Marion Co TOC

(The picture above represents the three parts of my grandmother's (Virgie above) family. Pearl the daughter of Henry McCracken & Emily Allen Lewallen, Virgie the daughter of Charlie Lewallen & Emily Allen Lewallen and Sarah McCrackin the daughter of Henry McCrackin & Belle Osbourn. Eli Henry McCrackin, Emily Allen Lewallen and all the kids moved to Indian Territory in 1897. Linda)

The following are the memories of Pearl McCrackin

Some Things I Remember:
    How Dad used to fib to us for entertainment
    Mother Used to sing stories.
    Dad and the kids bigger than us, fuss and fight (You can bet Dad always won)
    How many times I cried for butter to stir in my sorghum to make it white but didn't get it.
    How I had to be kept out of the garden, I'd cry for lettuce and onions.
    Our trip to Texas in a wagon in 1902 to visit grandma's sister.
    Coming from Arkansas in 1897.
    Early Christmases in a poverty stricken family.
    Early Easter Sundays and how we colored our eggs with catnip, sassafras roots, onion skins & coffee.
    Early churches in Indian Territory.
    U.S. Marshals in Indian Territory.
    Parties, Picnics and Dances.
    Canning and drying fruit.
    Hog killings, log rollings, candy breakings.
    Weddings and Infare dinner.
    Funerals, sickness, doctor dosing out medicine from saddlebags.
    My first school.

    I knew nothing about Sunday School and we had quit school long before Easter to pick up corn stalks and pile them in piles for a night of burning when the wind was quiet.
    We were so very-very poverty stricken. Hardly enough of anything to eat. We had a few chickens not any particular breed and I don't know how we got them since we came from Arkansas to Indian Territory without any. There were 15 of us. Five of Ma's, Four of Pa's and four of us. I was the oldest girl of the last bunch. Two boys were older than I. It was a struggle, I'm sure.
    I first remember Easter at the age of about 5. My brothers and I had gathered eggs not from a chicken house with rows of nests but ran when we heard a hen cackle to see if we could flnd a nest hidden in weeds, bushes or in a hollow log with an egg and to see if it would be a white one as Ma had said white ones would take the color better than brown ones. Since there were so many of us to eat eggs we stole out an egg or two ever so often until we got 5 or 6 apiece. Then with dreamy imaginations we would tell Ma the color we wish we could have. Then she would ponder and convince us that the colors that she knew how to produce were the prettiest and naturally we chose them. Hens were not fed but was a good chicken if it was a good rustler.
    There was a plant that we were taught to know, as the leaves of this plant, when made into a tea would soothe a baby crying with colic. Ma dried the leaves so she could have tea for a winter baby's aches. This plant was the catnip. We picked catnip leaves green at Easter, put eggs in to boil with the leaves. We hoped to get green eggs, but best I remember, they were sorts orange yellow. Then bluing for blue eggs. This rubbed off and wasn't admired as much.
    Our coffee maker was a big tin coffee pot. Coffee it was cheaper. Ma roasted it in her oven then ground it in a coffee mill held between her knees in her lap. When the hopper became full it was poured into the big pot, morning after morning new fresh ground coffee was added with more water until there was more coffee grounds than coffee in the pot. Ma let us put some eggs in her coffee pot to cook with the grounds to make brown eggs. Then sometimes she would take a knife and scrape the brown away and leave white stripes on the brown eggs.
    We sometimes would be allowed a scrap of calico to sew around the egg. The older 5 girls claimed every scrap of cloth to piece into patch-work quilts. My brothers would ask Ma to sew up one a-piece as they had sewed torn balls.
    We got our thread, for wasting as Pa always reminded us [was a sin], by raveling out a piece of brown domestic (as we called it) and using two threads of this. Then with our eggs sewed up tightly in bright colored calico we put them in an iron pot to boil and sat wide-eyed and waited for our calico eggs to get hard cooked. Sometimes they would be pretty sometimes not depending on the amount of dye that came out of the cloth.
    As I remember calicoes, almost all faded. Dyes were not all fast. If our eggs (three or four) turned out well we were pleased. If one cracked in cooking or the color wasn't good it was just too bad as there were no more eggs. I never knew you could buy or sell eggs then. They just had to be laid or else there were none.
    We dug sassafras roots for tea. All learned to like it. Sassafras made reddish color tea, so sometimes we cooked our eggs with the tea for pinkish colored eggs. Lots of sassafras grew in Indian Territory. I remember Elsie dug hickory roots by mistake and made tea. We had hickory tea. Drank it and -.
    Later on as we collected fowls it seemed we would go to the wild blackberry - to hunt guinea eggs. We especially wanted guinea eggs as their shell is much harder to break than other eggs. Sometime we could have the choice of a big-big egg. One each of turkey or goose eggs. These eggs were saved to set and raise from, so couldn't be wasted on the dratted kids as this third bunch of children was called by our older half brothers and sisters on each side of the family tree.
