CORLEY, OWEN BATES

I call it “The Old Gingerbread House” as it had what was called gingerbread decorations in wood on the front of the house. I can remember being so disappointed when they tore the old house down and built the “box” house. I don’t recall why that was done, nor was I consulted (I was very young at the time). But, needless to say, I felt very attached to that old house with its high ceilings and long hallway. Or it seemed long to me as my legs were very short at that time.

It was a house full of fond memories and wonderful times. It was a house that felt like home. And home is a very important place. It is a place of comfort, safety and love.

To me, I always thought it was a grand old house, and I loved going there because it was a haven to me like no other in this world. Going to see my grandparents was the highlight of my life even after I was grown. There was always warmth and love and, important to a child, good things to eat.

There was a hallway down the middle of the house with rooms leading off to the side of it. The living area was the first room to the right and there they always put the huge floor-to-ceiling Christmas tree, one cut from the woods somewhere with all its homemade decorations on it. Strung cranberries and popcorn, rings and stars of colored paper pasted with homemade flour-and-water glue.

Grandma always had our treats ready under the tree. She always fixed us bags of goodies. There were fruit, nuts, candy, a package of Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum and a lone quarter. We enjoyed the goodies, but we would very diligently hunt down that all important quarter. We felt we were rich because back in those days a quarter would buy a lot. We could get foot-long sticks of gum, jawbreakers, sticks of peppermint and licorice and all for a penny a piece.

The living room contained an old organ that had been purchased at the fair one year and hauled home in a wagon. My grandmother played and sang to me. The organ was ornate and had to be pumped with one’s feet. It had knobs with letters on them that pulled out for some of the keys. I loved it.

They had a small kerosene heater in the sitting room where the organ was kept, and I now have that kerosene heater in my home as a decoration.

There was another room that had a pool table, and I remember the men in the family using it quite a bit.

Grandma’s kitchen had an old pot-bellied iron stove that was used to help heat the room. She always had a kettle going on it.

Coal for the stove was kept in a coal bin beside the house. Corn cobs soaked in kerosene were used to light the fires in the stove. I used to have to go with the bucket and scoop to get the coal from outside. I sometimes also had to get the cobs to soak in the kerosene. They were easy to find in the barnyard where the cattle had eaten the corn away. Also there were times we had to shell the corn ourselves and we kept the cobs for the stove.

Above the stove was a shelf which had an old clock on it. The clock was wonderful except in the middle of the night when it bonged out the hours with annoying persistence. Covering my head with a pillow did not do any good. The clock was the only thing that I told my mother I wanted of my grandmother and grandfather’s things when I grew up. Through the course of time I never received it as my mother died first and it went to others in the family. There was a note in grandma’s old Bible to give the clock to my mother, but no one ever honored it. And of course there was always the chance I still would not have gotten it. I could not prove I had asked for it as a child.

Grandma’s cook stove used kerosene in a huge bot-tle on the end of the stove. I used to get the kerosene for grandma and also for my mom, as she had one also. The kerosene bottle would be filled and then turned upside down on the end of the stove so the kerosene would run from the bottle to the burners and the oven. In some instances it was rather dangerous, but the stove cooked quite well for all the wonderful meals my grandmother cooked in and on it.

She could make the best caramel pecan cake, mince pies, chocolate and coconut pies. There was always a wonderful ham and a very brown turkey for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Her house always had the wonderful smells of cooking. She would have homemade peach pickles, homemade pickles, the best in the world. She had chow chow made from green tomatoes. Wonderful pickled beets and canned blackberries for homemade berry cobbler. (I got to pick the tomatoes and berries, so I guess I did contribute). I could eat until I would be sick, but I still loved every minute of it. Her peach cobbler was wonderful too. I don’t remember a thing I would have cut from her cooking.

They had a water well outside the house that had the best-tasting water in it. I used to have to go and draw the water from the well with a long bucket tied to a rope. (After my legs got a little longer. I took pictures of the old home place when my grand-mother died, but I failed to get a picture of the well).

They had a bathroom with a huge iron tub in it. It was hard for me to get in and out of and that thing was always cold, no matter the season. I don’t think enough hot water could have been put in it to warm it up.

They had a huge cistern just outside the kitchen window that always caught the rainwater that ran off the house. It was used for bathing and washing hair and cleaning the house. It was piped into the house and the bathroom. The well water was for cooking and drinking.

Grandma and grandpa had a stainless steel cream separator on the closed-in back porch near the well. They would put the milk into the separator and it would run through; the cream would separate and leave skim milk. Then the cream would be put into the old crock churn (I have my mother’s) and I had to sit and churn. Pulling a dasher up and down would produce buttermilk. It was not hard, just an-noying when I could be doing something important like playing in the creek that ran through the pasture. (And yes, we did play cowboys and Indians. We had lots of shootin’ matches. And of course I had to be the good cowboy. I was very much a tomboy. And loved it, too.)

