HATE THAT SONG

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That Song; “Doing what comes naturally,” I just hate that song. It isn’t that it’s not true it’s because they’s making fun of us.

Someone asked me, “How far back in the woods do you-all live?” and I told them if we lived any further back we would be coming out on the other side.

There were two kinds of people who live where we did, the hill folks and the bottom land-ers. You could tell the difference by looking at their sheets hanging on the clothes line. The hill folks sheets were reddish on the bottom (the red dirt don’t wash out) and the bottom land-ers sheets were dark brown, they had better soil than the hill folks.

A city feller asked me why the sheets were dirty on the bottom and I told him it was because the men folks didn’t wash their feet very often. They figured that they would just get dirty the next day and it would just be a waste of good soap.

We always knew when it was time to buy new overalls. It was when the patches would fall off because the cloth was too rotten to hold the stitches. New overalls were only wore to church until the old ones would fall apart when they were washed then the new ones became regular.

There were a lot of bootleggers where we lived. The sheriff always left them alone as long as they dropped off a jug each week at his place.

Family planning was a must, the girls were expected to be married by the age of fifteen (or sooner) and could cook as good as their momma. When the boys got a wife they just built another room on the main house.

Most all of us got a good education and some who were sickly even made it to the fifth grade cause they couldn’t work it the fields til they were older.

The girls didn’t wear their step-ins except on Sunday when they went to the Pentecostal church or they were wrasslin, the boys liked to wrestle the girls, it were something like courting.

The men wore long johns in the winter and nothing in the summer. We took baths in the summer as soon as the river warmed up enough.

In the winter we would play a game where you would be blindfolded and see if you could tell who it was by smelling them.

In the winter there were not as many chores so making hominy was not only good for food it was also entertaining. It took two or three days to make it depending on whether you had some lye or had to use ashes to get the skins off. Momma would fry some side meat and use the fat to cook the hominy in.

The lowest form of humans was the chicken thieves. The chicken was a staple for us. We raised a lot of chickens. We ate their eggs and would fry the young ones on Sunday, then when the layers got older they got stewed.

The roosters when they got old, they were thrown into the pot and boiled. It took forever to get them tender enough. The old folks couldn’t chew them so they just ate the broth and dumplings.

Flour sacks and cow feed sacks could be washed and the printing would wash off or at least most of it. They were used for making different kinds of clothes. The women would buy some dye and then make them a new dress. They would use the old buttons so they had a new dress for ten cents.

I have much more I should tell you but the dogs have started to howl cause they want to go hunting and I want to go also. If I don’t get back in time for church tomorrow pappy said he would get rid of my dogs so I better make tracks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeZz6ATBncU&feature=related

This post has been linked with Tracy at Winsome Wednesday

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