    The first I remember we were share-croppers, then the next year we advanced to renters. Bought a team and wagon (on credit) on time so we called it. We were up a bit now. So we had all the eggs we could eat for Easter Breakfast. Some had them boiled, some had them fried. Some had them both ways. In order to get eggs enough for Easter Breakfast it took doing without eggs for so long that we really enjoyed the eggs when Easter came.
    Pa and Ma were good Christians but in the Indian Territory where we lived there was nothing as I remember ever said about Sunday School. So Easter was not mentioned as a church event and had no connection with death, burial and resurrection of our Savior. Top of Page
    To me colored eggs and all the eggs you could eat for Easter Breakfast was a good Easter. I'm sure Ma knew about Easter Parade in her way, as we had a new dress for Easter. But no shoes or hats for summer as those things were luxuries. And luxuries were not for us.
    We didn't know anything about crepe paper at first but later, and before we knew about egg dyes, we wrapped our eggs in red crepe paper and cooked them and got beautiful red eggs. That was a step forward, when we could get a dime to buy paper for box supper. We would take the outside peelings of red onions and put eggs and onion peelings into a pan with small amount of water enough to cover eggs and cook until done. They had a reddish purple color. We didn't use this often as onions were too valuable as food (relish) with our fat meat. Then, too, if an egg would crack in cooking, we disliked the flavor of onion with our egg.
    I don't know if this was near Easter or not but I remember we went to Tick Hill to a singing. There I saw a little girl about my age (pre-school) with a dress that stood out and she had on slippers and black stockings in the summer time. I wished inside of me that I could be like her.
    I had never had slippers as we called them and no black stockings as mine were wool-knitted white and red stripes, one stripe of red around my leg and then alternate with white. Ma always quit her knitting before they got long enough to meet my drawers which came below my knees. I remember the hard time I use to have making them meet. No wonder it was so wonderful when on the first day of May we threw our much too worn out shoes away and turned our shrunken, much darned virgin wool striped stockings over to the next younger - (while on the red and white stockings). Dad raised the sheep, sheared them and Ma brought a bag of wool from Arkansas with her. I don't remember how she died her wool, but I remember her spinning the wool into thread and winding it on a spindle, then winding thread from spindle into hunks, then into balls. Then her knitting, knitting, and knitting and how quiet we would have to be to let her count the stitches when it came to turning the heel and narrowing off the toes.
    On my first day at school Pa walked with my two brothers and me to Tick Hill two miles away (or Sand Ridge School). There he made arrangements for us to go to school (on time) as we were supposed to pay one dollar each per month as it was a subscription school in the Choctaw Indian Nation of the Indian Territory.
    I remember how scared and unimportant I felt. I had on a candy-stripped blouse waist dress and was barefoot. My hair was braided. I usually wore it curled but Ma said it would be cooler braided. This was a summer school. My memories are dim concerning this school. I think I went only a short time and took sore eyes and quit and went with Ma to the Creek Indian Nation to visit John, her oldest son.
    I remember the ABC Class, sitting on a long bench with other children and swinging my feet like they did. Thought that was part of saying the ABC's. I had a McGuffey's first reader but didn't do anything with it. The teacher rang a hand bell to call us in. There were no desks, just two rows of long homemade benches, pushed against the wall on each side. The girls sat on one side and boys sat on the other. There was an aisle up the center for the teacher to pace up and down, up and down.
    The older pupils carried our drinking water from a farmer's well near by. The bucket was cedar and a rusty dipper for us all to drink from. I told Ma l wished we had a gourd to drink out of. (I still think nothing I ever drank water from is as good as a gourd dipper).
    We had no toilet, not even an outside privy. So when a pain hit us we took to the bush, or down the hill to the hollow, where we could soon smell that others had been there before us.
    At a recess at this school, we played Skip-to-my-Lou. As I think now I was too little to play skip-to-my-Lou. I learned the song to it "If I can't get a red bird, a blue bird will do, If I can't get a red bird, a blue bird will do skip-to-my-Lou, my Darlin". One big girl sang it " If I can't get a redbird, a striped bird will do" and choose me with my candy striped blouse waist dress. How pleased I must have been to remember it for ever. Wonder if the candy striped dress was all the school dress (as we called it) I had?
    When Winter came and the cotton was all picked it was time for school again. This time Pa said we would go to town to school. Oh, How I dreaded it. I didn't pick cotton. I had to help tend to the babies as Ma did the cooking for all.
    The town school was more than three miles away. They used different books in town so we could trade our books in on other new ones. I found a second reader and asked that it be traded in for me a new Baldwin second reader. I was laughed at about wanting a second reader so soon. I told them the first reader wouldn't last long. Poor Ma. I heard her ask Mary, my grown half sister, how she must dress me to go to town school. I didn't know what they decided but I do remember how I felt. I must have looked as odd as I felt. My dress was outing flannel, red and black striped and checked, Basque waist with a gored skirt. Every part of the dress was lined with gray cambric. We had no sewing machine so it was made by hand. The sleeves were mutton leg, the skirt was long, mid-calf; to keep me warm. Then there were my red and white striped stockings. Funny I can't remember my wrap. But I had a fastener with beads on top.
