Setting Up Housekeeping

Here is another installment of Mama's memoirs, "In her own words..."

After spending two weeks with Uncle Valson and his family, Austin and I stayed with his mother and his brother James for a while. Then we moved into one of the Van Eden houses.

In order for us to set up house-keeping, Austin went to Z. J. Carter's furniture store in Wallace and bought a small iron cook stove, several wooden chairs, and a low oak dresser, which we gave to Richard many years later. He also bought a mattress to put on the old-fashioned wooden bedstead that Maggie gave us. (I remember it had the folding bedsprings that most people used at that time.)

Austin had to buy on credit, and I believe it involved a note being drawn up between him and the store.

Our living room was furnished with a set of wicker furniture that I had bought before we were married, with money I had made picking strawberries and doing other field work. It was used in the living room at home until I got married and needed it. I had also made and quilted two quilts before I was married. They lasted many years.

We lived in the Van Eden house for only a few weeks, but it was there that Austin learned to pick a guitar. I had learned to pick chords well enough to sing along, and I believe I still had a cheap guitar. Austin took it and sat in the kitchen while I cooked or washed dishes and I would sing for him and tell him how to change from one chord to another. It wasn't long before he could pick a guitar much better than I ever could.

When he began to preach revivals, he would use the guitar to accompany himself in solos and the two of us in duets. People just couldn't seem to get enough of the guitar playing and singing. They kept Austin so busy in the openings of revival services that he was so physically exhausted he hardly felt like preaching, as the evangelist.

I wish he had never given up picking the guitar. But, since I played the piano, we began using that and leaving the guitar at home. Singing with Austin has always been a joy to me, and others seemed to enjoy it, too. Having children who were - and still are - so musically talented added so much joy to our life.

Austin and I were given the first bridal shower that I can remember in Watha. One of the families gave it in their home, and many of the Watha citizens attended. We were so delighted with the gifts we received; like many others, we had little money with which to buy the things we needed. There were gifts for the living room, bedroom, kitchen, etc. - nothing really expensive but all given lovingly.

There were no toasters, irons, nor any other electric appliances. At that time very few people had electricity. Some of the Watha folks were beginning to have electricity installed in their homes; but our lives, Austin's and mine, were not affected because we lived in the country. We used kerosene lamps, wood stoves, and a battery-powered radio, when we got able to purchase one.

To iron our clothes, we used irons that were heated on the stove or in the fireplace. Unless we were lucky enough to own an iron that could be heated by burning cobs. This heat lasted much longer. We had such an iron at one time.

In the fall of 1930, Miss Maggie Brown's brother, Angus – or Pat Brown as he was usually called – died suddenly, and she was left alone. She and her brother were the only children their parents had, and neither of them had ever married. The closest relatives that they knew about and had any contact with were cousins.

Years before, when Austin was growing up in what was known as the "Rooks field,” he had spent many nights with Miss Maggie when her brother – who worked as a blacksmith on construction crews – was away from home. So when Miss Maggie was left all alone, she thought of Austin and wanted us to move into the house with her. (By that time, we had left Van Eden and were staying with Austin's mother and brother anyway, but our furniture was still in the house in Van Eden.) So, in February, 1931, we moved into Miss Maggie's house, "on the hill". It was built like the Van Eden houses, with only 3 rooms, unfinished on the inside and never painted on the outside. This house was our home until it burned a few days before Christmas in 1935.

Miss Maggie had chickens, hogs, and a cow, so we always had something to eat, even during the depression years. But we often had to boil the eggs because we didn't have the grease or oil to fry them in. And, sometimes we had to grease the griddle by rubbing a meat skin on it, so that our corn bread wouldn't stick so hard and fast to the pan.