom of the buggy causing it to tilt sideways. Lucille and Valeria thought it was turning over and jumped out on the right side of the buggy screaming and scared the horse again. Et, Doris, and I were still in the seat and they wouldn’t leave me. After the car went by we waited until the horse calmed down and pulled on the  reins again to try to get the wheel out from under the buggy. I was surprised when it worked. After the others were back in place, we went across the road back to the bypass and down Matson Street until we reached home. When we got there Daddy was getting in his car. When he saw us he came over and grabbed the horse by the halter and led him back to the barn. He told everyone to get out and unhitched the horse, put him in his stall and pulled the buggy around to the side of the barn.

We found out afterwards that someone had seen the horse rearing while we were waiting to cross the highway. They went straight to our house and told Daddy the horse had run away with us and we were going to get killed in that buggy. We told Daddy it wasn’t true but it scared him so bad that he didn’t believe us. He didn’t talk to us about it that night and I wondered what he was thinking. I found out the next day. He carried the buggy to the sale on Wednesday and sold it at auction. It made me sick. We had such a good time riding in that old buggy and had just begun to feel safe on the road. He kept the horse and I did get to ride it but I sure missed the buggy. We didn’t even get a picture of it.  How I would love to have one now of the horse, the buggy and those dear friends of so long ago.

Tweet

Peas, Please

 It was in summer of 1934 that Tweet began working at our house. Many changes occurred that year. My younger sister Sybil was born on June 5th; Mama underwent surgery for a hysterectomy later that month and my little brother Buddy died in July. The loss of a child takes a terrible toll on a family. Mama’s health reached a critical point and the doctor said she needed complete bed rest if she was to recover.  Daddy asked Tweet to come to help out until Mama was well again.

I'm not sure about Tweet's age but she seemed old to me. When you're five, anyone over fifteen has a tendency to look ancient. Et was eight, Bill eleven and Syb a tiny baby. We were a handful for anyone but Tweet was used to big families and took us in stride. She cared for Mama, prepared meals, cleaned house, washed clothes and still had time to deal with other problems that arose.

Daddy loved peas. He loved to plant them, eat them or make pea vine hay for livestock. He spent part of his childhood on his grandfather's farm after his mother died and never lost his love of farming. He had a strong work ethic and didn't believe in land being wasted if it could be put to use.

 

A big open field on one side of our home separated our next-door neighbor and us. Daddy used the field as pastureland for the occasional horse or cow we had at the time. There was also open land behind our house and the neighbors on the other side of us that extended to the end of our block. Daddy knew that planting peas enriched the soil and decided to plant them on the sites mentioned that year. He plowed the land and broadcast the peas over the entire area. Since our yard was not in the best of shape he planted it too. If planting by the signs helps Daddy sure got it right that time. There were peas everywhere.  Instead of the Bluebells of Texas we had the Green Peas of Kershaw. It was a sight to behold. When harvest time rolled around all the neighbors were welcome to peas if they would come and pick their own. We were handing peas out by the bushel.

Daddy gave Bill, Et and me the chore of picking peas for our use.  It’s an easy task when you’re young and short and the peas are hanging full on the vine. The soil around our home was rich and every vine must have received the nourishment needed for an abundant crop. We all ate peas, Daddy, Mama, Tweet and the three of us. Bill said we ate peas for breakfast, dinner and supper but I don't remember having them at breakfast. Sybil was still on a milk diet so she was spared. It didn’t take long for us to grow tired of a steady diet of peas and we complained to Daddy. He solved that problem in a flash with,"Eat your peas, they’re good for you." He had more serious things on his mind and didn't put up with childish complaints.

 

Bill, Et and I were eating lunch one day and Bill said there was a worm in his peas.  Et and I stopped to look and it was true. There was a little worm floating around in the peas on his plate. That did it, relief at last. I grabbed my spoon and scooped up the peas and the worm and headed for the front door. Tweet was on the porch rocking Sybil while we ate. I was careful not to lose the evidence while running down the hall with Bill and Et following close behind.

When I showed Tweet the worm she looked at the spoon, looked back at me and said, "Throw it in the yard." I had anticipated more of a reaction than that and just looked at her.

     "Throw it away. It ain’t going to hurt you cause you didn’t eat it and wouldn’t have if you had cause you wouldn’t know that you did."

Her logic was sound but not what we wanted to hear. We told her we would tell Daddy. She just looked at us and said, "You do that." We knew better because Daddy had left Tweet in charge and would accept no foolishness on our part. She continued rocking Sybil who slept through the whole thing.

Mama’s health improved gradually and life returned to normal. Tweet still helped and she was a godsend to our family. We teased her at times singing a little ditty of Tweet Tweet goes the mockingbird. I don’t know which one of us thought of it but it didn’t bother her one bit. She just ignored us and went about her business of keeping us well. To this day I still think of peas when I think of Tweet. I didn’t think I would ever want peas again if given a choice but that changed over the years. Now I love a serving of those little brown peas with fresh tomatoes and the happy memories it brings.