    I don't remember the first day. But this town School was a two teacher school - A man Mr Philbeck - and a woman, Miss Lula. Miss Lula was the primary teacher. She was a tall thin lady, black hair piled high on her head, very white skin with blue eyes. She wore a light grey dress with a high yellow standing collar most of the time. She was very stern and had the daylights scared out of me all the time. I finished my first and second readers at this school. Got a spelling book and arithmetic book.
    Here in this school, Pa got the idea that I would make a teacher, as he had never known anyone learn as fast as I did. I know I was only normal in my progress.
    I soon knew I was dressed too differently and cried much about it. I told Ma the wool stockings scratched so I couldn't wear them. What did she do about it? Well, she got some black ones for me and made me put them on first I was still humiliated. I told Ma that no one's drawers showed but mine.
    Francis and Jewel sanctioned it so after much worry, tears and begging I left off my loud stockings and got to stuff my outing drawers down into new black stockings that were long enough to reach above my knees and were kept in place by rubber garters instead of being tied below my knees. Then I had my other school dress to make so Ma paid attention to how other little girls looked and made this one full skirt, shorter, and left the lining out.
    When Thanksgiving came, I was given a part in an acrostic that spelled out Thanksgiving for an afternoon program. I was the second 'T'. "Mother I now doth appear, Tenth in the list he ranks. Gladly he doth his lithe works in the evening given to thanks." Didn't make sense but I memorized it. This was my first memory piece. Top of Page
    Then I drew a place in the Christmas Program. It was an acrostic also. I wasn't pleased this time as I had been in a piece once. I wanted my brothers to have a piece. But the teacher selected only those who she didn't have to teach by rote.
    I remember staying after school to practice. Then she would turn us loose too late for little ones to walk three miles home. Several times a wolf would cross the road in front of us. Then my brothers would take my hands and open their barlow knives for protection. That was enough for me, I was afraid no more.
    In the spring our recesses were spent gathering spring beauties, daisies and buttercups on a meadow near by. I learned to know these flowers there. Don't know why we didn't go to school a full year but suppose Pa couldn't raise $3.OO a month for us. We didn't go to school any more for 2 or 3 years, then we went to Brooken.
    Now I tried the third reader. Schools were not graded and you could use any book you wanted to just so you had the $1.00 per month per child. Mr. Moore was our teacher. He had a long gray beard and walked with a bad limp. Here again I took my schooling seriously and advanced rapidly. I had no trouble with my clothes being odd looking any more as Ma had found out I should look similar to those around me.
    Now I had a little sister going to school with me. How proud I was of her. My brothers were slow, slow, slow to learn but Lucy knew she had a job to do and did it well. Now it took $4.00 per month. Four dollars seems little but it was so hard for Pa to get. We sometimes would have to miss a month on account of the pay. All the half brothers and sisters are married and on their own now. Pa, Ma, and five children seemed few then, but as I look back now it was plenty. (I was 9 years old during this time.)
    I soon entered the advanced class because I could read and spell well, but knew nothing else. This school was similar to the others. It had an outside toilet One with girls and one with boys written over the door. This was between years 10 and 12.
    The last of school program was put on. I heard them practice so much so I'd learn every part. Then go home, tell it to Ma. Learned to sing all the songs then go home and sing them. Also, all the poems. Later I found out I had memorized Psalm of Life, Wreck of the Hesperus, Village Blacksmith, Two Glasses and many other familiar lines.
    (Back to Stockings. First School) I cried because no one but me wore red and white striped stockings so Ma traded some white wool to a neighbor Mrs. Nickerson for some black wool and spun the yarn and knitted me some black ones. They still scratched.
    About my wrap, I wore a big gray and black wool shawl Ma got from a chicken peddler. When I was too cold for this I stayed home until it got warm.
    >Ma managed some way of getting a boy's suit for Francis, an outgrown suit of a neighbor's boy, but when winter came the suit was too small for my brother and I got the coat. This was my school wrap for a long time. Again an old lady's jacket from out of nowhere was mine to wear to a new school at Brush Hill. (I'm 12).
    Dad had credit at a store in Brooken. With so many girls getting married they ran the bill at the store so big Pa and Ma were very depressed. Now with no grown help for a big farm we were rented out. That is, someone got to the landlord and rented our place, so Dad had to move out.
    We got a small log house, one big room with a shed for the kitchen. The kitchen door opened out. I remember icicles a time or two were so long we could not open the kitchen door until the icicles were broken away.
    There was no ceiling. Joists and rafters were in plain view. The room was made of boards hewn by hand from nearby logs. Then joist, that is a beam running parallel to opposite walls, were used to hang clothes on.
    The kitchen and dining room furniture consisted of a very small cookstove, nails on the wall for skillets, buckets and one battered tin dishpan. I don't remember a stew pan, but iron pots, iron teakettle and tin coffee pot. A stove shovel, a soot rake and a stove cap lifter were hung on the wall around the stove which was in a corner.
    Near the door which opened outward was a water bucket, a gourd dipper and a rusted tin washpan with a hole that had been stopped with a rag. This was done by twisting one corner of a rag and putting it through the hole like threading a needle then pull through the hole until the leak is stopped. These were placed on a shelf nailed fast to the wall.
