Foxfire 9

by Foxfire Fund, Inc.

  We had a milk cow and Mama went to milk it [one day]. I went along with her and there wasn’t a thing in the world wrong with the cow that day. She was just as fine as you ever seen. The next mornin’ Mama went down and milked her and the cow didn’t much want to let her milk it that time. She went ahead and milked anyway and then turned the cow out in the pasture. It went right around that pasture fence a-goin’ towards the branch, kinda leanin’ on the fence. When the fence give way [under the cow’s weight], the cow fell over in a little low, flat place. It died. A heart attack, they said. Well, the boys went out there then and dug a hole and buried her where she died.

  I worried and worried about where we were going to get our milk. The only milk cow we had died. They bought another one but us young ’uns didn’t know no better. We bawled our eyes out ’cause our cow died of a heart attack.

  I was still crying about the cow when me and my sister, a little older than me, started across the creek. There was a big ol’ turtle setting up on a rock. I wanted to take it to the house and make me a pet. I didn’t know then how dangerous they was. My sister run to the house and got my mama and she come and got the turtle and took it up to the house. Then she just took and chopped its head off and she cooked it! I did cry then. She’d killed my pet! We bawled our eyes out. That was the prettiest thing we’d ever seen and she just took and chopped its head off and cooked it. They say they are real good [to eat], but I wouldn’t eat a bite. That was my pet. I found it and I thought it ought to have been mine. We kept its pretty speckledy shell for years.

  Right about where the turtle had been in the branch was a big ol’ plum bush. We’d go down there and get them big ol’ plums. They called ’em hog plums back then. Mama would tell us, “Don’t you go down there and get them plums!” We’d go down there anyway. She didn’t like for us to eat ’em atall ’cause she said they wasn’t good for us, they would just kind of make your stomach hurt. Us kids didn’t care. We’d eat ’em anyhow—like a crab apple, you know.

  We’d eat persimmons, too. We’d bite ’em when they was green and see who could eat ’em and not make a face. It draws your mouth inside out! After the frost was on ’em, when they was ripe, they was good and we’d eat ’em.

  Now we didn’t have no rural mail [delivery]. We’d have to walk three or four miles [to the old Sautee store] to get our mail. We did our trading there and everything. They might have [rural delivery] down in the lower country but not back in the mountains. When they finally did get to deliverin’ mail [to us], it was ridin’ horseback. Had these mailbags they’d put on each side of the horse’s back and then put the saddle on and take off with the mail.

  We did our trading there [at the Sautee store], too. We’d trade eggs and chickens and swap ’em for whatever we couldn’t raise. We’d tie three or four fryers up by the feet and lay ’em on our arm and go swap ’em for something we couldn’t raise. We’d take buckets of eggs and trade ’em for coffee, sugar, salt, soda and something like that, ’cause we growed nearly everything else. That store had about everything in there.

  We children would cut broomstraw. It would be as high as your head. We’d take what we always called ’later forks because we used to dig ’taters with ’em, and get the husks off the straw with them forks. We’d clean it real good. We’d carry big bundles of that broomstraw to the Sautee store and trade it for goods. We’d have to carry it [walking] because we didn’t have any other way of going much except footin’ it. They’d buy every bit of it. They’d just take the bundle of straw from us children and they’d make it into brooms. They’d [sell them for] about seventy-five cents for the broom and [give us] about ten cents to the bundle. We could’ve made it into brooms but they said, “Just bring it on.”

  We made our own brooms [for use at home]. We’d cut out about that much straw [about four inches in diameter] and wash it real good. [Then, we’d] take a potato fork and strip all that husk off. Then take a good, stout cord (not too big around, something like a fishin’ cord) and make a loop. We’d run that cord down a little more than halfway of the straw and then just wind it up to the top. You wouldn’t tie the cord, but just stick it back down in the straw as far as you could. Then, we’d cut the ends off the straw at the bottom and just sweep the floor. I love a homemade broom ’cause you can get down under anything with one hand and sweep it out.

