Summers on the Farm

Chink. Chink. The swing rocked to the rhythm of our feet skimming across the thick gray paint of the porch floor. My grandmother and I sat together on the August afternoon. The mist of the sudden shower dampened our faces, a welcome relief from the heat. As the rain stopped, steam arose over the lush green pasture, the musty smell of wet hay replacing the freshness of the rain.
My brother and I spent a week each summer at our grandparents’ farm in Enon, Louisiana. My grandmother indulged her passion for family heritage and storytelling during those lazy afternoons on the front porch. I was her only audience, the only family member who seemed to value her stories.
“Tell me about when your mother died.”
“When I was three years old, my mother died of typhoid fever and left seven motherless children.” Then, she told how her 16-year-old sister Evie took over the daunting task of running a farm household. I cringed at tales of the cruel woman who became her father’s second wife.
“She died after only one year of marriage.” Her soft face crinkled with a touch of mischief as she admitted that she was not sad at all. “Later Daddy married the kind woman we called Mother.”
Of our ancestors, she always said, “we are of pioneer stock, sturdy and dependable.”
The white farmhouse was full with treasures. I learned where and when each piece of furniture was bought. Little notes were taped onto the back of photos, pieces of jewelry and other items.
“Remember to tell your mom and uncle to look for these notes. I have already decided who gets what.” She pointed to a photograph of herself and chuckled “They can use this to scare away the rats.”
“Now this has your name on it. Remember, this is a real antique, so take care of it. It is a rose bottle and used my mother to make perfume from rose petals and water.”
I examined each of the miniature knick-knacks on the shelf hung on the living room wall and looked at the black pages of her photo albums. MawMaw watched, hoping that I would remember and appreciate the heritage she had worked so hard to preserve.
The smell of biscuits and bacon reached my room at the front of the farmhouse. It was summer vacation at my grandparents’ farm.
“I thought I heard little feet padding around,” MawMaw laughed and said softly. She wore a cotton housedress, its printed fabric not much different from the worn curtains that rustled in the window above the sink.
“Odell, would you take the children to the watermelon patch this morning?”
“Hmmm.” PawPaw continued to read the Bogalusa Daily News at the white enamel kitchen table.
“Will you drop me off at the garden so I can finish picking the sweet corn Mike likes so much?”
“Um hmmm.”
PawPaw finally looked up from his paper and said, “Do you kids want to take a ride to the watermelon patch after breakfast?” PawPaw finally looked up from his paper and asked.
I put down my fork and answered, “Yeah!” I was a big fan of Washington Parish melons. PawPaw always let us thump them to see if they were ripe.
“Okay. We can pick those round little melons you like so much. Now hop on the back of the trailer.”
We all jumped onto the wooden bed of the trailer. Mike said, “Don’t forget to drop MawMaw off at the vegetable garden,”
PawPaw started the red tractor and began to drive slowly in the direction of the garden.
“Hold onto your hat, Rose,” he said and chuckled as he floored the tractor and took off, not to the garden after all, but through the woods.
MawMaw shouted, “Now, Odell, you stop right now!”
We held on as tightly as we could as the trailer bounced and tree limbs pelted our heads. PawPaw was well satisfied with the result of his escapade--MawMaw’s screams and our delight.
On Sunday, we’d go to Enon Baptist Church in the center of “town” on Highway 16 between Franklinton and Bogalusa. “Town” consisted of a caution light, the church, Enon School for grades 1-12 and Cousin Hollis Green’s gas station. My great-grandfather Green had helped build the original church building in the late 1800’s. The rustic church pew I used in my home for over twenty years was a reject from those he built for that church. The present church building was built in 1938 of large chunks of Mississippi sandstone. My grandparents took pride in showing us off to the “community” of Enon. On Monday, we would visit Aunt Evie Green Magee who lived in on the adjoining Green property, the sister who raised my grandmother after her mother’s death. Stately at almost six feet tall, Aunt Evie was the kindest woman I ever met. We sampled her famous egg custard pie and carried home jars of crisp sweet pickles. Then we went across the street to Aunt Maude Jenkins’s weathered farm house, where all the Green siblings had been born. Aunt Maude’s pale blue eyes welcomed me as her weathered face krinkled around her loving smile. Also tall, Aunt Maude was a little more stooped and frail. MawMaw said it was because she had worked so hard helping Uncle Fred with farm chores. MawMaw thought of her and PawPaw as more “city folk” They had lived in Bogalusa most of their married life where he was postmaster until his retirement. Unlike Aunt Maude and Uncle Fred, their farm was “non-working”, except for a garden and a fledging Christmas tree crop. Aunt Maude also had her specialties, fresh churned country butter and the rich pound cake she made with it. There were more rounds to be made: Uncle Hollis, Uncle Arthur and Cousin Glenna. Each relative commented on who Mike and I resembled. I envied the third-cousins we played with because they saw each other every week of the year.
After getting a pound of butter from Aunt Maude, MawMaw gave me a cooking lesson, along with a lecture about the importance of learning how to cook. The recipe for Aunt Maude’s pound cake called for six eggs, still warm from Uncle Fred’s hens. MawMaw would take out six custard cups and break each egg into a separate cup before it went into the rich batter. By the time the cake went into the oven, the entire kitchen was a mess. I’ve been accused of inheriting her habit of dirtying every dish in the kitchen.

During the week, we visited each aunt and uncle. Aunt Evie had baked her legendary egg custard pie. Aunt Maude supplied fresh eggs and soft butter to make MawMaw’s famous pound cake. The relatives thought of my grandparents as “city folk.” They had lived in Bogalusa most of their married life where he was postmaster until his retirement. Their farm was “non-working”, except for a vegetable garden and a fledging Christmas tree crop. I envied the third-cousins we played with because they saw each other every week of the year.
We left at the end of the week stocked with packages of frozen vegetables, jars of sweet pickles and dozens of little round watermelons, feeling a part something solid and lasting. We knew that when we returned next summer, everything would be exactly the same.

