Do you Remember when?

  • Bathing in a galvanized tub by the woodstove.
  • Washing clothes by the creek.
  • Using feather beds as cover on the beds in winter.
  • Sleeping with all the windows and doors open during the summer months.
  • Hearing the katydids, whippoorwills and crickets at night as you walked a country road during the summer.
  • Can you remember Malmaw fixing that breakfast?
  • Warming your front side by the fireplace.
  • Remember Pal Paw fixing the fire for the long night?
  • Making sling-shots out of rubber inner tubes, shoe tongues.
  • Rolling a barrel rim or hoop with metal wire for hours.
  • Riding the horse drawn hay sled and having Pal paw stack the hay on the sled.
  • Going to the outside toilet no matter what the weather.
  • Using the Sears catalog for paper . . .in the outhouse.
  • No indoor plumbing or electricity until we were almost grown.
  • Sitting on the porch.
  • Playing cards on the porch.
  • Putting the card table away when the preacher came by.
  • Uncle George dressing up like a woman.
  • Being scared from listening to ghost stories and mad dog tales and Malmaw getting fun from the telling.
  • All baptizings were in the river.
  • Trading at the Balkan company store with scrip.
  • Getting paid a dollar a day to take in the hay, hoe corn and pick beans.
  • Remember how dark the nights were on the Creek?
  • Hulling walnuts and the black stain having to wear off our fingers.
  • Remember when the road crossed Hances Creek several times from Page to Malmaws & Palpaws.
  • Remember when the Creek was so clear, large number of minnows, and other creatures lived in it?
  • Remember crossing the Creek on rocks?
  • Remember Raub hole below the old Schoolhouse?
  • Remember when electricity and telephone came up the Creek.
  • Can you remember what it was like before that?
  • More dirt roads than paved ones.
  • Highway 25 was the main north-south road from Pineville to Michigan.
  • Going to the movies at the Bell Theatre.
  • Going to all day church meetings and dinner on the ground.
  • Remember when there were long church services and there were as many people outside as in?
  • Remember walking to Aunt Carrie and Susie’s for Pop?
  • Remember foot logs across the Creek.
  • Remember gathering at Malmaws and Palpaws?
  • Remember walking to their house and smelling the Coal sulfur in the air?
  • Carrying lunch to school in a four-pound lard bucket.
  • How about picking Blackberries and putting them in that lard bucket?
  • Everyone drinking from the same dipper.
  • How about getting your drinking water from the stream behind the house?
  • Hearing a hen cackle in the springtime.
  • Watching a chicken run around the yard after its head was wrung off.
  • Flagging down a Greyhound Bus along the Harlan road.
  • Not being afraid to pick up a hitchhiker.
  • Neatly patched kids clothes.
  • Remember Palpaw repairing shoes?
  • The smell of bed sheets dried in the sun.
  • Lard rendered from hog fat.
  • Have you ever seen a hog hung from a tree to prepare the meat?
  • How about a car beening clean in the River?
  • Half gallon canning jars.
  • Wood floors scrubbed with lye soap.
  • Smell of fresh greens cooking on the stove.
  • Fly swat made from screen wire or rubber inner tube.
  • Old fashioned church fans.
  • Setting up with the dead.
  • Playing in the creek, catching tadpoles, crawfish and frogs.
  • How about seeing boys’ saining for minnows in the creek?
  • Corn shocks and pulled fodder. Pumpkins on the ground.
  • Having to cut your own willow switch and getting a harder switching if it was too spindly.
  • Sears and Roebuck catalog for toilet tissue.
  • Smell of fresh sawdust.
  • Remember Charles shooting Clifford with a BB gun as he bend over to pick up coal.
  • Remember Malmaw telling tales to Clifford and having Leon scare him from the Porch?
  • Remember the Pineville flood and Clifford taking Aunt Carrie and Suzies TV up to your old house with his pickup bed door down?
  • Having cornbread and sweet milk for supper.
  • Hand shelling corn to feed the chickens.
  • Picking up potatoes from fresh-dug soil.
  • Eating potatoes fried on a wood cook stove top.
  • Do you remember Palpaw starting the cook stove with kindling?
  • Do you remember Palpaw getting coal from the Coal House and bringing it in a coal bucket across the walkbridge?
  • The cold wood floor as you ran barefoot to dress behind the wood stove.
  • Local cut Cedar Christmas trees with paper chains and bubble lights.