Bill's 1931 Model A Coupe

My brother Bill was fourteen when Daddy bought him his first car. It was in 1937 and there were fewer restrictions on driving in those days. The car, a 1931 Model A coupe, had a rumble seat usually referred to as the "cooter" shell. It belonged to our local dentist who sold it to Daddy for fifty-five dollars. Bill made good use of that car during the summer while school was out. Gas was cheap and he and his friends pooled what little money they had and spent most of their time going and coming. The destination didn’t matter. They piled in as many friends as the car would hold and rode. They were having fun.

Summer flew by and soon it was time for Bill to return to school. Daddy wanted to be sure he stayed there. Bill had already asked if he could drive his car to school. That may seem a reasonable request for most people but since we lived directly across the street in front of the high school it seemed a mite suspicious. Daddy believed in an ounce of prevention and decided it would be better to clip Bill’s wings before he took flight. He remembered when Bill started school at Midway, a rural area near Kershaw, where they lived at the time. It was Bill’s first year and he had no desire to go. Mama and Daddy lived in a house across the road from the schoolhouse then too. Daddy owned a small grocery store located beside their home.  He would take Bill to school each morning, drop him off, and then go to his store to work. When Daddy left the school Bill lit out for home.

Esther, our sister, was three years younger than Bill and too young to go to school even at the one-room schoolhouse he was attending. Daddy continued taking Bill to school and Bill continued slipping away as fast as he could. Mama decided to try sending Esther with him thinking that would solve the problem. It didn’t. When the first opportunity arose he headed for home leaving Esther and the school behind.

One day Bill followed some older boys when they left the school grounds and he became lost in a wooded area nearby. They had everyone out looking for him and Esther was crying because she had lost her brother. When they finally found Bill Daddy brought the two of them home. He and Mama decided it might be best to wait another year before trying again. Things worked out just fine for Bill and Daddy. Bill and Esther graduated from Kershaw High School in 1943. We were in the midst of WWII and Bill had been given a deferment to allow him to finish high school. He was inducted into the army and reported for duty the day after his graduation. It was thirty-two long months before we saw him again.
 
When Bill returned home he too had acquired a healthy respect for education. He and many of his friends returning from the military attended Kershaw High School for refresher courses that year. Afterwards he enrolled at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. Daddy was so proud the day that Bill graduated. Daddy grew up in a time and place when many children didn’t have the opportunity to attend school. He had hopes that all his children would acquire a college education. Unfortunately his daughters had other ideas. Esther and one of our cousins enrolled at King’s Business College in Charlotte after graduating from  high school. That didn’t last long because Et became homesick and was ready to leave after a couple of months.

After graduating in 1946 I didn’t have college on my mind either. Daddy made one last effort and enrolled Esther and me at Columbia Commercial College in Columbia, South Carolina. He had hopes, again, that if two of us went together we might stay. Daddy didn’t realize the strong homing pigeon instinct ingrained in his children. He carried us to Columbia on Sundays and told us he would be back for us on Fridays. Columbia was approximately sixty miles from our home and too far to walk but Et and I would take every opportunity that arose to return home with the first person we saw from Kershaw. Sometimes it would be as early as Tuesday. I know Daddy was disappointed when we decided we had enough of CCC and came home after six months. City life was not for us.
  
Mama ran interference for Et and me. She told Daddy that everyone was not cut out for college. It was his dream, not ours, and he finally agreed.  Esther went to work in Lancaster at the Spring’s Purchasing Department the following year. I was hired at Spring’s Uptown Office not too long afterwards. Daddy had a store in Lancaster at the time so we all rode to work together. Everyone was happy, especially Daddy, to know the two of us were at least taking advantage of our training at CCC.
  
My younger sister and the baby of the family had dreams of becoming a nurse. She enrolled at Camden Nursing School in 1953. She was doing fine until her class was required to watch an autopsy on a little child. She passed out cold during the procedure. It was more than she could take and we found her at home that afternoon when we returned home from work.  I think by that time Daddy had resigned himself to the fact that his daughters did have dreams of their own.  Many years later, Mama, who Daddy always referred to with the pet name of “Duck” told us of Daddy’s final words in the matter.

 “Well, Duck,” he said, “I suppose one out of four ain’t bad.”

   














   

My Hometown

My hometown is located halfway between Lancaster and Camden, South Carolina. Both cities are County seats and the county line used to run right through our town.  Not a straight line, mind you, it more or less ambled along its way.  One of our Mayors once said that it looked like somebody must have gotten the surveyor drunk, tied a brick to a rope, tied the rope around his waist and he dragged it along behind him plotting the line as he went. The old joke was that in some of the homes you could sleep with your head in one county and your feet in the other. It was probably true of the ones that bordered the line.

Kershaw’s main industry back then was farming, the Kershaw Oil Mill, and Springs Cotton Mills. Springs Mill was located at the northern end of town between the main highway into Kershaw and the bypass that ran parallel to it. Their land joined the Kershaw Oil Mill property that was located directly behind our house. You could say that one of us was in the other’s backyard. The railroad tracks lay between the two of us.

