Upon reading in an edition of Mature Years that a perfect Christmas gift would be the story of a grandmother's life reflecting what life was like during the first half of the twentieth century. I decided to try it; perhaps I will not completely "bare" my soul because as is true of most people I have my painful memories and I do not wish to relive them and besides, I am not writing an autobiography for publication. I am simply going to put down my memories of life as it was lived in my generation on a farm and how different it was from yours. I hope not to make it so detailed that it becomes a bore to read. If I seem a little conceited sometime, forgive me, but I want to stress the positive side of my life instead of the negative and certainly there were both sides as there are in anyone's life.
A lot of family background concerning my family heritage can be found in "The History of the Cook Family".
My parents had the pleasure of welcoming me into their home one summer day in
1919 very near to the end of World War One. Of course I was born at home and
perhaps my parents were not too happy to find out they had another daughter.
They already had five. The small house I was born in was no longer in existence
when we moved to Shiner in 1973 but my older sisters showed~ me where it had
stood which was about a half-mile from our present home in Terrace West. Of
course my earliest memories do not include the first three years of my life
but I was often teased by my sister Mary that I had freckles because I was raised
on cow's milk. Our mother was in the hospital with a severe case of shingles
and my grandmother Cook had died in the flu epidemic. I was left in the care
of my Aunt Emma Flessner (my father's sister) who was a close neighbor. I don't
remember living with them but I know that I was always a favorite of the Flessner
family who must have gotten some pleasure out of caring for a baby. I still
have a dish my Aunt Emma gave me when I visited with them in Yorktown for a
weekend while I was attending college as was my cousin, Leslie.
When I was about three years old we moved to what we called "Kloesels" place. My parents were tenant farmers and they rented the Kloesel farm which was located about six miles from Moulton in the Komensky community. My earliest memory begins there, perhaps because it was a new event in my life. The first time I saw the house I was carried in by one of my older sisters. She set me down in a wide hail with a pine flour which was painted yellow. The wide hail divided the parlor and our spare room. Although how a family of twelve people could have a spare room is beyond imagination, but it was a room which was strictly kept for guests. Our parents and the youngest children shared a bedroom and the rest of the family excepting grandpa who lived with us (he had a small room off the porch) all shared the second story. It was floored but not finished out and was not divided into rooms so no one had any privacy. Most of the family activity was concentrated in the kitchen and dining rooms. The dining room was used to eat and study in as well as other activities such as domino games. It was the only room in the house which was heated in the winter time excepting the wood burning stove in the kitchen which was used for cooking. We had no indoor plumbing and no running water. Water was earned into the house in buckets. Our outdoor toilet was located far enough from the house to prevent odors from permeating to the living quarters. Having to relieve ourselves at night was far from fun. We sometimes used a chamber pot when the weather was bad but we did not like to clean them so as children we got up and usually squatted as close to the house as we could. My father always made his way to the outhouse but my mother used the chamber pot. We had no toilet paper either. We used the Sears & Roebuck catalogue not only for much of our shopping but also as a substitute for toilet paper. Everybody did. The house we lived in would have been considered a shack now but at that time was as large as or larger than most houses in the neighborhood.
The move from Shiner to this house was done in wagons drawn by four horses with neighborhood friends assisting. Moving was quite a chore because not only was there furniture to move but also cows, calves, horses, chickens, turkeys, geese, hogs, dogs, cats etc. and also the food for them which would have to last until the next harvest.
Beside the house all farms had a group of outbuildings, a barn to store food for the farm animals and poultry, a buggy house to store the seldom used old buggy and the farm implements, a car house (now called garage) to store the Model "T" Ford, a cotton seed house to store cotton seed for the next planting, a smoke house to store and preserve the hams, bacon and sausage, a wash house in which to store laundry (tubs, lye soap, bluing and rub boards). There was also a corn crib for corn as well as stables for horses, pens for hogs and cattle. Caring for and cleaning all these buildings (a number under one roof) as well as feeding and tending the animals and poultry took a lot of time not to mention gardening and canning vegetables and fruits. Farmers raised almost all of their food, buying only flour, sugar, spices and seasonings. We seldom bought a loaf of bread and it was a real treat to get a bowl of corn flakes. A box of corn flakes cost 15 cents. We did buy oatmeal and cream of wheat quite often. Our breakfasts usually consisted of cornbread, sometimes white bread, eggs, bacon and molasses. Farmers also spent a lot of time growing and harvesting cotton to sell and corn and grain to feed the animals.
Farm chores kept everyone busy during different seasons of the year but we still had time to play. We had no close neighbors to play with but we had each other including our retarded brother who was a wonderful playmate. We loved him very much because he remained a child, mentally. I think one of the saddest sounds I ever heard was his crying which he seldom did. We had few toys but we did not miss them. We played games, namely tag, hide and seek, kick the tin can, and many others which we all took part in. We made balls out of old cotton stockings stuffed with paper (our volley ball). We used canes for stick horses, old bottles for our hospital patients, our "Barbie dolls" were paper dolls cut from the Sears and Roebuck catalogue as was our toy furniture and of course we made mud pies and made cows out of cucumbers and match sticks. We seldom played in the house, but we didn't need to, there were plenty of outbuildings to play in, including the barn where we played in the hay. We also played in the attic where a stove pipe gave us some warmth in the winter time and under the house in the summer. That was the coolest place we could find.
