Some Things My Mother Taught Me

1. Always hold your head up high. (Don't look down like you're ashamed.)
2. Girls should keep their legs together, especially when wearing a dress.
3. Be a friend to have a friend.
4. Help others by encouraging them.
5. Always pray.
6. All problems you were worried about last night are much smaller in the morning.
7. If your friends talk to you about other friends, they will talk about you, too.
8. Be careful what you say, you can't take your words back once they have been spoken.
9. Always tell the truth and you won't have anything to worry about.
10 Stand up for what is right.
11. Love yourself and be true to yourself.
12. Love your family. (Blood is thicker than water.)
13. Smile and be happy. Don't go around with a frown on your face.
14. Flowers add to happiness.
15. Singing helps uplift the spirit of everyone.

Hickory Valley School

Hickory Valley School was the nearest school for our family. It was a little over a mile. It was situated in an area that allowed lots of farm children to attend. From our farm you went up a hill and followed a path through the woods then out into a flat area which went down a small hill. The school house was one large room with a cloak room for coats, boots, and lunch pails. The students were in the first through the eighth grade.

The teacher would come from a near by town and board with us. She would stay in the "living room" or guest room. She would eat with the family at breakfast and dinner. She stayed from Sunday night or Monday morning until Friday evening.

The day started with the teacher calling the students to order. The Pledge of Allegiance was said. Someone would read from the Bible and then the Lord's Prayer was said. There would be a song or two. One song would be honoring our country and one would be a gospel song or a silly song.

The teacher would write the assignments on the blackboard for the older students. As they worked on their assignments she would call the first grade to the front of the room, where she introduced words and pictures. She would go over and over the words to instill their meaning and begin to teach reading. When the first grade was sent to their seat the next grade would be called and the older students who had finished their assignments could help the younger students. So this process went on until lunch time.

At lunch the students could eat outside in the warm weather. Everyone carried their lunch. Usually they brought leftover biscuits and ham or peanut butter and crackers. Many brougth vegetables or fruit to go along with their biscuits. After eating the students played softball, tag, or hide and seek. After an hour the bell called the students back to class. The process of teaching Geography, English, or Math continued.

In the winter the teacher would pay a boy student to go early and build a fire in the stove. The students would sit around the stove and keep warm.

The older boys would go to the spring for water which was kept in the cloak room. Each student brought their own drinking cup to use. The water bucket had a dipper with which they dipped the water into their personal cup.

I'm sure this seems like a crude way to learn by today's standards,but it worked to educate the students in those days. This is where my four brothers and four sisters started their education. The oldest five finished the eighth grade there.

I was only four and wanted to go to school so bad that my mom let me go with my brothers and sisters one day. The walk was so long and the day was even longer. I never asked to go again until I was five and we had moved to another farm where the school was a little closer.

Farm Animals

Living on a farm required a lot of animals to meet the needs of a large family. All of the animals were important. Since my dad carried the mail a horse was very important to him as he rode the fifteen miles or more each way to town to pick up the mail from the train.

We also had a pair of mules which pulled the wagon on days he took the wagon to deliver packages on the rural route. The mules also pulled the plow for breaking up the ground for planting crops. They pulled the bush hog for mowing hay or weeds. They hauled the wagon loaded with hay, tobacco, corn, or other farm produce.

The cows were very important as we relied on them for fresh milk and butter. We usually kept five or six cows. While some were busy calving the others were being milked. After breakfast each morning, mom and the boys would go to the barn to feed and milk the cows. In the summertime the cows were milked outside near the spring. The milk was brought to the house and strained into clean buckets or milk jugs and then placed in the spring to keep cool in the summer or stored in the cool of the house in the winter. The same process was done in the evening so the cows were milked twice daily. The cream would rise to the top of the milk and mom would scoop the cream off to make butter. She would leave some cream to make the milk rich and tasty. Some milk went through a separator, which was cranked by hand and somehow separated the cream from the milk. Sometimes mom sold the cream to the produce store in Mt. Vernon. The churn was a white stoneware jug with a round board top and a spindle that went inside to go up and down until the cream was turned to butter. Sometimes the butter took twenty minutes or more to make. My job was churning when I was old enough. We usually churned every five days. The butter was lifted off the milk and the milk was then buttermilk, which was used in making bread or for baking or drinking.

We raised pigs for pork. The pigs had to be fed twice a day. Often we had a sow who gave birth to ten piglets. We would sell some pigs and keep two for slaughtering in November. The meat from the pigs was cut into bacon, hams, loins, and ribs. Some of the meat was salted and hung in the smokehouse for curing. My mom cooked some immediately and then canned some. The fat was cooked and lard was rendered from it. We used the lard for cooking and baking. What was left from rendering the lard was called cracklings which were stored to snack on.

