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Frankly Speaking - Frank Gillispie - March 3, 2011
This is laundry day. I sorted out the clothes, put the whites in the machine, added detergent, turned the dial to the proper
setting and pushed a button. The machine will do the rest.
Laundry day was not always so simple in my early teens. In fact., it was a two day event!
The day before laundry, we kids had to drag some oak or hickory tree limbs out of the woods and cut them up into firewood.
Next we would turn the black pot upright and put bean cans under the stubby legs to get it high enough off the ground for
the fire. Then we would use the bucket and windless to draw water out of the well to fill the pot and two wash tubs. That
took a good part of day one
The next morning we would build a fire under the wash pot. Mother would use a kitchen knife to cut shavings from the bar
of lie soap and stir it into the water until it dissolved. Then the clothes were added. Once they had boiled enough. We would
pour some cool water into the pot so that she could handle the clothes.
Next came the rub board. This sheet of metal with irregular groves stamped in it.
Each item of clothing was rubbed
up and down the board until all the dirt, sweat, oil or whatever was forced out. The it was twisted to wring out the dirty
water and tossed into the firs washtub for rinsing. This was repeated until all the clothes in the pot were cleaned.
The clothes were rinsed thoroughly in the tub, then transferred to the second tub for the final rinse. Finally they were
again wrung out and pinned to the close line to dry.
This whole process was done twice, once for white clothes and bed linens, and the second time for colored items like blue
jeans and work shirts.
You can imagine what the hot water, lie soap and rubbing did to my mother’s hands. About the time the corn huskers
lotion healed them, it was time to do laundry again! So when she got a chance to take a job at the factory that made card
board milk containers, the firs thing she bought was a wringer-washer.
We still had to draw the water out of the well and heat enough in the iron pot to fill the machine. But it had a set of
paddles inside that would beat the clothes and rub them together.. Then the wringer on top would squeeze the water out of
them. It would swing from the washer to the tubs so that it could wring the clothes after each rinse.
With two incomes, my parents finally managed to purchase the land in Hull and build our current home. With the proper electric
wiring and running water, they finally were able to buy and install a modern washing machine. Mother was proud of that machine!
That leaves me wondering what laundry day will be like when our current teenagers reach my age? Probably just walk by some
kind of cleaning ray and keep going.
Frankly Speaking - Frank Gillispie January 20 2011
Life in rural Georgia runs by the calendar. Each season has its special jobs to be completed, The weather this week was
ideal for hog killing. No one had refrigeration when I was a kid. So when grandfather decided to kill and butcher a hog, he
had to do it during a cold snap. Once he started, the process of preserving the meet had to be completed before the temperatures
warmed up and spoiled it.
Grandfather had was a good farmer. He always had a couple of very large hogs to butcher each winter, and the meat they
produced would last all the next year. That is, if it were properly preserved.
There were three methods used to preserve meat without a freezer, they used smoke, salt and sugar.
This process was carried out in a small outbuilding called the “smokehouse” They used different techniques
depending on which cut of meat they were preserving.
Hams and shoulders were usually sugar cured. They were hung in the smoke house with a little fire in the center to fill
it with smoke. Then the meat was rubbed down daily with sugar. Once the meat was cured, it could be hung in the smokehouse
in a tight fitting cloth bag where the smoke would keep insects and other pest away.
Other cuts of meat were packed into wood boxes full of salt. Salt will draw the moisture out of anything buried in it.
This was the only way used to preserve fat back and other cuts that contain large amounts of fat.
Then there was sausage. Smaller and tougher cuts were ground in a sausage grinder with just enough fat to make them fry
well. Various herbs and spices were added to help with the preservation process and to enhance the flavor. The sausage grinder
was hand operated and grinding the sausage was the job of any available grandchildren. Turning that grinder would quickly
exhaust the arm of younger people. We had to frequently switch arms and take turns to get all the sausage ground. Then, if
anyone accidentally dropped a gristle into the hopper, it would jam and we had to take it apart and clear it before we could
continue.
One last job was rendering lard. As I said, just enough of the fat was left to provide good frying. The rest was cooked
down into lard for use making biscuits, pie crust, and frying vegetables.. After the lard was cooked out, the tiny fragments
of flesh, called “cracklings” were used to flavor cornbread.
Cold buttermilk and cracklin’ cornbread
was a common breakfast out on the farm.
I know that it is much easier to run down to the market and buy pre cut meat and packaged sausage. But the whole operation
of killin’ hogs was a part of farm life fifty years ago, and there was a sense of satisfaction in preparing and preserving
your own food.
