Chapter 3

Summertime

After the crops were laid by in the summer came “big meetin’ time”.  Everybody went to the protracted meetings at all the churches.  No one thought of working at anything when their meeting was in progress.  That was a time for visiting and fellowship, enjoyment and serving the Lord.

Everybody liked to have their meetings in the light of the moon.  Of course, they couldn’t always do that, but they did as much as possible.  In the evenings between sundown and dusk, people began to gather, coming from all directions—people walking, riding in wagons and buggies, on horseback and mules, people with happiness beaming from their freshly scrubbed faces.

If it was the dark of the moon, some would be carrying bundles of rich pine splinters which were stuck under the house to be brought out and lit for a torch to light their way home.

We attended all the meetings at all the churches, but I knew the

customs of Mt. Zion Church better than any of the others.  The bell was rung early, loud and long, and the lights were lit—kerosene lamps, hanging on the wall with shiny reflectors behind their globes.  The women with children went in and spread pallets of quilts along the walls and in the corners.  The men and young folks stayed outside talking and visiting until the bell was rung again, just a tap of the clapper, then the men and boys went in the north door and women and girls in the south door.  The men sat on the north side and the women on the south.  A few of the men sat with their wives to help care for the children.  Uncle Allen Moore was one of them, and Cousin Jim Strickland always sat with his wife, even after his two boys were going to school.

Most of the little children went to their pallets and lay down and soon were asleep.  The older ones went as they got sleepy.  The singing started.  How nice it was to go to sleep on a pallet listening to the singing, but how hard it was to have to get up and ride home lying in the bottom of the wagon with only a quilt under you, bouncing over rough roads, sleeping on the smooth stretches and waking with a start when a wheel hit a rock and almost bounced you out of the wagon.  The big road was usually smooth enough, but, oh, that road down Kichemedogee, across Red Hill Branch and that other rocky-bottomed branch!  But, I loved “night meetin's”.

There were usually a number of baptisms every summer.  Baptizing was done sometimes in Little Kichemedogee, sometimes in Big Kichemedogee, below the mill and sometimes in the mill pond.  One time I remember it was in Pretty Branch above the ford in the big road.  Effie Pritchett and Bessie Jones, and maybe others, were baptized then.

I can see Papa now, going down into the water with a stick to measure the depth, then, as they sang “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand” see him leading them into the water, then standing in the deep water with hand raised, ready to baptize, then see them coming up out of the water as they sang, “O, Happy Day that Fixed My Choice on Thee, My Savior and My God”.

Always at the baptizings, someone would throw a blanket to the preacher to wrap the women after they were baptized, and after they came out of the water a number of women would form a circle, holding up blankets to make a screen for the women to dress behind.  The men went into the woods or somewhere else to dress.

At the first service after baptizing, the new members stood at the front of the building and the congregation sang “Blessed Assurance” or “Standing on the Promises”, marching by and giving them “The Right Hand of Fellowship”, welcoming them into the fold.

I shall never forget Mt. Zion, nor Papa’s preaching there.  It seems that I can hear him even now, reading the scriptures and propounding the word.  Seems I can hear his strong young voice lifting in song to the sweet, high tenor notes of “We’ll Work Till Jesus Comes”.  He seldom sang tenor, but that is one song he sang it to.  I can see him, as we stood for the Benediction, his hand uplifted and head bowed, and hear him say “Now unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever, Amen.”

For so long there were no Bible classes, just a reading of a portion of the scripture, communion services, singing and preaching.  While Papa was preaching there, they started classes for the children and a Bible class for adults.

After the classes there was a fifteen minute recess.  People went outside, over to the well and talked, or did whatever they wished.  The bell was rung, and they went in for other services.  The church began to grow faster than ever.  Most of the young people in the community came to the classes – there were no classes at Union – and a number of them were baptized and became members of the church.

J. D. Strickland was my teacher.  He was very good, having us read the Bible daily.  The little papers he gave us had questions on them and we had to learn the answers from the Bible.  We had a large family Bible that Papa had bought from Mr. Charlie Dowdey.  I would lie on the floor, or sit by the table with it before me and read, and I loved it.

