Maibelle McCullough Mouton:
Remembering With Joy

There was too that golden Spring day we made garden! In the big lot (9) where the strawberry bed was enclosed in boards and covered with chicken wire! (10) The moist brown earth had been plowed and all the family were busy laying out beds, dropping seeds or setting out plants from the seeding boxes. Gladys and I were too little to help and my guess is that we were only in the way of all that happy family activity! Anyhow my papa took us to the fence and showed us how to lay out miniature gardens, leaving us a small quantity of seeds, turnip, carrot and radish -- even a few onion sets! We were intrigued and worked diligently. My guess is that we were no longer in the way!

Oh the joy of working in the dark, moist soil (Rock and gravel free!) The scent of spring and the happiness of family activity! I think this golden day was before the birth of Bopeep for I do not remember her in the little gardens and I do remember mama's happiness loving the laying out of her beds and planting her seedlings. Only Lizzie was not with us being still in college!

When she came home for Christmas holidays or for summer vacation, she brought excitement and joy into our lives. In summer she put on Childrens' Day programs. She had the cooperation of everybody in town. Mamas made crisp white dresses and dads built a stage across the front of the church. Roses in abundance transformed that little church into a bower! She taught us to march and sing and speak! She gave us motions to make our songs more effective! she gave us sense of mission and worth that inspired us to do our very best. I loved it all, singing, marching, speaking! That little church holds happy memories for me!

One Christmas I remember Gladys and I sang a duet with Lynn who was dressed as Santa Claus! As I recalled this duet, all the words came back to me. We were about 6 and 3. When we finished the duet, he opened his pack and gave every child a red net bag filled with candies, nuts and one big golden orange! Wonder of wonders! When I recall what a treasure that orange was! I realize how surfeited kids are today and how much sheer magic has gone out of life!

Having her attention and being in her programs was one of the rewards of being in the Sunday School! Her vacations were always too brief as she went back to college. That's why Edith became mama's helper and almost raised me! Before she could life me, she turned me on the bed and changed my diaper! Mama told me that! As soon as I learned to walk I trailed her like a tail on a kite! She never made a playhouse -- be it mud pie, paper doll, or corn cob cattle lot -- she always made mine first and then her own!

I trailed her down the wide dusty road past the gin lot to the wide slotted gate of the pasture (34) There we climbed on the gate and called the cows! "Sook, Bossy!' "Sook, Blackie!" And waited for the tinkle of their bells as they came out of the woods and ambled up to the gate, Gentle, homing cows! We followed them to the milking shed. Lynn did the nilking if he was not in college, and he obligingly squirted milk into our mouths!

I remember being sent to the store for something mama needed. The store (2) stood in the corner of our yard. I entered by the yard door, seeing the big dark cavern, lighted by one lamp on the tall desk where Guelcksy always stood to audit the books. I was taught to wait, hearing him count in his native tongue "eine und Svanzig -- drei und Svanzig" and presently he would write down the sums and, looking down at me, would smile and say "Vell, vot is it Honey?" and he would give me what I had come for. Dear old man! He had left Germany because he was a third son. In those days the first son was for the Church, the second for the Government and the third for the Army. He came to America and in his wanderings came through Alicia just as papa was finishing the construction of the house where I would be born!

The family had quickly out grown the small house that Uncle Will had helped papa build for his bride. I think papa was uncle Will's nephew and mama was the neice of his wife, aunt Mary. I know they met in the Orr home and their wedding was in the Orr home. The home farm on the railroad was their wedding gift!

Guelcksy stayed to paint the new home, fell in love with the towheaded boys, and never left us. He was so much a part in our family that as a child, I did not know that he didn't belong to us!

Lucille is the only one of my children to remember him. This picture was made on a visit to Alicia when she was only two. He loved her just as he had loved all of us kids. I am so glad I have this picture of him!

Likewise Mrs. Gardiner, a widow with two little boys, was in deep distress when mama befriended her and let her live in a tenant house (27) facing the road beyond the cow lot.

