There's a Snake In My ... Chicken House...

I apologize for skipping around so much. Last week my stories were of my grandparents' times, and then we skipped forward to my childhood before the Wedding in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and then almost twenty years forward to our move to Alaska in 1969.

So let's go back again, but not as far as my Mam'aw's days. Let's talk about Aunt Tot's little cabin on "Deep Ellum" as she called it. But first I need to explain about Aunt Tot. I already told you about having summer fun on her place in Kosciusko, Mississippi in 1954, where she milked five cows for Uncle E.G. Deep Ellum was not the same place, nor the same time.

Aunt Tot had married Uncle Guy, the Love of her Life. They had a son we called Sonny. He was one of our favorite cousins. But in the late 1930's Uncle Guy came down with appendicitis  and died. This was when Sonny was about five years old. If they had antibiotics then, they didn't treat him with them. So Aunt Tot was raising Sonny all by herself.

She tried to do that on a little "Place" which wasn't really big enough to be called a farm, but it had an old log cabin which they used as a kitchen, and they had moved a plank house up next to the cabin to give a bit more room in which to live. They had built a little enclosed "bridge" between the house and the log cabin kitchen, which Jim and I called a "dog-trot." (Don't ask... I have no explanation... other than perhaps you could pass through there without getting your feet wet in the Mississippi mud as the floor of it was about a foot off the ground.)

Mom had lost her job at the cotton mill in Kosciusko, and was looking for a job in Pine Bluff at another cotton mill. Meanwhile, Aunt Berl was taking care of Jim and me out at Aunt Tot's "place" at Deep Ellum. This was in the spring of 1948, when I was about four years old. Sonny was in maybe the fifth grade and Jim was in the second grade. The boys went to school but I was not old enough yet.

It's funny to me now, how that these days I can't remember what happened five minutes ago, but I can see clearly the pictures stamped in my mind out on Deep Ellum. I remember first of all what an ordeal it was to get there. That spring the road was so deep in mud that you couldn't drive all the way to the Place. I think Aunt Tot picked us up with a car, but the car was abandoned at a bridge and Sonny met us with a horse. The Aunts placed Jim and me up on the horse, Jim behind Sonny and me in front. That put me right up on the horse's bare withers. I think I was wearing a dress, but also a coat as it was early spring and quite wet.

We proceeded to walk down the muddy road, kids on the horse and aunts walking behind. I cried. Those wither-bones were hurting my bottom so much. But no one would allow me to get down and walk, too. They didn't want my shoes to be ruined in the mud.

Finally we made it to the cabin.

...

I remember Aunt Tot using that same horse to pull a plow. She was turning up the earth in the little field you could see from the house. Like most all the Coalters, she was tall and skinny legged, with long arms, hands, and fingers. She had developed a little skill at pressing down on the plow to make it dig in deep, and at the same time loudly coaxing the horse to "Gee" or "Haw", depending on which way she wanted it to pull that plow. As I remember, the horse would cooperate a little while, but then when it decided enough was enough, it would balk. Somehow, though, Aunt Tot got that field plowed.

She sowed the seed without the help of the horse. I watched, fascinated, as she took long-legged, deliberately even steps, her left arm holding a wooden box in front of her, that somehow sprayed the seeds as she walked and turned the attached handle. I never saw the harvest. By autumn Mama had taken us all back to Pine Bluff, because she had started working again in the cottom mill there...

...

Sonny was a very entertaining cousin. And enterprising. He found some planks and built me a playhouse. He drew a large square in the dirt with a stick. Then he found planks, probably three or four feet long, somehow nailed them together to form a fence-like wall around the square he had drawn. That's all. I thought it was a mansion. The aunts supplied me a few fruit jar lids and sticks and I had me a kitchen. Who cared if it didn't have a roof? I had more fun there than with any play house in my whole life.

...

Sonny found a huge tire and persuaded Jim to get inside and let him roll him around the yard in it. I suppose Jim was a glutton for punishment, as I think he did that several times. Me? Once. Only once. Well, maybe it was just a boy kind of thing.

...

There was a hen house in the back. It was Sonny's job to collect the eggs in the afternoon. Once he sent Jim running into the cabin to announce there was a snake in the hen house. We all ran out to investigate. Sonny had a hoe, and was playing with a long rattlesnake. As Aunt Tot insisted, he chopped its head off. (I don't know why he didn't do that in the first place.) After that I didn't enjoy my playhouse or anywhere outside any more. I figured there were snakes anywhere you might look.

Then I found out there were other dangers, too. One morning I sat down in the wooden rocking chair and something suddenly inflicted a fiery burning pain on my little bottom. I came up out of that rocking chair screaming and dancing around. Aunt Berl grabbed me up and pulled down my panties and discovered the culprit, a wasp. How did he get in my britches? Beats me. Sure did hurt, though.

...

Aunt Tot got her water from a well that had a hand pump attached to the top. There was a glass jar she always filled with the last of the water at a pumping and set it down at the base of the pump. "We need that to prime the pump next time," she told me. I saw "next time" how she picked up that jar, and poured the water right back down the pump and then began to pump it up and down vigorously...

I always wondered what we would do if someone accidentally knocked the jar over and all the water spilled out, and then there would be none when you came back to pump some more. What if I came there so thirsty I couldn't stand it, and so I drank the water...? Or... would I have the courage to pour that water down the pipe not knowing if it was the last water in the well and the pump wouldn't work...? I never got the answer to that question, but in later life I've remembered that and thought there is probably a spiritual application there somewhere...

...

We had more fun with less toys in Deep Ellum than anywhere I can remember in my whole life. "We have fun when we use our noggins," is what our Mama and our aunts told us. So in that case, even work can be fun...