    A small mirror was hung to one side off the shelf about as high as Pa's face, a comb-case containing a fine comb and a course comb were hung under the mirror, on a nail near by was a very rough towel made from either a worn-out meal sack or cotton sack.
    At the other end of this shed room kitchen was a big eating table (as we called it) which Pa had made for the big family and was to be filled again in later years as the babies came regularly every two years. A bench was on one side of the long table near the wall to keep it from turning over.
    In a corner was a safe. It had solid doors from about midway down in which a very few kitchen necessities were kept. The upper half of the safe had shelves for a few very plain heavy white dishes and some snuff glasses that had been given to us. The doors to the upper half of the safe had panels of tin which had many nail holes in them so the contents inside could air out. Leaned against the wall near the safe was an enormous sack of corn meal and a 50 pound sack of flour. These always had light sprinkles of the contents around on the floor, even enough to track in.
    The "Big House" or living-room bedroom combination was very crudely furnished. Two bedsteads. (One Pa had made was nailed against the wall for the boys), was pushed fittedly into corners and back for room. Under one of these beds was a trundle bed, also made by Pa, no casters (so it was dragged out every night) for Lucy, Dossie and me to sleep on. No springs or mattresses - straw beds and feather beds. No chest, no dresser, no nothing, or rocking chair for babies. A very crude homemade stand table for a coal-oil lamp, a fire board with a striking clock. A few chairs left over from a way back had been rebottomed with baling wire, sea-grass and calf skin. There were not enough chairs to set everyone in a chair around the fireplace so we rushed to get a chair as if it were a special privilege to sit in one. Chairs were carried from "big house" to kitchen.Top of Page
    Outside was an ash hopper built to hold wood ashes burned in the fireplace during the winter then in the spring, water was poured slowly onto the ashes and finally below it would begin to drip lye-water. If we had been lucky enough to have soap grease saved up, Ma would make soft soap for us. Soap grease was obtained by stripping and washing hog guts, saving meat skins and meat cracklins. We seldom had meat cracklins for soap as we used ours in cracklin' bread.
    Pa made a wagon shed for the wagon to stand under. Here we always had a barrel of molasses turned across a fireplace log. You could take a pitcher out to the wagon shed, pull out the stopper below, get your container under the hole, pull out the bung hole stopper and watch the stream of the most wonderful sorghum anyone would imagine. (This is where Azza was born.) Pa didn't get to live in this place but one year as the landlord decided he wanted to tend the place himself. We were permitted to stay until we could find another place.
    This was too late in season to find a desirable place. Ma was heavy with child also. Pa found a house in Brooken but no land. We would be close to school but as all schools in the territory were subscription, with no land to tend we could not pay tuition. Some land was subrented in Galconda bottoms and we moved into Brooken after Ma was delivered of her baby and was able to move, in February 1905.
    This was the same shape house but was plank instead of log, same furniture was arranged the same way. The same trundle bed and all. We were on the bank of Brooken Creek. From out the kitchen door you could look across the creek and see Brooken Mountains. Dad got some hauling to do from McAlester Wholesalers to merchants in Brooken and Enterprise and made some spending money as he called it.
    To help us endure the rest of the winter and long, long dry summer, Pa got hold of a sorghum mill and made sorghum for people then we fared better. But the debtors were pressing on all sides, a crop failure, due in part to dry weather left Pa in a state. He knew not what to do.
    Then John, Mother's son, came to our rescue. His wife (a full blood Creek Indian) and baby had died, leaving him with two little girls. He persuaded Dad to turn the mortgaged cows, etc., over to his debtors and move into the house with him and tend his farm. This was to be a very crowded situation.
    John emptied one big room for us and we shared the kitchen with John and his six dependents: a no account cousin; a full blood Creek Indian mother-in-law (Mrs. Grayson); sister-in-law (Mollie); stepdaughter (Nora); and two daughters (Lillie and Lucy). None spoke English very well. (1906)
    A good crop was promised but someone got to Pa and he sold his crop in the field before it was harvested and lost on the deal. But we children (5 of us now) got to go to school this time at Brush Hill in the Creek Nation.
    In the summer of 1906 Pa took us with him and we went back to Brooken to make sorghum again as the people had planted their sorghum cane and expected Pa to make it up for them. He was paid in sorghum, two gallons to the cane owner and 1 gallon to Pa.
    I helped at the pan skimming, I being 12 going on 13 was embarrassed to be working barefoot as people came in and out to watch the process of sorghum making which I'm sure is an interesting sight to one who has never seen it done.
    We made the sorghum and then back to Brush Hill to pick black-eyed peas before starting to school. The boys were started first as they learned more slowly. The girls could pick the peas then catch up with our school work then besides it took $5 a month now and $5's were so scarce. Pick and flail and shell peas then sell or trade them to get money for tuition.
    John Lewallen bought most of the groceries that year and we got to go to school three or four months that year in a one teacher ungraded school. None were graded.
