Lela Memories

I would like to share a few memories of my childhood:

I remember Dada had so much love for singing. Ruth would play the piano, Dada the autoharp an all the rest would gather around and sing. He would take us to different places to sing.

Dada loved to go to church. He never missed many Sundays. He didn't have an education, but he could say lots of big words. He read a lot.

Mother went to church as much as possible, but with eight children she had lots to do to keep us all in church and school.

I always remember Mother with a big smile. She loved everyone of us. She didn't want us to do anything for her. She wanted us to do for Dada. After we got married and left home when we would come home, she would always want to give us something to take back. She just loved to do things for us. She had a lot of love for flowers. It seemed as if the flowers knew it. She could grow the prettiest ones I have ever seen. I know the day she went to the hospital (and never came back), she watered all of them before she left for the hospital We still have part of her Christmas cactus she had when she died in 1966.

I remember we had a spring about one hundred yards from the house which we would have to go to the spring three or four times a day to get buckets of water.

Mother had a wash house by the spring where we would wash our clothes. We had a big black wash pot to heat our water in. We built a fire around the pot to heat water to wash the clothes. Mother had a wash board to scrub our clothes on to get them clean. As we children grew older, we would do the washing. The spring water was so cold, as cold as the refrigerator.

Just above the spring there was a little stream Dada built a long box and set it down into the water. He made a hole in each end for the water to flow through. He put a lid on the box. The is where we kept our milk and butter to keep it cold. It really kept it cold on a hot summer day. Each day before meals one of us children would have to go to the milk box to get milk and butter to have for our meals. I remember sometimes it would come a big rain and the water would get up so high in the little stream and ruin our milk and butter. We wouldn't have any milk until the cows were milked again.

The church and school we went to was a little more than a mile away. We children would have to walk to school and sometimes through rain an snow. Our school had two rooms.

We had to hoe tobacco, com and our garden. We would be so tired when we came in for dinner, but we would wash the dishes for Mother. She had to work so hard cooking for all of us. I remember so well when my younger sister and I would wash dishes. I would wash and she would dry them. Sometimes I would be in such a hurry to get them done, I wouldn't get them real clean. She would laugh at me and put them back in the pan for me to wash them over. It would make me so mad, I would slap her. We would start crying. Then I would hug and pet her to keep her from crying so Mother wouldn't whip me.

After we would get our dishes done, (we had forgotten we were so tired from hoeing) we girls would go out to the woods and play in our playhouse. We raked a large place in the woods and put up stakes and tied string all around the stakes to make our house. We would have separate rooms To make our chairs and tables, we would put planks over the rocks. We would get lots of moss to make the beds and for the carpet.

I remember so well we had an eating table about 10 or 12 feet long. We had a bench behind the table and the small ones would sit on it to eat. Sometimes when we were eating, some of us would get to laughing and Dada would get after us and tell us to quit; but that would make us laugh that much more. Then he would make us leave the table.

When it would come up a bad cloud, Mother and Dad would make us sit and not be playing, talking and laughing while it was thundering and lightning. I well remember the summer 1932. We had a bad hail storm and it completely tore up our tobacco, com and garden. We had worked so hard in it. The tobacco was almost as tall as Dada. We were all sad to see our crop tom up. Dada was sad about it because of eight children to clothe and feed.

I was first married to Johnnie Bell Wiseman, November 17, 1934 at Hillsville, VA. On June 26, 1965, Johnnie was killed by a car while he was putting out a fire in a car that had wrecked at the crossing where his station was.