I Remember

My first memory was of arms grabbing wildly for me. I remember Mommy was holding me on her hip. She kind of stuck her hip out and I sat on it like riding a horse. She held on to me with one arm and the other was free to do whatever she was doing at the time. I remember she bent over and put her free hand on a person's face that was lying down on a low bed. It was an old woman. When Mommy's hand touched her face she screamed and reached both her arms toward me. That was my nightmare. I seemed to not be able to get that out of my head. I can remember waking up at night with that image in my head for the longest time. When I was older and could talk, I told my Mommy about what scared me so bad. She said I was walking at the time and an old lady who lived near by was dying and she had gone over to sit up with her, which was the custom in those days. She didn't give it a thought that I would be aware of what was going on but the old lady died or so they thought. Since Mommy had some knowledge of what to do at those times, she bent over to close her eyes. When she put her hand on the lady's face to close her eyes, the lady screamed and reached her arms up toward Mommy and me. Mommy said she lived three more days before she finally died but I was hysterical for a long time. I think soon after that my little brother Bill was born. After Bill came to live with us I didn't dream that bad dream so much. Mommy must have been pregnant when that lady died.

Johnie was my older brother. He was named after Daddy's brother John and Mommy's brother Henry. Everyone had two names back then and sometimes more. There was a song called John Henry the Steel Driving Man and Daddy would sing that a lot to Johnie. It would make him so mad. Johnie was always following Daddy around if he could.

Bill was named after Daddy's brother Bill and Mommy's brother Adam. I have a clear memory of Bill taking his first steps. We were eating supper and Mommy cleared the table. She stood Bill on one end of the table and he walked across the table to Daddy. We all clapped and Johnie and I clapped for a long time. For a while after that it seemed Bill walked on the table at every meal. Bill got better at walking. He could walk all over without falling down. I tell you he was the busiest little fellow and to this day he hasn't changed a bit.

Our little house was just that, little. There were only two rooms, a kitchen and an all-purpose room you could call it I guess. We slept in that room and spent our evenings there. If we had company we visited there also. Mommy sewed and quilted, while we played games and read. Sometimes we cooked over the open fireplace in the cold weather and ate there too. There was one window and an outside door in each room.

Bill seldom got the run of the house because he was fast for a little guy. Mommy would put a chair across the door between the kitchen and the front room to stop him. She would lay the kitchen chair down on its side and it blocked the doorway pretty good. I remember Johnie and I were in the yard playing and some how little little busy body Bill got around the chair and into the kitchen. The outside door was open and Bill just ran right out the door. It was high off the ground and there were three big flat rocks for steps and he hit them all. Johnie and I were screaming our heads off. Mommy jumped out the door and never touched a step. She bent down over Bill, I thought she was biting him but she was blowing in his mouth. After a little while he began to cry. Boy my Mommy knew a lot of things. They said she breathed life into him. I remember thinking at the time; I'm not ever going to walk out of that door.

There were things I remember so clearly even though I was very young. We were always gathering things for the winter. At that time you could pick wild berries and greens. There were plum and apple trees growing right out along the road or the edge of the woods. There were persimmons and papaws. There were all kinds of nut trees, walnuts, hazelnuts, hickory, and chestnuts. There were huge beech trees and there were nuts on them. We gathered them all. Mommy and Daddy raised a big garden and worked very hard putting things up for the winter.

Picking berries were always the hottest and hardest gathering that we did. Not only was it hard work we usually got chiggers too. We all went on those trips. Daddy took the sled and all the buckets we could find. The mule pulled the sled and us kids. It seemed as if the good things were always on a hill or some place that was hard to reach. They put the sled under a tree and Bill and I stayed in the sled. Johnie ran around pretending to help. We were there all day that day. You could look down the hill and in the valley was the store and the house the storekeeper lived in. I guess he was rich because he had a saw mill up the hollow behind the store. He owned some houses he rented to people also.

We lived in one of those houses as did Mommy's friends Betsy, Deb and their kids. Some times they visited us and we visited with them. It was getting late that day and we were getting ready to go home when Daddy said, "Look Charity, what are they doing at the store," so we all watched. Men were running around with sticks poking around under stacks of lumber, which was in the store yard. You could see it plain as anything. Deb bent over and poked his stick into the lumber pile and Kane the storeowner had a gun. He put the gun right against Deb's head and shot him. It was awful. We all cried and Daddy said, "We better go help." Mommy said, "No, we don't know what was going on. We'll take the berries home and work them up. Then we'll go see what we can do." So that's what we did.

I talked to Mommy about it after I was older. She said Kane had a teenaged daughter who always did the milking, and the summer before the cows had got out. Deb worked at the saw mill for Kane, so Kane sent him down to help her get the cows into the barn. Deb had a shotgun with him, which was normal in those days. Almost everyone carried a gun of some kind. He sat the gun in the barn while they got the cows up, and the little girl knocked the gun over and it went off and killed her. Mommy always thought that was why Kane killed Deb. Kane said he was killing rats, but only one shot was fired and everyone saw him put the gun against Deb's head. So Kane was taken away to prison and his family sold the store, saw mill, and all the houses.

I remember Deb's funeral, everyone cried so hard. Mommy took food and clothes to Betsy and the kids. Betsy moved away right after the funeral.

It wasn't long after Deb was killed that school started. Johnie went to school but I wasn't old enough. Every now and then Mommy would let me go visit school. I thought that was just about the best thing that could possibly happen and would beg to go everyday. The older girls would play with me, comb my hair and teach me to write and make numbers. They gave me all kinds of things like paper, broken crayons and little short pencils. Those were treasures to...