Naked yards - 9-21-10
People living on my street spend thousands of dollars on their lawns. They buy seed, fertilizer, water and pesticides to
grow the perfect lawn, then spend more thousands of dollars on lawn mowers, fuel, fertilizer spreaders and other equipment
to maintain it.
My grandparents, still struggling with the effects of “reconstruction” had no money for lawns. Instead, they
kept a hoe handy and if any sprig of grass appeared on their yard, they dug it up and threw it always. The yards around old
farm homes contained nothing but a few wandering chickens.
There was a practical reason for this: pest control. If any pest, be it a bug, worm, lizard, or any other crawling creature
started across that bare ground toward the house, a chicken was sure to eat it!
The chickens were welcome for other reasons. The provided eggs for breakfast and the main menu item when the preacher visited
the house for dinner. They were also the source of another problem. They left their “droppings” all over the yard.
We never had to cut grass, but we did have to sweep the yard on a regular basis. That required a very stiff yard broom.
To make a broom, we went out in the woods and found a dogwood tree that was growing in a shaded area so that it had long spindly
limbs. Three of these limbs tied together with bailing wire made a good yard broom. But what about landscaping? There were
gardens and fruit trees around the edges of the yard. And for color near the house, they would take an old tire, split it
around the tread and pop it inside out. Grandmother would then fill that with woods dirt and chicken droppings and plant her
flowers in it.
Now remember that rednecks never let any useful material go to waste.
The best thing about a bare yard is the space it left for kids to play marbles. We had three popular games involving marbles:
pig eye, circle and rolly hole. The first two involved trying to knock marbles out of the circle or pig eye by hitting them
with your favorite marble called the “shooter.” Rolly Hole was similar to put put golf. We would shoot the marble
from hole to hole around the yard to see who could complete the circuit with the fewest shots.
The naked yards were environmentally sound as well. We never sprayed dangerous pesticides in or around our homes. We never
polluted the air with fumes from gas lawn mowers and we never disturbed our neighbors with all the noise. (That was probably
not important sense the nearest neighbor was usually a half mile away or more.)
There are two ways to deal with poverty. You can sit on a sofa and complain, or you can get out and use whatever is available
to make a better life. And that includes dogwood limbs and chicken droppings!
Little Red Wagons - Frank Gillispie - July 8, 2010
Several families were at the Colbert Independence Day festival with children being pulled in “Radio
Flyer” red wagons. My brothers and I received one of their wagons for Christmas one year. Contrary to the claims of
the company, it didn’t last very long.
That may be because we had a large hill behind our house that had been terraced to control erosion. We quickly
found that we could drag the wagon to the top of the hill and ride it back down to the bottom. The ride included dodging rocks
and roots, and jumping over the terraces. The wagon was not intended for that!
Before long we managed to tear the axles from under the body of the wagon. But that was OK. One of the things
redneck children learn is how to make their own toys out of whatever is available. So we found some scrap wood, rope, big
nails and a tin can and constructed a :”go cart” using the axles and wheels from the wagon.
A 2X6 stud served as the body of the cart. A 2X4 was nailed under the back edge with the axle and wheels
nailed under that. On the front, we drilled a hole where a large bolt screwed into another 2x4 served as the front steering
axle. We attached the tin can behind the axle and stood another section of 2X4 behind that. Then a straight piece of tree
limb was fitted into the can and into a notch in the top of the upright 2X4 with a section of rope to hold it in place.
A cross piece was nailed on top of the steering column and a section of rope wrapped around the column about
half way up. The ends of the rope were nailed to the front axle out near the wheels. Turning the column would tighten the
rope on one side and loosen it on the other. That gave us full steering control.
Next we made a hole in another piece of tree limb and drove a heavy nail through it and into the side of
the cart. This was the brakes for our vehicle. Pulling up on the brake would cause the end to dig into the ground slowing
us down if we were going too fast.
Another family of boys had received a “Radio Flyer” wagon and borrowed our hill to ride it on.
It suffered the same fate as ours. And soon they had their own Go-cart. This of course led to frequent races that resulted
in falls and crashes with the expected skinned knees and elbows. The amazing thing is that none of us were ever seriously
damaged.
And the medal bodies off the wagons. Our mothers filled them with woods dirt and planted flowers in them.
How Mother and Dad found each other
Recently, while doing an inventory of the
things left behind by my parents, I found a bundle of old letters. I was happy to discover that they were letters my parents
exchanged during their courtship. They verified many of the stories my mother told about that era.
