Those were my best secret daydream times. I found them and would spend hours sitting in the smokehouse on a box or a blanket, reading by the light of the one small smoky window, the old smell of cured ham still in the air. She subscribed to the Reader's Digest Condensed Books series and when she had finished several, she packed them away and stored them into the old smokehouse attached to the side porch room.
Grandma believed in education and she loved to read. We would pick them and she made pies I never really cared for them as it is almost impossible to get enough sugar to overshadow the intense twang of the berry. Along the back fence in the yard she had a wild growth of gooseberries. We went to the chicken house together and gathered the eggs and spread the grain for the chicks. She and I would sit on the big wrap around porch of an evening and swing slowly, counting the fireflies. With Grandpa I fished with Grandma I learned to hull peas and pit cherries with a straight hair pin. I remember the old pump she had at the kitchen sink and that she would let me pump (or at least try to) the water into the pot to heat for dishwashing. They also put in a full bath at the back of the house and put water plumbing in the kitchen. There they installed the first plumbing with a shower, a round one the drain in the floor and no real tub to stand in. But it didn't and finally they had a cool cellar/basement ready.
The floors started creaking in the kitchen and Grandma would run to the back and yell for them to stop, she was so afraid her floor would fall in. Dad said they put braces under the supports in the floor and jacked the house up off the foundation, then dug the cellar out. The boys and Grandpa decided to dig a basement under the house. Until I was seven or eight they did not have indoor plumbing. Grandma's farm house was over 100 years old. His little house is gone now, but I still remember him. Uncle Guy seemed happy in his life on the farm and Grandma loved her brother and took care of him until he passed away. Maybe he was embarrassed by his appearance when he ate or maybe he just liked the feeling of independence of deciding when he would eat that fried chicken and potatoes. I don't remember him ever eating with us at the house, but he was a grown man. Every meal he would bring his empty pail to the house and Grandma would have the other one filled with food. He had two pails, milk pails with covers.
Uncle Guy always wore overalls and a light denim shirt with work boots. Grandpa built him a little house with a sitting area and a bed and a stove for heat. Grandma brought him to the farm after her marriage and took care of him for many years. I remember Uncle Guy and looking back he probably had some type of cerebral palsy. I don't like that word, but it's the vernacular of that day. Grandma had a brother who was "afflicted". She was hardy she had to be to marry a tall red-headed farmer and raise four boys and a girl during the depression. Grandma was a farmer's wife in southern Illinois. To me though the look is that of fierce determination. Maybe she was a lot like most little kids when they have to dress up and stand still while they would rather be outside running or swinging or making mud pies. She looks so young, such a little girl and yet she has the same look on her face that I remember when I stayed at the farm. I love this picture the dress, her ringlets and hairbows, the lace up shoes and small details like the delicate choker at her neck and her china doll with real hair, not the painted on kind. I found it a few weeks ago in a box with scores of other pictures most of the people I did not know or did not recognize and yes, most were relatives. ~ Margaret Walker This is a picture of my grandmother, my father's mother, Mary Lewis Gould.
With veins rolling roughly over quick hands
0 kommentar(er)
