Peddlers who sometimes came through the area back in that time were made
welcome, in traditional southern hospitality style, and provided with
overnight lodging, if needed – even though the bed might have to be
taken apart later and scalded and cleaned to get rid of lice and fleas.
Back in the 20's my grandfather was the only one in the
rural country area to own a car, a T-Model Ford. Prior to that,
the family traveled in a wagon drawn by mules wherever they went.
Of course, the world was very small under such circumstances.
In Tennessee the cash crop of the day was tobacco, which
required hard manual labor to grow in times before modern insecticides
and hybrid improvement. The entire family had to work hard to
assure success of the cash crop, which gave them money for bare
essentials.
Even as a child, Mother could chop wood, wash clothes
with a washboard and tub, and iron with flat irons heated on a
wood-burning stove. My grandmother made lye soap and hominy in a
black kettle in the yard. The family worked to grow their own
food, had chickens and pigs, and hunted and fished.
Necessities of life were homemade or bartered, with only
absolute essentials purchased outside the home. It was an
antiquated, country lifestyle in the roaring twenties, a time when city
life was becoming much faster and more sophisticated.
My grandfather knew music and taught the family to
sing together in harmony while their chores were being done. The
family was in harmony not only with music, however, but with the past,
the land, with God, and each other.
In spite of school, chores and working in the
fields, there was still time available for being a child. Children
played games of their own invention or wandered the woods
gathering herbs, mushrooms, or wild fruits, such as persimmons and
mulberries. They went to school in the proverbial one room
schoolhouse, with a teacher so nervous she cried and had tantrums,
saying the forty kids she was responsible for were driving her crazy -
and they probably were.
My Mother was a very curious child and stayed underfoot
listening to the grown folks talk. She loved to hear my grandma
discuss politics and world events during the depression years. She
even remembers hearing Granny Adams, my great, great grandmother,
telling about her own childhood during the Civil War, and how the house
was ransacked and horses taken by Yankee soldiers while the children hid
in the woods with the family valuables.
Does it matter? Tennessee has a long and proud
history, but most people will never be famous. They will live
ordinary lives. They will live their life, die and be forgotten
and their memories will die with them.
But each person has a right to be remembered for the
life they have lived, for what they have contributed, and for the person
they are. There is a place in history for common folk. And
so, our family, small and insignificant as we may be, is a now a part of
Tennessee's past… and our family's heritage will continue to be
remembered.
NEXT: Family Reunion
