one more post

been reading some of la. sisters post about childhood years...
Ours was quite different...we lived in the same house but had different tasks and chores to do....when the older two sisters cleaned,cooked,washed clothes (wringer washer at that),ironed clothes and all the other chores I wondered why i didnt have those memories....Shame on my butt....Myself and my baby brother had a different life...While the older two sisters cleaned and worked in the house and the 3 older brothers cut mine props and brush..me and the little one played and played and played..we had a playful life....never worked at all....no no no.absolutely not..
After dinner (that the girls cooked each night) (whenever our dad was home) while the girls had to do dishes me and my brother sat on dads lap and ate popcorn and watched tv...I think when those older ones got us out of eyesight of mom and dad ,,,we got our just dessert..

Ah yes,,,the growing up years...I remember a milk cow named Blondie that just about killed our dad when she died...but she was a good milk cow..I remember going out to the barn where the older brothers would be milking and say we want to try it...not knowing you just didnt pull on those tits ..you had to squeeze and pull and for little hands it was hard to get your fingers around those big cow tits....hearing the milk hit the tin bucket then becoming more quiet as the bucket got more and more milk in it.
and if a cat ventured near we would laugh and squeal as we squirted milk in the cats mouth to drink...
I remember days of playing in the barn loft..hiding from each other in the big bales of hay ...not thinking about all those nasty critters baled in the hay and yukky spiders and spider webs you ran into not to mention hoping you didnt run into any blacksnakes laying or hanging around anywhere..
yeah..life was great for us on the farm...I remember the gatherings on sundays ((possible saturday afternoons) when family from charleston would gather and we would have cookout or something similar..at which ..one time i remember my mom having a cow because it was in the middle of the summer and termites were crawling and flying around like crazy.and she was trying to keep everyone outside so they wouldnt see them..
I remember going with the older sisters at certain times when they decided we were good enough to tag along with them..now mind you there is only 4 years at the most between us girls ,,,yet the two oldest run by themselves...probably trying to scheme and plot on how they were going to get revenge on us two little ones that got by with almost anything....At the time when we were allowed to tag we would all wonder up the creek that ran along side the house into the main creek by the main road...anyways...up along side this creek we would go ..out of sight of the house and my sisters had found these little rock formations where pools of water would gather and they would be different levels...i remember them calling them the knee pool.foot pool and ankle pool,,evidently ,thats how high the water was in them...and we would sit and dangle our feet in them.There is not too many things i remember about younger years..we did have some good kiddy times..I remember in a yard with seven kids we had no grass until you got about 40 or 5o foot from the house...because our main games were marbles.
I remember digging three holes so far apart and a home hole or the one you went too last that sat farther apart..and i remember saying fudgy..whatever the hell that meant..and sometimes a circle was drawed and we had a shooter marble that we got to shoot at the marbles in the rings to knock them out..and then there was the horses we played with..my son still laughs at this one.Our horses were two stick clothespins stuck together and it made a horse.yep,,we had no dirt in our yard..a lot of homemade toys...I remember climbing the big tree that sat directly in front of our porch if we could hoist ourselves up to reach that always too tall branch...and that tree was use lots of times to crawl out a upper bedroom window and heave ourselves down to the ground from it....
I remember my dad loving animals..we had mules..cows..not too mention dogs and cats...I remember a dog named fuzzy...and nicky..my dog was named bernard...we all got a puppy when they were born..My brother liked the ducks...I remember a certain sister calling a chicken slug a bug..pet raccoons were named honey and sonny...they ran free after they were tamed and returned several summers ..then one summer they never came back...i remember crows with clipped wings..pets(maybe or maybe not) they were in cages.My dad would pick up ground hogs on the road on the way home from work and after he got those little mean devils tamed they would become pets.one time there was a litter born with no mother to raise them...they had no hair on their back ,,my mother was suppose to leave them by the stove with a cover to keep them warm..and one day the stove was fired up too hot and that was the last of them little ground hogs.,,One of us had a calf named april...I spent a lot of time with her but dont know at this time whose she was.and the pigs,,,,i loved the pigs .taking a corn cob and scratching their bellies and watching them fall over...but after the first year when i saw the pigs heads sitting in the creek at butchering time and the pigs turned into table food i wanted nothing to do with anything that was going to end up on the table and in our bellies.
I remember killing chickens...either wringing their necks or on a block of wood and someone held their legs and the one with the hatchet held their heads and soon they were flopping around on the ground only to end up on the table.the one with the hatchet was the beheader..i remember then chickens flopping for what seemed hours til they died..and one flopping under the house...there was a hole just big enough for a flopping chicken to accidentally flop thru and sure enough one chicken found it....It was bad enough to eat pickled pigs feet and pig ears plus cracklings ...but then again my dad never let anything go to waste...when the yellow feet were cut off the chicken they were boiled and we would skin them and eat the meat....sometimes i wonder whether that was real food or not to eat..do you think i would even pick up a pickled pigs foot or ears or chicken feet or mince meat and eat now....yuk,,,no way..we never had seafood when we grew up but i can eat more seafood now then domestic food...oh yes,,i forgot...we used to take the bladders or whatever the little blowed up things were in the chickens and play with them.....after they were killed....oh gross ,,on that one..