Chickens were a necessary animal. Mom loved her chickens. She always bought baby chicks in the spring and raised them for fryers. We had lots of fried chicken. We also raised some for laying eggs. We ate eggs every morning, so you can see their importance. Mom would let some hens "set" in the summer. She would put twelve eggs under the hen in a nest and wait for them to hatch. This way there was always fresh chicken. The chickens were important for feathers for filling pillows and feather beds. The feathers were saved and kept clean until there was enough to make the necessary bedding.

Sometimes mom raised geese but she thought they were too messy to keep all the time. We also had sheep at different times. The wool was very helpful for making warm clothes and bedding. We always had dogs and cats. There was always a beagle or hound dog in addition to Fritz and Rover, my oldest brother's dog.
 

My Parents

My mom and dad met when they were teenagers, dad was eighteen and mom sixteen. They lived several miles from each other. Dad's older brother married mom's older sister, making the families more tied together.
Dad and mom wanted to get married when they were nineteen and seventeen but dad's mother refused to let dad marry until he was twenty one. You see he was earning a living for my grandmother and her six daughters who were still at home. I never understood why the oldest brother wasn't responsible to help the family. My dad was named for his father so maybe he felt like it was his duty and he completed his duty. He was twenty one on the twenty second of May and married my mom on the twenty ninth of May. My mom turned nineteen on the twenty fifth of May.

In those days everyone celebrated the life of the loved ones who had passed on by going to the cemetery on Decoration Day, the last Sunday in May. They placed  flowers on the graves. They took a dinner and had lunch after a church service in the cemetery. My mom and dad went to such a celebration and got one of the ministers there to marry them. After dating three years, they were finally married.

They made their home in a two and half room house, where there first three children were born. This house was up the hill a half mile or so from the farm house where the other six were born. My dad, with help from others built the farm house and barns.

Our parents didn't have the opportunity to get a formal education. They went to elementary school in  a one room school house. My dad was left handed and suffered so much from his teachers making him use his right hand to write. Unfortunately his hand writing suffered. He still wrote left handed in spite of his teachers trying to retrain his brain. My mother could have gone to Standard or Norm School and taught school, but she was busy helping her mother, who was always sick. She helped take care of the five younger siblings. She learned to cook, sew, and clean. My mother was never sick. She called herself a "work horse". I believed she learned a lot from her sickly mother who out lived her. (Mom died of a blood clot to the heart after a broken hip. I was twenty five when she died.)

My parents were very talented in singing. My dad had a great bass voice and mom was a soprano. They sang a lot as they went about doing their work. They did a lot of singing in church. Mom played the organ.

They started the day cooking breakfast together. My dad fried the bacon or sausage and made a big skillet of milk gravy. Mom made biscuits, fried eggs, cooked oats, and made a big pot of hot cocoa. When breakfast was ready they prayed aloud together. Usually their prayers awakened us children or maybe we were just waiting to hear them pray. Sounds like a big breakfast, remember they were farmers or hard workers so they got a good start by being filled up with food. The day began with chores and then designated work.

Our Farm Home

Our house was a simple two story frame house. The outside was painted white. There was a porch across the front. There was always a swing and chairs on the porch with many pots of brightly blooming flowers. There were two front doors. One went into the family room which also served as my parents bedroom. as you entered that door, the stairs were to the right. There was a fireplace along the wall. There was one window in front and another on the outside of the room. The room consisted of an iron double bed, dresser, oak closet, chairs, and a sofa. Mom had a rocking chair and dad a big stuffed chair. The door straight ahead led to the dining room which was filled with a big oak table and chairs with a hutch and buffet. If you went to the right instead of going into the dining room you entered the guest room which contained a bedroom suit as well as an overstuffed mohair couch and chair. This room contained a fireplace in back of the one from the family room. This room is where the other front door opened into. From the dining room to the right was a bedroom which my two oldest brothers shared. It had an outside door. From the left of the dining room was the kitchen which contained a huge warm morning wood burning stove for cooking and heating. There were cabinets for dishes and a pie safe for storing dry foods and cans. There was an outside door which opened to a path that led to the spring and smoke house.

The stairs led to two bedrooms . Each contained a bed and a chest. I shared one with two sisters while my two other brothers shared the adjoining room. The chimney from the fireplace went between the two bedrooms and we got heat from it in the winter. We did not have an indoor bathroom so we carried a slop jar upstairs at night so we didn't have to go out to the bathroom.

