Mama was eighteen years old when she caught the Tallulah Falls Railroad to Georgia to visit Aunt Inus. That’s how she met and later married Dad on April Fools Day, 1937. They jested that they both got fooled.
My parents hatched half a dozen children in their quiver. There are twenty-years between my oldest brother and youngest sister.
Mama said it was like having two families. The first three Edward, Betty, and Ellis were yoked to work. Work is a four-letter word; so are food and love. Edward and Betty worked alongside Mama, as baby Ellis played on a padded quilt spread in the corner of the corn patch. Mama put syrup on his hands and gave him a feather. It was a wonderful, simple pacifier uncomplicated by batteries and cords. My older siblings had all but flown the coop by the time Ernest, Beatrice and I came along. My parents must have been tuckered out “raisin” younguns. They just named the last three in their quiver and turned us loose.
Laughing Irish eyes made it hard to tell when Mama was really mad. They looked like clear pools of blue water where fairies danced and pipers played. We thought she had eyes in the back of her head, hidden by short dark curly hair. Without ever losing focus from inside chores, she knew exactly what we were up to. Nothing escaped her sharp attention. Rebukes filtered from the house like, “All right, younguns; I am gonna help ye out with that scrabble,” or, “Get away from that copperhead-infested wood pile! If one bites ya, it will die,” or, “Y’all been in the garden trompin’ in th’ beans; guess you’ll eat snowballs this winter.” Probably my favorite warning was, “I am gonna whip y’all till ye pee like a polecat, then whip you for peeing.”
—Barbara Taylor Woodall It’s Not My Mountain Anymore
I wish I could have know Barbara’s mother. She sounds like she would have been so much fun to be around not to mention smart. I would have never thought of that feather trick!
Today’s Thankful November giveaway is a used copy of It’s Not My Mountain Anymore written by Barbara Taylor Woodall. Leave a comment on this post to be entered. *Giveaway ends November 20, 2022.
Last night’s video: Saving Seeds for Next Year’s Garden in the Appalachian Mountains.
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Work, food, and love are four letter words,,,,,, loved it. Great reading
My grandfather used to tell me that his mother would put the end of his gown (before he wore short pants) under a leg of the bedstead then used the feather with a bit of molasses spear on his fingers. Wise women back then my grandfather was born in 1900.
Would love to read this book. It’s right up my alley. The copperhead woodpile. That keep ya on your toes.
I would love to read this book. have enjoyed listen to you read the others. I’m so glad I’ve found yall!
I’m the oldest out of four children, and my baby sister is 19 years younger than I. My son and baby sister are the same age! I was set to chores when I was young–washing dishes, making beds, sweeping the floors, dusting, cleaning the bathroom (after we finally got one!). My brothers had outside chores. By the time baby sister came along, I was married and gone (but not too far away). I’m fairly certain that Baby Sister didn’t have the chores we did when we were growing up. 🙂
When I was around nine years old Mama told me to stay away from a hen nest because the eggs were rotten. Daddy had found it the day before and when he got home from work that day, he was going to clean it out. Well, I wanted to see the rotten eggs and the poor hen still sitting on her nest like all was well. She flogged me when I entered her little hen pen. Eggs cracked, I couldn’t get out, sulfur scented fumes went everywhere, rotten eggs clumps were all over me. I finally escaped, and walked back to the house, nonchalantly, as if I’d just taken a peaceful walk in the woods behind the house.
Mama was taking a break from her house chores, watching her story, and smelled me immediately. She got the hickory switch from off the top of the refrigerator. I ran out the back door, leaving a trail of stink behind me. Mama came after me. I ran around the house, looking behind me at every corner (the only time I slowed down). Mama was there, with the hickory switch in her hand, gagging in my wake. I don’t know how many times I ran around the house, or why I kept doing so instead of running off into the woods. Panic had taken over my mind, I reckon, and I could not develop another plan of escape. She finally caught me, and I got two switches to my legs for not obeying her. She was gagging, I was crying. But that was part of being taught about boundaries. I willingly disobeyed her and the price to pay was a whoopin’ from a ‘keen little hick’ry’.
