When I was growing up, it seemed like our chores were endless with not much time to play. After breakfast, I didn’t have to help with the dishes since I was the only one of six children who knew how to milk a cow. So every morning and every night, I went with my mom, Mary Clayton, to the barn to milk the cows. I thought that was a lot better than doing the dishes and my sisters probably thought they had the best chore.
We had to hoe a lot of corn. Dad, Palmer Clayton, told us to dig out the weeds and grass before raking dirt in the rows. But, if Dad wasn’t watching, we just raked the dirt in. He always knew what we had done when the grass came back up in three or four days.
We always looked forward to rainy days. We packed a lunch and went to play in the barn loft. If we went back to the house to eat, there were dishes to wash.
One day after a rain, we decided to play church. We sang; then my brother preached. Then we decided that we needed to have a baptizing. The only doll that I had ever had was with me. She was blond with curly hair, yellow dress, painted face and body. After the baptizing, her hair was ruined, and her face was peeling off. I was in tears. My brother, Ermel Clayton, was sorry, but my doll was ruined.
If we were naughty at night, Mom poured out a bucket of water, and the one who started it, had to go down the hill, in the dark, to the spring and bring back a bucket of water. I was always so scared of the dark and of hooting owls. I didn’t get back to the house with much water in the bucket. (Submitted by Berniece Clayton McClure.)
You can find this piece, along with other writings in “Reflections on Mountain Heritage” published by the Gilmer County Genealogical Society, Inc.
If you’d like to pick up your own copy of “Reflections on Mountain Heritage” you can find it here for a very reasonable price.
My Raggedy-Ann doll suffered a similar fate, although after hanging on the clothes line for several days she finally did dry out.
We never had cows to milk, but there were garden chores which I usually drug my feet about doing, and dishes to wash. I never minded the dishes too much because I’ve always loved to play in the water. I still don’t mind doing the dishes.
Berniece’s use of the phrase ‘started it’ reminded me of Paul and me when we were little. Our older brother Steve always seemed like a grownup and never fussed like we did. I can just hear Paul or me one saying “but she/he started it!”
Last night’s video: 9 Brides and Granny Hite 7.
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I am the oldest of four siblings. I didn’t have so many chores that we didn’t have time to play. We did have to weed a few rows in the garden, and my sister and I had to do the supper dishes each evening. I also learned to milk our cow. I didn’t have to do it everyday though. I learned how to drive with a clutch by driving the tractor while dad stacked bales of hay on the wagon it was pulling. That was a scary thing but dad made me do it. I remember having to do other random chores at times but mostly we got to play. We played basketball and softball —we drew pictures, picked flowers, and used our imagination to have all sorts of fun. It was never boring and we had very little toys really. My mom worked all day. We had a wringer washer and she carried in rain water to fill it most of the time. She had no dryer for many years. And we only had cold water that we got from a hand pump—so she also heated water for washing and bathing and everything. She worked so hard. We often tried to get her to go on a picnic or something —she would pack us a picnic and let us go —but she worked. As we got older , we helped more with dusting furniture and helping with the wash. Sunday was different—on Sunday, mom would play badmitten with us. Dad would take us on long drives or we would have family picnics. No working on the Sabbath, except mom almost always made a delicious afternoon dinner. The rest of the day was restful and fun. Good memories.
Good rainy afternoon, the tropical storm has given us 3.5 inches so far so staying inside today. When I was young growing up on the farm rain did not stop the chores, they were never ending. As long as it wasn’t lightning rain didn’t even stop field work especially tobacco harvest. We had hogs chickens and cows, they have to be taken care of no matter what else is happening. It was hard work but a great life.
Not much playing when we were kids. To much work. We had fields on hills of corn to chop out. A big garden. Peach and cherry orchard and apple. O so much. Then wood to get for winter. The horse worked as hard as we did. We did have a cow to milk. We never got food from the store . We ate every thing we raised and hunted. Looking back, it was well worth it. The wonderful time we spent together.
