Memories Of A Share Croppers Daughter
and bring them out to work on the farm . Mommie would give them lunch on our front porch . After lunch one of them ( Hans Willard ) would play the piano for us . Stella had a crush on him .
Mommie spent all summer making our dresses for the school year . Many of which were made from printed chicken feed sacks . We each had five dresses . When I was in the first grade , I cried because I didn ’ t have a new dress for Monday . Mommie should have spanked me for that , but she didn ’ t .
Mommie seldom went to town . She would call the little grocery store and give him her list and Poppie would go and pick them up . In those days we could run a bill all year and pay it off at the end of the year when the tobacco was sold . Poppie would always bring us a bag of candy home . We would sit down and count it out – one for you and one for me – until we had it divided evenly .
Mommie and Poppie Yazell
by Martha Rankin
I was born Martha Fay Yazell a long time ago in Bourbon County , Kentucky . My parents -- who we called Mommie and Poppie -- were farmers ( share croppers ). They had thirteen children . Ten girls and three boys . One girl died at eighteen months of age before I was born . We called ourselves the six big ones and the six little ones . I was one of the six little ones .
We had plenty of work to do . We raised a big garden and canned vegetables from the garden in the summer . We had hogs , chickens , and a cow for our milk . We made butter and cottage cheese and sold cream from the milk . As one of the six little ones , I never did learn how to milk a cow . It was a big job . My oldest sister , Stella was milking one day and told Poppie that the milk would be sour before she got through it was taking so long . We heated our house with a big coal stove and two fireplaces . We had to fill the coal buckets with coal in the winter and carry them to the back porch . Our drinking water came from a spring at the bottom of the hill . We carried water up the hill in buckets for drinking and for washing clothes on Mondays .
Sometimes we would get in trouble . The man who owned the farm had a strawberry patch . We would pick some when no one was around . My sisters , Mimmie and Thelma , were coming back from the patch one day and Poppie caught them . He said , “ I told you all not to go in that patch .” Thelma said , “ We did not go all the way .” Poppie said , “ I told you they were not ripe .” Thelma gave herself away when she said , “ Yes they are . I found a big one .”
My sister Rene was the jokester in the family . At our house , you could get out on the roof from one of the upstairs bedrooms . Rene put on a black glove one night and got on the roof . When Stella went to bed , Rene reached in the window and laid her hand on Stella ’ s face . One day Rene and I were the only ones at home and she told me if I would cut a chicken ’ s head off she would dress it out and fry it for lunch . She said I was younger and Mommie and Poppie would not get mad at me . When my parents came home , there was a big plate of fried chicken on the table . On a sad note , Rene passed away from Alzheimer ’ s in 2012 . I have three more sisters who have Alzheimer ’ s as well . I also had a brother , Russell who passed away from Alzheimer ’ s .
One of our jobs as kids was to chop the weeds out of the tobacco . One summer the rows were so long that Poppie would take our lunch to one end and leave it there . We would chop weeds going down the row , eat lunch and then chop back in the afternoon .
Farming could be dangerous . One time we were setting tobacco and my sister , Betty and I were on the setter and my brother , Charlie was driving the tractor and he went to sleep and fell off . When Poppie asked him what happened , Charlie said that his hat had fallen off and he jumped off to get it . Another time my brother JR was driving the tractor and it started raining so hard that he took off to the barn so fast , he ran into the gate and just about threw us girls off the setter .
I remember Poppie would go in to town and get the German Prisoners of War On the farm