Updated
March 1, 2015 0:18 AM
From: Larry Wilcox
- click here for photos of Larry and his family.
5
to 9 years.
The Doggit Place was a nice place with
a small house and a nice big barn with a hay loft where my brother and
sister spent many an hour playing.
The water source was a pitcher pump in
the back yard at least a hundred feet from the back door. I recall one
of my household chores at this home was caring water into the house
for my mom to cook and wash. I recall making many trips carrying the
water in an old tin bucket that had once held syrup. I believe the syrup
bucket only held half of a gallon.
When we first moved to the Doggit place,
I recall the first time I met my friend Jack Cumbie. The Cumbies were
good neighbors that lived maybe a hundred yards away. I recall first
meeting Jack (Jackie we called him). I asked him his name and he said
"Silver" and pretended to be riding a horse around in a circle. I recall
thinking what a strange kid. Turns out he was okay, just a very humorous
guy that I grew up with. I was to spend many an hour playing with Jackie.
There was a creek that ran behind his and
our house. It was called Lattie creek and we were to spend many hours
playing in the small swimming holes. Probably one of my favorite memories
was being invited to lunch by Mrs. Cumbie. I now wonder if I didn't
scheme to be there at lunch time and get a welcomed invitation from
her. She was a great cook!! I especially remember her biscuits. They
were out of this world.
My mom was not much of cook except for
a few dishes. My father used to tease her about her biscuits. He would
say, "Now don't go near any deep water after you eat her biscuits."
I recall several years later my mom had to go visit her mom or someone
in the family and left dad and us kids to fend for ourselves. My dad
sent me to a neighbor's house to get the lady's biscuit recipe and I
couldn't believe how great my dad's biscuits were! Interesting thing
bread. We almost always had biscuits and cornbread. Occasionally, we
would get "store bought" bread now called plain old white bread. We
called it light bread and thought we were eating cake.
My mom's fried chicken was the best you
could ever eat. I have heard a lot of people brag on her fried chicken.
I think she had her own version of the Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe.
A couple of other of her dishes that were my favorites was she made
a fantastic minced pie and her stew. She called it Slomgullen.
It was while living at the Doggit place
that I started school. I think I had a head start at school because
my mom would spend hours reading to us. I was only five years old when
my mom enrolled me in school. The state requirement at the time was
that you be six years old. Of course the school would get no state funds
for me. So, the superintendent complained. However, I had gotten my
first report card with all A's and my father took it to Warren Jones
who was the school board chairman. When Mr. Jones saw my report card,
he said leave the kid in school.
I had a classmate, Joan Boyer who also
was underage and she also made great grades and was kept in school.
I am told that there is no record of our first year in school. In those
days you started to school at six years of age in the Primary grade
and then after a year went onto the first grade. Joan and I were promoted
to the first grade our first year. And so began my scholastic career.
I rode a school bus to school while we lived at the Doggit Place. I
had to cross a cow pasture to catch the bus on an old gravel road that
went all the way down to a remote community, long since abandoned, called
Randolph. It was to this very remote place that local politicians were
supposed to go after they lost an election.
I recall my first days at school. My teacher
was a lovely lady named Maple John Smith. As a barefooted country boy,
I could hardly stand this newly applied discipline of having to stay
seated and not being able to move from your desk without permission.
The school had outdoor toilets and to get permission to go to the bathroom
you had to raise your hand. So as a restless five year old I noticed
some of the older classmates getting up and going across the room and
sticking their pencil into this machine looking device and turning the
crank. AND, they didn't have to go through the raising hand and getting
permission routine. So, one day when I thought I couldn't stand sitting
at my desk any longer, I decided to give this newly found freedom a
try. I slowly walked toward the window where the shiny machine was fastened
to the window sill. I inserted my cedar pencil and turned the crank.
When I pulled my pencil out the imbedded eraser was quite sharp. Oops!
I recall that mom had made some kind of
arrangement with Mister Chapman to raise cattle. The barn at the Doggit
place was a dairy barn. The ground floor was poured concrete with stanchions
to hold the cows while they were milked. There was a trench in the concrete
behind the cow as she stood with her head in the stanchion to catch
her urine and manure. This made it quite easy to clean the barn. As
I recall my mother milked around 10 to 12 cows by hand. We had a cream
separator that separated the cream from the milk. The skim milk was
feed to the hogs and she sold the cream in town.
I recall that another of my chores was
to turn the crank on the separator. It was really a hand operated centrifuge
that swirled the heavier butterfat (cream) up through a series of disks
and out a spout. The skim milk came out of a lower spout. The skim milk
was so white that it had a bluish tint to it. Thus the name "Blue John"
for skim milk. I recall a situation that my mother loved to tell about
me. She once made a remark that we had so much milk we could take a
bath in it. One day at school the teacher was teaching health and asked
if we drank milk. I quoted my mom by telling the teacher that we had
so much milk that we could take a bath in it. The teacher later told
my mom what I said. I do recall mother's older sister, my aunt Wanda
visiting us and using the milk to wash her face. It seems it was supposed
to have some cosmetic advantage. Even though the great depression was
on and my father was working 10 to 12 hour days, six days a week, we
did not go hungry.
The Doggit place was a nice place to live.
Of course it had no electricity, no running water (except when I ran
from the pump to the house), we heated and cooked with wood. Our lighting
was with a kerosene lamp. My mother did the laundry on a rub board.
I don't think the house had screen doors.
I recall one summer the ceiling being covered with houseflies. If insect
spray existed in those days we didn't have any. I recall my dad trying
to kill the flies with a lighted newspaper. A rather dangerous thing
to do, I guess.
It was while living at the Doggit place
that we got our first dog. He was a saddleback hound. We named him Oscar
for reasons I don't recall. Oscar had been a foxhound but had gotten
his wind broken, whatever that means. I guess it means that he couldn't
run well enough hunt foxes and the owner gave him to us. We loved Oscar,
but I don't recall what happened to him and don't think we had him when
we moved to our next house.
One other incident I recall happened while
living at the Doggit place. My brother Thomas and sister Helen and I
were playing in the loft of the barn. My sister for some reason had
a paring knife in her hand when she jumped out of the hay loft. She
landed on her stomach with her hand beside her head and it was holding
the paring knife with the blade pointing up into the air. A tragedy
that never happened.
Someone had stored some personal possessions
in a section in the barn and had wired the section off. I recall we
managed to get into the section and check it out. I found a whiskey
bottle that still had some whiskey in it. My first smell of whiskey.
I think it was Scotch.
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