Someone will have to explain this one to me…
uncle mahlon
Aunt Naomi’s Story (part 15)
Grace and John Hale lived about two miles from us on Route H. They were good neighbors to mom and daddy. Mother made wonderful angel food cakes. She needed cream of tarter to make these. One time she had me walk to Grace’s to borrow a teaspoon of cream of tarter. Grace and John were the first in the neighborhood to own a television. They invited us to watch. The evening we watched, there was a monster show on and Jimmy Durante singing “Inka Dinka Do.” Good memories!
There were some sad memories also. We had another neighbor named was Harry Smith. He had a wife who we never got to see. She suffered from some type of depression because she drowned herself in their farm pond about two years after they lived there. We went to their house to Christmas Carol and although they were home, they never came to the door to acknowledge us as other neighbors did. We were young and very shocked at the suicide. That was the first we ever heard of such a thing and so close to us!!
Two men were hunting on our farm (I was about 7). One man came running up the south hill, shouting for help that he had shot a man. Daddy and Mahlon took the car down as far as they could go and they carried him to the car, then they hauled him up to Brazito. Mother called ahead and asked Mr. Norfleet to take him to the hospital because they thought our car couldn’t go fast enough. The man did live and we were very relieved.
Every few years controlled burning is done to get rid of noxious weeds, etc. on farms. Sometime a fire would get out of hand and the entire neighborhood would rush to the scene and help put out the fire. Once a fire got away from our neighbor in the woods behind the brooder house.
Aunt Naomi’s Story (part 11)
[Editor’s Note: Aunt Naomi didn’t really split things into parts. I’ve done that to make them more or less the right size for posts, and so that we could comment about them as we go along. However, this does mark the point in the story that AUnt Naomi calls “Chapter 1”.]
When I was about 5 or 6 years old, the REA (Rural Electric Association) came to our community and we had our house “wired” so we could be modern and have electricity. This was a very exciting time. Everyone was talking about how the house was going to be “wired.”
No one ever explained anything to me… so every evening when I came home from school I would run up to the house and look for the wire that would be wound around it. I didn’t know it would be inside the walls! Nobody ever told me anything. I spent most of my life feeling stupid!!! There was a lot of thin copper wired left lying around the electric poles that were installed on the farm. The wires had a rubber coating on them, but Mahlon showed us how to peel the coating off to get to the copper wire. He showed us how to bend and shape these to write our names and wear as pins.
When we learned that there was such a thing as a “shower” we decided we should have one, so in our countrified way, we made one (only in summer). We had a bucket that was used to feed the newborn calves. It had a large rubber nipple on it. We filled the bucket with water, hung it in a tree in a secluded place and let the water stream down on us from the nipple. I think we also used old buckets with holes. This worked just fine and we were perfectly happy with our shower and our homemade lye soap.
Coal oil and dried peas… by Aunt Bea
Down at Schubert’s, Mahlon drank coal oil and put the dried peas up his nose. Once he had his whole mouth full of those black wasps. I think he was stung and once I remember he had a bumble bee in his mouth. Mahlon had a dark temper as a child.
In the morning when the stove was really hot in the living room, like red hot, he would get too close and burn himself then he would get so mad and hit the stove. That’s when mom talked Elizabeth into getting the enamel stove, or Sis, I forget now who bought it. Could have been the boys.
Plowing the corn… by Uncle Mahlon
Now Vernon being the big brother that he was didn’t cut me too much slack. I was about twelve years old and he said if he had to work, I had to work. So when it came time to plow the corn he used the team of mares on the cultivator to plow the corn, and he hooked up the mule for me on a five shovel plow to plow. And thats what I did. the mule was smart enought to know how to do it. He’d go down one row and miss one row and turn and go back up the next. Our plowing was like making ovals. He would never step on a stalk of corn when he turned at the ends. He had enough room. I’d do that plowing and pretty near fall asleep plowing. But when I harnessed him I couldn’t reach the top of the mule to put it on so Vernon had to do that for me.
I guess it was good that Vernon taught me how to work that hard. I remember us getting into arguments out in the barn about who was stronger than the other one. We’d do chin ups, Dad would yell at us to do something worthwhile. We didn’t get tired doing them we just ran out of time.
Photo Friday Uncle Edition
Here are a few more from the batch that Aunt Naomi sent in a while ago. Feel free to send in your own photos as well. You can scan them and email them to me, or use your digital camera to take a picture of them and email them to me, or just send me the photos through the post office.