My Father was born and raised in Talmo,
in Jackson County Georgia. Mother was born in Oglethorpe County but spent most of her early years in the Neese community of
Madison County. They were both the children of sharecroppers.
Dad was of 21 years old when the Civilian
Conservation Corps reached its peek in 1935. He signed up and was assigned to CCC Co 485 at Blue Ridge, Ga. In the spring
of 1935, his unit was transferred to Athens, Ga to serve the Sandy Creek area. The camp was established in a pine grove behind
Fortson's Store off U.S. 29 in the Dogsboro community.
Mother would laugh when she told about
the first time they saw each other. He was driving a truck load of men to a work area on the Neese-Commerce road. When they
passed a farmhouse he noticed a pretty girl on top of a shed spreading peach slices to dry in the sun. At his first opportunity,
he came back to the area looking for her, and he found her!
When his camp moved again to Cartersville
in the fall of 1936, the letters began and continued until just before their marriage on April 1, 1939.
When he finished his allowed time with
the CCC, dad rejoined his family as they returned to their ancestral home in Central South Carolina. There, he went to work
as a field hand in order to earn enough money to start a home. There he was forced to wait until Mother convinced her mother
that He was the right man. It seems that grandmother had another man in mind for her. When she rejected this man, another
name was put forward. Again mother refused and finally won grandmothers approval of her choice, my father.
On April 1, 1939, they became tired of
the debate over arrangements and eloped to Jefferson for the wedding. They moved into a small house across the road from my
grandparents home near Neese. There dad set out to produce a cotton crop of his own.
Mother said she could not start a home
without a family bible. Dad insisted that he had to have a shotgun to help feed his new family. So they scratched together
just enough to buy a bible and a shotgun. I still have both items.
After making one crop on his own, and a
stint in the WPA, dad landed a job helping build the Plantation Pipe Line pump station in Neese. When the job was finished,
the management kept him on as a maintenance man, which led to regular promotions. By the time WWII was underway, he was a
key employee at their major station in Spartinburg S.C. There he was deemed to be an essential employee and as such each draft
notice he received was turned back. Once Hitler's army was defeated, he got a new draft notice. He was preparing to leave
for basic training when the Japanese surrendered.
Dad tells of how he carried mother and
his kids to a movie on what was to be his last day at home when he was paged by his boss at the pipe line. Japan had signed
surrender papers and his draft notice had been withdrawn.
Dad always said that the only reason Japan
surrendered when they did was that they heard that Benjamin F. Gillispie was on the way!
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First Crush
I was an eleven year old fifth grade student at University Demonstration
School in Athens, Ga. She was a twenty one year old student teacher assigned to my class. She was my first big love!
The
City of Athens had a large school system, but the few rural families were left out. Most of us were sent to a school owned
by the University of Georgia and used as a practice school for their education students. Our campus, along with the Teachers
College, was located in Normal Town on the site currently housing the Navy Supply Corps School.
It was a great school.
Because it was a teaching facility for student teachers, each class had a highly skilled and experienced teacher, along with
one or more student teachers. Class sizes were fairly large, but we had plenty of instruction, and we all received as much
attention as we needed.
Our student teacher for that spring had a strong interest in science, and she was very pleased
to learn that I lived across the road from a swamp. (In the political correct terms of today, it was Wet Lands.” She
immediately asked if there were any ponds with tadpoles.
Now that swamp was one of our major play areas. I knew all
the paths, all the streams, and all the little ponds. And yes, I knew which of them had tadpoles. There were thousands of
tadpoles. So she suggested that she come over Saturday morning and we would go catch some to put in the aquarium tank in the
classroom. Watching the tadpoles grow into little frogs would be a wonderful science lesson for the class.
Can you
imagine a better way for a red neck kid to spend a Saturday morning than tromping through the swamp with a beautiful girl
who likes to get in the mud and chase tadpoles? I had the time of my life! The best part was when I got to hold her hand and
guide her to the safe ground and stepping stones we used to cross the swamp.
Catching the little critters was easy
enough. She had brought along some little dip nets and I provided a couple of half gallon mason jars. We collected a couple
of dozen tadpoles and plenty of sticks, leaves and other material they used for shelter. We had enough stuff to fill the aquarium
with places for them to crawl up on as they developed their legs and lost their tails.
I had her all to myself most
of that morning. I liked her a lot when we started that adventure. And by the time we finished, I was madly in love! How was
I to know I was being educated at the same time?
When the school year ended she was gone. But I remember her as one
of those special teachers who instilled in me a love of learning. And I am still grateful for that.