  I [lived in White County] until [I married Johnny]. We moved first to Banks County and then here to Buford. I was seventeen and he was eighteen when we married, and that was on October the fourteenth, nineteen and twenty-three. I had met him in White County at Blue Creek Church when he boarded with his uncle.

  Just after Johnny and I had got married, we had his daddy’s car one day. We started to his daddy’s house and had my brother and his girlfriend with us. We had started up a pretty good little hill when the kingpin split open and we started going back down that hill. The brakes wouldn’t hold and we couldn’t stop. [Johnny] swerved the car around and cut it into a dirt bank. One wheel went up faster than the others and the car just landed sideways. My brother’s girlfriend weighed about two hundred pounds and she got to the other side of the car and it just set back up. We just liked to have wrecked, but we didn’t after all.

  PLATE 8 Flora and Johnny Youngblood, taken shortly before his death in 1980.

  [Later on, when we lived in Banks County, I tried driving a car.] Johnny said, “I’m tired. You wanta drive?”

  I said, “Might as well.” So I got under the wheel and let him hold the baby. Well, I was going along pretty well and I passed a road where there was some dump trucks hauling dirt. One dump truck had a back tire to blow out as it passed us. I turned loose the wheel, took my feet off of everything and said, “Get it.” Johnny grabbed the wheel. I thought that dump truck had hit us [when I heard its tire blow], but we didn’t wreck. I don’t know why, but I never did drive anymore.

  We hadn’t been living in Banks County long when Johnny decided to farm a crop. [He borrowed a mule] and plowed all day. When he took the mule home, it got sick. Well, he went on over that evening [to the man’s house that he had borrowed the mule from] to help him with it.

  [I was there at our house alone except for the two babies.] Ruth, the oldest child was little, and Ruby, my second child, was a baby. There wasn’t but a year and three months between ’em. I had Ruth setting looking at the Sears and Roebuck catalog while I got the little one to sleep. I heard something coming out the driveway. It sounded like a whole lot of people walking. I never heard so much racket. The old house had wooden shutters so there was no way to see out without opening up a window. Well, it was after dark and I wasn’t about to open that window. There was a family of colored people lived out from me. I wasn’t used to no colored people, because they weren’t allowed back in Cleveland [Georgia]. Everybody knew I was scared of ’em. The trail [of noise] was coming from the way [the colored family lived]. So I just knew that those folks knew that Johnny was gone and they was gonna come out there to my house. There was a well in the front yard that we drawed water from, and when they came to the house that well bucket went off [the shelf]. I thought it was them and they was drawin’ a bucket of water. I got scared and I could just see ’em in my imagination drawing a drink of water.

  Well, [the noise] went on around the house. We had filled up the straw bed with new straw and there was some [leftover straw] out on the grass. They was making a racket there. I pictured in my mind that I could hear ’em and I thought, “They’s a bunch out there and they’re talking real low.” Well, I got scareder and scareder, and I went and got down a sixteen-gauge shotgun. I wore an apron then and I filled my apron full of [shotgun] shells. I set down there with that gun and watched the door. If they had touched [the door] like they was gonna come in, I was just gonna shoot through the door. There was just a little ol’ bitty porch there and it’s a wonder [whoever or whatever was there] hadn’t touched the door.

  Then I heard Johnny coming up. I learned the way he would walk and could
tell his walking ahead of anything else. So when he got to the door, I jumped up and undone it right quick. I said, “Come on in.” He saw I was scared and cold. [I always get cold when I get scared.]

  He said, “What’s the matter?”

  I said, “There’s a bunch of them colored people at the back of the house.”

  He said, “Aw, there’s not.”

  I said, “They are, too, because I heard ’em coming from the house and they’re right around there.”

  He said, “Set down. That’s a mare and colt. They’re out there eating that straw.” [laughter]

  I’d done got scared to death and it wasn’t nothing. Boy! Was I ever scared, though!

  In 1938 I was pregnant, seven months to the day, when I got hurt by a mule. It was an early Sunday morning before church and I went to turn her out into the pasture. When I opened the stable door, she didn’t come out. I said, “Come out of there, Kate! What you doing? Come on out!”