I remember a dinnerbell on a tall post and mom would ring that dinner bell that could be heard echoing around the hillsides when she wanted my dad and he wasnt close by.On one particular day it was when one of the dogs got fishhook caught in its mouth and had to be cut out.and perhaps it was used to be called for dinner..Isnt that what a dinner bell is for..I remember washing clothes and my mom would hang them on the barbwire fence when the lines were full and the cows would wander in from the meadows and eat our clothes on the line.Those clothes that had cow chewed holes in them would actually be in style now..really ..farm life had its pros and cons..
one of these blogs i will have to relate on our city life after we moved to town..that was a hoot to.
I remember eating popcorn on dads lap and watching several tv shows in particular..one was called Happy about a baby...one was Tate -a gunslinger show and im not sure about this one but i was thinking mr.ed--the horse was back at that time too..
My sister says our dad worked away from home most of the time on construction..I do remember our mom on saturday nights having us peel potatoes and she would fry skillet after skillet of potatoes ,,,we had to wait our turn and that was a long wait for us two little ones..sometimes it doesnt pay to be the youngest...I remember sunday dinners...that would chicken dinners ,,,and you guessed it..same chickens we butchered..I remember plucking those chickens..big buckets of boiling water and we dunked those chickens in it and the feathers would pull out so easy..till you got some quills that were stubborn and would break off..
I remember swimming in the big creek along with all the water snakes and all the other creatures that were in it..I'm amazed tht all seven of us survived the farm life...I mean ..ours wasnt exactly a docile ,placid life....You see..our dad liked his booze..and boy did we get some innocent whoopings from him when he came from town half or almost drunk...How he made it 14 miles from the town of ripley to our little home on little creek was beyond me....God must have been watching over him to get him home but not us cause then we got whipped....now sometimes i grant you ..we deserved some of them whippings but half the time we didnt ..I remember dad making us cut our own switches to be whipped with..OF COURSE we would cut the smallest ones we could find only to have our dad put two or three together or use a belt or some other kind of strap....Really ,,when our dad was sober ,you couldnt ask for a better dad....He played with us...I remember him hiding Easter eggs and at a small age our dad looked tall even though he was only 5ft 10 or so..He would hide the lucky egg under his hat and then you guessed it,,he would holler at us two younger ones and we would be the ones to find the lucky egg....us two playful ones..that did absolutley positively nothing...I remember our mom and dad sitting on the front porch and watching us kids play hide and seek...ahh..memories..Now ,,if you could hear the tales from all seven of us that would be fun and scary because we all remember different things. I remember the home brew my dad made ..in the cellar and how we would all go out and dip into it and see who could drink the stinking strong stuff..back then we could...I think my dad must have been drinking buddies with the local sheriff of the county because he never got arrested for drunk driving and if he did ..they didnt do nothing to him
I remember plugging the watermelons in the patch...Well they did it on tv and didnt get in trouble and knew how to find the ripe ones ,,well .let me tell you ,,that didnt work for us...we plugged them...put the little plug back in like a bunch of dummies..left them laying in the patch....dad come along..found the then rottening melons and we got our deserved ass whipping...Now some times we might have been justified in getting butt whipped and this might have been one of those times.BUTT (he he) not all the time..
I remember my dad ((THIS IS A CRUEL ONE)) putting the newborn kittens or puppies that he didnt keep in a burlap bag with a weight and tossing them off the bridge...and watching that sack sink and all the little air bubbles come up from the over abundance of live kittys at the time..Ahhh,,,one time not so smart...hole in the bag and the little kittys got out...another story..that would be animal cruelty in this day and age...for sure.and at least it wasnt us........in the bag.. I remember fishing off that same bridge and when the water was clear watching the fish swim under the bridge and the snakes and the frogs..all them critters.I also remember the floods from that same creek that would come up to the front porch of our house and we would always have an escape route in case it succeeded in coming ito the house in which case it never did.OF THAT I CAN REMEMBER..
I remember a certain cousin coming out that always had a mouth frothing toy that we would have liked to have had and how envious we were of him for being an only child and getting new and better toys...but then again he only had the toys.I also remember how his mom would holler at him all the time that he was going to get poison ivy.. We never got hollered at cause we were always outside playing....if we got poison ivy,,,tough shit...we had brothers and sisters that we could pick and choose to play with..at the time we never thought that...but i'm glad that it was ((not Me)) that had seven kids but our parents did cause we had play mates to pick and choose from..If one wouldnt let you play with them another would....OF COURSE I ALWAYS HAD THE BABY BROTHER ,,THAT DID THE SAME AS ME ...ABSOLUTELY NOTHING...WE PLAYED AND PLAYED AND PLAYED....country life had its ups and downs....but it never killed us..and i THINK we all came out sane..There is more tales from the darkside which will have to be told later on.

a few memories of growing up..soon to be forgotten when we are gone..new memories will be acknowleged thru our children which will be nothing like ours..or our parents....