doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Ot fO jO, Grand pappy & mammy thread.

I took lots of rabbits to lots of people who needed them badly. When I could get a shot at a javalina they got those too. Nobody turned them down. Today, I doubt you could give a rabbit or a javalina away. No need to eat that stuff when they can swipe that Lone Star card for beef.

Anyway, most people wouldn't know what to do with a bird or animal that still had the fur/feathers on it, much less how to clean a gizzard, or what a liver and heart is. I used to clean all the gizzards on doves, quail and ducks and keep the livers and hearts too. I love fried gizzards/livers/hearts and eggs.

A lot of guys I know don't take the time to do all that. They pull the breast out and toss the rest. I can't do it. I watched a guy cut the breasts out of two nice pintails one morning and toss the rest into the water. I asked him what he was doing? He said, "Don't worry the alligators will eat it..... yeah, that's what I meant....

Now, I never could develop a tolerance, much less a taste, for brains (I know that's a pretty ripe comment...). I will leave them for someone else.

Alan

Good question, Gil. Grandaddy installed a Delco "light plant" long before the REA ran poles and wires out here. It was a low voltage system with a little building full of batteries off to the side of the house. The engine that powered the generator to charge the batteries would crank itself up and run for awhile when the batteries' charge got low. They had several appliances that ran off the low voltage system, in addition to the lights. My Daddy told me that when he would get home from school he loved to listen to a Tom Mix show in the afternoon on the radio. He said every day when he would be listening to that show the generator would crank up and cause static so bad that he couldn't hear the show until it shut itself off. There are still some of the insulators for the wiring in my attic. I had the entire house rewired in 2000, and the electrician asked me what I wanted him to do with those old insulators. I told him to leave them. Planters Electric Membership Corporation was formed in 1936, and began running lines in 7 counties.

The Delco light plant wouldn't run a deep well pump, so Grandaddy devised a deal that supplied running water to the house. He had a 75' high Aermotor windmill that drove a long driveshaft that sat atop several large poles that went to the open well behind the house. The water from the well was piped up into a "water tank", which was a homemade tank of about 400 gallons that sat atop a 40' tower built of heart pine. The tank itself was made of cypress staves and steel bands, like a big barrel. The height of that tank provided water pressure to the house. No hot water heater, but no going out to the well to draw water with a bucket on a cold night, either.

SRH

I simply cannot stand that type of thing.
Grandma & mum made simply beeeauuuutifulll giblet soup with the feet & all in it. But never did eat a beak. Grandma made specially sure we cut the heads off right up high to keep as much neck as possible.

Around here people catch the fresh water red claw crayfish & break out its tail then wash that in running water & cook only the tails.
I always cook the beasts whole & love the flavour of the yellow fat in the body & crack the claws & suck out the legs just as my family always did.
While doing this I have very little idea of where my cell phone is or what it is doing.

On the farm we used to do all our own kills of the cattle, sheep, goats & pigs & poultry & all we raised & ate. Being Germans there was all the wurst, black blood pudding & sausage to the old kraut recipe's. Grandma caught every drop of blood from the cut throats. The intestines cleaned & processed were used for wurst & sausage skins.
Every scrap of meat cut off & in the grinder, skulls cut open for brains & tongues & then boiled to get the remnant goodness to make what they called brawn or braun. bones & feet boiled to get the jelly part of the brawn. Grandpa ate the boiled eyes sucked out of the skull.

It used to be said that the only thing those old Germans did not use from the pig was the squeal.
Well to prove his point my Grandpa used to cut out & keep the voice box from the pig & had a whole row of dried ones nailed to the front edge of the top shelf in his workshop. He had some ears there too for silk purses someday. He was a real comedian.

I remember as a child climbing up there & getting some voice boxes down & blowing through them to try getting a noise. They did not make a peep.
So it is true, the only thing thrown away is the squeal.

O.M

Great story Stan. We are currently remodeling my Grand parents farm house. When they moved there in 1946 it had no indoor plumbing. I will have to ask my father but I believe they added the electricity sometime in the early 50's. I know my Grand Father plowed that land behind a single horse before he could afford a tractor. Different days indeed.

Ya'll was living awful high on the hog Stanley...

My grandfather on my mothers side died before I was born..my grandmother died in 1969 in the same house my mother was born in...she was born 1914 along with four other kids one older three younger. My grandmother went to the same church her entire life...that my great grandad helped build.
His Bible still sits on the pulpit of the unlocked Church.