We also had all the farm animals for pets as well as dogs cats and kittens. Once my father brought home a white rabbit with pink ears. We were very excited about our new pet. That evening we put it into a chicken coop for the night and the next morning when we went of feed our new pet we found that the dogs had gotten into the coop and killed it. I can still remember how we cried.
It was very hard for us to face the fact that the calves and piglets would have to be slaughtered for food when they grew up but there was compensation however in the fact that there were always new baby animals to take their places. We always loved to reach under the brood hens (we sometimes had twelve or fifteen setting hens at one time) to see if the baby chicks had hatched. We sometimes got pecked by the mother hen but we loved to see the fluffy baby chicks. After the eggs had all hatched the mother hen would get off the nest and take her ten to fifteen baby chicks to the barnyard and teach them how to scratch for food.
Of course there was a great deal of time when we had to work in the fields which we all did from the time we were about six years old. During the summer months we all wore overalls and straw hats. I remember an occasion when I overheard a farmer who needed help with his sick animals (my father was a self educated vet. There were no educated ones) remark to my father that he sure had a bunch of little boys to which my father replied that we were nearly all girls.
Two of the most hated farm chores were tying corn tops into bundles after we
had cut them because we had to get up before five o'clock in the morning while
the dew kept the stalks pliable so that one stalk could be wrapped around a
bundle and tied. The bundles, after a drying period were taken to the end of
the corn row where a wagon drawn by horses would be loaded and taken to the
barn. The corn stalk bundles would then be stored in the barn or they were stacked
in a big stack to be used for winter feed for the animals. There was next to
no feed ever purchased. All the farmers grew their own. This part of farm work
could be completed in a few days and it would be late fall after the first northers
before the cool dry air would make the ears of corn dry enough to be removed
from the stalk and thrown into wagons to be taken to the corn crib to be stored
for food for the poultry. Shucking and shelling corn was a daily chore for the
younger children throughout the year.
The other hated chore was stripping cane. It was an exceptionally hot chore
because the cane was tall and there was no breeze reaching us. The younger children
always crawled along the cane rows and stripped the lower leaves while the older
taller ones took off the top leaves. We always chewed some of the sweet juicy
cane. That was the only pleasure in it. I never liked the rich molasses except
when used for ginger bread or ginger snaps but it was a part of every family's
diet much like mustard and mayonnaise is today. Most of it was used on cornbread
along with home made butter.
The cane was cut near the ground and then loaded on wagons and taken to a cane press where the syrup was extracted. It was then put into big iron pots and cooked until it thickened into molasses.
I have mentioned how a part of our summer was spent, but not the last part
which was spent harvesting cotton. On July 31st (My sister's Alice's birthday)
of almost every year my mother would call us together and tell us that it was
time to start picking cotton. Oh my! How we hated to hear that but we went to
get our pick-sacks which had been prepared earlier. Each of us had our own made
to fit our size. Most of them were worn out by the end of the season and new
ones had to be made each year. They were made out of cotton sacking (a light
weight canvas) with shoulder straps fitted to each person's size. The straps
were fitted around the shoulder leaving the sack open to be pulled behind the
person using it. The cotton was plucked from the bolls and put into the sack.
Most times the sacks were pulled up and down the cotton rows until they became
too heavy to pull at which time they were thrown over the picker's shoulder
and carried to a wagon usually placed in the middle of the cotton field in which
we were working. The cotton was weighed and emptied into the wagon. When there
were about fifteen hundred pounds in the wagon, our father would bring the horses
and hitch them to the wagon to pull it to the cotton gin where the cotton was
separated from the seeds and made into bales of about 500 pounds each. The bale
was then taken to the nearest town and sold. Some farmers kept some of the bales
and sold them when they needed cash instead of selling them and putting the
money in a bank. Ours always had to be sold as cash was needed to pay the bank
which had loaned us money to carry us through the winter months when there were
no cash crops. Turkeys were raised by most farmers to be sold for Christmas
money as that was when there was a market for turkeys. They couldn't be frozen
for use throughout the year as they are today.
The cotton season lasted about two months depending on the crop and the weather.
School started about the middle of September and our parents usually let us
attend from the beginning of the term, but some children did not get to start
until they weren't needed at home. We had to pick cotton though after school
and on Saturdays. It was hot dirty work. We went barefooted and the hot sand
caused us to seek the shade of the cotton plants to walk in. They were sometime
nettles to step on and wasp's nest to put our hands or not to mention back ache
since we had to stoop to pick the cotton from the bolls. Now there are cotton
picking machines to pick the cotton and I don't think any is hand picked anymore.
The days were long too. We were up before five. Cows had to be milked and animals
fed before we ate breakfast and went to the field which was usually at daybreak.