Papa had tried so hard to get help for mama! He had even build a house (15) for a negro couple, Jim and Mary and their teenage daughter Jennie, but threatening letters from the K.K.K. made them afraid and they did not dare to stay. To this day Alicia is all white and dying!

Mrs. Gardiner was God's answer to mama's great need. She was devoted to mama and tireless in her service!

She was always about the kitchen, washing clothes on a rub board under the plum (8) tree, punching them down in the big bubbling Kettle, heating sad irons on the big kitchen stove to iron the endless array of ruffled petticoats, and dresses, gowns and shirts. There was no prepressed material in those days. Everything had to be sprinkled down over night before ironing! She was tireless, cleaning, cooking, canning, peeling, washing dishes -- a grateful and devoted friend! I wish I had a picture of her; but more than that I wish to tell her how gratefully and lovingly I think of her today helping my mother the she did!

At the back of the calf lot there was a tame black berry patch (14) Tame berries are larger and juicier than wild ones. They have less thorns, too! Mama and Mrs. Gardiner wore long black stockings on their arms with holes cut to free their fingers for picking! I remember them picking buckets full of berries, while Gladys and I roamed around their feet, eating all the berries we could reach! Oh! But they were good! So were the pies that Mama made and the delicious jelly for our butter biscuits!

The long dining table that seated eight, three times a day, served a different purpose in the afternoon. Mama folded the linen cloth and used the oil cloth undercover to spread material and cut out garments for growing family! One day papa came through the dining room and noticed that the figures of her left hand were all bandaged. He stopped to ask "Did you burn your hand, honey?" She said "No" and showed him how right-handed scissors rubbed blisters on her fingers!

He remembered and the next time he went to St. Louis to sell cotton or buy supplies for the store, he went to a foundry and had a pair of left handed scissors made for her, silvered and sharpened!

You can buy left handed scissors everywhere today; but they were not available then, and you and I will have trouble to imagine her relief and joy, receiving those scissors! They were her dearest treasure! She kept them in her machine drawer and we children never thought of using them!

I don't remember the birth of Bopeep. I was Edith's charge and shadow! I was Lynn's adoring errand boy! I don't remember that either of them were ever cross or impatient with me! Even as an adult, I was always sure of their love and concern for me!

But I do remember the dreadful day I saw men carrying my father home from the gin, where he fallen with fatal stroke!

Gladys and I were sent to aunt Mary Orr's house (32) where we played quietly in her big front entrance hall using empty whiskey bottles for babies and wrapping them in towels for blankets. Gladys will remember!

I remember the amazing stopping of the three a clock fast train that always flew through our town as if it were not there! This day its panting ebony beauty paused in our little town to let Lizzie off, called home by the death her father!

And now there were changes made in our living arrangements. The front room which had been our parents' bedroom, became the sitting room. Each evening we sat there around the center table that held the big lamp and did hand work. (I strung quilt blocks - two light and two dark) while Lizzie read aloud. David Copperfield, Mill on the Floss, a Tale of Two Cities, Lorna Doone, Little Women, Black Beauty and Toby Tyler! They are still my favorite books today!

Mama took the middle room for her bedroom and kept Bopeep with her. Gladys was already rooming with Lizzie upstairs and now I joined Edith in the middle room. The boys were across the hall over the parlor.

I like to remember the day papa took us to visit the gin, to see its big black engine, and to find the wonder of the turntable in the floor (30) big enough to ride on. I think it was upstairs and it was the means for carrying finished bales of cotton out to the ware house. Papa let us ride on that turntable. I held Edith's hand and was so glad we made the circle and I saw papa waiting for us. He lifted me off. The girls rode again and again. Once was enough for me. and yet I'm glad for this memory. So many things were finished when he left us.

Lynn was the first to leave us, marrying a local girl, Ada Lee, and made his home in a house that is still standing across the street from the church, or at least it was still there when I visited the church in' 79!

Hugh thought it best for him to leave and let Lynn decide he wanted to care for the Alicia business and take care of mama and the girls. He went to California.

