As the seasons come and go my memories take me back to 1928 when I was 4 years old. My parents, Thomas Henry Whisenant and Mattie Lou King, bought a small farm near Morgan City, Alabama, and I can still remember the warm, summer day we moved like it was yesterday. My sisters Wonnie, Ronnie and I watched Mamma, Daddy and Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Ditto loaded all of our belongings on wagons to be moved. (Our brother Melvin was 1 year old and W.D. would be born later.) In those days, horse or mule drawn wagons were the only source of transportion.

  My growing up years in Morgan City was during the Great Depression,  

and money was scarce.

  We always had plenty to eat, especially molasses and sweet potatoes. We also had plenty of canned fruit and vegetables and whippoorwill peas that we grew ourselves. I remember us kids helping Mamma pick the peas. After they were picked, Mamma would tie them up in a sheet and thrash the hulls. On a windy day, Mamma would pour the peas from one sheet to another and the wind would blow the hulls away.

  We always had plenty of milkand butter since Mamma kept two cows. She would put the milk in a jug and cool it in the spring that ran close to our house. The spring also provided us with

drinking water and a place for Mamma to do the laundry. She boiled our clothes in two wash pots. Our homemade laundry detergent was chips of homemade lye soap and a little bit of lye.

  Back then we used straw mattresses to sleep on. Mamma would take down the beds every spring and scald the rails to kill the bed bugs. She cleaned the beds by replacing the old straw with fresh straw. On top of the straw mattress was another mattress made of duck and goose feathers. The spring cleaning also meant scalding the walls and scrubbing the wooden-plank floors of the house. Daddy usually

made the shuck mops for Mamma to clean with. He drilled round holes in a square boassrd with an auger for the shucks to go through. The handle was made from a sapling pole. Mamma raised her own broom straw and which she used to make brooms from. She used hot water and lye soap to mop the floors, and used her homemade broom to sweep away the rinse water.

  In our home, the room with the fireplace was used as a living room. That room also had a bed in it, and we sat in straight-back chairs. Coal oil lamps were our only source of light. Our dining room table was homemade with a

homemade bench and cane-bottomed  chairs for the kids to sit on.

  Even as young children, my brothers and sisters and I had daily chores to do. We would carry the drinking water from the spring or bring in firewood to be used in the fireplace and cook stove. We were taught at an early age to use a cross cut saw and how to split firewood.

  Growing up during the days of the Depression was not an easy task, but everyone lived about the same lifestyle as we did. Walking to school with the neighborhood kids was always so much fun. We all carried our lunch to school in a molasses or lard bucket, and carried our books in flour sacks. Mamma would pack   

homemade biscuits, a baked sweet potato, and either a fried apple or chocolate pie for our lunch. To make the chocolate pies Mamma would roll out her dough and use a saucer to cut a round crust, She would then put butter, sugar and chocolate in the crust and fold it over while pressing the edges together with a fork. Then the pies were browned in a skillet until they were done.

  All of us kids enjoyed playing along the road as we walked to and from school. We didn’t do much playing in the mornings, but had more time in the afternoons. We would often stop by the Jacksons pond and play in the water and arrive home in wet

clothes. A short distance from our house was an old dipping vat that people used one time to dip their cattle in to kill lice and ticks. When we first moved to the farm we referred to it as the “dipping vat place”, and still call it that to this day.

  Wonnie, Oveline and I are the only ones left from our family now. Melvin passed away in 1994 and W.D. died at the age of 1 in 1931. Our sister Ronnie died in a tragic accident in 1928.

  Ronnie was excited to be in her first year of school and was standing near the fireplace reading a book. Her clothes caught fire and she

panicked. She ran outside and toward the barn where Mamma was milking. Mamma was just coming out of the barn and threw a bucket of milk on Ronnie, and also rolled her around on the ground. Mamma got the fire out, but it was too late. Ronnie had already breathed the smoke and fire from the flames and died later on that night.

  A lifetime of experiences can evoke both sweet and bitter memories. Even though the bitter ones sadden us, it is the sweet ones that I cherish most as I reflect back on my memories of the past.