Growing up on a farm there were always chores to do whether you wanted to or not. It was just me and my brother and he was ten years older than myself, so he had more to do but I had my share also, and I
helped mama with inside chores. When my brother got married, and I was older that left me and mama to help daddy with outside chores. Some of my fondest memories was going with daddy to “feed up” as he called it. We had hogs on some land that we had to drive to get there so we had buckets ready and once we got them loaded in the back of the pick-up, he would ask me if I wanted to drive and of course I did, that’s how I learned to drive. I look back now, and I am so thankful I got to be raised in the country and was taught the value of hard work. Tipper, wonderful chapter last night and tell Katie I enjoyed her video making banana bread. Have a blessed day everyone…
We kept a milk cow up until I was in my late teens or early twenties. Both my parents could milk a cow but quickly passed that off to me and Harold as we got big enough to grasp it. Harold wasn’t fond of the task so I, being the subordinate became the primary milker (I know of no technical term to describe it) in the family. None of the four that followed ever mastered the art.
Milking a cow isn’t just going out to the barn and forcing a cow to provide you a bucketful of milk. The experience, if done correctly, is pleasurable to her. First you provide her with sweet feed or other food that helps keep her calm and still while you prepare her for milking. First you clean her udder with warm water. This not only assures that you don’t contaminate the milk but mimics the actions that her calf would have taken, causing her to “let down” her milk. If you do it right you can take all her milk and she will gladly give it.
A cow’s teats are not spigots nor her udder a storage tank. They were designed by God to efficiently feed her offspring. Cows do not give milk without first having a calf. You have to impersonate that calf if you want milk. First you put your slightly open fingers around her teat, bring them up against her udder with some force, as a calf would do, and pinch it off between your thumb and the pad of your index finger. This assures that milk is not forced back up into the udder. Then you follow with the rest of your fingers sequentially pressing against your palm. Don’t squeeze all at the same time but one finger after the other. Squeeze and hold until all fingers are clamped in place. Next release in the same order and repeat, over and over, until the stream of milk thins to almost nothing.
With a little practice you can learn to milk with both hands. Together or alternately. Or in a rhythm if you want to change it up a bit. The main thing is that the cow remains comfortable. DO NOT pull on a cows teats if you expect to get milk. You are more likely to get kicked for your efforts. It’s the same as if you were her rambunctious calf. Keep her happy and she will gladly give you all the milk she can produce.
I used to be proud of the dexterity in my fingers and hands. I owed that, I think, to my learning to and milking a cow over several years. It was a chore but I often found it enjoyable. Something about the rhythm was almost harmonious. My hands were trained to do what needed to be done without my thinking about it. My mind was free to wander. Drudgery became delight. But, that was the exception rather than the rule.
Usually you have hurdles such as below freezing temperatures, snow, sleet or rain. You have “muddy” tails matted with cuckleburrs. You have flies which get in your eyes and irritate Old Bossie until she initiates her only defense, that club back there with its imbedded spikes which invariably finds, not the flies on her sides, but those on the side of your head.
Not many people this day and time have any idea where milk comes from in the natural world much less how to extract it. It doesn’t come from a milk truck, a convenience store or a supermarket, it comes before that from the udder end of a cow. Its a rudimentary rumination process.
There’s more to it but I believe I am at the end of the page.
What a wonderful memory from Berniece. It brought back memories of my own about washing dishes and other chores growing up. Our mom made use three girls take turns washing dishes. The boys had trash duty. They got off easy. We never had cows, but we had big gardens to help plant and keep up. We also had to help with all the other household chores. She made us take turns with everything except dishes and taking out trash. We even all, including our brothers learned how to cook and sew, even if it was just to sew on a button. Now my oldest sister says she don’t remember learning how to cook because she had to watch us younger ones when we were babies, so she might have not had as much learning at cooking as the rest of us, but I think that’s an excuse so her husband will do all the cooking for her (LOL).
Love reading these stories
The comment about having to get water reminded me of the time my Daddy, Lerman, and his 2 brothers were talking about all the trouble the middle brother used to get in. They would be rowdy and tussling but when Daddy heard the dipper rattle in the bucket he would get still and sit down but Uncle Wayne would not so Grandmama would send Wayne to get water. Uncle Wayne said he never knew that and that Daddy was sneaky, haha. That day they also talked about the summer that as a means to help keep Uncle Wayne a little calmer maybe the boys kept a chart to see who would get the fewest whippings before school started. At the end of the summer Daddy had 3 and Wayne had 33! Daddy got a dollar as a prize but he said he was always mad because he had to give Wayne a quarter of it because he was such an overachiever! They are all gone now except the baby brother, Ron, and I sure do miss hearing all the stories and laughter!
when your young looking down an endless row of corn with a hoe in your hand, it gives you a couple of things, ambition to make something out of your life and an appreciation for free time !
