1982-1986

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Getting ready for winter By OVID VICKERS Wrench, some Wild Geese Flying, and move them if they decided dur· Monday morning, a few yellow and several Flower Gardens , to be ing December to move and work fo1 leaves fell from an out-of-sight limb aired on the clothesline or folded a different landowner. beyond the window where I sit to across saw horses in the backyard As soon as the weather turned drink a cup of coffee in the early under the pecan trees. (There was a cool it was time to make syrup, bed morning quiet. Floating through the time when saw horses seemed an the cane, and make a potato hill. morning air like little golden boats, esstential part of everyday life. One Some people kept their sweet the leaves were the first hint that never sees them today.) potatoes in a potato house. We put -summer is moving into fall. Soon we During those last warm days of ours in a hill. A potato hill was made will turn off the air-conditioning and summer, the late apples were sliced by digging a hole about one foot for a few days enjoy being free of thin and placed on sheets of tin to deep and four feet wide. This hole what is called the ''utilities.'' dry. These apple-covered sheets of was lined with pine straw before the At our house, preparation for tin were placed on top of the potatoes were piled into it. Next, winter will amount to getting out an smokehouse or the chicken house if boards or dry corn stalks were lean- electric blanket and lighting a match the roof was not too steep. They ed against the hill of potatoes to to some piped-in natural gas. While might be put across two biddie form a cone. Dirt was then thrown I enjoy these rewards of modern coops or two saw horses. (Saw over the hill, and the final result technology, I will again, because of horses could be used for everything looked somewhat like a small dirt- my rural upbringing, feel a bit con- from drying fruit to sunning a mat- covered Indian tepee. Field mice fused. When leaves turn yellow and tress.) Dry butterbeans were picked found these potato hills ideal places the morning air lets me know that and red pepper saved so there would to spend the winter, and when girls a sweater will soon be needed, be spring seed to plant. All the glass and women screamed at the potato somewhere in the back of my mind jars from a summer of canning had hill, it meant that a mouse had run I begin making a list of what needs to be placed under the bed in the out while they were getting potatoes to be done in order to get ready for "fire room" to keep them from to cook. winter. freezing in some unheated section of Because Mama said it must be If my mother were living, she the house. done, we covered the fig tree with would announce that the time had chicken wire and then filled this wire come to move the feather bed from When there was nothing left to cage with cornshucks. This was a between the cotton matresses where gather from the garden, it was time long and tedious task, but our fig it had been put on the first bright to break ground. for l;l. winter turnip tree always put out in the spring day of spring. Out of the quilt chest patch. In the past, it was not uncom- when our neighbors' trees would be would come a Double Wedding mon for a family that did "day killed to the ground by a severe cold Ring, a Dutch Girl, a Monkey work" to dig up their collard plants spell. ~------------------------------ In September and October, we cut

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and stacked wood in a woodpile that had been neglected since the last fire (except for ironing fires) was built on a cool morning in April. Sometimes, Pappa would dynamite heart pine stumps for the "kindl– ing.'' Buying dynamite always made Pappa mad because the law required that dynamite must be signed for a reason given for its purchase. Pap– pa always dutifully signed his name and then wrote down in the record book at the hardware store that he was buying the dynamite to use in a gold mine. · After the syrup had been made, the potatoes stored, the fire wood stacked, and the apples and peaches dried, there would be time before the first frost to catch a fish or two, rob a bee tree, and watch droves of brightly colored butterflies go south.

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