Re: Things remembered

Posted by JerryS on October 19, 2011 at 22:33:31 from (65.0.40.190):

In Reply to: Things remembered posted by Popinjohn on October 19, 2011 at 15:29:38:

My memories of growing up in the rural deep south in the mid-40s and 50s are similar to those of some of you guys. I was raised on a couple of hundred acres settled by my great-grand-pap when he returned from the Great Unpleasantness, and I grew up in the same house my mother did, one built by my GGF in the late 1800s. It had 12-foot ceilings, no running water, electricity that was added after the fact (the lights were a single bulb, hanging from the ceiling). Heat was fireplace and a couple of butane heaters. No source of heat at bedtime, which made no difference to my brother and me as we slept on a screened ‘sleeping porch’ year-round.
We grew, caught or killed just about everything we ate, but we ate well. My clothes were the ones my brother outgrew, though sometimes my aunt sewed me some nice feed sack shirts. My time was pretty much dictated by the fact that we had a small dairy; up at 4:30 a.m., milk, catch the bus to school and back, and milk again before homework. Every day. Every day. Had the radio with local country music (the Louisiana Hayride was staged here) plus all those wonderful old radio mysteries, dramas and comedies.
On Saturdays it was a tradition: ALL the country folk would get up early and head to our little town, where they would loiter all day long, shopping a little but mostly visiting with their neighbors. We’d join ‘em after milking. The kids would go to the drugstore and read all the funny books, and then go to the variety stores and handle all of the toys and other interesting stuff until movie time. You could catch a double feature (the western was always first) and get popcorn and a coke for 30 cents. Then it was time to go home and milk. Sometimes I’d ride home in the back of a mule-drawn wagon driven by Wes, the old black gentleman who sharecropped on our place.
Sunday mornings (after milking) found us in an 1800s Baptist church heated with two pot-belly stoves. Musical accompaniment to our hymns was provided by old foot-pedal organ. At some point they added ceiling fans; they stirred the hot air some, but primarily they just batted the hundreds of wasps that for some reason were always hovering overhead. After church my uncle would sometimes open up the old board/batten sawmill company store across the road (metal signs all over the outside, a glass –cylinder gas pump out front). There I would treat myself to an Orange Crush or Grapette and a pink-icing Stage Plank.
Oh, to do it all over again---for a little while. I had a great growing-up, and I think about it when I look at all these clueless, directionless, irrelevant numbskulls who are trying to find meaning and purpose in their lives by camping out in a park or doing any of a number of other pointless and purposeless things that this generation of primarily big-city young people seem to occupy or distract themselves with these days. Yes, those were the ‘good ole days’. I wonder what this generation will look back on and consider their ‘good ole days’.

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