Losing My Blind Chicken Was Horrid

4. How we came to have a blind chicken I do not know. I was after all just five years old. But I remember Chicken. She wandered about the yard, bumping into fences, pots and bushes. Twice daily Mommie gave me a bowl of corn meal mixed with either water or milk. I guided Chickens’s  to the bowl. She ate greedily until  sated.  Rarely did she leave the yard. One day she was not there. Daddy found her out beyond the far pasture—dead.  Mr. Widner shot her. He said he feared she was rabid when he found her staggering.  Chicken was my first significant loss. I have learned that chickens do not get rabies. Was Mr Widner stupid or me

Digging Lime Tunnels Is No Laughing Matter.

3. Up behind the house was the barn, much bigger than the house.  It housed  two cows and two horses, the wagon used for farm work and transportation, and the feed for the animals. Out past the barn was a lime pile for treating the acidic soil. Lime is a wonderful material.  It’s like chalk, easy to dig, finer but more compact than sand, smoother than dirt.  Perfect for digging holes and tunnels.  But it is not a toy.    Daily when we went out to play we were admonished by one or both parents, “Don’t play in the lime pile.” That’s like asking a child not to touch the candy on the table. Fearful of punishment most days we heeded the warning.  But one day after we lost our ball on the shed roof we were drawn to the wonders of tunnel digging. We dug. We dug until our tunnel was quite large and our arms and legs were covered with lime dust.  Mommie’s voice rang out, “You gals better not be in the lime pile.” Fear of what would happen loomed.  I tried in vain to brush away the lime dust. If there were water we could wash it off, but water was at the house. And so was Mommie.  Ivy partially solved the problem. She removed her bloomers, peed and tried to wash the lime from her arms and legs. She had great success in leaving streaks of lime down her arms and legs.  Both of us got a licking. But later that night I  could hear Mommie and Daddy laughing .

I Got A New Brother

                                                    One Early Memory

2.  In the winter nobody  came to our house after dark unless something was amiss .  It was early November, two months before my fourth birthday .  But this night my Grandma Neely and Grandma Cardwell and Aunt Rhodie were there. Over our vocal protests  Ivy and I were put to bed with fair warning that if we did not go to sleep ‘ we would get a whipping we would never forget’.  I awoke to the sight of the kerosene lamp in the front room and hushed  voices.  The bed was wet, my shirt was wet. Ivy had peed in the bed. “Mommie,” I called, “Ivy peed on me again.” Aunt Rhodie came—not Mommie. “Jewell, git up. Come see your new brother.”  He was so ugly.

THIS BLOG NEEDS A NEW DIRECTION

                                         THIS BLOG NEEDS A NEW DIRECTION

                            

My cousin Richard has informed me that the only way to keep a beagle from wandering at will is -- and I quote "cripple him or fence him".  I tried the invisible fence. No go. So I have contracted to have a physical fence built to keep  bad boy at home. 

That being the case I need a direction for my blog. I have a new direction.

                                                       STUFF WRITTEN DOWN

“Write stuff down,” my son said.  “I tried to get Dad to do it. He didn’t. Now he’s gone and it’s gone too.” Oral history has fallen prey to mobilization and fractured families.  How many children live in the town, or even near the town of their parents?  To say nothing of  grandparents ,  aunts and uncles.  So I begin to write stuff down.

Much I do not need to rewrite for it is part of my e-book ALL ROADS LEAD SOMEWHERE  by Jewellee Cardwell, available from Amazon.  All the stories and all the scenes painted there are a part of my heritage. A few (very few) scenes  happened not to me but  to cousins or neighbors.  All however  were a part of the family and community of my childhood. Other stories can be told. Thus I begin.  Some will be of interest; others boring. Read and use as you will.  I begin with my earliest memories—either mine or planted as mine by repetitive accounts by my family.

                                                      SKETCHY EARLY MEMORIES

1. Our house in rural Claiborne County Tennessee was small- -  a kitchen with the wood burning stove, a dining room, a front room where my parents slept, and the small bedroom I shared with my sister Ivy. The cistern was just outside the kitchen door; the outhouse out past the smokehouse. In the dining room was a table with caned bottom chairs and a bench for Ivy and me.  Also in the dining room was Mom’s windup record player.  She kept the wind crank high up on a shelf out our reach.  Every night when she was not too tired from the toils of the farm work she would crank up her record player and play her favorite records.  Most were gospel songs, but not all. She had records out of Nashville.  As it ran down the speed slowed, the words stretched out into undecipherable syllables. She would lift the needle arm and when we said, “play more, Mommie”, she would say ‘nuff fer tonight.”