Memories by David Haymes

A few months ago, cousin Robert Haymes, knowing my passion for old stories and local history, sent me some of his father’s writings. What he sent was clear and concise and truly painted a picture of life here seventy plus years ago. With minimal editing it is today’s article. David Haymes, was not only an encyclopedia of genealogy and local facts, but also a collector of funny tales he often regaled me with. Thankfully he took the time to write this and much more down before being robbed by dementia, and passing on to his eternal reward. What a legacy for his grandchildren and those yet unborn who will want to know what our world was like. It's now your turn, during this holiday season, leave a legacy, take the time to write it down or record it with your phone. Someday it will be priceless. Happy Thanksgiving! –CCH.

Memories

By David Haymes

Growing up on a family farm in the Missouri Ozarks, life was filled with work, family, church and company. By my first recollection, the wandering wagon track roads, which had been built and maintained by voters working out their poll tax, had been improved, graded and graveled by people hired by the Works Progress Administration. My family had a good automobile but due to the shortage of tires and gasoline we did not make any unnecessary trips. The MFA exchange delivered our feed, The MFA hatchery picked up our eggs, The MFA creamery hauled our milk and when we had hogs or cattle to sell, we hired someone with a truck to take them to the MFA stockyards in a large city in a neighboring county to be sold. There were two general stores within a short walk (One to two miles) Where we purchased flour, sugar, salt, Log Cabin coffee, spices, vinegar, crackers, both soda and graham, K-C baking powder, soda and lye. Butter and cheese were ordered from the milk hauler and delivered the next day, with the cost being deducted from the by-weekly milk check. Every year we raised a large garden and at least one and sometimes two truck patches. What we didn't need for immediate use, we canned, dried or preserved for use later on. Each year we would choose a Jersey or Guernsey steer to feed and fatten to be killed on (What seemed to me to be) the coldest and most miserable day of the winter. We would hang the four quarters in an unheated building to be used as long as it lasted or until the weather started to warm up toward spring. The tallow was rendered to be used for whatever need arose, from waterproofing shoes and boots to mixing with lard to fry chicken or donuts. Each fall around Thanksgiving we would kill two or sometimes three fat hogs. The joints, middlings, ribs and backbones would be cured. Then the loins would be canned, the lard rendered and the sausage ground and stuffed into the strivings that had been peeled from the leaf lard, then last the head would be cooked and prepared for use in scrapple. The meat we produced was supplemented by fish we caught, quails and squirrels we shot and rabbits we trapped, although most rabbits were sold to be shipped to the big cities in the northeast. We kept and maintained several bee gums so we always had honey on the table and every two or three years we would raise a small patch of honey drip cane or atlas sargo which we would strip, cut and remove the heads then haul to one of the area molasses mills too be made into molasses on the shares. Early in the morning we would have a hearty breakfast consisting of meat, eggs, potatoes and almost always biscuits. Noon dinner was the big meal of the day and supper might be leftovers or something entirely different many times including cornbread. Each Saturday enough light bread was baked to last for the week. It was made with everlasting yeast my great aunt had purchased at the 1902 World's Fair in St. Louis. Each week when the dough had risen a small bit was saved and let dry out and the next week it was crumbled into the new dough to cause it to rise.

Each Sunday, weather permitting, we attended Sunday School at a nearby church and on Sundays when church was held,usually one Sunday each month, we attended both morning and night. We did no farm work on Sundays, except the normal chores, and the

afternoons were a time of visiting and relaxation, Many Sundays if not most we would go home with another family or another family or two would come home with us for dinner and afternoon visiting.