The old churn was also used in making pickles. They would be put into the churn with vinegar, spices, and salt to stay until they could be packed into canning jars. I also had to help with the can-ning of the fruits and vegetables. I washed the jars and lids, peeled peaches, snapped beans, shelled black-eyed peas, picked berries and washed them. I helped pick the peaches, plums and other fruits, sometimes with scratched arms, hands and legs, not to mention the chiggers we got into with the berry picking. (You know God made everything for a purpose, but that little red bug is one thing I have never been able to understand what good they were except to make us miserable.) Had to watch for snakes too.

I cannot neglect to mention “Ye old outhouse” with nature’s air-conditioning built in. It also let in the wasps. When they were buzzing around, I was not to eager to use it. I sat down on one and believe me it makes for a lasting impression.

I think grandma’s and grandpa’s was a three-holer. It was very hot in the summertime and in the win-ter it did not take too long to take care of business and get back into the house when the north wind was blowing. Or when the snow and ice were on the ground. And it did not have toilet paper like we have now and no flushing. The paper was catalogs and newspapers that would have been discarded and lye was used in abundance. Some of them were Sears Roebuck & Co. And there was a favorite game, the kids played on each other by waiting until someone went into the outhouse and then they would stone the door so they could not come out. In the long run all the kids got their turn in there sooner or later.

At Halloween some of the perpetrators would move the outhouse over a few feet. That trick did not make folks happy when they had to “GO” in the middle of the night. It was hard to tell the outhouse had been moved in the dark and the outcome brought on flaring tempers and a messy surprise.

The huge black iron pot I had mentioned before was also used on washday. The pot was set upon rocks or bricks where they could build a fire underneath. The clothes were boiled in the pot and we had a long stick that we used to stir clothes and to lift them out of the hot water. They were put into a #2 washtub with a rub board in it. We then rubbed the clothes with the homemade lye soap and pushed them up and down on the rub board to get them clean. Then we had at least four tubs of rinse water. For the white things there was bluing in another tub. The work was done by hand and then the clothes were hung on the line to dry. The clothespins were put into a bucket and the bucket handle bent so they would slide down the clothesline as the clothes were pinned on the line. I have the one my mother used, and it had shortening in it before the clothespins. I had it painted with a country scene and it is on top of my china cabinet. Needless to say, the laundry was very hard work and took all day to do. It was not too kind to the hands, either, and in the wintertime it was terrible.

Grandpa and grandma had more than one chicken house, but I can’t remember how many. They raised Rhode Island Red chickens, the same kind we had at home. Grandma had one old red rooster who would chase my little brother, Coy, when he would go out of the house. One day the rooster decided to jump on me. I went back into the house and got the broom. When he ran at me, I whacked him with the broom, almost killing him. He did not bother me anymore, but my mom finally killed the rooster and made chicken salad out of him, since he would not leave Coy alone.

Grandpa Corley always took good care of everything. We had to work when we visited and had to do jobs over if they were not done right. I got the job of cleaning the separator many times, and it better be clean too. But, I was well rewarded with a piece of grandma’s caramel pecan cake. There was al-ways good food at their house, and we were allowed to eat our fill.

I remember that Grandpa Corley liked his hot but-tered (real) biscuits with sorghum syrup. He also sometimes ate peanut butter with the syrup and biscuits. He put it in his plate and then stirred it up with his knife and then put it on the hot biscuit. I never did try it, but I should have so I could tell you how it tasted.

They had a grape arbor outside the house not far from the cistern, which used to be one of my favorite places to play. I loved the homemade jelly on a hot buttered biscuit, and my mother used to make green grape pies. I personally did not like them, but she did.

There was a garden out from the grape arbor that always contained many wonderful things to eat. Not like the vegetables we get today. (Are you beginning to get the idea that food might play an important role in how I felt about Grandma and Grandpa?)

Tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage, greens, turnips, green beans, blackeyed peas, onions, radishes, watermelons and more were grown. There were blackberries, dewberries and popcorn. There were peach trees and plums for making jelly and jam and plum butter.

Grandpa would plow the garden with a disk plow pulled by a mule as he walked behind. The reins he would have across his shoulder. When he got to the end of the row, he would say “Gee” or “Haw” and the old mule would turn to the right or left. I can’t remember which meant which now, but that old mule knew what he meant. Grandpa used to plow his fields that way before they came along with the new-fangled thing called a tractor, which cut down considerably on the time it took to plow a field--and increased the chances of producing more and making more money. The weather and the insects had to cooperate too.

Grandpa raised mostly cotton and corn. At that time cotton was king and made the money for the farmers and also the business people. Without the cotton they would not have been able to have their stores in town (Garland).

Hogs were raised for their meat: hams, bacon, sau-sage, backbone, etc. They were killed in the fall of the year when it had gotten colder in order that the meat might not be spoiled by the very hot summers. This was called “hog killing time”. The hogs were hung up to drain all the blood out of the meat in about ten to fifteen minutes.