  Then I just stepped back for her to come out. Well, she just leaped up in my face. She took her foot and laid my leg plumb out. It didn’t break the bone, just chopped the flesh up. She also bit me in the back and stomped me.

  After a while, Johnny woke up and looked out the window. He said a low voice woke him up saying, “Johnny” real low. He saw me trying to crawl through a little place [in the barn]. The mule was still pawin’ at me. He jumped up and ran out and run the mule off and got me to the house. They got the doctor there and got me all done up. I came to enough to know something had happened. I had false teeth, hadn’t had ’em but a little while. Well, I missed them and I was a-beggin’ them to get me my teeth. They hunted and hunted and finally found them up under the cow box, where we fed the cows. [The box was nailed off the ground.] They weren’t even broke. They was still clean. I stayed in the bed two months. I didn’t lose the baby. It was a twelve-pound boy.

  I had eight girls and four boys. There was three girls—Ruth, Ruby, and Rosalee, and then three boys—Grady, Hoyt, and Herman. Then there was Mamie, Gene, Johnny May, Grace, Mildred and Rosie. [I had a midwife] come to the house [for the first six]; then the doctor [delivered the last six]. All of’em were born at home but the last one. I went to the hospital with her. That’s my baby. She was the tiniest and she weighed six pounds!

  When the doctor delivered the babies at home, he brought scales with him. They were those kind that had a scoop in ’em. They’d weigh [the babies] first and then dress ’em. I had two that weighed twelve pounds. Most of them weighed eight and a half to ten pounds.

  We farmed the first few years [we were married]. We done everything! Johnny would kill hogs and dress ’em, salt ’em down and everything. We raised our own milk cows and one time I got one to a pretty good size. Some people came over to buy it and I said, “No, I don’t want to sell this one.” She was so pretty. She was my pride and joy and I wasn’t gonna sell her. I wanted to save her and raise her into a milk cow.

  Well, they went on back and didn’t try to buy her no more. Two days from that, that calf didn’t come up to the barn. I got out and hunted, but I couldn’t find her. Johnny said, “I’ll go see if I can find her. Maybe she’s hung up somewhere down in the pasture.” He went down through the pasture then and found where she’d fell over in a ditch and broke her neck. I said, “Well, I should have sold her, but I didn’t want to.”

  When the Depression hit, we had four kids and by the time the Depression was over, we had two more. [Johnny] had to leave home to find work. I just kept house and kept the kids here in school. That was a full-time job. I ain’t ever worked away from home. Never have. Johnny’d work and send us money home. [I ran the farm] when Johnny was working away. We just raised produce stuff. We didn’t raise no cotton. [We grew stuff] just for our own use.

  PLATE 9 “I’ve quilted a lot of quilts! It’s a sight at the quilts I’ve quilted for outside people. And I would crochet cushions to sell, but I did not make any clothes to sell.” Mrs. Youngblood.

  [Johnny worked] in Atlanta during the Depression. He’d ride the bus down there and back. He didn’t have to work too long until he got to where he could buy a T-Model [car], [He’d stay in Atlanta through the week, boarded there] and come home on the weekends. After he got the car, he still boarded because he couldn’t afford the gas to drive back and forth. [And then, during the Second World War, there were many shortages and we had to be issued rationing stamps for food and for clothes.] There wouldn’t be much cloth in the stores and when they got some, they rationed it—so many yards to this one and so many to that one. [Flour and feeds for animals and chickens came in cloth sacks back then that had pretty prints on them or were plain colors and were suitable for reusing.] I made all my kids’ clothes. I’ve made my boys many a flour-sack shirt. It took about two hours to make one. I had a pattern to go by. I’d put [the buttons] on just like a regular shirt and it had a collar. [The cloth] looked like broadcloth and came in white, so I left it white. It was easier to take care of.