Cotton's Impact on Dixie
When the first European settlers arrived in what
was to become Madison County, they brought with them their plows, livestock, seed and knowledge of farming. From the beginning,
Madison County was an agricultural society. Even the native Americans who preceded them raised squash, beans and corn in their
gardens.
The first production of our area was corn, eggs, salt pork, butter and a variety of other products that could
be produced by farm families. Our land was not suited to large farming operations because of the average slope of our hillsides
and the lack of depth of our soil.
But the time came when Cotton was King in the South and, like the rest of the region,
our farmers cleared the land and planted cotton. That was a long term mistake. Cotton cultivation leaves the soil exposed
to the wind and rain, and erosion quickly took its toll on the land.
Eventually, a system of terraces were constructed
on the hill sides to try to control the erosion. When you are driving around the county, look at the pasture lands and you
can still see them. All those terraced areas were once cotton fields.
Every available acre was planted in cotton when I
was a child. Madison County was devoted to the crop. At the height of cotton production here, Madison County had eleven gins
in operation. The last one to operate was in Colbert. It closed in the early ‘60’s.
I helped out in the cotton
fields as a child. My first job was as a clod hopper. I would follow behind my father or grand father as they did their spring
plowing stomping on clods of soil to break them up. Then after the cotton sprouted, we would “chop” the cotton.
That included digging out the excess plants in the rows so that the cotton was spaced for the best production, and to remove
grass between the plants.
Then, of course, in the fall we hand picked the cotton. That was a difficult job. The advent
of automated cotton pickers relieved us of this chore. For a while, both methods were used. It was easy to see which filed
was hand picked and which was done by a machine. The hand picked fields were clean. The machine left a litter of cotton fiber
stuck on the plants and lying on the ground.
In addition, cotton makes high demands on the essential nutrients of the soil.
As these combined to destroy our soil, our ability to produce the crop quickly declined. Eventually, the gins all closed and
the cotton fields became pasture land for cattle. Vast areas of the county were planted in pine trees in an effort to restore
the soil and gain some practical use of it.
Many Madison County people try to cling to our rural past, but thanks to cotton,
that has become a difficult task.
Going to the Mill
Madison County is blessed with a number of streams and rivers capable
of powering small mills. You will find communities throughout the county will the term “mill” in their names.
Spratlin Mill Road, Watson’s Mill State Park and Seagraves Mill are examples.
These mills were important to the rural families who made their living
from the land. It was within my lifetime that most transportation in the county was by horse drawn wagons, and a trip to the
mill to grind corn into meal was an all day adventure. I can still remember one such trip with my grandfather when we went
from his farm in the edge of Jackson County to Seagraves Mill to have his corn ground into cornmeal.
My grandfather had a corn Sheller. It consisted of a metal housing
with a large cast iron wheel that had a series of spikes in the side. The ear of dry corn was put into an opening and the
spinning wheel knocked the kernels off into a wooden box and the cob spit out the side. Grandfather, with the help of several
grandsons, spent several days shucking the corn and running it through the machine until he had a load of burlap bags of corn
ready to go. Early in the morning, he hitched up his horses to the wagon, loaded it with bags of corn and a couple of grandsons,
a jug of water and some sandwiches and headed off to the mill.
The distance was no more than a few miles. But the dirt roads were
filled with ruts and rocks which caused the horses to take their time making the trip. The game my cousin and I played was
standing in the bed of the wagon without any support and trying not to fall down. We fell more than we stayed upright.
We arrived at Seagraves Mill shortly before noon and unloaded the
corn. The miller pulled a leaver to start the stones turning then poured the corn, one bag at a time, into a hopper. As the
ground corn came out of the stones, it was diverted into sifters that separated out the corn meal and the “shorts.”
Both were sacked up. The miller took his pay in shares of the meal and the rest reloaded into the wagon. Then we bounced and
giggled back home.
A bit about “shorts.” This was the husk and germ from
the corn. It was not considered to be worthy for human consumption, so it was added to the “slop buckets” and
fed to the pigs. Today we know better. The “germ” from the corn is the source of corn oil, a popular cooking medium
in today’s kitchen.
A further bit about “slop buckets”. Every rural kitchen
had a large bucket near the stove where all the waste, trimmings, some few leftovers and even the water used to wash the dishes
was collected. When it was full, the bucket was carried to the pig pin and added to the food given to the hogs. Country families
were the original recyclers. Nothing was every wasted, not even the dish water, or the unwanted residue from grinding corn
into meal.
Going Green is not a new idea to us rednecks. We grew up that way.
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