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Note: September 29, 1990 This is a few memories I will write down before they all leave me. I hope my children and grandchildren will share this and know a little more about their ancestors. We lived on Duncan's Ridge, Logan County, about six or seven miles from Lewisburg. Dad had done so much hard work on the rough place we had moved from, he cleared a lot of land but just small patches and rough and rocky he got tired of trying to make a living on it the boys were getting big enough to help. So he decided to make the move, I remember living where we were all were born until the fall of 1926 when we moved. Dad hired a man from Lewisburg to drive us to look at the new farm on the Claymour and Russellville Road. It's called Highland Lick Road now. This was the first time I had ridden in a car. Dad rented the farm and we moved to a big two storey frame house that had eight or ten rooms. It was located near to the Todd and Logan County line near Antioch Church. They told us the house was haunted, but I never saw anything. My mother was really terrified especially when Dad was gone. She would hear noises and see lights outside the windows. but bad luck hit the next two years were extremely wet the land was flat so the crops drowned out. I started to school at Green Ridge Country School, I was 5 years old, Thelma Gorrell Deason was my first teacher. She came by our house in her buggy & horse drawn. I rode with her sometimes it was about 2 miles. Woodrow and I walked some. Roy and Raymond went to High School at Gordonsville for a while. Overa Hadden was my 2nd grade teacher. The fall of 1928 after 2 bad crop years Dad bought a farm from Jim Lyons (Dura Wrights Daddy). I believe it was around 150 acres. He sold the farm on Duncan's Ridge and borrowed the money to finish paying for this farm. It had a pretty new frame house (white with green shudders) and 2 dog houses on the roof. My room was upstairs the rooms weren't finished, but it was o.k. alfully cold in winter. Had a big chimney up through the middle of the house and it would snow around the chimney. Of course the depression hit soon after that. It was terrible, no money for anything, but we never got hungry or too cold they cut plenty of wood for the big fireplace. Dad could not make enough money to pay the interest on the farm for 3 or 4 years. But the man that had the note didn't push him, so when he did make money enough to pay very little each year. They put out corn, wheat tobacco, and milked three or four cows. and about 100 hens and mother would raise forty or fifty turkeys. So when we sold cream and eggs would buy sugar, coffee, salt just the staples, raised, big garden and truck patch, dried peas and beans, pop corn, peanuts. Had big orchard of apples, peaches, grapes, pears, but that sure was a lot of hard work we would can fruit make jelly and preserves and dry fruit all summer. Take corn and wheat to mill for flour and meal. They also planted sugar cane, in Aug or Sept. the blades would be stripped off the cane the stalks would be put through a mill drawn by 2 mules go around and around in circle to grind the juice out of cane, then with the sorghum mill was a big long pan with a hole dug from underneath, a fire would be built under it and the juice would be cooked for hours someone would have to stand over the pan and stir and dip off the skimmings when the sorghum got thick enough it would be run out of pan into 5 gallon stands then put into 1 gal buckets to sell. Maybe sell for $2.00 or $3.00 a gallon, which was pretty good money then. We would also raise enough potatoes to eat all winter put them in a dirt hill in the barn, so they wouldn't freeze, also raised sweet potatoes, would have plenty to eat, didn't know what a hamburger or pizza was then. Maybe got a soft drink or popcycle once in a great while. In the winter we would make molasses taffy and pull it until it turned light. Popped pop corn over open flames, bake bread, sweet potatoes on the hearth with hot coals of fire on cooked dried beans in iron kettle on heart. It all taste good on a cold night, also hot corn bread and sweet milk, canned peaches with real cow cream and hot biscuit with real butter and molasses. We would have plenty of meat also, Dad would butcher 4 or 5 hogs can the tenderloin, ribs, sausage, liver and sometimes backbones would salt down and cure the rest, smoke sausage, when the meat was salted down about 6 weeks would take up and smoke for days, the hams, shoulders, bacon and jowls also made souse out of the scrapy parts, and rendered lard out of the fat had to cut it up and cook the grease out of it in a big black kettle. The part that was left after the lard was strained, was called cracklins. They were good to put in cornbread, wasn't anything wasted. After we moved I went to school at Gorrell school. I liked to go real well, we had to memorize a bible verse every morning, everyone recited one before we started our classes. Mother would fix our lunch in a little tin lunch box, biscuit and sausage, home made cookies, peanut butter and crackers and maybe once in a while, graham crackers and hipolite marshmallow creme. My, did it taste good! She also made fried pies a lot, dried peach or dried apply or maybe just plain butter and sugar in the center. When I got home from school I would be so hungry, we would chase to the kitchen look in the warming closet of stove or stick our head under the tablecloth that was spread over the dishes and food on table, sometimes she would have a boiled ham hock. I would get a green onion and piece of corn bread and that was so good. In the spring my dad and the boys would go to the woods and cut enough wood for the cook stove to last all year. They would rick it up across the back yard. Before we cooked a complete meal, we would have to build a fire in the Kitchen Range. I learned to cook at an early age, while my mother was doing lots of other chores, doing laundry, feeding the chickens and separating milk. She poured milk in the top of the cream separator and waited for the cream to rise to the top then let the milk out of a faucet at the bottom. The cream was taken to cream station and sold twice a week. Selling the cream and eggs would pay for what we didn't raise and had to buy. We usually walked about three miles to carry the eggs in a basket to Arthur Wells' country store. We had to do lots of hard work but we had lots of good times together as a family. We would play checkers, dominos and guessing games after supper. Cooking washing and ironing for all the family kept my mother busy. We had no conveniences. Everything was done the hard way. The clothes were washed in a washtub on a washboard rubbed by hand. The white clothes were boiled in a big black kettle outside then they were hung on the clothesline. When it was real cold, they would freeze on the line. My hands would get numb and I ran for the fire when I came inside. Source: "Wife's Genealogy" by Thelma Arlene Harris Mallory 29 Sep 1990 and interviews with Thelma Arlene Harris Mallory October and November 2003. Transcribed by Jo Violette and edited by Gary Violette.
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