The following transcription is from a series of recordings my father made in the early 1990s:
Making Honey
back in the 1930s
Behind Mr.
Earl and Bea [Bryan] Denham’s house, Pop Denham and Joe Bryan had bee hives all
out in the yard. Ouida and Juanita Seal
and I watched them when they would rob the bee hives. They would take the slats out of the bee
hives and the slats would be covered with honey. They would always give us a little bite of
the honeycomb.
Baling Hay
I remember
back in the 1930s they had a big hay baler down on the Peck place. Bermuda grass and lespedeza grass were grown
and then cut and left to dry on the ground.
After the cut grass had dried in the fields a day or two, the hay baler
would come through.
There would
be a man on a tractor pulling the hay baler and two men would be sitting on
benches on each side of the baler. The
men sitting on the baler benches would be sticking hay wire in through the hay
press and tying off the bales before the bales moved out the back.
It was a
slow operation as it moved down through the fields. You could look behind the baler and see many
square shaped bales of hay. Others would
come along in a truck and load up the bales and take them to the barn.
As well as I remember, a bale of hay weighed
about 65 or 70 pounds. Modern day bales
of hay are great big and round. I don’t
know what they would weigh.
Mill Grinding
There used
to be a little shotgun house on the depot street near Dr. Gordon’s house. Mr. Ralph Slade had a grits mill at the
little house. People would bring their
white and yellow corn there and put it in the machine and it would grind the
corn into meal.
I don’t
think the people were charged for the grinding.
Mr. Slade would get a portion of the meal as his pay and would sell
this meal to other people.
Making Syrup
Back in the
1930s, Mr. Richard Cloy used to make syrup.
The Cloys lived up the road towards the dip in the highway, about three
miles from Sicily Island heading towards Wisner. They raised their own sugar cane. I would go up there around syrup making
time.
Mr. Cloy
would cut the cane and run it through his syrup mill. The mill was just some big round wheel shaped
pieces of metal. There was a big long
pole that came out from the top of the metal pieces and a horse or a mule would
be tied to the pole and pull it around and around to turn the wheels. As the wheels were turning, they would stick
the sugar cane in and it would mash the cane flat.
Juice would
come out one end and into an iron looking pan sitting on a fire on the
ground. I don’t know how long they
cooked the juice but they cooked it to a certain thickness.
Mr. Cloy
must have made about 300-400 gallons of syrup each year. He sold the syrup to local people. It was part of his farming operation and he
probably made a little extra money every year from selling the syrup. There were others on the Island who made
syrup but Mr. Cloy is the only one I remember making it back in the 1930s.
Gathering
Dry Corn
Back in the
1930s, when the corn dried in the Fall, field workers pulled it by hand. This hard, dried corn was used to feed the
cattle, chickens and hogs. They would
take a couple of horses or mules and a wagon and go out in the fields. Men would walk along beside the wagon breaking
the dried ears of corn off the stalks and tossing them over in the wagon.
Treats
As children,
we couldn’t just go to a store and get a treat anytime we wanted one. Some were lucky to have gotten a nickel a week. Others might have gotten a nickel once every
month. Many children never had any
money.
|
Blackberries |
If we wanted
a treat that didn’t cost a thing, we would go out in the fields and get a stalk
of sugar cane. In the late Spring, we’d
go pick dewberries. Dewberries were
found on small briar bushes close to the ground.
A couple of weeks after the dewberries went
out, we’d pick blackberries. Blackberries were found on bigger, bushier briars that were up off the ground. Dewberries and blackberries looked a lot
alike and tasted about the same.
|
Maypop |
Maypops grew
on vines along the corn fields and cotton fields. They were about half big around as a golf
ball. When they were green, they had
little seeds on the inside of them that had a sour taste to them. When the maypops got ripe, the seeds had a
sweet taste to them.
In the woods
and swamps there were red hall trees.
The hall apples that grew on these trees were very small and red. They had a mellow apple flavor to them. They weren’t quite as sweet as a regular apple.
|
Possum Grapes |
Possum
grapes grew on vines in the woods. They
weren’t as big as the end of your finger but they had a good taste to them.
Right here
in town there were wild cherry trees.
The tiny cherries that grew on these trees were a blackish color and
had a bitter taste to them.
Mid-July the
figs would get ripe. Fresh figs off a
tree were mighty good.
I remember Uncle Jim and Aunt Lena McLelland had a mulberry tree. A mulberry looked something like a blackberry
or a dewberry except the mulberries were oblong and grew on trees and they had
a different taste.
When I was a
little boy, we would find patches of what we called rabbit grass. It was a certain kind of clover that we would
chew. It was sour.
Pears would
get ripe in about September. Along about December, we’d gather pecans. There were always lots of sweet pecans in
this part of the county.
|
Pecan Tree |
The people that
lived out around the edge of the hills gathered hickory nuts.
There were
several black walnut trees around here.
I remember there was a black walnut tree across the road from Mr. Willie Benge’s house and one across the street from me at Mr. Joe Bryan’s house.
|
Bennett-Bryan-Denham House |
Black walnuts had a hard hull on them. When you cracked the hull, you’d get down to
the nut. You’d need a sledgehammer to break
those things. I remember Mr. Joe had an
old anvil out there on a stump and they would use a sledgehammer to crack the
black walnuts. There wasn’t much of a nut
down in there and it was rich and oily.
They had a different sort of taste.
We looked
forward to watching the seasons change. We would know by the season which of our treats would be
ready to eat. We didn’t have the money
to get candy, cookies, ice cream and cold drinks. We searched the fields, briar patches and
meadows for our treats.
Note: Parts 1-37 of 'The Stories That Should Be Told' can be found in the Tags List on the right-hand side of the blog.
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