She’s the sweetest Mama ever and she reminds me a lot of your precious Granny. I laugh about this incident now, but on that day in the summer of 1967, I was a puddle of disobedient stink. To make it worse, my little brothers laughed at me.
Sounds like a very entertaining book. Would love to be able to read it and be able to linger over all of the wonderful descriptive language that reminds me so of home.
Sounds like a wonderful book to read!
This sounds like a great book!!! I appreciate your Thankful November blogs!!!!
I love to read about the old days, times & folks. Since i started reading the Blind Pig i have also run across documentaries by David Hoffmann. Hope to visit Appalachia someday.
And all the children turned out well!!! Love some of the threats told to the children.
I love hearing about some of the things busy mothers came up with to keep their children entertained while they worked. My Mommy said she used to let me make music with pots, pans, and a wooden spoon while she worked in the kitchen. I imagine I had great fun and probably thought I was an awesome musician. I’d say Mommy needed some ear plugs. 🙂
Barbara’s mother sounds like a hoot! It would be hard to fool her or get away with much!
Wow, six kids and some families had more! I am in awe of families having lots of children I can’t imagine how they managed life with a passel of children!
Unable to tell if she was mad because of her “laughing Irish eyes” made me remember my grandmother. She had Cherokee and Crow ancestors. There was no was to tell if she was mad or happy by her face. It looked the same if she was offering you a cookie or if she was reaching for a switch.
Sounds like a great book. I am sure I would enjoy reading this one.
Big families resulted from insufficient birth control means and in many cases religious beliefs that all children were gifts from God and not to be prevented. There are 9 kids in my family born in 3 different decades from ’24 to ’42. I’m the youngest, 18 years younger than the oldest who had left home before I was born. There’s a set of twin boys in the middle that sort of defined the break in the 2 different ‘families’ of kids. They were part of neither but a ‘family’ in their own right. Our number has dwindled to 4, a brother 94, another 89, a sister 84 and me at 80.
My oldest brother told the tale that he broke our parents in and got all the discipline, but you would never have known it. I used to say that my Pa saw him and said, “I can do better than that!” and kept trying until he had me and was satisfied. 🙂
I will say that I was not raised too strictly although I did have to bring a few switches for my mama. I think they relaxed the discipline for me because they had already seen enough in raising my 8 siblings to know what to do and when to do it.
God truly blessed us with great parents.
Sounds like a lovely read. All the toys of today are ridiculous, when syrup & a feather is all a babe needs to be entertained . Ha! Simplicity.
They’d probably get you for child neglect nowadays if you put your baby down while working in the garden. Of course they have video enabled baby monitors now so I guess you could clip one to a corn stalk and do what you needed to do lol
Another good book! I find the syrup and feather “pacifier” amazing. I sure do respect those mamas that had a houseful of kids, cooked, cleaned, worked on the farm and could heal or cure just about anything. My dad was one of 10 children and boy did he have some stories to tell about growing up. Enjoyed the video last night. So many different kinds of peas and beans. The way this year is flying by, won’t be long before planting time begins again.
What a terrible thing to say to a child. I can’t imagine ever telling my child that I was going to whip them until they wet themselves. Hopefully it was just an idle threat, but non the less, it turned my stomach when I read it this morning. Apparently the author thought it was amusing but as a reader I found nothing humorous or pleasant about such an awful act.
Patricia-it wasn’t an idle threat it was a tease 🙂 Mountain folks are notorious for their rich colorful language which includes a whole lot of teasing and joking. The clue that it wasn’t a real threat came in the other tidbit shared from her mother: “Get away from that copperhead-infested wood pile! If one bites ya, it will die.” Teasing children that the snake would die instead of them was a gentle reminder that they should stay away from the woodpile-of course they knew the snake wouldn’t die but they might. Similarly they knew the admonishment of whipping till they peed wouldn’t happen either. As Barbara says, that was her favorite warning from her mother because it was funny. I do understand everyone doesn’t have the same sense of humor : ) My family constantly tells me I don’t have a sense of humor at all : ) The book does detail Barbara’s heartwarming memories and her mother was the true matriarch of her family’s life and enriched it greatly.
