Borrowing Coals

By Linda Vickers and Opal Turner Brown

When my father Ellis was born, most families were larger then than they are now. Times were hard and medicines available were not much help when people became ill. One of my dads brothers and a sister died in infancy. He was one of seven other brothers and one other sister who lived to become adults, to marry, and have children.

Dad loved his joke about seven brothers being in the family and all having a sister each. The story was told in such a way to sound as if there had been fourteen children rather than eight.

The two oldest brothers were already married at the time their mother died. Ellis was three and a half years old. His sister Alma was fifteen. For a while she kept house and cared for the brothers left at home. About two years later she married.

Soon after that, their father married again. Two of the five children he and his second wife had died in early childhood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Sep 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781466999527

Book preview

Copyright 2013 Opal Turner Brown.

Illustrated By Linda Vickers

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4669-9953-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-9952-7 (e)

Trafford rev. 10/29/2013

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Borrowing Coals is lovingly dedicated to my father, Ellis Murry Turner.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter One— Strangers in the House

Chapter Two— Borrowing Coals

Chapter Three— Something Real Fine

Chapter Four— The Thomas Clock

Chapter Five— First Day of School for Four

Chapter Six— Moving to Ripley

Chapter Seven— Owl Dumplings

Chapter Eight— Missing Alma

Chapter Nine— The Banana Train Comes to Town

Chapter Ten— Now Gracie Can Rest in Peace

Chapter Eleven— A New Mama

Introduction

W hen my father Ellis was born, most families were larger then than they are now. Times were hard and medicines available were not much help when people became ill. One of my dad’s brothers and a sister died in infancy. He was one of seven other brothers and one other sister who lived to become adults, to marry, and have children.

Dad loved his joke about seven brothers being in the family and all having a sister each. The story was told in such a way to sound as if there had been fourteen children rather than eight.

The two oldest brothers were already married at the time their mother died. Ellis was three and a half years old. His sister Alma was fifteen. For a while she kept house and cared for the brothers left at home. About two years later she married.

Soon after that, their father married again. Two of the five children he and his second wife had died in early childhood.

Many people lived on farms then, and even the children had to work hard. A grandparent or an unmarried aunt might also live in the home and help care for small children and do work that was not too heavy.

The amount of work to be done depended upon the time of year and the number of people in the family as well as the weather. Crop time started in early spring and continued on through late autumn. Planting, hoeing, plowing and harvesting were constant struggles for the entire family.

Rain caused the grass to grow faster. If grass grew faster the people must hoe faster and plow more. On a brighter note, ample rain resulted in a good harvest.

Contrariwise, too little rain kept the crops and gardens from producing well. In that case there would be less to gather and slightly less work, but more worry about how to get by.

Springtime and early summer were busy times of breaking and rowing the soil, planting seeds, and careful tending of tiny, new plants, in the garden and in the fields. Mid-summer was a continuation of plowing, harrowing and hoeing (which cultivated the plants closer than harrow or plow could manage, and cut back any grass left near corn or cotton.) The plows or harrows were pulled by mules or horses. Hoeing was accomplished by human power alone; although, any task requiring mule-power certainly required human power also.

Laying-by time usually came around the Fourth of July or soon after, and was possibly the time looked forward to most, but was not just one day. The occasion was a stretch of days following the last careful hoeing when the family hoe-hands tried to be extra careful to get rid of all weeds and grass.

One tiny cockle-burr left in the field could cause a great deal of trouble come corn harvest, or cotton-picking time. By then there would be a large plant covered with prickly burrs (or seeds) to be dealt with, or carried over until the next spring.

Laying-by time was also when the farmer plowed extra soil over the roots of his maturing corn and cotton, melons, and peanuts, to help them withstand the dry days that were sure to come.

The labor was intensive, and the days long. What did the farmer think of as he guided the plow, and walked up one row and down another and back down the same again?

His day started long before daylight with the feeding of the farm animals and milking (or not, however he and his wife worked out the problem.) After all, if he did the milking, she was at the house frying the bacon, scrambling the eggs, minding the babies, and making the pans of biscuits from scratch while keeping the fire going in the old wood-burning cook stove.)

After the farmer and his family had hurriedly finished their breakfasts, he returned to the barn to let the cow (or cows)out to pasture, gear up his mule or team (as the occasion required) to start the day’s plowing.

The wife cleared the table, covered the left-over food with a clean cloth, and gathered her little ones around her to take care of their continuing needs.

Maybe she was happy when the day came that she could lay aside her hoe to sit on the back porch to slice green apples for drying in the sun, or to chop cabbage for making kraut.

Searching out hiding cucumbers, pulling onions, and gathering green tomatoes for making mixed pickles was often done by children of the family. Preparing and canning these ingredients was managed by the mother and all other family members except those still laying by and sweating under the hot summer sun.

