In The Beginning

In two weeks I will be 73 years old. It has been an amazing ride, this lifetime that I have lived.

I was born on January 14, 1939,in rural Logan County, Arkansas. I was the first of 4 children born to Dale Means and Ruth Garner Means. My mother and father had married when she was 18 and he was 23. My father was very poor though my mother's family were land owners and farmers. My parents eloped, went into Booneville, Arkansas, and married. They had no home to go to and no money to rent a room, so they went to the home of friends and stayed with them. My grandfather (my mother's father),dismayed at his daughter's choice, built them a cabin on his land.

So when it came time for my 19-year-old mother to have me, she went to her mother's house. They sent for a doctor from town. That was the only medical care she had when I was born.

Rural Arkansas at that time had not caught up with the 20th century. They were stuck in the 19th century. There was no electricity, no running water, no indoor plumbing. Most people did not have cars and still used horses for transportation and for working the fields.

Laundry was a two day job for the farmer's wife. She drew water for a well and filled a 3-legged iron kettle and two galvanized wash tubs. This was outdoors even in the winter. When the kettle and tubs were filled, she piled sticks around the iron pot and lit a fire. First she washed the better clothes, Sunday dresses, linens and towels, in the kettle of boiling water. She used a long stick, like a walking stick, to swish the clothes around to get them clean. Then she pulled them out with the stick and put them into the clean tub of cold water. Using her hands now, she rinsed them twice in the tubs.The work shirts and dirty overalls of the men went into the kettle after the better clothes were finished. She used a wash board and lye soap that she had made to get them clean

When I was little my parents and grandparents didn't even have clothes lines. Clothes we hung of fences and bushes.

The next day after laundry day was ironing day. Two heavy irons were heated on the wood cook stove. All the dress clothes had be starched on wash day. The starched clothes had to be sprinkled with water, rolled up and put in a basket to dampen. The work clothes, towels, and sheets were not starched, but most women ironed them anyway to soften them. The ironing was an all day job.

Needless to say, with all that work clothes were not washed after one use as they often are today. When kids came back from school or church, they had to get into play clothes.

Feeding a farm family was also a big job. When I was born, my grandmother had 3 teenage boys, a husband, and a 7-year-girl to feed. They worked hard and needed a lot of calories. She would get up while it was still dark, light kerosene lanterns for light and build a fire in the big iron cook stove. She made biscuits from scratch, fried some kind of meat, fried a dozen eggs and a skillet of potatoes. On the table was canned fruit, jellies, butter, a pitcher of milk and a pot of coffee.

Except for the flour for biscuits and sugar for the jelly,and the coffee, everything on the table was produced on the farm. Everyone worked hard from early spring to late fall. The fields were plowed by the men with horses pulling plows and harrows. All the crops produced were for use on the farm, not for selling. There were large fields of corn for the animals. There was a good sized potato field as the potatoes had to last the year until next harvest. The men did the plowing, but women were often expected to help with the planting and harvesting as there were no machines to do those jobs.

Everyone in the country planted a really large vegetable garden. In my grandmother's family, she and her daughter were expected to take care of that. In my immediate family, my mom and dad worked the garden together as well as us kids when we got older. Enough vegetables were planted for summer eating and for canning for winter eating.

There was an orchard for fruit--apples and peaches mainly, but perhaps some grape vines.

Cultivated food was supplemented with wild food that grew in abundance. Polk salat and wild asparagus was gathered in the spring and canned. Wild fruits were blackberries, wild grapes, and huckleberries.The men would bring is wild game and fish.Almost any game was food--squirrels, raccoons, possums, rabbits, deer.

A big noon meal was provided for the hard working farmers. It was called dinner and the evening meal was supper. The women often used the whole morning preparing food. In the afternoon in the summers there was gardening and housework to be done. Supper was an easy affair as it was mostly leftovers with perhaps some fresh cornbread. My father liked to have just cornbread and milk for supper.

Nothing went to waste on the farm. Any food scraps went into a slop bucket to be fed to the hogs. Cats, dogs, and chickens were also fed scraps. Nobody bought dog, cat, and chicken feed. The chickens and turkeys were given corn in the evening. Milk cows were expected to graze. In winter they had hay which the farmer had put up, and some corn.

The dogs and cats were not pets on the farm. They were expected to do their part in keeping varmints off the farmstead. They got no veterinary care. Nor did any of the animals.

Soap making was another big job on the farm. It was a no frills soap. It was plain, white lye soap. The women make their own lye by running water through wood ashes. The fat was came from the butchered hogs. Homemade lye soap was used for everything--face washing, bathing, laundry, shampoo, dishwashing--everything!