My name is Ivory (Boggs)Barker, I am 75 years old.
These are some things that I remember about my
childhood.
We were poor, my Dad didn't have a
regular job. He worked for other farmers, whatever they had something to do. My Mom worked hard too, she took care of me and my sister, cooked and worked outside on the farm and garden.
When us girls got big enough, we
worked and helped in any way we could.
We had to go barefooted during
warm weather,but got a pair of $1.00
shoes in July to wear to Sacrament
Time at church. We also got a pair in the
fall to wear to school.
We also wore tan colored long stockings.
For in them times girls hardly
ever wore jeans. I remember I got a pair
of Bib overalls one time. I was so
proud of them. I was Daddy's boy for there
were no boys in our family that lived.
We went to a one room school house
We didn't have anything to play with
only soft ball and base ball and build
play houses. We got rocks and put moss
on them to make couches. We would gather
redbud beans and pretend we were cooking beans.
We had spelling bees and would compete
against the neighboring schools.
We never went hungry, but our food
wasn't a very big variety. We eat a lot
of gravy and cornbread and milk and
cornbread. We only killed one hog a year.
For meat but Dad killed rabbits,squirrels
possums and groundhogs.
My Dad made moonshine whiskey sometimes
and sold it to buy groceries
I have watched the "still" for him while
he would go home to eat dinner.
I sold a few quarts for him and
I've even drunk it.
I didn't have too many bad colds.
We always had to doctor ourselves
when we did get sick. Mom raised
"worm fuse" to make medicine for worms.
She put skunk grease and sugar on it
and we took it for hoarseness and croup.
She put "coal oil", "turpintine" and "lard"
on a flannel cloth and pinned it to our
gowns on our chest for colds.
We had to walk about 2 to 21/2 miles
to school.It was awfully cold sometimes
So Mom took an old sock cap and cut
us out a pair and sewed them.
We burned wood for heat most of the time.
Dad cut it and hauled it off the hill,
then we sawed it with a crosscut saw
or sometimes chopped it with an axe
We most always cut the wood to cook with.
Sometimes we burned coal, I remember
Daddy digging the coal and carrying it home
in a sack on his back to keep us a fire.
We always had to pack our lunches for school
or if anyone of us worked away from home
We most always took cornbread and ,milk
especially in the winter time
We went to an old one room church
that set upon the side of the hill.
Everyone walked that didn't
have far to go, others rode horseback
We raised our corn to make meal. I remember
taking the corn to the mill to have it
ground into meal.
We raised almost everything that we eat. We pickled some, canned some and dried some.
I remember picking blackberries and selling
them for 25 cents for a 10 quart bucket
and we always delivered them too.
We canned some ourselves and made jelly,
jams and preserves. We also picked
blueberries and rasberries,
canned apples and peaches
and these fruits were our snacks
in the wintertime, also we made snowcream.
Mom used to go out in the hills and pick wild lettuce and we always had winter onions so we had greens real early in the spring. I used to help take care of my cousins. They were 2 and 4 years younger than me. My sister was a year older than me
so while our parents worked in the fields
we watched the kids.
Then they moved away in later years
I watched my baby sister which was eleven
years younger than me. But I would rather
go outside to work as to stay inside.
I helped my Dad work outside a lot
I used to go possum hunting with him
and carry a possum and a polecat in
a sack on my back.
I took Daddy's mules hitched to a sled to the mouth of the hollow , where we lived, to get some feed , I think it was I who turned the sled up side down on the way there. I've cut corn, cut tobacco, help put the tobacco in the barn for curing, picked beans, gathered apples, peaches and corn. I've washed clothes on a wash board and made my hands bleed, helped up hay and stripped tobacco. We had square dances at the house all the time. We would take the bed down and out of the way so there would be plenty room to dance. One night we were going to dance the old year out and the new year in and some one changed the clock on us, So we danced at the wrong time. We used to have parties and play kissing games, like Post office, Thimble and Spin the Bottle,Please or Displease.
We all had a good time. One Halloween a few of us got together and went to our school house and made a mess. We didn't tear up anything, and we helped clean it up the next day though. We would put things in the road and pick up fodder shocks and turn them upside down. We had a log cabin, we rented it out to a family of 7 and we would all run and play in the pasture fields.
My first cousin lived not far from me and we visited often.
People used to visit often but nobody has time now it seems.
We had to walk one mile to the mailbox and I went everyday.
It was a big trip for me. We had several pets over the years
and some would die. We had one die one time and we sung
"Pretty Polly" at it's grave. We didn't have electricity until I
was grown . We had all our switches on waiting for them to turn
the power on. All at once it come on and my Mom yelled
"there it is!". We all had a good laugh out of that.
Not long before that we had got screen doors and rugs on our floors
We gathered black walnuts and hulled them and cracked them and we sold the kernals. We would crack them for other people and we would get half the money out of them. I remember taking
them to the store in a big sack, on a horse. We were lucky if we got 25 cents a pound for them.
We didn't even have a radio for years then we finally got a battery one. Then after we got electric in the house we got a refrigerator. That made a difference in our food and cold water. I had a baby girl by then and she really loved Jell-O, before we got the refrigerator, I would take it to a friend's house and make it for her
I've got to stop and back up a little,
I am getting ahead of myself when I was about 3 years old, my Grandpa lived with us, I remember
getting him by the hand and leading Him to the table to eat, I thought I was helping him. One Christmas, Santa Claus come to our house, we were scared for we had never seen him before. I got in Daddy's lap, my sister got in Mom's. My aunt was there with her little boy and of course he got in her lap. Santa brought us some candy and I noticed he had a ring on just like my uncle's. So I guess I was smarter than they thought. We used to go on the hill with Mom and Dad when they were hoeing corn. We played in the Cemetery, and also in the tall grass we called "broomsage", we would pretend that was our children and braid it like it was their hair. We would sometimes play in the branch and catch fish out from under the rocks and Mom would fry them. Dad would get the black snakes and twirl them in the air and crack their heads off and kill them that way. We would take big leaves off of trees and fasten them together and make clothes to play in. We had broken dishes and the inside
of can lids for our play dishes. They told us that babies lived in rotten stumps., before they
were born and people would catch them and break their legs and that was the reason they couldn't walk. Me and my sister wanted a baby brother or sister so bad we went up on the hill and dug a tree stump down to the ground but we never found no baby....ha ha...Dad give me a pocket knife with a Mickey Mouse picture on the handle. I was so pleased, I carried it in the pocket of the bib on my overalls. I would whittle littlesmooth sticks, I guess I was making something,I don't know what. We didn't have any paper doll books so we used a catalog to cut out people and have families and we would let them have a car that would run on water for they were very poor. I thought everyone had to be poor because I was.
� Copyrighted Ivory Barker