Oh that sounds like a delightful book.
So much has changed in the raising of the children over the years.
Haha…so vivid, I love books that let you step right in the room with them, as a fly on the wall! Now that I’m a mammal (or Ma’am for short) to a 12 month old and bout to be a Ma’am to his sister any “minute,” I think I need to start resurrecting some sayings from my childhood? Not that there is a lot of them. Mostly they were threatening a pinch or a switch of the hickory from my mom. My dad didn’t usually have any sayings, we didn’t need any sayings from him! I got a whippin from him maybe twice in my life and after that I did absolutely everything he told me to do, the first time!
what a awesome story..it reminded me of my mom’s family…my memoo( grandma) that’s what I named her..had 4 children the first two were born 1930/ 1934.. then she had 2 more…1943/1945….pretty much different as night and day.being born in different decades…
I bet that’s a good story! That mama sounds like a hoot.
Sounds like a wonderful book! My mother was the oldest daughter of 9 children and my oldest sister is a couple years younger than my mothers youngest brother. My poor grandmother! She actually had 12 children but the first 3 died of various childhood diseases at young ages. Mother said she was the babysitter…of all those youngens as they came along.
My folks bought a worn out cotton farm, and even with four youguns and one on the way, mama had to pick cotton. She spread a cotton sheet at the edge of the field put the baby in the middle and tied all four corners up to bushes. With four of us tagging along, she went back to picking. When she went to check on him, he was sleeping peacefully with a big rat snake snuggled up beside him. Mama was of the persuasion that all snakes were deadly. She backed away slowly because she did not want to wake the snake or the baby up. She ran to get daddy, and by the time they got back the snake a crawl away. This made for a family legend that we all tell when we get together for holidays.
Randy, I totally agree with you on watching the Waltons. Still watch reruns today. I loved this story and the sayings from the old times. My Grandma used to put my mama on the floor in her gown and put the tail of the gown under the table leg in the kitchen. That way she was close and could see her, and the weight of the table leg kept her in place and prevented her falling over. So smart and so simple, yet it worked. Would love this book.
Always enjoy the excerpts from books on, of, and about Appalachian life. Many touch a memory • but, many are a new event or information. All inspire a interest to read, listen, and learn more about life stories of “people in the holler”!
This was such an interesting opening and really makes me want to read “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey used to say! Thank you for sharing it with us. I hope you will have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I love you all.
Oh, Tipper, I do so love the books and stories you mention! I am reading Dorie Woman of the Mountains now and enjoying it immensely. I think its’s grand how you keep introducing the Appalachians to so many thousands of people!! I hope you carry on for many many more years!!!!
wish we could go back to those good old days!
I so enjoyed reading Barbara’s book and I’m warmed by revisiting these colorful quotes! Thankful.
Wow! This unlocked some memories. I said before Taylor is my maiden name and her writing reflects so much of my family. My daddy is the youngest of 7 and the difference between him and the first born is 18 years too. Just like this is written, by father had lived in the second set of wilder kids growing up. The first set were born to work too. Everyone thought Uncle Jack was my daddy’s daddy. Too funny!
Barbara’s mother sounds like my brother’s friend’s mom. He said she had five or six daughters that she turned loose every morning like free-range chickens. Mom would have never given her children a feather with its pointed end. One of her biggest fears was that we would find something to play with that was capable of putting our eyes out.
We tried the feather and syrup trick on our youngins but the syrup drew in yaller jackets and honey bees.
Aunt Merrill said that when Crazy Joe was just startin to crawl he was afraid of feathers, She said she would sit him in the middle of the floor and put a ring of feathers around him. She said he would sit there and play all day and never crawl away.
I already have the book!