    John's Indian mother-in-law rented us a farm with a log house. We moved out of John's house in December of 1906. We were to pay her 1/3 of all the corn we raised and 1/4 of all the cotton. Our truck patches were free from rent. We lived here until December 1914. During this space of 8 years, Indian Territory was added to Oklahoma Territory and both added to the Union in 1907.
    Schools and teachers were graded. Pa got a job assessing taxes after statehood, and was elected Justice of the Peace. We still farmed on a big scale but seemed each year to make just enough to pay amount borrowed from the bank to make the crop on the year before.
    When the schools were graded, I was in the 8th grade. It seemed that none of our forefathers had ever reached the 8th grade. Pa had taught school in Arkansas. He said guess he would have been in about the 6th grade. I think most of his pupils were his own kids.
    As the 8th grade was as high as they went in the country, a doctor friend's wife came out from town (Checotah) and offered to keep me for $10 per month (pay or not) that I must not take the 8th grade again.
    I was 16 years old when Pa loaded me into the wagon, put a little broken lid trunk into the back end and we drove off to town. How big everything was (my two teacher school at Enterprise) then never more than a one room school until this. A ten teacher school. This was September 1910.
    I lined up in the 8th grade row and went to the 8th grade room as Mrs. McDonald (the doctors wife) had a little girl 12 years old who was in the 8th grade and could show me around.
    After chapel the Superintendent called for Pearl McCracken to come here. I remember he and the Principal had a table they were working around upon the stage in the combination auditorium - study hall for 8th grade and high school. I went up on stage (the highest stage in the whole wide world it seemed) to talk with the Superintendent and Principal about my classification. It was agreed they would let me try the 9th grade. It was here I found out how very narrow my education, so far, had been. (I now have eked out a degree) but never in all my years of schooling did I study so hard. Top of Page
    When summer vacation came and cotton chopping was over I had Pa to buy me Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, She Stoops to Conquer and Hamlet (4 for $1) to read before school started. It was so hard to read these classics. But it seemed other people knew about them and I had never even heard of them. Needless to say, they were meaningless.
    I entered the 10th grade the next fall with a different feeling. I had learned the ways of town school got acquainted with people. Mrs. McDonald was sick and couldn't keep me. If it was because we didn't pay, I never knew. But I stayed with her a while then a while with the rural mail carrier's family. He carried the mail on our route. Things advanced after statehood. We had a mail box and mail delivered to mail box on a post every day. A friend of mine stayed here also. But she failed to pay her board and he couldn't keep her any longer, so she was told she couldn't stay any longer. So as not to embarrass her, he told me to get another place also. I did (Boatman's) for a while. Francis (20 years old) had surprised me being in line in the 8th grade row. Going to work for room and board at a rooming house, had gotten me a place to work also for my room and board.
    I progressed rapidly, always studying very hard. I liked my work and teachers. I got a part in the school play, belonged to a literary society, glee club and girl's quartet. After school closed and Pa was taking me home he said he was going to borrow some money for me to go to teacher's institute in Eufaula. (I could go to school no more where I was) to take reviews in preparation to taking the teacher's examination for a third grade certificate. I took the examination passed and Pa resigned off the school board at home and I taught the first 4 grades in the same room with another teacher at $50 per month for 7 months. This was my first school, started in the summer
    This clipping (Clipping was recollections of these activities. Too crumbly to copy) reminded me of our time at Enterprise. We dug sassafras roots for tea, not as a medicine but because we liked it and we had no cows for milk and not able to buy coffee for all. We took sulphur and molasses in the spring, I don't know why, iron, I think. We wore asafetida bags around our necks to keep us from catching any contagious disease. If we got close to measles, etc., we were to pick up bags around our necks and start sucking.
    We hunted wild blackberries where we'd call ever so often to keep from getting lost from each other. If we got lost we wanted to be lost together.
    I swung a friend on a grapevine swing and stepped into a yellow jacket's nest. I was grown then. We were on a 4th of July Picnic. I went to the river, stuck my feet into the water (I was stung around the ankles) then a woman put some of her snuff on my stings. Of course the stings were painful but OK the next day.
    Aron stuck his tongue to a frosty hatchet used to cut the top out of the molasses barrel and pulled a piece of skin from his tongue.
    I washed my face in stump water many times to take off the freckles. I hunted hickory nuts and tried to pick them out. Some trees had better nuts than others.
    I've run past many gypsy camps. But Ma always wanted and usually got her fortune told by one of them. While poor old Pa got held up by some once.
    Pa got wild honey from bee trees. Sometimes there would be a tub full of honey from one bee free. Your Dad (John Garrison) did the bee robbing like this says. We were in Kansas at Lucy's, John thought he could rob the bees. He covered all but his ankles and they stung him enough to make him sick.
    One neighbor nearly drowned grappling for mud cats in Deep Fork River. l've hunted cotton tail rabbits, smoked them out of hollow logs and trees but don't remember the dog getting fastened. I've ridden cows to pasture, have stayed in two run away wagons. Had one horse to run away with me. Fell off one horse right in the middle of the creek in cold weather away from home.
    I've played on straw stacks, plummy piles around sorghum mills and had fun in snow on box sleds.
