REMEMBERING - 1921

The first year we were married Wilbur worked for a man that had a sawmill. He drove a big truck hawling lumber to the station to be loaded on the railroad cars. We lived at Wilbur’s dads for a month or two then Mr. Howe, the mill owner, cut all the timber around Mr. Mixsons and around Curtis Robins, Wilbur’s cousin, and at the place called “Central”, the old school house. Then we moved to Otter Creek near Wekina. The houses we lived in was made for an old turpentine still. All made of rough lumber, with lots of cracks with newspaper glued all over the walls, it was a mess. The bed-bugs were bad, and I took off all the newspaper and scalded the walls with boiling water but as everyone knew at that time there were no insect killer to kill bed-bugs, you just had to keep scalding the beds and put kerosene on the mattress and by that way we kept them down.

When Mr. Howe closed the mill we came back to live in Marion county. Henry, Wilbur’s brother, had a house (the house that Alice lives in now) and that was where we moved to. It had only two rooms, it wasn’t ceiled and we had wood shutters for windows. We cooked and warmed by the wood stove. I sewed baby clothes and made a quilt. When it was about time for Adrian to be born, we went and stayed at Mamas and Papas--we were there a week or two when he was born on Thanksgiving day, Nov. 25, 1921. He was the cryingest baby. I did nothing but hold him until he was about a year old. When he was three weeks old we moved into Job’s old house. It was a with a house and so he let Wilbur farm for a share of the crop. I never liked that place, it was shady with large oaks which made the house dreary. There were two rooms for bedrooms with a fireplace in the end of one and shed rooms for the dining room and kitchen. It had a well that was quite a long way from the house where we carried water for drinking and cooking. Wilbur made a good crop of corn and peanuts to fatten the hogs. Job had a lot of goats which we took care of. We got a cow to milk from Mr. Mixson. When the corn was ready to gather he decided to sell some shelled corn and he borrowed his dads cornsheller and while he would break a load, I would shell the corn and bag it up. Adrian was pretty cross, but I did a pretty good job. We had about 30 mixed hens, and two roosters. Grandpa Mixson called them “Rosalie’s pond birds”, they could fly like birds, wild birds that is. One day I looked out the door and saw those roosters chasing one another down the road.  They would go a little ways then turn around and the other rooster would chase the other one back to the gate, then turn around and start over again

Once when Adrian was about 2 years old he was playing in the yard and I looked up and he was gone. I was sure scared but we found his little tracks and found him down in the cornfield picking blackberries. Myrtice, our little dark haired daughter, was born there in 1923, Oct. 23rd. When she was nine months old we moved into our own house on the hill on the land Papa gave me.

When I was a girl we use to rake the magnolia leaves every Saturday afternoon and burn them. Right then I decided I never wanted a magnolia tree in my yard – a beautiful tree but too many leaves. Sundays always seemed so beautiful --I can still hear the hens cracking and smell the sweetheart soap papa used to. shave with. At night, hear the frogs across the flat pond in front of the house. The hogs and cows all ran loose in the woods as only the fields were fenced. When Bill, my youngest brother was little he wanted papa to build a trap to catch a cow for beef. He said, “Papa lets build a bull trap and we could have all the beef we want.” We had a milk cow named Daisy and when I got big enough mama made me learn to milk after that I did most of the milking. Papa always got up at 4:00 o’clock and fed the horse and built a fire in the cook stove for Mama to cook breakfast. I helped Papa with the hay and dropped the corn and peanuts by hand. He taught me how to stack the hay so the rain wouldn’t run down the pole and spoil the hay.