The train usually passed through Kershaw once a day. When we were children we would run out back and wave at the engineer. Most of the time he would blow the whistle and wave back as he went by. There were occasions when I heard the train and the mournful sound of its whistle at night. I would lie in bed pretending it was telling me goodnight.

There was an ice plant at the oil mill and my friends and I loved to run down the railroad tracks in the hot summertime and ask Mr. Clyburn who worked there to give us some ice. He would open the big old door to the freezer room where the huge blocks were stored and chip off hunks for us to eat. He was a kind old man who was never too busy to take a few minutes to talk with children.

The Oil Mill was the largest business in Kershaw during those years. They owned the biggest store in town, the bank, and a livery stable. They were also cotton buyers. I’ve already mentioned the ice plant but what I remember most was the cottonseed meal and hulls they processed. The hulls were sold in large croker sacks and that’s what Daddy bought to feed our cow.  She loved them. The meal was as smooth as flour and a deep mustard color. I put the hulls in one of Mama’s old discarded dishpans and sprinkled the meal over them. Old Daise would stand there eating the whole time I was milking as contented as could be. Like Elsie the Borden’s cow I suppose.

Milking was my chore. Mama had always milked but she had a bout with eczema one year and the doctors said it was caused by an allergy related to the milking. She taught me to milk and that was my job from then on. It didn’t bother me one bit at the time because, since I milked the cow, I didn’t have to help with any of the housework or washing dishes. That suited me fine. I hated housework.

You wouldn’t believe how good the oil mill smelled at times. A lot of people thought it smelled like ham frying and at times I suppose it did. There was a lot of dust that formed from the mill and it settled on the houses nearby. Daddy just got out the water hose and rinsed it away when it began to build up. It must have been good as a fertilizer too because there was always plenty of grass in the fields around the house for the cow to graze.

Old Daise and I almost parted ways one time. It was summertime and I was milking away hurrying so that I could get on to more important things like playing with my friends. We had a short stool that I sat on. The milk pail was on the ground in front of me and almost full. A horsefly must have bitten Daise because she suddenly swished her tail and lashed me across the face almost blinding me. She kicked out and the milk pail went sailing across the ground slinging milk every which way. I jumped back out of her way and fell backwards over the stool and almost broke my neck. I jumped up and anger overcame common sense. I hauled off and kicked her as hard as I could on her leg. I forgot I was barefooted. You haven’t experienced pain until you kick a bony cow leg barefooted. My big toe and the one next to it swelled so big I thought they would burst.  To this day I don’t know how I missed breaking both of them but I was spared that. I picked up the pail, hobbled to the back door, sat down on the steps, and called Mama.

Mama didn’t laugh then. She brought a small tub filled with ice water and soaked my foot. The ache finally subsided enough for me to make it in the house. By the time Daddy got home that evening some of the swelling had gone down. Mama told him what had happened and I could hear them laughing. That made me mad all over again. I was pouting in my room when Daddy came in to look at my foot.

     “I reckon I better go check on the cow,” he said. “No telling what you did to her leg."

A Fly on the Wall

Have you ever had the thought “I’d love to be a fly on their wall right about now”? I have. It’s human nature to be inquisitive about the lives of others. Sometimes it’s someone you know and again it may be a complete stranger. It might pertain to something as innocent as how they can seem so cheerful all the time or why they act so grumpy. Chances are they're having similar thoughts of you.

My daughter and I were talking recently about some of the experiences my husband and I had shared when we were first married. She told me that she heard me discussing them with older relatives or friends and realized there were so many years in our early marriage that she and my son didn’t know about. It made me think of my mother and the stories she would tell us about her life as a young girl, marriage to my father, and the life they shared. I thought of the times that Willis, my husband, and I talked of when we were children and how different it is today from the way we were brought up by our parents. There were sad stories and happy stories from all of us but now they have been committed to the memory of those who have been left behind. “I want to know all those stories about you and Daddy. I wish you would write them down for us so we will have them for our children. After you’re gone there won’t be anyone to tell us.”

I’ve thought of that many times since that day. Mama gave me a five-year diary for my birthday when I was in my teens. I began writing in it then and continued to do so until after Cathy was born. There was only a small space to enter my thoughts each day so I began keeping a record in notebooks to help me remember the really important things happening in our lives. At times I would go for months without writing anything and then again the entries would be daily. Time dims the memories we have of the past and sometimes we lose them entirely due to illness. I don’t want that to happen to us so I decided that I would find my diary, pull out the old notebooks, freshen my memory, and try to see what I can do with what I remember of those years.

Life is like a roller coaster with its highs and lows and we had both. We rejoiced in the highs and comforted each other during the lows. We made mistakes, some big, some small but in hindsight I realize that they enriched our lives and brought us even closer together.

So, if you would like the opportunity to be that fly on the wall, stop by. Our lives are those of ordinary people. We had our hopes and dreams and worked toward seeing them fulfilled. In most I believe we succeeded.