I made up the part about us using the syrup and feather on our kids. It wouldn’t work outside because of the insects and inside you’d have sticky stuff all over the floor and the walls.
The part about the feathers around cousin Joe is true. He got the name from the Jackie Gleason skit about Crazy Guggenheim and Joe the bartender. Actually my cousin Joe wasn’t any crazier than the rest of us.
Betcha don’t remember Jackie Gleason, do you?
Read young this excerpt today made me think that for parents and grandparents to be firm and consistent disciplinarians they have to have firm and consistent morals themselves. Without them, they become ‘do easy’ or guilt-ridden. With them, they have the confidence they are doing the best for their children.
Yes, I know, very serious. My excuse is I am fun-impaired. I typically look behind the seen to the reason why and I am an odd-ball as a result. Don’t mean to spoil anybody else’s fun though.
Sorry folks. “Read young” was supposed to be “Reading”.
I like the phrase “behind the seen”. At first I though you meant to say “behind the scenes” but I caught on quickly. I consider myself an oddball too but not fun impaired however my definition of fun isn’t shared by most people.
With my dad being the youngest boy (he had 1 younger sister) out of 15 children. I wonder if Mammy ever used syrup and a feather. I’m sure she had lots of tricks but I know the older children helped rear the younger ones. I can’t even fathom 15 children!
Sounds like a good book.
Great story
My grandmother told me she put my dad on a quilt under a shade tree while they worked in the fields & stuck his hands down in a molasses bucket & gave him a feather. It entertained him for a long time while their hound dog stood watch. The hound dog would guard my dad & would bark if my dad scooted off the pallet or if a snake or a person got close to the pallet. The dog would bark if my dad had messed up his diaper-guess he could smell it. That same hound dog taught my dad to walk. My dad would pull up on the hound dog & the dog would walk ever so slowly across the porch & my dad would walk holding on to the dog. Also, when my grandparents had to go milk the cows in the winter, they would leave my dad at home, but would put the tail of his gown under a bed post to keep him from crawling in the fireplace. The hound dog sat guard then, too. Remarkable how the folks back then found ingenious ways to take care of their kids.
When I first read the headline “raisin children” my mind pictured wrinkled pruney kids! Lol
I love to read/hear about the good ole days!
I got a huge kick out of reading Barbara’s story this morning. Sometimes I get to thinking I have it tough and then I think on folks like Barbara’s mother and my grandmother who must have been as tough as rawhide and tender as a bean sprout. It’s hard to conceive of such strong people today. Is it just me or have radical feminists lost all dignity of a lady and certainly ladies of the not so long ago past who made us strong women of today. It’s difficult to be loving and stern yet wise and frugal. My granny loved you like crazy but she could tear that tail right up for you too if you were in the wrong! We never could pull a “fast one” on her. She’d had 11 kids and raised a bunch of grandkids she got stuck with cause a few of her kids were sorry and no count. Talk about keeping a kid busy- the feather and syrup thing is pure genius yet simple. I’d say a toddler or baby learned quite a bit in his frustrations- like not giving up or in… good times- we need them again!!!
I laughed out loud at the mama’s reprimands. She must have been feisty and fun – a great combination. I’d love to read more about their life in the mountains.
Those colorful words paint a wonderful picture. I am the youngest of a family of six with two “sets”. I loved the wording of those threats and was given a keen switching as something to cry about. Mother said she put the babies’ clothes under the bed post when she had to leave for a short time. Syrup and a feather was creative but my first thought when reading was ants! Thanks again for sharing.
Sounds like a great book! You always choose really good reads. I’ve enjoyed them all so far. Also enjoyed last night’s video on YouTube. Your table runner was so pretty (the one you said you got dirty) Hope y’all have a great holiday season!!
The book sounds like something I need to add to my collection
Thanks for adding
You have never failed to entertain us with memories of others and yourself. The Blessing from years ago are just as important as Blessings of today. I do with more people would adhere to their roots and quit looking for someone or something to inspire them…families and best friends inspire us ‘today’ if people would stop and ‘smell the roses’, so to speak. Thanks again Tipper…God Bless
That must have been one sticky quilt!