My grandmother gave into getting electric lights in the 1950s...a party line phone in the 1960s..they finally made her put in an electric well pump in the late 1960s she fought tooth and nail because she didn't want it but she was getting to old to pump water..I didn't like it either. I used to pump that well pump hours on end and never got the first drop of water...I guess there was a reason they never taught me how to prime the pump.
Story was they had the best water for miles and people came and went freely and used their well.

Mule barns...blacksmith shop and tool barn...smoke house, root seller. Everything one needed to survive. My mothers brothers paid for their ammo by trapping mink and beaver in the 1920s...the traps in their oak baskets and all the tools were all still there when I was a kid.

She refused indoor plumbing...not because she couldn't afford it because she didn't want it. A toilet in the house didn't sit right with her.

She cooked on a wood stove until she died...Nothing like cathead biscuits cooked on a wood stove.

People talk about hope and change...she was happy and alive.

You think you know country... you don't know what country is.

One of the cypress cisterns out at the ranch collapsed. I got all the boards and ran them through the planer and the jointer. It took the old bleached wood off and the bevel but they were still random width. I arranged them and made our kitchen table from that cypress. It's a trestle type 7' long. Nice light colored straight grained cypress, trees cut probably 150 years ago.

I was recycling and repurposing long before it was cool to do that.

After 1930 and the oil boom, my great-great grandfather took grandma and moved to Corpus Christi never to return to the "Garden Spot of South Texas" and my uncle got the Humble Co. to pipe gas to the house. He used it for cooking, a bit of heating and lighting. It was some number of years after that they put in one of those dodads that added the smell to the gas. Folks used to blowing out kerosene lamps lived dangerously with natural gas piped into the house.

They had that gas up until I was about 10. I can remember going out with my grandfather on Thanksgiving morning in the freezing cold and warming up frozen gas pipelines with a torch and pear burner to get gas to the house to cook that turkey. They put in propane not long after that.

I don't know when they got electricity. Water came from the ground brought up by the efforts of an 8' Aermotor as was every drop of water within 5 miles. The cisterns evolved from cypress to clay to concrete. They did put a bird/bat proof roof over the one for the house.

Of course early on the kitchens were separate from the house and a steady supply of wood kept the hearths and stoves going until the gas stage. 12 people require a lot of cooking.

Grandpa (my Great-great grandfather) had come from Italy, settled in North Carolina at first and then participated in the Oklahoma land rush. He had a 32 Colt revolver and a C.D. Bonehill 10 gage shotgun (which I have). I wish I had the Colt too but ....

In 1903 he saw a flyer "Sweeden Farm Lots" near Piedras Pintas Texas, "The Garden Spot of South Texas". He sold his Northwestern Oklahoma farm and bought 160 acres sight unseen in Piedras Pintas (Soon to be Benavides, Texas). He bought a train car load of lumber and he and the boys got in the wagon and headed South. He was likely disappointed by "The Garden Spot of South Texas". It wasn't hardly that. But they cleared two 30 acre pastures, built a house, drilled a well and scratched out a living for 30 years. Then the Humble Oil Company changed their lives. It changed the way they lived but it did not change who they were, and I thank them and God for that.

I've got more stories than y'all want to read, so I'll stop till I just can't stand it any more.

Alan

When the REA ran electric to my one grandfathers farm, 1932, they put the pole right across one of his fields. Not where he wanted them. So he and my father moved them to where he wanted them. A few days later they came out to run the lines and the lineman noted the extra distance and said it would waste too much wire. After a few minutes my grandfather asked him if he like oysters. Yes was the reply. So for a bushel of oysters the poles were left where they were and the line was left where he wanted it. My father had to go tong the oyster up when he got home form school. We had several oyster beds in our creek. About a year later the REA had to put one more pole in the line because the pole-sitters had set the poles too far apart they said.

I remember seeing a old Delco system on his farm. I think it was a 32 volt system. Most were, but they also came in 65 volt and 110. All our family had were the 32's I think. Few farmers complained that when the new power lines were run they had just bought a new system or that they did not want to rewire their house to get hooked up to the REA. They all did by the war. Lot easier to flip a switch than anything else.