The back room upstairs became the quilting room. Mama, Lizzie and Edith were the quilters. With Lynn married and Hugh in California, we took over the boys room for our play room.

In the end, Lynn chose Railroading and Hugh came home and took care of the Alicia business, gin, store and farmland.

One summer mama took Bopeep and me to Illinois. I have mixed memories of the places we visited. Mama's brother uncle Marshall Smith and his wife aunt Josie had only grown children and they were washing buckets of gooseberries, the first I ever saw, pale green balls with white stripes and very very sour!

I don't know if aunt Mary [Fife] lived in the same town -- was it Ducoin [DuQoin]? -- but she was in a wheeled chair and we had to be very quiet. She was mama's oldest sister. Then we visited papa's [half-] sister Matilda Ferris, who had two [3] daughters [and 2 sons]. One of them had married Mr. Summers and they had a son named Roy. I don't know if they lived there or were visiting as we were. Roy had a big box of iron horses and carts that he played with but would not let me or Bopeep touch them. [note: corrections made by Martha Purdy, April 2000]

One day his mother took him to spend the day with a friend. That day Bopeep and I had fun with the iron horses and carts, hitching and unhitching them all day long, until we were thoroughly satisfied. Then we put them all carefully back in his box and Roy never knew!

Our last visit was in Galatia, Illinois with mamas other sister, aunt Carrie; what a love! and she had the nicest husband, uncle Randall Jones, who had a drug store in the corner of his yard. How could I keep from loving him? -- big, handsome, blonde and kind! -- a father figure if there ever was one! They had two daughters, grown-up like our Lizzie, and they had adopted a son, Charlie, about twelve!

One day uncle Randall killed a rat in his barn. He asked Charlie to take it and throw it in the river. Charlie asked me and Bopeep to go with him. We did and it was a long walk. Charlie decided not to go all the way to the river but to push the rat under the house! We knew that if he did that, the odor would reveal it! But he did it anyhow! Then as we turned home, he began to try to make us promise not to tell -- and we would not promise! He got so mad at us that he went back and pulled that rat up from under the house and trudged all the way to the river! I don't think he doted on Bopeep and me after that!

Outside of that event, we loved our stay in Galatia! I even celebrated my birthday in uncle Randall's Sunday school, sitting in a decorated chair and being sung to! More than that aunt Carrie had made a birthday cake with candles!

When we returned from that trip, Guelcksy had a wonderful surprise for us. There were two big paperdoll houses, two -- storied and wall papered, and one apartment over the stable with a horse and buggy in the stable!

I can't imagine how we decided who should have what; but I know Iwas well pleased with the apartment over the stable. We had endless fun with those houses! In the big room over the parlor we arranged our doll beds, trunks, and boxes of treasures along one wall and those paper doll houses along another! Such happy memories I have of those days!

Before Alicia had an icehouse, we had big excitement when the 100lb package of ice came on the local! It was always sent in a sack of saw dust! Hugh washed it off under the pump and carried it into the dining room to put it in the top of the ice box. This meant ice in our icetea glasses and sawdust for icing on our mudpies! The ice house put an end to all that; but gave us delight when Lizzie and Hugh collaborated to make ice cream. Hugh pounded the ice while Lizzie made custard. Then we kids turned the handle until it got too hard to turn! Then Hugh took over and finished the job! Lizzie took the long paddle out and laid it on the tray for us kids to taste the drippings clinging to the paddle! Oh how good it was to sit on the steps of the porch and savor the goodness of ice cream!

We played another game called "Budget". I can't imagine where we got that word or decided what it meant! We stuffed our doll clothes and blankets in sacks and Gladys lived on aunt Mary Orr's high porch, I lived on Mrs. Gardiner's front porch and Bopeep lived on the dining room porch at home. The game consisted in packing our "budgets" and visiting to discuss their contents! I recall a great deal of yelling back and forth! Gladys will laugh at this memory -- and so will Bopeep if she's listening!