My Family: Chapter 7

Once in a while, Mom would give us sweet milk and cornbread as a treat for supper,it was the milk that was the treat. We would have nothing else and there were never forks on the table, we ate with a spoon. Dad might have eaten with a fork on a Sunday but I only ever remember seeing him eat with a spoon. Mom was forever telling me to stop raking my teeth across the spoon. Every day, on a weekday, for breakfast we would have: gravy, eggs, biscuits, jelly, Karo syrup, and apple butter. For supper we had: soup beans, fried potatoes, and cornbread. On Sundays we might have fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, and cornbread (during the summer she would add corn, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, cabbage, and noodles). Sometimes we have canned tomatoes with noodles which had sugar in them. In the summer, we go with Mom (taking a knife and a poke) to the mountain to hunt for poke greens for our supper. Our diet never varied, this was all the food we ever ate. This one time mom had choose which chicken she wanted for dinner, she caught it by the neck and was ringing its neck when she felt it break she let go so it would flop around, instead the chicken got up and run under the house, mom was surprise  she said that she could have swore that she felt its neck break she said that she wasn't going after it because it was meant to live so she picked another chicken
 we told her that she was wasting her time that we wouldn't eat any of it after watching her kill it, she got mad and said it was all in our head. About two weeks later the chicken came out from under the house and it walk with a crooked head and die of old age.
 We ate and spoke differently then the North does, here are some words that we used: A butter knife was called a case knife, a bag was called a poke, and soda is called pop.

Poodie (me) age 8

Here I am at about eight years old and things haven’t change much at home, Dad still drank and worked the Hoot Owl shift. Mom joined the church so she doesn't drink anymore, but they still fight. I heard Mom tell Dad as soon as her girls were old enough to take care of themselves, she was going to pay him back for every wrong he was doing her.  I tell you it was wonderful not to have her drinking, but I heard her cry a lot when Dad would leave on Friday after work and we wouldn't see him again until Sunday night.
 
Dad's niece and her family lived in front of us on the other side of the railroad tracks next to the main road.  They lived next door to a lady that every one knew was crazy.  She would come out of her house cussing and saying she was going to dig a grave.  One time while I had been over at my cousin's house playing, she and I met on the railroad tracks (I just happened to leave my cousin’s house at the same time as she left her house) she had a garden pick in her hands and this time it was her husband’s grave she was going to dig.  I got scared and ran home screaming, I made it to the front door and fell in.  Dad picked me up and asked what was wrong,  I told him the crazy lady was going to get me. He said to stay out of her way and we watched her go up the railroad tracks, all the while hitting the ground with the pick and cussing. There was a salesman at our house that day, he was trying to sell mom a sewing machine.  He asked Dad if someone was going to do anything. Dad said no and said her husband would take care of her as soon as he came home.

Mom bought the sewing machine but as soon as she put the needle through her finger, she got rid of it. Dad's niece took the sewing machine and finish paying for it. Mom sew by hand, making us dresses out of the flour and corn meal bags.

It was about this time that the neighbor, next door to my cousin's, shot and killed his wife. They were a black couple who had been drinking and got in a fight. He chased her around the outside of the house with a gun and shot her. He was gone about five years and after he came home, he never drank another drop of whiskey. His house and job were still waiting for him when he came home.