  A lot of times I’d hold my baby on my lap and cut a dress out from [what I called the] butterfly pattern. Grab it up, sew it on the sewing machine, and put it on who was going to school in time to catch the bus. [For that dress], you only had to hem around the sleeves which were like cap sleeves, around the neck which was round, and at the bottom for the hem. You didn’t have much change in clothes then. You done well if you had three good dresses.

  They had shoes rationed. You got one pair a year and they had to do you. They put a shoe repair shop up at Buford where they could keep ’em patched and sewed and cleaned. I made all of my little ones’ shoes out of Johnny’s felt hats. He’d wear a hat till it was unfit to wear and I’d take it and make my babies shoes. They weren’t out-on-the-ground shoes. I’d double the felt when I cut them out. I’d just cut them out in the shape of a boot and sew the two pieces together and then put a sole in. I didn’t have a pattern for those.

  Meanwhile Johnny helped frame houses, carpentering. He read blueprints. A lot of other people couldn’t read them, but he could. They’d always holler for him. He made good money but he had to stay gone nearly all the time. He joined a carpenters’ local [union] and they would hunt him a job if he got out of work. He built houses everywhere. He left Atlanta to help build an H-plant in Jackson, South Carolina. Then he went to Indiana and helped build a hydrogen plant there and then one in Tennessee. [You couldn’t come out and say a word to nobody ’cause everything was secret.] That was back in the war times. He helped build a bomber plant in New York State. He went from there to Niagara Falls to work on the dam.

  I went to Niagara Falls [to visit him] on an airplane. I hadn’t flew [before], hadn’t been nowhere by myself. I took off up there and stayed a week. I enjoyed it!

  As for the ride—it was good and smooth riding until we hit a air pocket. The stewardess was always giving you something. They give me a cup of coffee and if I started to take a drink, I poured it on me. They give me mints to chew so I wouldn’t get airsick. I’d felt better if I’d had somebody to go with me, but I went by myself.

  [The pilot] got to telling how high we was and I thought to myself, “Now that’s high enough.” We went so high you couldn’t see a thing in the world but the little thunderheads in the sky. Now they are pretty up there, the prettiest things you ever seen.

  It took us two hours going up to get to Pittsburgh and then I changed planes. I said to the man there at the door when I went to get out, “I’m supposed to change planes,” and I showed him the number on my ticket.

  He said, “Go to that plane right out there.” There was a soldier boy walking along there and he had the same number plane to go to. [The man at the door] told him, “You see that she gets on that plane,” and he said to me, “You follow him.” Well, I just followed him on out there then and he stepped back and said, “You go up first,” and I went on up the steps.

  I got up [to Niagara Falls] and we went around and saw a lot. We went to the whirlpool at the end of the Great Lakes. There ain�
�t no bottom to it. It’s where [the water] goes around and around. They had a place built on each side and a thing you could ride across on cables. I wouldn’t ride [laughter]; I was off the ground enough. They done said there wasn’t no bottom to it. I wasn’t about to get up there.

  The airplane that I took up there didn’t get back. They said it was about tore up and they kept it to be repaired. So when the time came for me to come back home, I had to come back first class in a big sightseeing plane. We came back low and I could look out the window. It was just beautiful. Going over housing projects that looked like little rabbit boxes. They would tell us where we were, but I can’t remember all the towns we flew over. We flew four hours before we even lit at all.

  You know, it just cost me eighty-eight dollars and fifty-five cents for a round-trip ticket. Now it would cost you that from here to Atlanta. Everything’s went up so.

  Johnny was a member of the carpenters’ local [union] for twenty-five years. He had to pay dues so I told him that was buying a job. They’d find jobs [for him] and that’s how come he was going to so many different places. [After he retired] he got a pension and drawed that until he died. That was the twenty-eighth of June in ’80. He was seventy-eight. He had emphysema of the lungs and then he took pneumonia. He also had bleeding ulcers and they couldn’t doctor the emphysema without settin’ the ulcers off to bleeding. Just one thing brought on another until he just couldn’t make it. We just lacked from the twenty-eighth of June until the fourteenth of October being married sixty years when he died.