Guest post by Angela Rosemary, author of Dating Calamity
Most of us have lived in times of excess. My parents did not, though life had changed dramatically by the time I came along, when my parents were in their 40’s.
My mother was quite young when her father took a job with Inter Mountain Coal and Lumber Company driving a train. He had previously worked for a railway company in Virginia. He first had to lay the track through the mountains so the train could bring out logs for the lumber mill. The family followed along as the tracks were lain.
My Mom’s family lived in some terrible places at first. Some were infested with bed bugs but not for long. They moved the bedsteads out and torched them, the frames being made of iron. They painted and filled any cracks that bugs could fit through. Eventually new rooms were brought in by train, and were linked together near a limestone spring. Everything was new but there wasn’t any electricity but oil lamps and wood burning stoves kept them cozy.
As the track moved along their little rooms moved with it from place to place until they finally settled near a town with a school. It was the first time my mother had been to school and she came down with some sort of fever that left her legs and knees swollen and sore. He mother would make a poultice of herbs to draw out the fluid that had collected in her knees. She still had to make the excruciating 3 mile walk to school each day and would then cry herself to sleep at night. They didn’t know much about treating it in those days and over time it led to a weak spot in her heart, causing leakage of blood from one part of her heart to the other. She later developed a tumor in one knee as well.
Despite the pain Mom went through she said life was pretty good there. They would take the train to another town and buy large sacks of pinto beans, potatoes and canned salmon for salmon cakes. A lady from a nearby farm would ride in on a horse, bringing chickens tied by their legs to her saddle. Her mother would buy a couple and fatten them up with grain. On Sundays they would eat fried chicken or chicken and dumplings and a cake of some sort, maybe blackberry jam cake with caramel icing or coconut cake with lemon filling and seafoam icing or velvet dark chocolate. Her father did his part rolling lemons and slicing them into a pitcher with sugar to make the best lemonade you could ever want.
My mother’s family then moved to yet another town and had a perfect little place by the river with rich soil where they could grow their own potatoes, corn, beans, peppers, anything they wanted to grow, even peanuts. My mother thought it funny to learn that they grew underground.
This new place was close to a 2 room school house and my mother began to read to her younger sister the Zane Grey novels that her mother had read to her. People in town would pass books between each and my mother would read all that she could get hold of. When she wasn’t reading she would make doll clothes from the scraps her mother had left over from making her dresses. My mother would later do the same for me, giving me the scraps to make clothes for my Barbie. I later learned to make chairs for them from tuna cans, with the lid still partially attached to form the back of the chair, covering them with cotton balls and cloth with lace for the edges. I enjoyed making my own toys and appreciated them more, I am sure, than a lot of kids appreciated their multitudes of store bought gifts.
Mom also enjoyed fishing with her brother. They would row across the river and climb the mountain and enjoy the view of town from up high, watching the cars down there or looking for shapes in the clouds above. She enjoyed all the simple things in life, knowing nothing of all the gadgets and advances that would come, that many of us think we can’t live without. It is time that we all think about what we really need and be grateful for what we have.
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Books by Angela Rosemary
Dating Calamity ~ View on Bookshelves | View on Amazon