In 1948 I enrolled in the first grade in the district rural school. School districts were small, covering about five sections of land, with the school house close to the center so most scholars only had no more than one and a half miles to walk to school. The eight month school term ( Twenty school days equaled one month) usually began about the third Monday in August. As we didn't get any long vacations, As I remember school was not in session on Thanksgiving day and the Friday after and again on Christmas day the last day of school was either in the last week of March or the first week of April, and was usually celebrated by a picnic and maybe a program featuring the talents of the scholars. The school was administered by a board of three school directors, one elected each year for a three year term at the annual school meeting held on the first Tuesday in April at the school house. A school teacher was hired sometime during the summer by the board of directors for the following school term. Their contract was seldom renewed, the thinking at that time was that new teachers equaled new ideas, concepts and methods of teaching. children entering the first grade in election years took their lessons in the grade levels in this order: First-second-third fourth-sixth- fifth-eighth-seventh while the children entering first grade in odd numbered years went straight through. This was so teachers only had six classes to teach each year. Our school house was an old building even sixty-five years ago when I began attending but must have been well constructed because it is still standing though it was converted into a dwelling house. As most if not all rural schools were built in the form of a rectangle with a dual purpose door in the south. It was the front door when you were on the outside and was the back door when you were inside. There were windows on either side of the door and windows along the west side of the room in order for what light there was to come from over your left shoulder. Rows of desks faced the north with the teacher's desk in the front and behind her a large blackboard, a set of maps that rolled up like a window shade, a picture of George Washington and the stove. We also had prints of two pictures so we could study and discuss art. After studying and discussing them for seven or eight years we got so good at it that some of us could tell which was Pinky and which was Blue Boy just by looking at them.

When I started to attend the school yard was mostly a weed patch with a flag pole near the road where Old Glory was raised every sunny morning and taken down and folded either at the end of the day or at the first clap of thunder, a soft ball diamond, constructed at the beginning of the school term by someone bringing from home toe sacks that we took to an abandoned saw mill across the road to fill with saw dust for bases. A well and pump with bad water to the west of the school house and two toilets in the north corners of the yard. Our sports equipment consisted of a volleyball, I have no idea why as none of us had ever saw a volleyball game but we used it for ante-over, throwing it back and forth over the school house. Each year the school board would buy a softball and we had three old cracked bats that had been repaired by being wrapped with friction tape. For inside fun on rainy days we had a checkerboard, a sand box, a sorry game and later someone brought from home a Monopoly game. The teacher immediately burned the dice, so we would not be led into vice or corruption, but later we put pencil dots on two of the little green houses and used them for dice. After my first year a district Parent Teachers Association was organized and built a lunchroom and hired a cook to provide lunches Before I graduated in 1956 teeter-totters and swings had been added to the playground.

During the school year I helped with the night chores like milking, feeding hogs and chickens, gathering eggs and carrying in firewood. During summer vacation I continued with the chores and did a lot of field work. We had large drawing horses as well as a new tractor and while I never worked the horses I might be disking or dragging with the tractor while my father planted corn or drilled wheat or oats. We usually ground corn and oats for dairy feed on Saturdays. We did no field work on Sundays so afternoons were mostly free time to do whatever I wished. When we had company the children would play at most anything someone thought of. The only rule was to be home in time to help with the daily chores. Lots of times several of we boys would go swimming in creeks or ponds or just ramble the hills and hollows depending on the temperature. My family didn't really approve of hunting on Sunday but plinking or target shooting was all right and if I happened to bring home a squirrel or a rabbit no questions were asked.

The timing of our farm and garden work seemed to revolve around holidays. We began drilling oats on or shortly after St. Valentine's Day. We also sowed lettuce and set out onions. Other early garden was put out on school meeting day if the ground was in the right condition. We planted corn as soon after April 20 as possible. The 30th of May or Decoration Day was commemorated at our local church and cemetery with preaching in the morning, a basket dinner at noon and a business meeting in the afternoon, then we knew it was time to cut hay. June was probably the busiest month as everyone tried to get their hay stacked or in the barn, their corn laid by, their wheat cut and shocked and their potatoes dug before the Fourth of July. Most families went to the county seat for an all day picnic on the Fourth. The remainder of July and August we cut and shocked oats, tended gardens, repaired fences and buildings, filled silo and thrashed. The rest of the fall and early winter we cut wood, drilled wheat, gathered corn and tried to catch up on anything else that had been neglected during the earlier part of the year.