Grandma and Grandpa lived on our farm in a reburbised old house that the children helped them restore. They never had indoor plumbing or running water in the time that they lived there. The old outdoor toilet was south of the house and the well house where they pumped water was directly behind the house. It was a drilled well and the kind that used the long buckets that you dropped down the pipe till it hit water and gurgled to know it was full. You would then draw the water back up by a rope attached to a pulley and fill your water buckets. Just behind the house sat wash tubs that I can remember taking many baths in as a child. Granny would fill the old aluminum tubs with water in the mornings in the summer and by afternoon the water would be warm enough to bathe. In winter the tubs were heated with water on the old wood stove.
MEMORIES OF GRANDPA:
Grandpa Altom died when I was 8 years old, but I do have a few memories of him although sketchy. I remember that he always smoked Prince Albert in a can, and he kept his 'tobacca' and rolling papers on a shelf behind the old cast iron stove. He always wore overalls and carried a pocket watch with a string tied to it that hung from his bib. He loved to squirrel and coon hunt. I can remember him taking me with him one time. He told me that if I tagged along that I would have to be real quiet. I told him I would be. About 30 minutes in the woods he sent me packing! I was probably about 6 at the time, so you can imagine how "quiet" I actually was. Unfornately, I'm 39 now and I probably still would be sent packing, if I was hunting with grandpa....seems I can't keep quiet for very long!!(smile).
Grandpa also raised hogs. In the fall of the year would come 'hog killin' time. Many today would probably never eat pork, if they had to witness the ins and outs of butchering a hog. I am glad to have been able to have lived on the verge of an extinct art. I call it that, because do you think that you, or most today, would have the faintest idea where to begin? Won't go into all the details for the squeamish, but it was all done every year for several years when I was a child. I can remember the old iron kettles perched atop a hot fire in the back yard where fat was being rendered into lard and the women folk in the kitchen around an old table with a grinder mounted to the side of the table where sausage making was going on, and others cutting and wrapping the meat as it was brought in by the men outside. There was a smoke house where the hams and shoulders were hung from the rafters. It was never actually used as a smoke house, but more as a storage house for the meat, as they were salted and hung rather than smoked. And boy, was the hams ever saltly. If you have ever eaten a salt-cured ham that can still be purchased today from some companies, you can relate to this. To this day, I have never eaten such good sausage as that made on our farm.
Grandpa liked to whittle. I can remember him making me toys. He would make what was called "slip-bark" whistles. He would cut a small hickory limb with no knots on it when the sap started running and fashion it from them. He would drop back about 5 or 6 inches and cut all the way around it and then notch it about an inch or so from the end. Then he would slip the bark off intact and shave off a little of the wood back to the notch and then slide the bark back on. He also made me a whip once, made by stripping and braiding the same type of wood. He also repaired the seats on the old rockers.
Grandpa was a Baptist preacher as well as a farmer, but I not remember ever hearing him preach. I believe that he had retired from preaching the gospel before I was born. These are some of my childhood memories of him.
MEMORIES OF GRANDMA
I have lots more memories of Granny Altom since she lived on the farm, after Grandpa died until my Dad's death in 1973. She was short robust woman. In later years she wore her hair long and tied up in the back. In the summer time she always wore bonnets that she made. She never owned a sewing machine and everything she made was stitched by hand. Back when flour and feed came in cotton sacks of different designs, she used to make me 'cotton sack' dresses, as they were called back then. They were well constructed and you would have thought they were sewn on a machine. She was a hard worker and I remember well going to the cotton fields with her to pick cotton. When I was real small I would ride on back of her cotton sack as she picked. She would pull my weight and that of the cotton all over the fields and rarely complained about the added weight. I think back today of that and feel bad that I put that extra burden on her, but as a child it never crossed my mind. When I got older, she made me a smaller version of her sack and I picked along side her. Well, at least I started out beside her. But within minutes she was way past me and eventually passing me on different rows as she made her way back. Lunches were eaten in the fields, sandwiches or cold bisquits with bacon and a quart jar of cold iced tea, eaten under a shade tree. This photograph(Click Here) was sent to me by Loreli (Altom)Warren. She stitched the design on the quilt to represent Granny with a child riding on a cotton sack. She has told me of her memories of Granny pulling her infants around fields also. Babysitting in those days was a lot different than today, weren't they?
