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Monday, April 9, 2012

Sleepin at the foot of the bed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tkEotkyjHU 

Remember this guy?  This song and "Out Behind the Barn", "Got Company Comin'".  Everyone of those songs hits a chord with me.  We grew up pretty much in abject poverty, which made us right there with everyone else.  We had just come out of the big depression and things were changing.  Dad farmed with John Britan which wasgood because John had a tractor and 40 acres across the river.  Dad had horses because he did not trust that new fangled stuff.  We wanted to go some place, we walked.  Laundry was done on a scrub board before we graduated to the wringer washer.
We had a two bedroom house and there were 6 of us kids.  That made 8 humans sleeping in 3 beds.  Dad had his own bed.  Mom shared with Mary and Dorothy which left us 4 older kids on one bed.  I do not know where Jake slept, but I think he had a pallet on the floor.  Not with us girls, that was for sure.  There was no such thing at our house as privacy.  We had an "out house" and that was pretty private.  Well not really, cause it was a two holer.  But there was a latch on the door.  I often wondered if the latch was to keep me in or some one else out.
I can remember 2 wood heating stoves and one wood cooking stove.  Lord, when it was winter and the wind whistled through the cracks in the walls there just was no keeping warm.  We would hunker down under a pile of quilts, but they were not the pretty ones I have now.  These were what ever we could piece together to cover the old wool army blankets that seemed to pile up over the summer and fall.  Those things were made of something that does not ever  rot, wear out, shrink away, or stop scratching.
The amazing part was, if someone were traveling through and they stopped at our house, there was always a place for them to sleep and a meal for them to eat. Looking back I seem to think that the hayloft out in the barn was the warmest place we had and I think sometimes us kids slept out there.  I do remember when Jimmy Dickens was singing these songs that I could not imagine any other kind of life.  That was just how it was.
Of course, now I am older and look back it was terrible times.  No human should ever live like that, but we did not know any different so we just played in our little piles of dirt or climbed the tree, or chased the chickens and hid from what ever we were afraid was going to carry us off, like the gypsys out North of town.  I was always scared to death the gypsys would get us and to this day, I would not know a gypsy if one grabbed me!  And what would they want with me any how?
Well, I just wanted to tell you about the Jimmy Dickens songs.  Guess this is one reason I only listen to County Classic Radio.
Got to go take a nap.  I have made myself very sleepy thinking of the good old days.  You know what?  I would not trade one minute of my early years for a mansion on the hill.  they are what made me who I am today, and I am just pretty pleased with myself most of the time.
Have a good one.

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