Never mind envy on either side. There was no time or place for such thought. Everyone who was old enough and able was kept busy.

The kitchen was considered the mother’s territory regardless of how many family members she might be able to entice into her lair. And for all except the mother, her helpers were only temporary players on the stage. They managed breathers throughout the day, such as eggs to gather, extra wood to bring in, a baby brother or sister to mind, or carrying a fresh jar of water to the daddy still plowing under the hot sun.

Indoors under the shade of the roof, inside the kitchen was no retreat. To accomplish jelly making, canning, or cooking the noon-time meal, many sticks of wood must be poked into the firebox. At most, there were usually no more than two small windows, and only one half could be opened. Of course, there would be at least one door and possibly two.

Let it be said, there was limited ventilation, but possibly little air circulation. The average kitchen of days long gone were little better than sweat boxes during summer months before electricity came on the scene (except for the cold winter months).

And when the farmer finished his laying by there were chores a-plenty to take care of. Plow-points must be sharpened, fences must be mended, decaying steps at the front porch must be replaced, or one of his neighbors was ill in bed and must have help with his crops and someone to sit with him for a few days.

The farmer father would not have to do all this on his own, but he must take his turn.

Later, he and the mother might possibly find a day to go fishing with their little ones. Cold biscuits and a few pieces of ham or salt pork left from breakfast would make a nice picnic lunch. If they caught a few fish, time off could be justified.

Just as all seasons came in turn, be it little or much, so did the time of harvest arrive. Late summer and autumn were the main times of gathering and storing. And yet, in between there were still baby chicks to raise, roofs to mend, more fences to repair, wood to saw and chop, soap to make, washing to do by hand, and little brothers and sisters to care for.

Although the time for feeding the pigs or chickens might be varied to some degree, cows must be milked and fed on a regular schedule.

Winter months saw the continuation of daily work such as cooking, washing clothes, and dish washing. In addition, there were new clothes to sew and old ones to patch. There were shoes and buckets to mend, baskets to make, harnesses to repair and chairs to cane. During rainy or cold weather, as many of these tasks as possible were done indoors, but regardless of the weather or time of year, a certain portion of the work had to be taken care of outside.

Neighbor women sometimes helped each other with canning, soap making, or quilting, and during times of illness they shared food or visited in their neighbors’ home to help out until the ailing person was well enough to be up and about.

As mentioned before, men also sat with the elderly when they were seriously ill, visited the bereaved and dying, traded work with other family members and neighbors. They also chopped wood or plowed gardens for older couples or any woman alone who was not able to do all the work for her self. They built churches, schools and roads, and loaned their oxen and mules to any man in need.

Although spoken less often then, I love you, became actual, active works of expression. No one was left to live or die alone.

Except for very special occasions, weddings for instance, entertainment was not a separate entity. Entertainment was made up of the funny things that happened spontaneously and unexpectedly while helping with a house raising, loading hay, rocking a baby, or tripping and falling in the mud.

It was anything and everything that could be grabbed in snatches while working and held close for the cold times, the sad times, and the hungry times. It was the mild pranks people played on each other, the happy surprises they shared, the jokes and stories they told over and over from one generation to the next, stories that became the cohesion of family and life.

Borrowing Coals is based on a few of the many memories our dad told us of his own childhood when my sisters, our brother, and I were growing up. The stories as I have told them are not always entirely true, simply because so many of the facts have been lost in time, and there is no way of really knowing everything that happened, so I have used my imagination to fill in some of the missing parts. Each chapter, however, is based upon one or more true facts.

Some of the stories are sad; some are happy, and some a little funny. That’s how life goes. Sometimes we can choose. Sometimes we can only make the best of what happens.

Strangers in the House

E llis lay in the loft on his little straw mattress and listened to the regular bump-bump, bump-bump of chair legs on the kitchen floor below. Somebody was rocking Jarmon he guessed, and wished he could be rocked too, so he climbed down the wooden rungs of the little ladder and eased through the bed-sitting room into the kitchen, scooting here and there trying to stay out of the way.

He wanted to ask if there was anything to eat, but there were so many people, and everybody was busy putting things here and taking them there. Nobody except Aunt Martha Ann paid any mind to him, and it took her a long time to see him hiding over in the corner behind the cook stove, between the wood box and the slop bucket.

It was when Aunt Martha Ann came to scrape some leavings from a plate into the bucket that she spied him. "Why, Ellis, what in the world are you doing all scroonched up ’way over there by yourself? Come on out of there, child. I had been wondering where you were.

Come on; come on out now. Lord love you, little one. I’m so sorry. We’re all going to miss her.

Aunt Martha Ann almost dropped the plate and fork she was holding as she reached down and scooped Ellis into her soft round arms, hugged him close, then kissed him on