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built after a storm that tore up Uncle Clifton and Aunt Ruby?s house up. Maybe it was the '47 hurricane I was very young and do not remember the whole story. The room made a good place to take an afternoon nap and for Papa to read me a story from a big Mother Goose book that I had.
After coffee it was time to feed the hogs, chickens, horse and milk the cows. It was my job to shovel the fresh cow and horse patties out of the barnyard and into a pile. There were always two piles one from the previous year to be used to fertilize things in the vegetable garden and one fresh pile that could not be used until next year. This was composting before it was as popular today.
I used to stay with Papa when Honey went to Aunt Ollie's to have a dress or two made.
He would make me fried Indian bread. The hot fried bread was topped off with homemade molasses. During one of these times that Papa gave me one of the two whippings that he ever gave me. He went into the backfield to do something, it had rained, and I was playing in the water in the ditch when he came back and the water was about waist deep and running swiftly. I know the danger now but at that time, it was a nice pool to play in on a hot summer day. Well he came by the potato house and broke a limb off a pecan tree that grew there and forever more bet me the water and land in a 6-foot area. I never did that again. The other time I rode Creole, his horse, through the woods and up past Mr. Degruns house and out onto the main highway. I got a bridle wreath switch for that.
Papa had a heart of gold and the patients of Job but I guess I just scared him so bad that he was beside himself. Papa did not get that upset when Gene and I broke all the eggs under a setting hen that Papa had. We did it to see what they looked like before they were bom. Thinking back, we may have never mentioned that we did that. Ha Ha!
Honey was the one who had to do the disciplining. She could get you by the ear and make you six inches taller. The razor strap could make you do ?The Hoochie Coochie? and the hair brush could make you jump three feet while going in a circle around her.
Honey and Papa showed great and enduring love for each other. After 50 years of marriage they would still put their platform rockers together and hold hands. Such love is very rare.
She had more stories in her head than any writer of today. If only I could have written them all down. I am sure that there was some truth in most of them thinking back. There were stories of mud houses, wolves, antics of children and stories about the time in which she spent her childhood in Minnesota before coming South after a couple of years of failed crops. Grandpa Daniels was a Union Sergeant in the Civil War and met a Edghart "southern gentleman?" that he entrusted to go back south and purchase land for him and his family and build a house. Edghart instead added a room onto his house. This did not work out so Grand Pa Daniels had to start over again. Today the ending to that story is not too hard to figure out. Honey?s journals give a view of that which I hope to share someday.


Kidd 004
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