My
dad's upbringing was filled with crops to be tended, cows to
be milked, and wood to be cut. He was the 4th of 10
children, who, when not working in the fields at home, would
work for .75 a day, if they could find the work and they
were grateful for it. Ever see the movie with Henry Fonda
called, "The Grapes of Wrath"? Yes, a great one. My family's
history is not that far off the mark from that movie. Even
the final destination of Fresno, CA in the movie was mighty
close. I have family there. Pickers, they were. Crops and
such was the lifestyle. Times were hard. If the crops didn't
come in, you were in trouble. You grew what you ate, fed the
cows that gave you milk and didn't have running water in the
house or a refrigerator. Only in the later years did they
have an ice box. It sat out on the porch WHEN they had ice.
Salt was the preservative of choice. If you had meat at all,
it would usually be chicken, (freshly killed by ringing its
neck) or pork, from a hog that you had butchered in "hog
slaughtering season." This was done when it was starting to
get cooler, in October or November, so the meat wouldn't
spoil so quickly, and you had more time to salt it down
and/or smoke it in the smokehouse. The Allsup's rarely had
beef because they had dairy cattle, Jersey's and/or
Guernsey's. No beef cattle. Carbohydrates were a big part of
their diet and you can understand why. Grains and milk gave
them biscuits and gravy, etc... There were beans, and
legumes galore. They had a huge garden ( 2 acres) of fruit
trees, corn, tomatoes, nuts, etc... They also had berries
growing down at the bottom land by the creek, on the North
end of the 80 acres. Cotton? Yes, they grew cotton. This was
their major crop for making a living. Hand picked it all,
for selling, to make through the year. You went to a school
that housed multiple grades in the same room. There were
Indian residents that often resented you and the feeling was
mutual. Though, this was not the case with all of them. It
was mainly between the older generation. You'd shoot a
neighbors livestock if he repeatedly let them wander into
your feed crops. The reason you went barefoot so often was
that if your shoes were worn out - you had to wait till the
crops came in to get a new pair of shoes. Ten kids, two
bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room. Bathroom? No way. An
outhouse? For a good number of years, no. Just go out behind
the barn or the wood pile. When they finally did get an
outhouse it was a "one holer" with no pit beneath it. Just a
bucket that occasionally was emptied by one of the kids,
before papa had to tell you to do it. Toilet paper? Try a
corn cob or a tree leaf. A Sears Roebuck catalogue was great
for this use. Newspapers were scarce, but so much more
absorbent than the slick pages of the catalogue. Outside was
a smokehouse and a barn. Tales of Great Grandma Davis,
lifting the back of her skirt and "squirting number 2" on
the wood pile makes for good dinner time conversation, don't
you think? Henry Fonda in Grapes of Wrath? Not too far off
the mark at all.
Take
a look below at my Grandma in 1936, bringing my Grandpa Bob
Allsup some water, while he was plowing the fields in
Oklahoma. (Please forgive the slow load time due to me
insisting on having a large pictures.) This is the same
Grandma Nettie Allsup that I referred to in my "Blues Roots
Schpiel," concerning her picking cotton with a kid on her
back. Just stories, eh? It's so real you can almost feel the
Oklahoma red clay on your bare feet. You could easily add
some miserably hot, dry weather with a little wind and dust
to give you the feel of things. Life went on, though. They
were happy and "making it." Grandpa? He was 37 when he
married my Grandma, who was only 15. She always told her
kids she was 16, like it made a big difference. It did to
her.
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