HAPPY 101th BIRTHDAY!

Hattie Rogers Broadus is 101 years old today! This picture was taken in 2002.

My grandmother Winnie Chatman Mizell, who died in 1982 at age 76, was her first cousin and friend. When MawMaw Winnie was in a nursing home in Gulfport, Hattie, who was older than she, would ride her bike to visit.

When my parents moved to Gulfport after their marriage, Hattie helped them move many times from apartment to apartment, as they didn't have a car. After Daddy died in 1992, Hattie welcomed me into her home where I stayed as we took care of getting Daddy's house ready to sell. Staying there made me feel "mothered" or "grandmothered" again. She's an amazingly strong Christian woman with an admirably positive attitude in life.

This is the story she told me about when she had smallpox as a young adult:

“Tell me again your job at the Edgewater Gulf Hotel,” I asked, hoping to put together more pieces of the life of my extraordinary cousin, Hattie Broadus. She was my grandmother’s first cousin and, since my grandmother died over twenty years ago, my adopted grandmother. At 100 years old, she still stands tall at almost six feet although she now uses a tri-wheel walker for balance.

“In the 1930s, I was a cashier at the Edgewater Gulf Hotel on the beach in Biloxi. I was already dating Maxie, who was away at college in Texas.” Hattie continued the story for my sake. Without my prodding, she would have preferred asking me about my family and my life or playing a game of gin rummy.

I remembered the huge white structure with the sprawling green lawn and said, “How I wish they hadn’t torn down the Edgewater!”

In sharp detail, Hattie continued the story, “Employees were allowed to live in the hotel during tourist season. One day at work, I suddenly developed a raging fever. The doctor at the hotel told me to go home, so I drove myself the forty miles to the country town of Perkinston. As I drove, I got sicker and sicker, but finally reached the small doctor’s office. I forced myself to get out of the car and enter. The nurse looked at me and quickly left the room. I heard her whispering to the doctor.”

Hattie leaned back in her mahogany rocker and said, “When she returned, nurse stammered, ‘get back in your car and wait for Dr. James.’ Dr. James quickly came out to the car, took one look at me, and said, ‘Hattie, you have smallpox. Go home!"

“What happened then?” I was stunned. I could remember my grandmother complaining that, because Hattie had never been sick in her life, she had no sympathy for those who suffered. (Of course, my grandmother could never get all the sympathy she wanted from anyone!)

“I went to my parents’ home and shut myself in my room. I wouldn’t let Mama come in, so she left my food at the door. Sixty or seventy people saw me before I was diagnosed, but all were vaccinated and did not get sick. My hands swelled to twice their size, and I worried about scarring. People came to my window to see me.” Hattie chuckled and said, “I worried that Maxie’s sisters would write and tell him that I was scarred, but, when it was over, I was surprised to see that I didn’t have any scars. Maxie and I were married about two years later.”

I wondered if surviving smallpox had made her strong or if she survived smallpox because of her strength. Either way, Hattie Broadus is one tough lady.

P.S. I had written this post in February 18, 2008--Hattie's 101th birthday. On April 15, 2009, Hattie went to be with Jesus. About a week before, Ralph and I visited with her. She had been asking her minister why she was still here. She held my hand and said these most precious words to me: "I'm so glad we still love each other."

BEAUTY FOR ASHES

WARNING: MEMORIES REFRAMED! To those who were part of my past, my memories may surprise you. They have been reframed in light of what I now know about God—that He formed me in my mother’s womb and was always with me, working for my good and to answer my little-girl prayers. They have been reframed with God in the picture. They have been reframed against the backdrop of God’s attributes—who He is.

In one of her Bible studies, Beth Moore said, “You have not gotten this far in your journey with God without His footprints planted all over your path, and without His fingerprints all over the doorknobs of your life.” God was present “then and there”. He can and will heal the pain of our difficult memories.

Therefore, although my stories are absolutely factual, I cannot help but see them in the light of the work that Jesus has done in my life. Therefore, ashes may appear as beauty; mourning may appear as joy; the spirit of heaviness as gladness. According to Isaiah 61, the good news Jesus came to bring included “binding up the brokenhearted”, giving “beauty for ashes," joy for mourning" and the “garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.”

Photo: Spring tulips at Duke Gardens 2005

COURAGE

The doctor struggled to look his patient straight in the eyes as he quietly said, “I am afraid that you are in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.”

My mother-in-law stammered, “Are you sure?”

“Well, I am sure that you have it, but Alzheimer’s can only be definitively diagnosed by autopsy.”

“Well, that’s a little premature!” she quipped. She had obviously not lost her quick tongue and sharp sense of humor. Her son and the doctor both laughed.
Over the next few years, she entertained us by making jokes about her memory lapses. She cackled even louder when she caught one of her baby boomer children in their own senior moments.

In my youth, courage was not at the top of my “wish list”. The need for courage inferred that circumstances would arise requiring it. I thought that that if I mastered the “how-to” of being a Christian, all of my circumstances would be perfect, calm and good-- certainly not such that required courage. As I watched this courageous woman face her frightening future, I began to pray for courage in my own life.

I had taken to heart Psalm 71:18: “Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, O God, til I declare your power to the next generation, your might to all who are to come.” I thought of mentoring and teaching as ways to transmit knowledge of the Lord’s faithfulness to the next generation. My mother-in-law’s unexpected modeling of courage made me wonder, are values taught or caught? What better way to declare the Lord’s power to the next generation than to face with courage the challenges that life brings.