I have been thinking about this since writing my first comment. I was blessed to live beside of my Granddaddy Kirby, I tried to spend every second of my childhood life with him. He died when I was 17. Tagging along with him as he worked and trying to help him, as he plowed and worked his mule Kate and the many other things I did with him were better than playing. Now one of my most prized possessions is a broke blade butcher knife he carried in the pants leg of his overalls. I keep it in a safe. I hope my grandchildren have enjoyed their time with me just half as much as I did my time with him.
Speaking of chores, I was about 5 years old and had years of watching mommy wring clothes through our wringer washer. She’d mash them through to rinse and mash them back through. I had sat on the basement steps and watched her do this FUN PROCEDURE many times so when she headed outside to hang up clothes, I ran over to the wringer washer and began to mash some stuff through the rollers when lo and behold my arm got pulled in and mashed right good! I began to scream and cry cause it hurt but then it got my long curly hair in and was fixing to mash my head when in ran mommy and unplugged that mashing machine! She pulled those rolls apart and got me out. I can’t recall what she said but I do know her nerves were rattled because I had about met my end. Every day she’d dress my arm until it healed. God knows I love and miss my grand mommy who was my mommy all the days of her life!!! Oh sometimes there is a lump in my throat and tears in in my eyes as I think of my sweet and beautiful mommy!!! Is it any wonder I’ve “adopted” your wonderful mom, Tipper? Everybody needs someone to look up to and Granny is my inspiration to love others and keep trucking on!!!
Sadie, I have heard many stories of children and adults getting caught and their arms broke or worse in the rollers of those old wringer washing machines. I had to thread rubber through rollers identical to those washing rollers on one of the machines I ran at work. It made me think of those washing machines. We did have an E stop (emergency stop) at these rollers in case we got caught.
praise God , Hallelujah Hallelujah
I can recall my Dad saying, “Always something to do around a place.” And boy, have I ever found it to be true. I guess farm kids learn early on that ‘taking the easy way’ is often the harder way in the long run. As for playing – Mom said her brothers would use her and her sister’s dolls as trucks and push them through the dirt while they cried. And I never did learn to milk a cow.
Good morning. Today the Union County High folks, Class of ‘60 & Friends are having our annual Picnic in the Park @ Meeks Park in Blairsville. Most of us know about home chores way back then. Hank’s birthday was a few days back and I remembered that I was splitting some wood when my mom came to me and said, “Son, Miz Burnette just came and told me she heard on the radio that Hank died last night”….I was devastated…he was my hero. I went off somewhere and cried.
Oh what a chapter. My husband and I just sat there and looked at each other with a smile or chuckle. I think we liked this chapter more than the others so far. Can you just picture each of those frogs and when the Granddaddy jumped in her outfit. Such a chapter. And chores???…I was the eldest of three and it seemed the others NEVER had as much to do. Amazing how we see life unfold from childhood to adulthood and beyond. Give Granny my thoughts and prayers, she is always in mine.
Most all of the country kids of my generation had plenty of chores to do. Working in the garden, feeding the chickens and hogs, and bringing in firewood during the winter months were some of the bigger chores for me. I never had to milk a cow, the cow may have dried up and was sold before I was big enough to milk and we had a well and inside plumbing in our home. My grandparents had a well but no inside plumbing. My mother had several miscarriages and an older sister carried full term died at birth, there was only me and one sister in my family. Mother dearly loved both of us but petted my sister rotten. I got many whippings because of me getting mad at my sister for playing while I was working. Mother said she was allergic to weeds and things in the garden and didn’t have to work in the garden like I did, I thought the only thing she was allergic to was WORK. She has had a good many health problems in her life. I didn’t mention Daddy, he worked in a cotton mill but would work in the garden or at other chores just as soon as he came home each day. Playing and fishing for small minnows in our creek and tagging along with my Daddy while he squirrel hunted were some of the big joys of my childhood.