Good story! Thank you for sharing!
Thanks for sharing all these wonderful stories. You have introduced us to many books that we might not have found otherwise. Love all these mountain women made of gunpowder and grits!
So many books that I would love to get my hands on. Thank you for sharing!
Quite a story teller. I can feel her energy in well-chosen words. I can hear the accent as well. Like mother, like daughter . Thanks for sharing.
I would love to read this book! Take care and God bless ❣️
There was 17 years between my folks first set of twins and their last set of twins, with 2 “singles” sandwiched in the middle. Their quiver was also like 2 sets of children. The folks are gone now and we “arrows” are now just 4, in our sixties and seventies, but Mama’s warnings run through my head to this day. “Do you think I’m just talking to hear my head roar” and “Stop that crying or I’ll give you something to cry for”. The good thing about being in the caboose of that train was that she was too busy to ride herd on us too closely.
I’ve read every book you have recommended and not been disappointed..my grannys name was Dona, the book Dory was like listening to her childhood stories, if yoou changed the location to Ozark mountains. Her first daughters name was Dory Elizabeth.
Amazing story of amazing folks!! How anyone during those days, got anything accomplished!
“I am gonna whip y’all till ye pee like a polecat, then whip you for peeing.” That is so funny – I can see why that was her favorite warning 🙂
I love the “pacifier” she used – it’s amazing what people can come up with by just using what is on hand.
My father in law would say his daddy would tell him I am going to kick your tail so hard and fast you will think I’m in your back pocket. He spanked him a few times but never kicked or slapped him. I knew his daddy and he was a mighty good man.
I enjoyed watching you bag your saved seeds! I can’t believe Thanksgiving is just a week away! This year has certainly flown by. I would truly enjoy reading more about Appalachia. God bless❤❤
Sounds like a delightfully different book, the likes of which I have not read before. I would have liked to have known the whole family.
The Mama’s sayings in this excerpt remind me of my daddy’s colorful sayings. I love creative language.
I’ve read all the John Parris books you recommended, and look forward to reading this one. Thanks for introducing me to these Appalachian writers.
What a great story to wake up and read at 5:30 my time. What a mama! what memories to have. Thanks for sharing such wonderful book excerpts with us.
Oh, I would love to own that book!
while I am sure I would love each and every one of them I am very thankful I had only 3
So many amazing books I’d never have heard of if I hadn’t found your channel!
Mama sure sounds like she was a remarkable woman. More children need a mother like her.
I would like to read the book, I love reading about living in the older days. I think one reason for having large families was the need of workers when trying to make your living from a farm. The child’s pacifier makes me think of something that was used as a pacifier around here in the older days. I feel like I am talking dirty but it was called a sugar tit. Sugar was tied up in a piece of cloth and the child would suck on it. I always thought it would be great to be raised in a large family. I know the work was hard and necessary, but I never heard anyone from a large say they were not loved, seems to me the siblings from large families are very close to each other. My favorite TV show was the Waltons, I thought it would be so good to live in a large family like that and living where they did would be icing on the cake.
My mom tied up the only sugar tit I ever saw, for my baby brother, in 1940, I think. It had brown sugar and cloves in it. I think he was teething, but I’m not sure about that.
Gene, I never actually saw one but heard the old folks talk about giving the young children a sugar tit when they were working in fields. The young children or babies would be put on a cotton sheet. There’s a community near Duncan, SC that is called Sugar Tit
Randy, the Walton’s was my favorite TV show also. I always wanted to live in a large family, but I only had one brother. I loved how the grandparents lived with the rest of the family and I saw that a lot when I was growing up.
Gloria, I only had one sister. I had another older sister to be born dead. My mother had several miscarriages. I almost died when I was born. My wife had 4 sisters and no brothers. They call me their brother and I say they are my sisters.
Need to read more of B. T. Woodall.
Thanks for sharing!
What a wonderful story!!