When I was a kid, a deep well was anything over eight or ten feet. If you got good flow at ten feet, and the water was not too bad for iron(rust) or sulfa you left it there. If it was not good water you would move it maybe ten feet away and try again. We put one ten foot well in the bottom of a dry ditch for hogs one year. Ditch was about ten feet deep and dry as a bone. Used a hit and miss engine to pump water out of it. We put in a "deep" well on the farm in 1968 and it was 75 feet deep. Last irrigation well I had put in was 1200 plus feet but a bit larger than the 4" well with a 2" supply line on that 75 foot one. Cost a bit more as well.

Most of the good old days was hard work. Things I did as a kid, working on the farm, would make a safety expert throw up. I could never let my kids do it. Starting tractors with a hand crank or by turning a pulley, or by chain pulling one tractor to start another, no fenders, roll bars, safety covers on pulleys, belts and electric. Driving tractors when I was six or seven years old, all day long. Heck I am older than the triangle safety signs seen on the backs of tractors these days. Carrying a loaded shotgun or .22 on a tractor or combine while working.

When my Grandad lived in this house and had farmed long enough to get a dollar or two he built a "commissary" between the house and the road, a bit off to the west side. It was a little country store that sold staple food items and a few other things. Many families of white folks and black folks lived here, and couldn't travel far to "trade", so the little commissaries were all over the countryside. He would keep his open until late in the evening because many folks would come, after knocking off time, to "trade". He bought a "piccolo" and put it on the front porch of the commissary, so the customers could buy some entertainment. "Piccolo" was the local name for the early jukebox. Great crowds began to gather in the front yard to listen (and drink). Grandma began to get a bit scared of the crowds and would lock herself in the house until Grandaddy came home, after closing up.

One night Grandaddy decided to play a trick on her. He normally came in the back door, so that night he eased up on the porch and rattled the doorknob. She said "Who is it?". He didn't answer, but rattled the doorknob harder. She said "I said, who is it?". Still no answer from him. He twisted at the doorknob again, and heard two clicks. He knew immediately it was the hammer on her .32 revolver. He cried out "This is your ever-loving husband Minis Hillis!!". He laughed about that many times, but Grandma never thought it was funny.

Grandma was a very prim and proper Southern lady. She had a cook/housemaid for most of her life, but oversaw all the housekeeping and kitchen duties very closely. She was a superb cook, and taught the cook how to prepare everything to her specs. Grandma and Grandaddy loved to have visiting ministers for meals. The big dining room had a chandelier, and her table was set with white linen tablecloths and fine silver, for company. This was after the Depression, when things were a lot better economically.

In those days black women used all sorts of items as hair pins, and adornments. One day they were hosting the guest minister for a revival, I think, and cornbread was one of the things served. The guest minister bit into his piece of cornbread and bit onto something hard. He made some sound that caused Grandaddy to notice, and asked him "What's that?". The minister pulled a "cut nail", a squared iron nail common in those days, from the cornbread. Grandaddy exclaimed "There's a nail in your cornbread!". The cook, Minnie Clark, burst in from the kitchen and exclaimed "Law, that musta' fell outta' my head into the batter". Mortified ......... is the word I remember being used to describe Grandma's emotions.

SRH

Wasn't there a song about working for the company store...

Stan were your people from the south or carpetbaggers ?

My maternal grandmother grew up on a farm in Bermuda. Farm land was scarce and under Bermuda law, no house could be built on tillable land. Houses were built on the ancient coral bed outcroppings that were uplifted from the sea eons ago. My great grandfather grew casaba for local markets and Easter Lilies for export to Macy's. She was born in the 1890's and the family moved into the house when she was 6 months old. The house was 200 years old at that time. Water for drinking and cooking was recovered from rooftop rainwater that was collected into a large cistern. Otherwise, there is no freshwater on the island. By law, the roofs were made of slabs of the ancient coral and heavily white washed for the collection of water. The homes were built from cut coral blocks and stuccoed over. The houses were strongly built to survive hurricane winds and as was the practice in the rural south, the kitchens were separate from the living quarters because of the risk of fire. When my great grandfather died, the land was split up among his children. The old homestead is no longer in family hands and with the exception of one family, the rest of the property has changed ownership over the years. The view from the highest property, my grandmother's, was spectacular. Mom's sister was born in Bermuda and later in life she returned to live and work in Bermuda, but ultimately sold the house and moved back to the states.