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.