Uncle Matt and Aunt Alice
bought our little house where all my loveliest memories revolve around. When we came home from Aunt Mable, Mother’s
sister, and Uncle Carrol Sanders’ we moved into this “Mansion on the Hillside.” There wasn’t much to move; two beds, two
feather tickers, and four pillows; the old dresser; a sewing machine; and our
small library table; our books, consisting of the family bible; a few pictures;
four straight back chairs; a round table; a cooking table; the wood box; a wash
stand; Grandmother’s kitchen cabinet; two oil lamps; a few dishes and one cast
iron skillet; dinner pot; dish pan; water bucket; diaper and wash pan; Old
John, our dog; and some quilts.
I can’t say that I remember
moving into this home. I don’t even
remember being at Aunt Mable and Uncle Carrol Sanders. I had just turned three in December. But I can see it now in my mind as if it were
yesterday although; it is some fifty years later.
In the one large front room
were the front door, two side windows, and a window on the east side. The kitchen was an extension off the back of
this front room with the back door on the east end of the kitchen. Two sliding windows were on the north side of
the kitchen. Mother and Marie made this
little place shine.
The beds were both in the large
front room. We used straw mattresses and
the sweet fragrance of the fresh cut hay filled the room. On top of this was the feather ticking, which
are called feather beds. They were
sunned each week along with the quilts and pillows. We had no bedspreads. Mother used white sheets that were washed,
starched, and ironed with a flat iron heated on the wood stove.
The old dresser was adorned
with a crisp dresser scarf with tiny little flowers embroidered around the
edges, close to the dainty crocheted edging.
The old coal oil lamp sat with its sparkling clean globe. Mother would take just a pinch of wood ashes
and sprinkle them inside the globe. With
a soft rag, she would then shine the dark smoke streaks away.
Beside the lamp were a few
pictures of family members and a comb. I
do not remember a brush. There was also
a curling iron that was heated when it was put down into the globe of the lamp
where the handle held it just a few inches from the flame. The smell of burnt hair was an every Sunday
ordeal we all learned to endure.
We also had two old
trunks. One was flat topped and the
other was camel topped. It was in these
trunks that our extra clothing was kept along with our quilt tops.
The kitchen was the room of
wonder. Here around the old wood cook
stove, our Mother made the most delicious delights for the tongue and
tummy. Three meals each day were
prepared from scratch, each and every day.
A large round table sat in the
center of the room. It had four legs
that sprang out from a large pedestal that the large round top sat on. This was Grandmother Sarah “Jones” Wilson’s
table. It was around this table that we
learned and shared many stories. We
never talked about Daddy or Dewey Jr. “Mother,
tell us about when you were a little girl” was the common cry. And Mother, with a great love of her family,
shared her childhood memories with us, just as I have shared so many memories,
so many times, with our children.
Around this old table, we were
transported from that little home through our imagination, up the mighty
Mississippi on a large paddleboat, in a covered wagon with canvas, as the old
wagon trains were covered. To uncle
Alvies and Aunt Rose Wilson’s in Ann, Illinois, where we were snowed in and
spent a three week vacation. Here we ran
out of firewood for the fireplaces that heated the large rooms. The ice and snow were so deep, a wagon loaded
with wood would break through and become stuck in the snow and ice. To overcome this we watched the men make
runners for the wheels of the wagons and use them as sleds.
We went with the entire family
to the woods where we fell a tree. We
cleared the large branches and chopped and sawed an entire wagonload of
firewood, enough to keep the two families nice and warm for the remaining cold
snap. And then we traveled home.
When mother and her family
returned home, out around Blue Cane, Mother couldn’t her old cat, and she was
worried about him since they had been away for such a long time. She called and looked everywhere, but the old
tomcat did not come.
The house was cold and a hot
fire was soon made in the old boxwood burning stove, warming their chilled feet
and bones. A calm relaxing comfort came
over them: the comfort of home. Chairs
were pulled close by the roaring fire and soon the house was warm and
comfortable.
Mother was still anxious about
the old tomcat and was standing behind the stove. Her best blue bow of ribbon was atop her long
black hair. As she was standing there,
she heard and felt something drop from the ceiling. After close inspection, it is found to be
blood. Mother’s father climbed up the
stairs into the attic where he found the old tomcat laying next to the flue
where he had frozen to death. As the
flue warmed, the old tomcat was now thawing out. The blood had ruined the large ribbon in
mother’s hair.
These and many other stories
were told and retold around this old round table that now stood in our little
home. This table was there when mother
had lost her Dad and then her Mother. A
year later she lost Daddy and then five months later, she lost the baby
boy. But although Mother was strong,
this loss in her life knocker her for a real loop. But she had us children, and she depended on
Marie and Cliff, her right hand men, to help her survive.
A cook table sat beside the
stove with large crock jars or jugs, along with the salt bowl, sitting on the
table. Beneath the table there sat a
barrel of flour and a can of lard, also known as a stand of lard. On the table there were dried beans in a
brown paper sack, the coffee grinder, and the butter churn with its dasher. Everything had a special place and everything
was in its place.
The cook table was where the
meals were prepared, dishes were washed, and the mess of preparing the meal was
cleaned up. Hanging on the wall next to
the cook table and stove, was a match holder, but we learned early never to
play with matches.
At the other end of the kitchen
sat Grandma’s cabinet. This cabinet was
a “Neat Thing”, and Marie always wanted things just so-so in it and on it. It had little drawers down one side. Each drawer was about five or six inches wide
and about two to three inches deep or tall.
These were spice drawers. There
was also two glass doors on the top which protected our dishes and any left
over biscuits. The bottom was either
doors or binds, and this is where the pots, pans, extra potatoes, beans,
coffee, and similar items were kept.
The wash stand stood next to
the back door with a bucket of water and dipper, a wash pan and an old broken
saucer holding the piece of Procter and Gambol P&G soap. A nail, drove into the wall, was where the
towel was hung. The towel was usually a
piece of last year’s used cotton sack, which had been scrubbed until soft on
the old rub board that sat beside the kitchen door.
The walls were papered with
newspapers, but once we had real wallpaper.
This paper was about 36 inches wide and was pink and blue with large
trumpet flowers. It was held up with
tacks (Rex Tax?). There were no rugs on
the floor and at times the chickens could be seen under the house through the
cracks in the floor.
Once we had bed bugs. The birds were infested with them and soon
all the houses in the area had what was called “chinks” or bed bugs. Mother sat our bedpost in a lid of coal
oil. Although this helped, we weren’t
rid of the bugs until we got rid of the straw mattresses in 1941.
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| Thomas & Sarah (Jones) Wilson Mabel, Matt & Ines
1917
{this is the bow that got ruined}
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