Grandpa had a huge vat that was filled with water and a fire underneath to heat the water to boiling. The hogs were lowered into the vat and scalded, making it possible to scrape the hair off the skin. Not any of the hog was wasted. Even the head, tail, and feet were used. They pickled the pigs feet, which I could never bring myself to try. Those parts of the hog never appealed to me, so I never ate them. They also liked to scramble the brains with eggs and eat them. Ugh!

I was an observer of hog-killing a time or two and then found other places to go and things to do. (Be-fore much time had gone by I was put to work frying sausage, but more about that later.) Needless to say I did not handle that process very well.

I can apply the same feelings to killing chickens for dinner. My mom would ring their necks and then put them in hot water and pluck the feathers from the chicken. Preparation of chickens always had a very unpleasant odor to me and I finally would make myself scarce when this took place. The fried chicken was very good with the cream gravy and hot biscuits as long as I did not have to view the process of getting it to the skillet.

When I was about twelve, my father told me a story of seeing a man at the fair eat a chicken whole, and that did it for me. I am sixty-one now and I am just getting where I can eat chicken again. Childhood makes a lasting impression on us for the rest of our lives.

Back to the hogs. The meat from the hogs was cured and put into the smokehouse. They would have hams, bacon, and sausage stuffed into sacks that were made out of domestic or cheesecloth. The sausage was seasoned with homegrown sage and herbs. I never knew of any meat spoiling, and it was always put to good use during the winter months.

And, it turned out to be my job to fry sausage, #2 washtubs of it. I would stand on a chair and fry sausage until I was almost sick of it. We did not put all of the sausages in the sacks to be hung in the smokehouse; some were put into syrup pails, crock containers, etc. and when full we poured some of the grease into the containers and sealed them. We turned the containers upside down so the grease would come to the top and seal the sausage. These were also stored in a cool place, like the storm cellar. In the wintertime we would open these containers and reheat the sausage for fine eating. Probably no one would eat anything prepared in this manner today.

The fat of the hog and the skins were cut up and put into the old black iron wash pot and the grease was cooked out of them to make cracklings. We had crackling cornbread many times, which was very good. The grease was called lard and used in cooking for frying, cakes, cookies or whatever the recipe called for. All this was also stored in containers and taken out as needed.

Some of the grease or lard was put back into the old black pot and lye added and, I think, ashes. It was cooked and we called it lye soap. When it cooled my mom had a big knife she inserted into it and cut it up into pieces. It was very effective in washing our clothes and bathing, but by the time I was born they had come up with Ivory soap, which I used more than the homemade lye soap. (The old folks were very good at not wasting a thing, as people are prone to do today. They made their own and only went to town to buy salt, flour, coffee, cornmeal and whatever other staples they needed.)

We also had homemade hominy, made from dry corn and soaked in a lye solution. I do not remember how they did it nor the exact ingredients, but the result was very good eating.

Grandpa was tall and thin and balding on top. He still had hair, but it was very thin and he had knots on his head. He used to sit in his favorite rocker and read the Sunday newspaper. He would always go to sleep, and we would very quietly stand and stare at the knots on his head. We always wondered how he got them but none of us dared ask him.

They had a huge barn with a tin roof and a loft full of hay, which was a wonderful playground for us kids. I had two brothers, and Uncle Albert and Aunt Helen Corley had a girl and two boys. We used to play cowboys and Indians in the hayloft and all through the pasture.

There was a stream of water running through grandpa’s property, which was a great asset for cattle and/or milk cows and mules. My grandpa had a lot of milk cows and the milk was put into cans and sold.

Grandpa would go to the barn in the evening and call the cows. He did not have to go get them. He had one old cow that he trained to lead the others, but all of them when they had been there a while knew when grandpa called, it was feeding time. Grandpa would call the cows with a call that sounded like “suuuuuuuuuuu-cow” (like Sue Cow.) He drawled it out when he called, a long time. It was a sound I am not likely to forget as long as I live. He was from Tennessee and came to Texas in a covered wagon when he was about eleven years old and still spoke with the drawl that labeled him a Tennessean. He did not pronounce his R sounds. And he always had on that old straw hat of his. When he died, that old straw hat stayed on the peg where he put it until my grandmother died.

Grandpa did not like to lose his cows and he took very good care of them. One of them became sick and apparently out of her head, if a cow can be said to have lost her head. He called on the vet to check her out and he told grandpa the cow was sick on rotten fermented peaches. He let the cows in the orchard sometimes and the old cow was, for all practical purposes, drunk. The cow recovered.

And I almost forgot the birds that sang in the trees outside their living room windows in the summertime. There were cedar trees, which the birds must have loved because they were always there, and always singing. I can remember sitting for long pe-riods of time listening to them because I felt so peaceful there. My grandmother died the 27th of February and I remember the birds singing in the trees. It was a pretty, sunny day and some of the flowers were beginning to bloom. When my mother died, I returned to the old home place. By then the house had been torn down and nothing was left but some of the cedar trees. The birds were still singing in the trees and I felt close to my grandparents. I went alone and no one knew I did it, but I found my peace with my mother’s death there because I knew she was at rest with my grandparents. My mom died the 27th of February.