    I've followed cows to find a fresh warm cow-pile to put on Jewel's ankle when he had a bone infection in it. I've had green walnut juice put on my ringworm, also milk-weed juice. Ma gathered squaw weed to make tea for the girls. I've looked for white on chicken shupe to make tea for new babies. We put soot on cut places to stop blood. Made soot tea, onion tea, catnip tea for babies. Used bowelmonia a plant for bowel, white plantain for coughs, life-everlasting for pains (this I think was marijuana). Gathered dozens of early plants for greens. Ate wild onions and scrambled eggs. These I thought of when I read this clipping.
    Mother said an infare dinner was the second day dinner given by the bridegroom's folks. I looked in my dictionary and it said the reception of a bride in her new home. I've never heard of them since I've grown up. All I ever knew about an infare dinner was what Mother told me. The bride's parents gave the wedding dinner and the groom's family gave the infare dinner on the second day. Both were big affairs and everybody who heard of it came, no invitation was needed. When Aron was married [he married Fannie White sister to Dan White who married Virgie Lewallen] we gave the infare dinner. That is the one I am writing about.Top of Page
    The house we lived in was new in every way. New sawed lumber, bare wall, new hand-made boards to cover it with. There were four large rooms built in the shape of a T. As there was no way of refigreration, not even ice, many preparations could not be done too far in advance. This infare dinner was in October. Dad butchered a small hog. After dividing fresh meat with the neighbors the remainder had to be cooked in order to keep from "losing it".
    The black pot-bellied wash kettle was filled with water and the hams and they were boiled out in the yard. After being cooked to the right degree of tenderness, the skin was removed and the ham was scored and dotted with whole cloves and black pepper ready to be placed one on each end of a long table the next day. The table had been extended by means of two long planks resting upon heavy blocks of sawed wood.
    Pies were baked ahead of time also. Stacks of them. These pies as I remember were made of dried apples and dried peaches. Then the more delicate egg custards. It was years later before I remember cream pies. There were also green grape pies make to taste and look like gooseberry pies. There seemed to be an art to gathering the green grapes just at a particular stage so the seed would be soft, also an art in making them that I never acquired. I was particularly fond of the wild blackberry pies. Berries had been gathered and canned in the summer. After the top crust was put on with four and sometimes five rows of holes in it for the steam to escape, a strip of white rag was put around the rim of the pie pan to keep the sweet juice from oozing out into the oven.
    The cakes were baked beforehand also. The only kind I remember in my early days were yellow cakes, white cakes and molasses cakes. On special occasions they were yellow and white. If you needed more cake you just make the same recipe again. My favorite was jelly cake. The layers were put together until the desired height was reached with beaten egg whites then the top and sides were covered then sprinkled with candy to make it "show up on the table". I don't know how many cakes we had but I'm sure there were plenty.
    Try as I may I can't think of a vegetable. I remember baked chicken, dressing, chicken and dumplings, no light bread but cornbread and biscuits, homemade kraut, cucumber pickles and pickled beets. The drink was coffee or water.
    The first table, bride, groom and their father and mother of each were given choice places at the festive board then near relatives took vacant places until the table was full. The minister, I remember, came to dinner also. He ate at the first table. After this table there was another and another until all had been seated and fed.
    Some women kept dishes washed and replaced and some kept biscuits coming in piping hot (I suppose butter was scarce but I'm sure there was plenty of wild honey). Mother would never put that on the company table, thought, it was too common. All the food was placed on the table before any one started to eat. All the meats, all the cakes and all the pies, regardless of the number that were crowded in at first. No wonder the cakes and pies were stacked so high. After the dinner was over most of the guests were gone. Guess they took their leave as soon as they got what they came after.
    Elsie married in the summer of 1902, then Hattie, Virgie and Arron married in early fall. Pa had a credit at a country general store so after the weddings were over they had plunged the poor soul so deeply in debt he couldn't get out. With all the farm help reduced to the little ones he had to get a little place to cultivate as he was rented out. I mean by that some man with a bigger family was more appealing to the landlord so we moved from here to the little house I told about in those other lines.
    When I was 12 John Lewallen told dad (his stepfather) to turn all his mortgaged property over to the creditors and move into the house with him. Dad could have what he made off John's farm and mother could watch over his two children. We did this in January 1906 then John had a family to move so we could rent the place October 1906 and take a new start. We were all bigger now and able to take our place at the hoe so we began to come out of it bit.
    John Lewallen told your pop about when we moved from Arkansas. All walking when they went through a town people would stare as they played leapfrog through main street. I was three going on four when we left Arkansas for the Indian Territory. I can remember we camped one night and the next morning I had to leave my chair, no room for it. Then I remember how terribly frightened I was the first time I saw a train. I felt sure it would leave the track and hit me. One night while camping I heard someone yell. I knew the wild Indians would be sure to get us before daylight. Mr. Jones came from IT to move us out of Arkansas. We were to pick cotton and pay him for it.
    Dad had got himself into a mess with his neighbor and had to leave Arkansas or something so we didn't get to plan and get ready as we would on going into a new surroundings with such a big family.