Our day ended at twilight and again chores had to be done before we could wash,
eat our supper and go to bed. Sometimes it was too hot to sleep in the house
and we slept on pallets on the porch. Sometimes there was pleasure in listening
to the farm sounds, dogs barking, windmills creaking, chickens squawking, calves
brawling and owls hooting. Sometimes the sounds were merely annoying. Morning
came much too quickly.
All this sounds like nothing you would enjoy but it wasn't all bad. You'll never know how wonderful a cool drink of water tastes are how satisfying a country dinner was until you've spent a hot day in the fields. My parents always gave us a two hour lunch break and this was play time for the younger children and rest time for the older. We often spent our play time splashing water on each other from a horse trough just as children use their plastic pools today.
I don't know what the older people thought of while going up and down the rows of the cotton patch but I spent my time fantasizing about who I was going to many, how many children I would have, what they would be like, where I would live, etc. but our world was so small that I never dreamed big enough. How could I know (I had never been out of Lavaca County) that I would someday see London, Paris the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, the Pyramids and the Sphinx in Egypt -Bethlehem and Jerusalem - and almost all of the forty-eight states. I had read about all these places in my history and geography books but to me they were in another world.
There were other things we enjoyed. Sometimes we had Negro cotton pickers and sometimes our kin folks who lived in area towns would come and help since they always needed money. There was a lot of camaraderie. We raced each other to the end of the rows and we competed with each other as to who would have picked the most pounds of cotton in a day. I never picked much more than 200 pounds in one day which was far from a record. Our hired pickers were paid by the pound and could sometimes pick over 400 lbs. in one day but to do that they had to leave behind all the crippled bolls which our parents did not allow us to do. In the evenings when it was cooler we did a lot of singing. We had a phonograph and we played our 78 rpm records over and over until we memorized all the words. Some that I remember are "The Streets of Laredo, A Group of Jolly Cowboys, Red River Valley, Father Come Home to me Now". We also learned a lot of songs from the Golden Song Book which we used each day at school.
There were no radios or TV's. I remember the first radio I ever heard. Our neighbor invited us to hear their radio, the first one in our neighborhood. I was very disappointed in it. The nearest station was WOAI in San Antonio and the static was so bad we could only hear snatches of music. It sounded much like our radios do today when there is a thunderstorm, mostly static.
Of course, there were no refrigerators either. We did have ice boxes but because we had to go seven miles in a Model "T" to get ice we seldom used them except for a few weeks in the summer. All of the food had to be canned, smoked or dried if we kept it over a day or so. Butter melted, and milk soured almost daily. We didn't have the variety of foods we have today but we had plenty of sweet cream butter, eggs, milk, homemade bread, fruit and vegetables, both canned and fresh as well as fresh chicken and smoked pork. We had beef too when someone would go into town to get it. A round steak large enough to feed us cost about 75 cents.
Farmers formed meat clubs where a farmer would butcher a calf on Friday when it was his turn and share the meat with other members of the club. Without ice, meat had to be cooked and eaten within a day or two.
No memories of bygone days would be complete without including "Prohibition days" in our community. The eighteenth amendment was passed in 1919 and was repealed in 1933 when I was about fifteen years old. As far as I know no one in our community was criticized for breaking a law which should not have been passed in the first place, so they thought. This was probably natural since most of the people living in our community were immigrants from Europe where drinking beer was a way of life. It was next to impossible to enforce the law. Nearly all of the farmers made beer (home brew) to treat their guests and each other. It must have been served warm a great deal of the time since they often had no ice. If they didn't make it they could buy it easily enough since there were numerous bootleggers in the community. My father made it in the summer time for farmers who helped each other in haying time but he seldom drank much of it. He preferred moonshine (whiskey) and he also made that. I remember a whiskey still being hidden under the corn crib. We used to pick up the loose boards in the floor and look at it sometimes although we were not supposed to know it was there in the manner of children even as of today.
My sister, Mary used to love to tease sister, Ida who was pretty much of a prude. One day they decided to drink some beer so Mary went to ask our father if we could drink from a jug. Beer was usually bottled. She came back and told Ida Daddy said we could open the jug if we drank it all since he didn't want it wasted. This was not true. When it was opened we all took a sip and decided we didn't like beer so Ida fearing our father's displeasure drank the rest of it. She was sick for two days and Mary admitted she had lied but said Ida should have known better than to believe her. To her it was funny.
Once, I remember the hated "revenuer's" came to search our farm for evidence of "breaking the law". As they were walking around the house searching for a hidden still, sister Eleanora who was in the kitchen where there was an open bottle of wine threw it out of the window because she was afraid they would find it. She threw it almost on their heads. Seeing her fright they laughed and told her they weren't looking for homemade wine or beer but whiskey. They didn't look under the corn crib so after an unfruitful search of the premises they left. To my knowledge, my father did not make whiskey but half a dozen times, but he did buy it. It was very inferior whiskey called by many "rotgut" and probably contributed to his early death at the age of fifty-six.
To get back to life as I knew it, after a busy summer we looked forward to
the beginning of the school term. I will insert memories of my first day of
school since I wrote it several years ago.