At a very young age, the following scripture was selected by me as my motto:  “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report.  If there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” (Phil. 4:8)

I have always looked for truth, honesty, justice, purity and loveliness in everybody and everything, and life for me has been sweet.  I would say “one grand song”.  Of course there have been disappointments, sadness and sorrow, and heartaches along the way, but it takes valleys as well as mountain peaks to make our country beautiful, and it takes low notes as well as high notes to make a grand song.  And, I have found more good than bad in people and in life.

We attended singings in the neighboring communities.  One time at Providence, over the little mountain, south (I think), it came a thunder storm with a lot of wind and rain.  The singers kept on singing through the storm.  Those people on the outside came crowding into the house, causing considerable disturbance.  Someone at the front of the house ordered everybody to “sit down and be quiet”.  Someone in the back asked, “How can I sit down when there’s nothing to sit on?”  The questioner was arraigned into court for disturbing public worship.  Papa was summoned as a witness against him, but was never put on the stand.  He said that there was too much talking in the house for him to distinguish one voice from another, and, he thought they should have dismissed the singing when the song was over.

At a singing in Bethsaida, I saw a woman wearing a paper skirt.  She hung it on a briar and tore it.  I didn’t know many people there, but I recall Mr. Jesse Ginn and his wife, Ethel, for Oxford.  We went into Nixon’s Store before going home and got some cold drinks from Delma Nixon.

At a singing at Manning’s Chapel, a Methodist church south of our community, we saw a number of men and boys drinking and quarreling and trying to fight.  Some were lying across a wagon tongue vomiting.  I had never seen anything like that, and I never forgot it.

On the way to and from Manning’s Chapel, we children passed the time counting insulators on telephone poles.  There were only two telephones in our valley and they were new, owned by Mr. Fuller and Cousin Jeff Strickland.

About the time telephones came into the valley, Mr. Fuller and Uncle Allen Moore got phonographs with big morning glory horns that used cylinder records.  They would put the record on the machine, brush it very gently with a soft brush before placing the needle on it, then what wonderful music!

Phonographs were a mystery to me.  Where did all that music come from?  Who was making it?  One day at Mr. Fuller’s, Velma slipped out some bottles of root beer and we went out behind the garden and drank it, and she told us that she had looked into their phonograph and that there were little people and pianos and horns and all kinds of things that made music in there.  I didn’t know how it could be, but was just gullible enough to believe it.

J. D. Strickland got a phonograph the next year, and it was beautiful.  Looked like big morning glories that bloomed out in the field and all around.  We lived then at Grandpa Elder’s old home and Cousin Sabina and J.D., her son, lived in the little log house between our house and the barn so we could hear it any time he played it.  He also had a magic lantern that showed pictures, something like the slides of today.

Cider making came in the summertime, and was a jolly time.  Everyone who was large enough to pick up apples worked at it; neighbors often working together.  The apples were gathered in baskets, washed and poured into the press where they were beaten to a pulp with a wooden maul, then the press was screwed down and the cider came trickling out, sparkling, sweet, and delicious.  Everyone drank all they wanted and the remainder was put into jugs and put away to make vinegar for the family’s use until cider making time came the next year.

One day, a little girl and I went to the cider mill and made a quart and drank it all.  Then we went back to the rope swing under the big oak and were swinging up to heave and back, “let the cat die”, then wound and unwound, and soon were two little girls lying on the ground watching the world go ‘round.  We got up and waddled down to the big oak by the road, and there, lying across its roots, lost all our cider in the road ditch.  We didn’t need any more cider for awhile – but it was sure good when we drank it and we weren’t sorry!

There were many varieties of apples from June to those that ripened at cotton picking time.  The summer apples I remember best were horse apples, big, yellow, and juicy.  The women did a lot of canning of apples and peaches, also blackberries and huckleberries.  The huckleberries were from the hills in the woods, and blackberries from around the fields and along the roads.  Jelly was made and wild summer grapes put down in sugar or syrup—good eating for wintertime.

Almost everyone went barefooted in summer—some only around the house, but many men and women worked in the fields and some went visiting barefooted. One of the greatest thrills of my life was when spring came and Mama told us we could take off our shoes and go barefoot for awhile.  How light our feet felt and how good the cool, fresh air felt on them.  We would run around in circles, stopping to dig our toes into the soft moist earth, letting its coolness envelop our whole being.

