My Mammaw was a kind and funny person, She loved a good joke better than anybody. And she loved telling stories about when she was a young housewife with 5 children to raise. One story I remember in particular was was about Old "Cunye Runye". She had no refrigerator in those days, and she kept the butter on a shelf in the kitchen. Somehow old Cunye Runye, a rooster, got into the house and ate all the butter. Mammaw was so mad! She first had to milk the cow to get the cream, then churn the butter.....now this rooster had eaten it all up! She grabbed the rooster by the neck and said, as she jerked him around, "I'll make you eat my butter!" Another story she told was about an egg sucking dog that used to come around their place. She decided she would break him from sucking the eggs, so she caught him one day and filled his mouth with hot pepper and made him swallow it. He ran off and never sucked eggs there again! She also had a snake that would eat their eggs, and put a white door knob into the hen's nest one day. The snake swallowed it, then proceeded to wrap itself around a tree to break the egg. The snake died. She had a solution for everything, I guess. We kids loved to come see her all the way from Texas at Christmas time!
She would put pallets down on the floor in the front room to sleep on. There was a little gas heater beside us, so we never got cold. We always had a fresh tree Pappaw chopped down for our Christmas. On Christmas Eve night, Mammaw would hang Pappaw's brown and red-heeled socks up on the quilting hooks on the ceiling for Santa to fill. We always got an apple, an orange, and ribbon candy and nuts. Once, she hung one of her brassieres as a stocking! I'll never forget that. She was a fantastic cook, and we always had a real spread for Christmas dinner. She joking called her German Chocolate cake a "Shoesole Cake".
She made the best prune cake I ever ate! I never saw her in ladies pants..she always wore a dress and flate shoes, unless she went to church, and she wore little pumps, She loved to entertain us kids with games with "Button,Button, Who's got the Button", "Bear Walking", "Hot and Cold", "The Goose and the Gander". She taught us to spin a button with thread looped through it and held by our thumbs. We could really make that button hum! She taught me to crochet, even though I was left-handed. She also taught me to count to ten in Indian language, though I've forgotten it now. She said her great grandmother (I think) received some land when Pocahantas's land was divided among her heirs, and that we were kin to the great Indian maiden. And she let us play with her snuff jars under the house. There was always a stray kitten or two around her house. She loved flowers and had a beautiful Magnolia tree out front. At one time when I was little, I can remember their having a well in front of the house. There was a little bucket you could draw water from there, but later on the city closed it up and built the street over it. She had lovely Cala Lillies and Amaryllis. And we always made home made ice cream in the summer time on her front porch. We got to crank it when we were big enough. So many treasured memories...