    This man who hauled us had a one-room shack and tent for us to live in while we picked cotton. The family would pick cotton all week then Dad would ride horseback into Eufaula to get paid. It was always more then $50, Mother said, and that was a lot of money and she was afraid Pa would be robbed. Top of Page
    One day as Pa was riding home from Eufaula near sundown, a lone man raised up out of a ditch and threw a club at him. He dodged it he said and put his hand near his hip pocket and told the hoodlum to stay where he was and not move or he would put a hole through him. Pa said he stood there as he trotted on. Pa didn't have a gun with him not even a pocket knife, he always said. Ma said she knew this was true because Pa, as she called him, would never go to Eufaula alone again.
    After a fall and winter of cotton picking, it did last into winter, we rented a place called Bachelors's hall. This was near Enterprise, IT (Seems like I wrote about this.) I guess this was our hardest year to live through. We had no team and had to share crop.
    One of my sisters, Mary, had married. Her husband went back to Arkansas without her and so she and her baby were home with us. This was where we lived when I remember crying for some butter to go with my molasses. Also crying for milk I must have been a bawl-bag. Once a lady, Mrs. Davenport, told Ma to send over on the day she churned and she'd give us a bucket of butter milk. Jewel and I too a had big lard bucket (only poor people bought lard) and went over to Mrs. Davenport's after the milk, On the way home, when we got where on one could see us, we took the lid from the bucket, got on our knees and took turns in drinking the flesh buttermilk from the bucket After we drank all we could, Jewel wiped my chin with my dress tail and swore me to secrecy. Then I wiped his chin for him and we walked on full and happy. We didn't get buttermilk but a few times until Mrs. Davenport told us she needed the milk for her fattening hogs which was very true.
    In the fall (we had made friends with this Indian family) the Indian had Mrs. Davenport move and let Pa rent the big place. We had one horse, old Morg, and we bought another "on time" named Tom so we didn't have to share crop and Pa seemed happy. His big family was a worry though as it was so large to feed and clothe us all. (This is the house we lived in when the Peddler got fire.)
    Once a white collared man stayed all night with us. He asked me my name and I told him Capers Pearl. Then he asked me if I capered in bed. I told him no, only babies do that. Ma said I plagued her.
    It must have been a season for Malaria. We had several cases of "slow fever" in our family. One I remember was Hattie. She was delirious. The doctor came. He charged it also. I sat on the floor in front of him and watched him take his different bottles from his pill bags. Then take a piece of newspaper, he brought it along (we had none), cut the paper in squares with his pen knife then dose the medicine (powder form) onto the paper and fold up into doses. Somehow I always felt like everything would be all right when Dr. Mitchell got there and most of the time it was. We never had a doctor until the patient had refused to respond to Mother's remedies.
    Mother had scores of home remedies. Once Elsie had been sick a long-long time. Will came from Aunt Ellen's in McAlester to see her. He brought her a lemon. Ma wouldn't let her cut it but save it to smell of so it would help settle her stomach when she vomited (puked). So I helped Elsie smell the lemon until it shriveled. I remember seeing the lemon later when it was dry and hard. I think that was the first lemon I ever saw.
    The big picnics came into my life about now. It was during the time we lived here. So I learned to drink lemonade. And the father of the Indian girl we were keeping gave me an orange. I got to taste a banana but it was a bite l thought no good a tall. I like oranges. We went to a picnic almost always on the 4th of July. Since this was Lucy's birthday she thought they were her picnics. When she got mad at Tela (the Indian) and I she would say we couldn't go to her picnic.
    These picnics gave the drunks a chance to blow off steam. So we could almost always expect to see a drunken brawl. There was a very good Negro United States Marshall in that section of the territory and if we could get Grant Johnson, that was his name, to come and help to keep the peace we always felt more secure.
    There were a few, 1 or 2, lemonade stands where wash-tubs of lemonade sat on the ground to be sold for a five cents a glass, some paper fans, popcorn candy and chewing gum. Then there had to be a swing (merry-go-round) we called it. This was a crude affair with seats for two at interval arranged in a circle. The power was a horse hitched to a lever fastened to the center pole. As the horse pulled the center pole turned around this caused the seats to sail around slow or fast depending on how fast the horse walked. For music on the swing one seat was reserved for a banjo-picker and a fiddler. The musicians played over and over their most popular pieces, "Poor Little Kitty Puss", "Can't Raise Cotton on Sandy Land", "I like sugar in My Coffee Oh", "Boney Parts Retreat", and "Darling Nellie Gray". Sometimes if they felt like it they would burst into song. I remember as I got a bit older my ambition was to take up tickets on a merry-go-round. Top of Page
    My first recollection of picnics was lemonade (not pink), horse drawn swings, candy and the big basket of dinner spread on the ground, under a tree. The constant fear that some one was going to be shot.
    As I got older civilization advanced, these picnics were more and more places to meet friends and drunks were less numerous. The horse drawn swing was replaced by a steam merry-go-round with horse and carriages instead of the roughly built seats. Ice cream was to be had at the lemonade stands in dishes, soda pop in bottles, pink lemonade with more assortments of candy. No chocolate. Then popcorn with a fan, rubber balls with long rubber strings. The boy generally got his girl friend one of these. He carried her parasol while she chewed gum and angled the rubber ball, then away they'd go to ride on the steam swing.
