Things Remembered

The holidays were a time of reflection and a time for me to take a short hiatus from writing. Yesterday I heard a song by the group Alabama entitled "High Cotton." It is a song about growing up in rural Alabama. But the similarities between their experience and the days of my youth in Rural Oklahoma are simply amazing.

The song resurrected memories I thought were long dead and buried. It is amazing how something so simple can conjure images that have been dormant for decades, hidden securely away in the dark recesses of my mind. It is not a simple magician's trick that I so readily remember the humble circumstances of my youth. These are events that are vividly stamped upon my soul.

The first image was of an old four room shack with cracks in the walls wide enough to throw a cat through. A wood stove for heat. In the winter there was always a quilting frames hanging from the ceiling. Sleeping to the soothing sound of the gentle rain drops falling on our tin roof. Drawing water from the well for drinking, cooking and bathing. We didn't have indoor plumbing. The entire family would take their turn bathing in a number 3 wash tub on Saturday night with water heated on the stove. As I recall, we never knew we were poor until Mr. Johnson's "Great Society" informed us that we were living well below the poverty line. We always talked about helping the poor and we gave to those in need. But since we did not consider ourselves poor we never thought about needing help. I guess we were simply to poor to know that we were poor.

I remember milking the cows, feeding chickens, hogs and the cattle. We butchered hogs after the first freeze of the winter. There was always a garden to be planted in the spring. We gathered poke salad and other wild greens that grew close to the barn. There were, what seemed to me at the time, these massive Blackberry vines. We picked the bounty from the vines that left your hands and arms scratched from the thorns and hands stained from over ripe berries. We canned Blackberry jelly but best of all was when Momma would make a Blackberry cobbler for Sunday dinner.

Sunday dinner was a treat. I remember meals being a special time for our family. But Sunday dinner was something we looked forward to all week, beans cornbread or biscuits, fried chicken, deviled eggs, mashed potatoes and gravy followed by piping hot Blackberry cobbler. Sometimes we would have the preacher over for Sunday dinner. Company for Sunday dinner was always a welcomed change since we lived so far out in the country that visitors were rare. When you live more than 10 miles from the nearest paved road not many people just drop by.

On Sunday morning the whole family would load up in the old station wagon for the trip into town for church. We always dressed in our Sunday best. The boys in clean jeans and white or dress shirts, Momma and sister in their dresses. Shirts and dresses were often homemade. Momma would sew them from nice material that had once been either feed or flour sacks. Daddy would dress up in his blue Sunday dress overalls and white shirt.

I find myself amazed(even though i shouldn't) at how important Sunday's were to our humble existence. Driving 15 to 20 miles to church was a way of life me back then. Maybe that's why I think nothing of driving 20 miles to church even to this day.

I am fascinated by how much more complicated life has become as I have entered the last quarter of my life and as I prepare to shuffle off this "mortal coil." But I am also reminded of the things that are important to me in this life. These are attitudes and characteristics ingrained in me and which come from these early formative years. At the end of the day or near the end of my life here is what I find important:

Faith, Family and Fellowship.

What do you think?

Just somethings to think about along the way.

Bob