One of the greatest, if not the greatest sports and treats for the men and boys in the summer, was going in “washing”.  It seems that going in “washing” was strictly for the males.  What pleasure and pure delight was denied the female gender in Shinbone for a long time.

On a hot summer day, the men would say, “Boys, let’s go to the creek and go in ‘washing’”, and off they would go, taking no bathing suits.  Soon we would hear the loud lusty shouting and whooping with joy as they dived and splashed in the water.  They would come back to the house with wet heads, looking so happy and refreshed.  All the boys learned to swim and dive, even if they had to slip off to go swimming.

To me, as a small child, swimming was a mystery.  Papa explained to us how it was done, showing us the strokes, but on dry land.  I never saw anyone swim and could not understand how they could stay on top of the water, until after we came to Texas and I saw people swimming.  Papa went with us.  He would lie on his back, swell out his cheeks and float.  We learned to swim and float.  Even Mama learned to swim, and what fun we had together.  Papa, at the age of seventy-five, loved to go swimming in the Bosque River.  He taught a number of our neighbor children to swim.

There were a lot of hornets and yellow jackets in Shinbone Valley.  The hornets came around the houses, and many came in.  They wouldn’t sting around the house unless you met them head on.  They flew straight as an arrow, and if you collided with one, you were immediately stung.  They built their nests in bushes and blackberry thickets.  The nests were made of material similar to that of the wasp nest, but they were large and shaped somewhat like a jug, and hollow.  If someone got around a nest the hornets would come boiling out like smoke and if one was not a fast runner, it was too bad.  Their stings hurt like a wasp’s.

The yellow jackets there were not the little yellow wasps people in Texas refer to as yellow jackets.  It was a heavier insect, more like a honey bee.  Like the bee, he loved sweets and in syrup making time they would swarm around the mill and cooking vat, but would never sting unless stepped on or mashed—unless one got near the nest.  They made nests in the ground or in rotten stumps or logs, like the bumble bee.

One Sunday afternoon, Rosa Carter, May, Myrtle, Josie Carter, Elsie and I were playing in the woods near Uncle Joe Carter’s spring, building a dam across the branch making a wading pool.  Rosa and May were building the dam while the rest of us brought material.  We brought rocks, sticks, and about everything imaginable.  Myrtle and I saw a log covered in moss.  Suddenly, Myrtle turned back, running and crying, “Lordy, Lordy”.  I thought she had seen a snake and turned, running too.  Just as I got back to the branch something hit me in the neck.  I thought it was a bullet or arrow—I just knew I was shot and wondered if it was Indians—of course, I knew there were no Indians then, but who else would be out in the woods shooting people?  I fell down on the rocks and started kicking.  Rosa came running by, saying, “Come on everybody, follow me”.  I got up and followed.  She led us through the thickest bushes she could find, shaking the bushes as she ran.  After thrashing around for awhile, we came out into the road and counted our casualties.  We had all received one or more yellow jacket stings, except Rosa and Elsie.  Josie was stung just about all over.  Great whelps raised up on her and she became sick and couldn’t walk, so we carried her—two at her shoulders and two at her feet, with one in

the middle.  We had to sit down and rest every little while, for all of us were suffering.  After reaching the house, our mothers doctored our wounds and comforted us—we rested awhile then went to the apple orchard.  On the way, we stopped at the grapevine.  Hone bees were flying all around and crawling on the grapes.  While Rosa was picking a bunch of grapes, she accidentally mashed a bee and was stung on her finger.  Under the apple trees, bees were crawling on the apples that had fallen.  Elsie stepped on one and was stung on the foot. 

Now we all had a sting and were swelled up and cripple for awhile.

There was a lump the size of a bullet on my neck for months after that.  That was the only yellow jacket sting I ever had and I never had a hornet sting, except one in the middle of my forehead from a hornet collision.

Almost everybody had a well, and every well I knew had a windlass and “teekle”—and a cover like a little tabernacle.  There were a lot of springs throughout the valley from which cool water could be had to quench thirst – some almost ice-cold.  Springs flowed constantly, and will all the wells, there was no need for anyone to be thirsty for long.

The summers were never burning hot.  The sun was hot, but it was always cool in the shade, and the breezes were cool—no hot winds.  Summertime was a time of enjoyment – a time of fruit and beauty, a time for resting and playing, a time for visiting and serving the Lord.