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eaten. Laura lives in Frankleton, Miss and Forest lives in Slidell, Louisiana. One Christmas I baked a big ham, a shoulder, two big hens and made two kinds of dressing, cakes, pies and all kinds of other food so we had forty eight people to eat dinner with us and the
next day they were having Willies nephew's funeral and J.R. Boutwell my son-in-law preached the funeral so I told J.R. before we left that after the services to tell all of Cecil's (the deceased) relatives to come to the house and have dinner before going home. Because some of them lived in Pineville, Miss, Gulfport, Wiggins and other places so we had forty four for dinner besides some off the other ones who stayed at the house helped me to fix a big pot of every thing to send over to Cecil's mother's as some of them said they'd rather go on home. Then we fixed another big box to send to one of Willies sisters and after everyone had eaten all they could hold there was still lots of food left. One of the women said, Pearl; you must have been cooking all of this food for a week. Mrs. Reynolds and my niece Edith had stayed at the house and had all the dinner on the two tables one on the back gallery and a long table in the dining room. Mrs. Reynolds had made a great big pan of biscuits and you should have heard how they bragged on those cat heads. Then Edith fixed a big pan of macaroni and cheese and everyone seemed to enjoy and appreciate it. Mrs. Reynolds was Della's mother-in-law. She was a good woman. She'd been gone now for several years. It's funny how you never quit missing them. All of this food reminded me of the three loaves of bread and two fishes that the Lord fed so many with. Della married Freeland Reynolds and Loomis married his brother De Witt. Two brothers married two sisters. Both husbands are gone on now.
When you stop to think of how many were fed those two days it would have been over a hundred. As we had 48 Christmas day and 44 the next day which would have been 92 besides the two large families that I sent food too which would have been way over a hundred. That wasn't yesterday though. I pity them now if they'd expect me to fix a meal like that. That was in the old hog killing days when we had plenty of fresh pork, great flocks of chickens on the yard that you could go out and kill and a couple of big roosters or hens or two or three fryers at a time. That part was the good old days.
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