1915 photograph of the Hanceville Odd Fellows organization, photo was made as the men posed in front of the Hanceville Railroad Depot. Joe Mayfields Grandfather, W. W. Dowda, is on the front row, 9th from the right.
By: Joe Mayfield
Living in the country does have its rewards, at times they may not be recognized, and sometimes it may take years before you realize just how fortunate you truly are. It is the country people that have made our nation what it is today, due to their hard work, and sacrifice, we have the best food in the world, and that is undisputed.
As a young boy growing up, my grandparents took the time to teach me how to do the much needed chores, everything from shelling corn, to milking the cow, to chopping stove wood. Now when you’re a six year old boy, sometimes you want to do other things, but my mother’s dad, Papa Dowda, would just look at me and say, “This is something we have to do,” so there it was, we had to do it.
I vividly recall, Papa Dowda telling me to go shuck some corn before he came to milk the cow, it needed to be done before dark since there was no electricity, and it was necessary to see what you were doing. For those that may not know, when you crawl into the corn crib, and start shucking it gets very dusty, so dusty that you can hardly breath, so every 15 to 20 minutes you crawl out of the crib into the hall of the barn to get some fresh air.
I always had to stop about 30 minutes before the milking began so the dust wouldn’t get into the milk, although with no more light than the old coal oil lantern gave off, you couldn’t see the dust anyway.
In the summer, after supper, and once the dishes were washed, I recall how everyone would gather on the front porch to pick the seeds from cotton, and by the end of the summer there would be perhaps half a wagon of just cotton seed on the porch, this saved having to purchase that much cotton seed when it was time to plant the following year. People saved their seed back then, whether it was watermelon, okra, corn, peas, or anything that had turned out well once it was fully grown.
Another chore was the chopping of wood, wood was needed year round for the cook stove, but we always chopped extra so that we could put some in the wood shed for the winter.
I don’t know why, but it just seems that the winters were colder back then, perhaps going to the well for water, and dropping the bucket into the well, while the wind was blowing across the field in your face, maybe that had something to do with it, but turning the handle to bring up the water when it felt as though your ears were about to fall off due to the cold, made you look forward to getting back inside to stand next to the heater.
There was one thing about the wind that comes howling in the winter, (howling is when the wind makes a noise that sounds like a train, then it gets louder, then fades, then comes back again). The major reason for the howling is usually due to cracks in the walls, and that was the case at Mama and Papa Dowda’s. The main room, and the bed rooms had cracks in the walls, often times you could see day light through a place in the wall, then you simply packed strips of tow sacks, or some pages out of the Sears Catalog into the cracks, more times than not this solved the problem.
From time to time there would be a place around the base of the wall that could not be detected until night time, so if the wind came howling at night, the flame of the coal oil lamps would flicker up and down, indicating there was a breeze coming in from some where, then all you had to do was pick up the lamp and move it around the room until the flame really jumped up and down, then you knew the crack was in that place of the floor. Again, tow sack strips, or some paper could be pushed into the spot, and once it filled the place in, the wind couldn’t get through. Even after all this work however, the sound could still be heard.
When Saturday nights rolled around, it was time to listen to the Grand Ole Opera on the battery powered radio, back then, there was no FM radio, the government had not changed the law limiting the distance an AM station could broadcast. So everyone is in the living room, with a good fire going, rocking chairs are rocking, Grandpa Jones is telling his jokes, then all of a sudden, The wind comes a howling, and you miss what was said.
Published U.S. Legacies February 2006
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