    Sometimes contests would take place at picnic as ball games or foot races. The shooting galleries and balls to throw at stuffed dolls, etc. A wagon with peep holes to look into, stereoptical views. The pep holes were fixed all around the wagon and for a price you could look in all of them. Even see a girl in a bathing suit. These I wanted to do but didn't get to, no nickel. There was something they talked about that if you dropped a nickel into a slot and put a certain something to your ear you could really hear a rooster crow away off. I know now that it was Edison's Invention.
    There sometimes was a dancing platform built where one could square dance. The musicians similar to the ones on the swing only now a guitar had been added sat on the edge of the platform and played away while a caller stood near and yelled his "figgers" and "sets" to his hearts content. Of course you had to pay to dance. The boy paid so much a set. I never danced.
    Once I sat on edge of platform by him while Luther Dodson picked on guitar and sang "Kiss and Let's Make up". I never was quite able to live that down. I think now Francis hated Luther and was going to make me wish I'd never ridden on the swing with him and he did. (I'm getting too far along - must have been 10 years between the first and last picnics. I wrote about)
    This must have been in 1898 as we spent 1897 at Stidham. We were tenant farmers and lived on the only road that was traveled between Enterprise and Hoyt about 8 miles apart. Sometimes a drummer would pass and throw out tiny boxes of Arm & Hammer soda or Garret's Snuff with their advertisements. When we heard the noise of a wagon or other vehicles all would rush to the door to get a view. This one time I'm thinking of was an extra special treat. It was a peddler of merchandise with wife in a small buggy. They came to our place late in the evening and ask if they could stay all night. We lived in a 4 room house with 2 beds in every room except the lean-to kitchen. My father being known as the man who never turned anyone away from his door, permitted them to stay.
    They wanted to buy a chicken. So all got to chasing and finally caught a hen. Must have been poor as it ran so well. The peddler's wife dressed the chicken and Elsie made a fire in our good cook-stove. Soon the hen was boiling away in the black iron dinner pot with a griddle cover. The griddle fitted tightly on the pot but could not keep out the aroma of a chicken inside. So my guts began to beg and so did I for a piece of the chicken. My bawling must have been too loud for Elsie so after she stood it as long as she could she slipped the lid off to snitch me a bite to stop my mouth. She brought out the head bill, comb and eyes glaring at me. I can see it yet. Next the leg with foot and toenails still hanging on. Then the back with oilbag attached and wouldn't let me taste it for fear it would be too unclean. She said it would make me sick. I was somehow satisfied after that look.
    In the big house the peddler began to lay out his wares. Such beautiful things, beads, buttons, side combs, fine comb, pillow sahams, counterpanes, dress goods, ribbons, laces, jewelry, etc. All lain out over the big house floor. I don't remember whether we bought anything or not this was so long ago. Soon it was bedtime, two beds in the back part of the living room was filled, Dad, Mother and baby in one. In the other my married sister Mary, her baby and I. Where I wondered was the peddler going to sleep? Soon they started carrying bedding from the buggy and made their bed in front of the fireplace on the floor. They put their merchandise nearby. I think they were afraid someone might rob them. I know I was afraid to them. Soon all were bedded down. The big bedroom had two beds with four girls. Lean-to bedroom had two beds and trundle bed, five boys slept there. Ma, Pa, Lucy, Pearl, Mary, Oracle, Sarah, Hattie, Virgie, Elsie, Francis, Jewel, Aron, Will and Floyd. John was in Texas. In the night we were all awakened with a mighty rumbling of voices. We couldn't understand (they were Assyrians). The house was full of smoke and the strong smell of rags burning was imminent. Dad was disgusted so yelled out, "What's the matter?" The matter was the fire had popped out on their bed and set it on fire. They were fighting fire. Top of Page
    This was the beginning of many trips the black peddler made through this special area in the Indian Territory. I think I was 4 going on 5 else I could remember more. I don't know how we undressed and got in bed. I do know those four girls in the back room had fun about it. All wasn't fun living so poverty stricken.
    The older boys soon hired out and Mary took her baby and kept house for people a $1.00 per week. The landlord's wife died and we took in the girl and boy, full blood Choctaw Indians, 7 and 9, and kept them until the man married again. Both are dead now.
    Dad always spoke of a piece of sea grass to tie oat bundles or corn sacks with. It's the same thing rope is made of and was bought, I guess, just like you buy rope.
    A fire board is the mantle. We never said mantle. It was always fire board. It had paper cut in scallops hanging off the edge, generally pink or green wrapping paper. Since the house was papered with newspapers, the contrast was pretty. The striking clock was a big clock that was called an eight-day clock. That is, it had to be wound up every eight days. It would strike one time on the half hour then one time for one a clock, two time for two, etc. There was a box on the fire board with Dad's pipe and a twist of tobacco in it He planted seed, raised and twisted his own smoking an chewing tobacco.

(If there was more to Pearl's letter Nell didn't send it to me)

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