Life as I saw it.........

I don’t know what it was about being three but it seems that was the time that I remember first. When I was about three we lived in a tin top house, I think I remember the outside of the walls on the house being tin also. I loved to hear the rain at night, it would put me to sleep. We had a pitcher pump with a table built all around it, I could climb up on the table and pump the water.
We got a puppy while we lived there, we called him “Smokie” because he was part bull dog and had a white face and a brindle color body, he was my brother, Charles’ dog but he stayed with the family even after my brother went off to the CC camp. I rode with Dad, Charles and dad’s friend, Bud Hudpath, to get the puppy in Mr. Hudpath’s A Model car. The car was a boxy black car, like the cars you see in the 30's and 40's movies. When we got back home Dad put Smoky’s tail on a brick and cut his tail off with his knife and a hammer, one clean whack but I can still see it in my child's mind. Smokie was with us a lot of years but one day dad had to shoot him because he was foaming at the mouth and running around and dad was scared he had gone mad. Charles and I have talked about Smokie a lot, he was a good memory for us both.

We lived only about a quarter of a mile from the Ebenezer school house, this was where my sister Frances started to school. The house where the teachers lived caught on fire and burned one night, the flames reached high in the sky, this was my first experience with a house fire. My brother Charles and I visited the area a few years ago and the old school house was still there all grown up with weeds and stubble. This area was called “Big Creek”, it is in the area between Aubrey and Marvell, I doubt if I could go there again.
We skated on the ice in winter. We ate ice from the rain barrels until--- after the thaw when we found a dead kitten in the bottom of the barrel. Folks back then, kept barrels under the eave of the house to catch rain water to wash their hair or do the laundry, so much of the time the water that came out of the pitcher pump was rusty or foul smelling from the sulphur in the water.
About 1940 we moved south of Marianna to a farm run by the Burke family, dad share cropped. The family does the work and the boss takes his share which was most of everything. You’ve heard the old saying “I walked a mile to school everyday”? Well, in our case it was the truth, it was exactly a mile to the hard road (paved highway)where we caught the bus to Marianna to school. When it was raining or freezing dad came to the bus stop with the wagon and team and covered us with quilts to keep us warm. The Mulberry elementary school was on a hill and at recess the kids slid down the ice covered hill on sleds or paste board boxes. I don't remember many "Snow Days" from school.
When we walked to the hard road to go to school we saw the creatures of the earth,---- birds, rabbits, snakes, worms. We thought a horse hair left out in the rain would turn into a worm. My sister, Pearlie, was chased by a Blue Racer snake, when she stopped running he stopped too. We ate mulberries from the trees and we relived our day at school and thought of what homework we had to get done and about how much water we had to pump for the horses and cows. Those cows could drink and drink, Pearlie tried to run them away from the trough. Dad finally got a gasoline engine for the pump and we were so happy, but we still had to get the firewood in for the cook stove. Everything took place in the front room or the kitchen in the winter because it was cold in the bedrooms. In the summer we stayed out side when we could because it was so hot in the house. We played out side as long as we could , we played red rover, hop scotch,and we caught fireflies in a jar. The ground around the house was swept clean and all the grass was worn off, I don’t know if it was because we kept it off playing or if the grown ups kept it that way to keep back the snakes, the dogs killed a snake once in awhile. We had a China-berry tree in the yard and my sister Sue tried to eat the berries that fell so I think Mom kept the yard swept to keep up the berries. We made play houses out of sticks, we would line off our living room and kitchen and bedrooms and we left openings for our doors and windows, our furniture was a block of wood and our dishes were tin cans, we stirred up those mud pies and let them dry in the sun. We tried to get Sue to eat them. She wouldn't of course but she sure bothered us all the time, she wanted to play with us, she thought she was a big as we were, isn't that the way of sisters.