Our home was located on a one hundred sixty acre farm. The house was in the valley with land surrounding it on all sides. To the Northwest of the house was a big orchard. The chicken house was to the Southwest in back of the house. The barn where the animals were kept was to the North beyond the orchard. The big barn was half way up a hill beyond the animal barn. That barn is where tobacco was hung to dry in the fall as well as where extra hay was stored, including the farm machinery. To the East was pastureland or fields for growing hay. Farther East was the post offfice and general store, which we could see from our house. Where my dad started and ended the daily mail route. Farther to the West was the elementary school where my brothers and sisters attended. It must have been a mile and a half through the woods and fields. To the South and across the meadow and a big ditch was a sink hole, where we were not allowed to go. It was well fenced to keep the animals out. The garden was grown between the orchard and the house. Often watermelons and cantelopes were planted across the driveway and up the hill toward the corn or tobacco patch. We always had pumpkins, both pie and large ones. Mom loved to grow squash and gourds. The spring was below the house. It was fed from underground and was surrounded by rocks to keep animals out. My dad made a shelf for storing milk, butter, and other perishables in the summer. It was also our refrigerator, just a few steps from the kitchen.

There was much love in this old house. We each felt like we were only children because of the love our parents gave us. Although it wasn't fancy, it was comfortable and it was home. Mom decorated with wall paper and scarves as well as lamps and doillies. She hung frilly curtains from the windows and doors.

My Mother, A Farm Wife

I was born the ninth child. My mother had all nine of us at home with the help of a Mid-Wife. I'm told that my older brothers and sisters were sent to my dad's mother's house when it was time for my birth. My dad took them in a wagon as he went for the Mid-wife in late November. My two oldest sisters were twenty and eighteen. They had jobs in town and no longer lived at home. In those days the mothr stayed in bed for a week after the birth of a baby. I'm sure mom directed the care of the house from her bed. She said I was a good baby because she would feed me and change me and put me in the play pen while she did her chores.

Every Monday was wash day. She had the boys and dad carry water to the outside fireplace and put in a kettle to boil. She mixed the boiling water with the cold water and suds and scrubbed the clothes on a wash board and then rinsed them and hung them on the clothes line. This was a big chore as she washed sheets every week as well as all the work clothes and school clothes.

Tuesday was the day to iron. She even ironed sheets and pillow cases as well as starching shirts, aprons, and dresses for ironing. In addition to the washing and ironing she managed to cook a meal at noon. Often we had workhands on the farm, which required feeding. In the summer she tended the garden after it was plowed. Everyone helped to seed and plant the vegetables. She did most of the other work with some help from the boys to plow and weed.

The summer was time for canning or drying fruits and vegetables. Mom always canned and preserved plenty for the winter. In the winter she would make quilts. Not just one or two but many. There was a big quilting stand which she sat up in the family room. Every night and some afternoons she would quilt. I loved to sit under the quilt and play with my dolls or paper dolls.

Mom was a wonderful seamstress. I would look in a catalog and find a dress I liked and she would cut a pattern out of paper and sew the dress. The dresses always looked professional. She made clothes for some of the less fortunate people in our area. She loved to embroidery and made beautiful pillow cases and dresser or chest scarves. In addition, she had a dry sense of humor, which we came to adore.

My mother was a loving, hard working, talented woman. I admired her very much. She loved her children and husband to the utmost.

My Dad, the Postman

I was always so excited for my dad to get home from carrying the mail. I would look for a little bag of candy or a pack of gum. But most of all I would run into his arms and get a big hug and kiss. He would pick me up and swing me around and ask how I was and then go find Mama to give her a hug and kiss. Of course he would greet the other children in the same way, but I thought I was special, being the youngest. I was two or three at the time.

My dad began carrying the mail when he was sixteen years old. His dad had a postal contract when he died of pneumonia. My dad fulfilled the contract, therefore supporting his mother and sisters. Dad continued to bid on the contract for carrying the mail for many years. The route was over a sixteen mile stretch of rough roads which were unpaved. He had to ride a horse with saddlebags, rain or snow and protect the mail. Once or twice a week he took a wagon to carry the packages to the rural area. Most people ordered their clothes from catalogs which were then shipped to their homes by way of the postal service. Every spring people ordered baby chicks which had to be delivered right away. Many people ordered saddles or riding gear or other items for their farm.

Twice a year the large catalog companies sent out their big catalogs. These were always heavy and required a wagon. The main catalogs were: Sears & Roebuck, Spiegel, Aldens, and Bellas Hess (for women and children). Later J. C. Penney began mailing their catalogs.

Many people sent a grocery list by my dad to have him bring their groceries, as there were very few cars or trucks and the roads were undrivable, especially in the winter time. Sometimes the roads were so bad my dad had to walk his horse through the mud instead of riding it.

There were a few General Stores along the road to town. Some items could not be found in the General Stores. Dad was so big hearted and kind, he woudl not refuse anyone request for groceries or items from town. He was loved by everyone.

As the years passed, work began on the county roads and they were passable for automobiles. We got a truck and dad was able to carry the mail in it if it wasn't raining or snowing. Later when I was nine my dad became a postmaster and had a General Store.  Patricia Phillips Kincer; Sept. 8, 2012