BLACKBERRY
PICKING TIME
When wild blackberries ripened Granny would outfit me in one of her bonnets and tie a belt around my waist with two lard buckets with handles on them looped in the belt and she would do the same and off we'd go to the berry patches. I am not sure why, but back then I never thought about snakes and things and we would tromp through underbrush and waist high weeds to get to the berries. She would fill her buckets and start filling extra empty ones that she had brought along. My buckets never seemed to get quite as full as hers and by the end of the day I would have berry stains all over my hands and mouth. Never could explain how they got around my mouth(smile). When we got home Granny would make the best home-made cobblers I've ever eaten. She would roll the dough out for dumplings that were then cut into thin strips and dropped into the boiling berries and then cover the berries with a sugared down top crust. AAAH...just thinking about them makes my mouth water to this day. Maybe that was why I never thought about the snakes!!
Granny would take me fishing on occasion. She had two cane poles and didn't use the monofilament line that fishermen use today, but rather white string so thick that it was often hard to tie a hook onto. We would dig for worms and put them in one of Grandpa's old PA(Prince Albert) tobacco tins. There was no lakes or reserviors for us...we went to the ponds on our farm and neighboring farms and would sit on the banks often beside cows drinking water on one side while we fished on the other. She was a bream fisherwoman and we would always catch enough for a meal everytime we went. She is probably the one who hooked me on fishing, along with Dad, and why I dearly love to fish today.
THE
FRONT PORCH
Alot of life back then was spent on the front porch. The old house, as most older homes back then had, had a porch that ran the entire length of the house and there would be several rockers and a swing on it. Summers would be spent swatting flies and 'rockin' and 'waitin' on the mailman and just enjoying life in the slow lane. The porch was about 2 foot off the ground with a crawl space beneath it, where the old dogs would seek shelter and a cool spot from the sun. One time I did something to get on Granny's bad side. She told me I was gonna get a 'whippen' for whatever it was. This was back in the days when you could disipline your children without worrying about the child welfare department. And back then they would cut a hickory switch. While she was getting the switch, I hide from her under the front porch. I can remember vividly watching her walk the porch from one end to the other hollering for me to come to her so she could whip me. I looked up through the slats in the floor of the porch and watched her and refused to come out. Eventually her anger at me turned to worry and then I came out. She was so relieved to find me, I never got the 'switchen'.
CHRISTMAS
TIME
At Christmastime I always enjoyed going out on the farm and finding a cedar tree with a pretty shape to it to bring home for decorating. Granny would always say she didn't want a tree this year, but I would insist on bringing her one anyway. And she and I would put it up with decorations that she had had in the family for years. I think she always enjoyed doing this even though she protested. And every year she would go to town and buy a small gift for everyone of her sons, daughter, and grandchildren, usually a pair of socks for each of us. Granny lived on a fixed income after Grandpa died, and received comodities from the Government, yet it was very important to her to give something to each of her kids. She had a house full of rambunctious adult boys who loved to pick on her and she loved every minute of it. There was always hard rock candy and those big thick candy canes and at Christmas there would always be three kinds of pies - coconut cream, lemon meringue, and chocolate meringue. But most of all, there was always plenty of love in that old house. There would be laughter and singing and domino playing. The Christmas gatherings at Granny's were some of my fondest memories.
These are just some of my memories of Granny and Grandpa Altom. I hope you enjoyed reading about them.
written by Linda(Altom)Smith, Granddaughter
1998
Here is cute story that you might enjoy reading"Rocking on the Front Porch"