For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for July 14, 2012

put on a little weight, Laura?

Only as long as she doesn’t still wet the bed, Elizabeth. My younger brother had the top bunk when he was about six or so, while I slept below — it was like trying to sleep under Niagara Falls!

Uh, Oh!

Hi, fellow commenters! The “For Better or for Worse” arc about the farm, as well as the ensuing comments, have roiled up my creative juices again, and I had to reminisce about my granny’s farm. She had a farm house and several acres by the train tracks in Watha, North Carolina, a village about thirty miles north of Wilmington, not far from the coast. I visited there several times in the 1940’s, and here are my memories. Skip ’em if you want:

My Granny’s farm during the early 40’s was a great place to visit. She had a well with great-tasting, kind of minerally-sweetish water, and during warm weather we would do our morning ablutions on the back porch with a bucket, dipper, and basin. I’ll spare you my treatise on the other facility, but will mention that there was a galvanized washtub near the kitchen stove, where people took their baths. Maybe they took therm other places, too, like in front of the bedroom fireplace, but I just remember the kitchen part.

At night Mom and I would sleep on a thick feather mattress and cover ourselves with quilts that Granny and her friends had made at quilting bees. In the winter, Mom would heat a brick, wrap it in newspapers, and put it under the covers to warm my feet. I believe that once it got to sixteen degrees in that bedroom, but maybe I’m confabulating. It was cold, though!

(Continued from above)

In the morning Granny would wake up early to fire up the wood-burning stove and make breakfast. The stove was cast iron; the burners were holes covered with iron discs into which you could slide handles. Granny made great biscuits, which were slathered with Beulah the cow’s butter. We made the butter by churning her milk. Actually, Aunt Myrtle’s cow yielded better milk for butter, since her cow was a Guernsey, not a Holstein. I can’t recall exactly what the stove looked like, but

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=wood+burning+kitchen+stoves&um=1&hl=en&rlz=1R2GGLL_enUS371&biw=1537&bih=829&tbm=isch&tbnid=xYDblc-COg7qmM:&imgrefurl=http://airlase.com/kitchen-wood-stoves/&docid=vEMg1jIJHwOwnM&imgurl=http://i677.photobucket.com/albums/vv135/Jay123_bucket/ContractorTalk/stove.jpg&w=800&h=601&ei=WsPtT6ayMYSc8gSVlcGRAg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=1063&vpy=344&dur=5811&hovh=195&hovw=259&tx=138&ty=139&sig=102246736036197249160&page=3&tbnh=149&tbnw=216&start=59&ndsp=37&ved=1t:429,r:21,s:59,i:331

is probably pretty close. A pantry led off from the kitchen, with large gourds hanging from the walls to dip out flour and cornmeal from large containers.

(Continued from above)

On Monday mornings, Granny would light a fire under a great globe-shaped iron pot in the back yard, pour in water and lye soap, add clothes, and boil them while stirring with a smooth wooden pole. They hung out to dry in the sun and wind – nothing smelled better.

To the north of the wash area was the smokehouse. The hams that hung there were dark red and super salty. They added interest to the breakfast eggs, grits, and biscuits, and seasoned the field-fresh cowpeas, butter beans, okra, and collards for dinner and supper (main-day and evening meals, respectively). My mom told me about eating “cracklin’” biscuits. (Cracklings are bits of rendered pig fat.) She would eat the cracklings after picking them out of the biscuits, then hide the biscuits under her plate. Granny would lift up the plate and find a ring of biscuits under it. I imagine that even though this must have griped Granny, the biscuits made good scraps for the chickens.

(Continued from above)

I liked to lose myself in the corn fields. I could hide there, and walk on the pleasant-smelling grayish clay. The main crop, the money crop, however, was tobacco. One summer, after Granny’s farm had been sold, I helped “hand” tobacco on my uncle’s farm across town. I’d grab up three green tobacco leaves, put their stems together, and hand them to a woman who would wind them onto a narrow pole with other leaves. She could keep up with several handers at once. The poles would later be hung in the tobacco barn, which had a furnace to facilitate drying. The leaves would turn yellow-brown.. It smelled nice in there, like pipe tobacco. However, the gooey bitter black tar on my hands didn’t smell nice, and you didn’t want to get that stuff in your eyes.

Man, that work made me thirsty! Once I went through five Nehi’s from the store up the road. However, I earned enough money to buy a parakeet. That was enough to satisfy a fourteen-year-old.

(Continued from above)

By then poor Granny lay in bed all day, leveled by rheumatism and “hardening of the arteries.” She misidentified people and argued with the old lady in the mirror. She was cared for by my uncle’s wife, Aunt Myrtle, who was an LPN. She was only two years older than I am now when she died. As I told my daughter recently, if I’d had nine kids as she did, I might be in the same condition myself now.

Thanks for all the memories, Granny.

Regarding today’s strip about the bunk beds, and the “Niagara Falls” comment, above, my five-year-old granddaughter was recently observed (by her mom) to sit up in bed, fast asleep, hang her stern over the edge, and let fly. This happened twice! The girl remembered nothing about this the next morning, but thought it funny when told about it.

Thanks Gokie5, that was wonderful to read. Drinking Nehi’s! Boy did I love those little bottles of flavor. The farm information was great as I never stayed on one.

This is where in a 3 Stooges episode, the stooge on the bottom bunk would stick a needle into the sagging mattress, and you would hear a yell while the stooge on top goes flying upward and hits their head on the ceiling.

@Gokie5Loved the story. What great memories. Memories kids today will never have unfortunately.

Thanks, Gil. For more of my mischief, see gocomics.com cul de sac, March 24, 2012, starting with fourth comment. RubyRedRing, nice handle. My mom used to sing “Red Wing” all the time. It was written three years after she was born. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Wing_(song)Perkycat: How true, for so many. We have to work with what we’ve got!Gweedo Murray: You’re welcome. It was fun!

This brings back great memories of visiting my great aunt and uncle’s farm in Ohio. We slept in regular beds though,not bunk beds. I awoke one morning to find my aunt and uncle sound asleep beside me. (Not the great aunt and uncle). I never did find out where my parents slept. My cousins and I had a blast in the barn riding that rope swing. It was great times.

SCAATY-423 – thanks. ♥♥iced tea – great times, indeed!

Am I the only one who read the last panel as “Mama? Is this effing safe?”

Also, the stolen slats bit from ‘The Great Escape’.

Thank you, Gokie! When I was about to get married 30+ years ago, my to-be FIL got us to meet his great aunt and uncle on their farmhouse a few hours north of us by arranging for my fiance and me to go buy a car from them: at the 1800’s farmhouse that later had a train station built right there, bringing a town to life around them… Thank you for bringing back the memory and for sharing what it was like to actually live in that kind of place.

We had bunk beds as kids. Are you telling me there are no slats under the mattress to support it? Not only unsafe but pretty uncomfortable.

leagaleagle48GretchensMomThanks for the kind words – you all warmed the cockles of my ♥.

lightenupShikamooThank you for the compliment! :-)

Was the joke reused when Michael went to summer camp and took the bunk under a fat kid?