The Winter of’ 34
~ by Mark Blackwell
Times weren’ t always this hard. It used to be that the garden would come along perty good and our cow, Mae, was a good milker. We had a little flock of layers that gave us eggs, and Pa could go out and scare up some rabbits or squirrels fer meat. And we could trade the cross-ties we cut from our wood lot fer money to buy what we couldn’ t raise or hunt fer.
We would go over to Helmsburg ever now and again and watch the train come in. Sometimes we would sell some baskets we made outta splits or walkin’ sticks we’ d whittle. The city people who came down to look at the country liked them sorts of things.
It seems like everything jest went to blazes all together like. First it was the drought. We hadn’ t been getting good rain for the last couple of years, but we got on. But this summer got hard. We had a dry spell and used up all the water from the cistern to water the garden and the animals. When that happened, we had to go across the road and fetch water from the little spring that was half way down the hill where we got our kitchen water.
The garden didn’ t do but about half for us this this summer— it was so hot. And, again there just weren’ t no rain. Lord it was dry. We got by, gatherin’ what wild greens we could find and’ shroomin’ and such. We had regular meals then, mostly. But winter come on early and rations is scant. The taters and turnips and onions was all runty. And we only put up about enough to get us through’ til February.
I won’ t say that life was any kind of easy, but up to lately we had neighbors we could count on for help and we would return the favor. Like when Pa would cut timber for cross-ties. Or if somebody needed to go to town, they would go around to all the folks in the community and take orders for staples that somebody or another had run out of. Not that we could
36 Our Brown County • Jan./ Feb. 2015