Authors: Justine Felix Rutherford
There was a financial aspect to the honeybees as well as their usefulness in pollinating the crops for farmers. But to a kid, they were just a necessary evil. We had a row of bee stands that sat on a mound above the house. My dad knew about bees and that they flew a straight path to get to water. Why he ever built a clothes line between the bees and the creek I will never know! Every Monday was wash day. I didn’t have to help hang out the wash, but I had to help take it in. The bees weren’t usually mean, but they would be so mad at the clothes and flapping sheets that they would sting anything that moved. I remember getting a bee in my hair. I would start running and yelling for mom just knowing that at any minute that bee was going to set its stinger in my head. Mom would run outside and take off her bonnet or her apron and crush the bee before it got to my scalp. I exclaimed, “Relief, relief!”
Sometimes the bees would be so bad that they would sting the bed sheets. If we didn’t check carefully before we took the sheets into the house, a bee might remain in them, quietly awaiting its chance to awaken us with a thrill in the middle of the night.
There were wild bees that lived in the woods. My dad would follow them from the creek, where they were getting water, to the woods. He was looking for a bee tree. A bee tree is one that is hollow inside, which makes a great place for bees to live and make their honey. My dad would come in during the early part of the summer and say to the boys, “I think I’ve found a bee tree. Come along and let’s go get breakfast.” The honey was delicious with hot biscuits. Some people called it “gathering honey.” I called it “robbing the bees.”
They would take lard cans to put the honey in. When they came home with the honey, Dad would cut it in sections. The first thing he did was fill Mom’s honey dish. The clear amber nectar always looked so beautiful, and the taste was simply delightful. Part of the honey was put in jars and sealed to keep it fresh. We kept some of the honey, and sold the rest. As kids we chewed on the beeswax for days. Dad was always careful to leave enough honey in the tree so the bees could make it through the winter.
Raising Tobacco
Our biggest money crop was tobacco. At this time you could raise as much tobacco as you wanted. Everyone raised too much tobacco so that it wasn’t worth much. You ran a grocery bill from one year to the next. If you were lucky, after you sold your tobacco, you could pay your grocery bill and have enough left over to buy seed and fertilizer for the following year. Later Roosevelt put an allotment on tobacco. This was good because the price was higher, we worked less, and we made more money.
Raising tobacco was a year-round job. First we had to prepare the tobacco bed. It would be at least one hundred feet long. We put logs and brush on this area and set it on fire. It would burn most of the day. This killed any weeds that were in the soil, and the ash made the earth rich and soft. The tobacco seed was very fine. I remember my dad mixing the seed with the ashes to sow the seed. My dad always sowed radishes around the outside of the tobacco bed. After it was sown, the bed was covered with a fine material called canvas. When the tobacco plants were about six inches tall, the canvas was removed so the plants could harden in the weather.
When the plants reached maturity, we had to hand plant them. This was a hard job. I remember my dad and brothers pulling all these plants. They were put in washtubs and different containers and hauled to the area where we would raise the tobacco. This area first had to be prepared for the plants. The ground was plowed and harrowed until the soil was just right. It was then fertilized.
We hoped for rain when the plants were ready to “set out.” If it didn’t rain, we had to hand water the plants. Each plant had a dipper of water put in the hole before the plant was set. The tobacco had to be plowed during the summer. When the plants were small, the plow would cover them up. It was our job to go along behind the plow and uncover the tobacco plants. It was backbreaking. When my brothers weren’t looking, I uncovered a lot of the plants with my feet. If my brothers saw me, they would yell at me and say, “If you break one leaf off the tobacco, you have to eat it.” I broke several leaves off, but I made sure I stuffed them quickly into my pocket.
When the tobacco got big, it had large, green worms on it. We had to go through the tobacco and pull off the worms and kill them. I hated that job. Those ugly worms had black things sticking out from their heads called “feelers.” I called them horns! I placed those worms on the ground and hit them with a rock. Around the large leaves would form what were called “suckers.” We had to go along and pull the suckers off. The tobacco also had blooms that formed on the top. We had to top the tobacco before it was cut.
In the fall the tobacco would become ripe. It was a bright yellow color. It was cut and hung in the barn. I never had to cut any tobacco because I was too small and couldn’t lift it. The tobacco hung in the barn until about December when it was taken down and stripped from the stalks. It was sorted into different grades and tied into bundles called “hands.” It was pretty when it was hand tied. I never had to tie tobacco either because I found out that if I didn’t do it just right, they wouldn’t let me. So I didn’t do any of it right. I didn’t like anything about the tobacco—except the money.
If we were lucky and got the tobacco on the market before Christmas, it made the family a nice little Christmas present. The family was able to pay the grocery bill and have a little treat for Christmas. If we didn’t get the tobacco crop sold, there wasn’t anything extra for Christmas.
Selling Eggs
Eggs were a staple. We gathered eggs two or three times a day so that not one egg got broken. Eggs bought the necessities from day to day. We ate eggs boiled, fried, and scrambled. My mother would send me to the grocery store with a couple of dozen eggs. She always knew just about how much two dozen eggs would buy. Sometimes the price of eggs had gone up, and we would have two or three coins left over to spend for candy. Sometimes the price of eggs would be down, and we didn’t get anything to spend.
I remember one time I went to the store and eggs were up. I had six cents left over after buying groceries. I had been thinking about smoking for a long time, and now was my chance. I bought a bag of Buffalo tobacco. The bag was so fascinating. It was small and white with yellow cords to pull it together at the top. On one side of the bag was a black buffalo and on the other side there were two packages containing a thin white paper on which to roll your cigarettes. I had a penny left, and so I got a penny box of matches. I couldn’t wait to get started home so I could try out my cigarettes.
I picked out a nice spot on the hillside to try my first smoke. I carefully took off the cigarette papers, and then I opened up the sack and poured out some tobacco as I had seen my brothers do. The tobacco kept falling off the paper. When I got one end twisted, the other end would fall apart. Finally, many papers later, I got something that resembled a cigarette, and I proceeded to light it. A flame quickly shot up the side of the paper. I dropped what was left of that cigarette and proceeded to make another, thinking to myself, “You have to make that sucker tighter so it won’t burn so fast. I finally got another one made. I lit it, took a big draw, and felt my head begin to gently leave my shoulders and drift down the hill. By the time I got over that, my second cigarette had burned up. I decided that was enough for this time. I made my way home, thinking as I walked, “Where am I going to hide my tobacco so I can try this again?”
There was a lumber pile in the barnyard which I decided was just the right place to hide my smokes. I pushed my tobacco and matches back under a board and went to the house. A short time later I heard my brothers yelling at me, “Hey, Teen, come to the barnyard.” I went to the barnyard and found that they had discovered my cache. My brother Warner asked, “You know who this tobacco belongs to?” I said, “Yes, it’s mine, so give it to me.” My brother Alvin said, “We’re going to tell Mom on you.” Then he said, “I’ll tell you what. You give us the tobacco and we won’t tell Mom.” I gave them the tobacco, all the while saying to myself, “Some way, somehow, you’re going to pay for this.” That was the end of my cigarette smoking.
Selling Cream
Selling cream was as important as selling eggs. Selling the cream and eggs was what sent me to high school. My mother always tried to have two cows. If one was expecting a calf, the other one was milking. We always had milk. We milked twice a day. The milk was put in crocks and allowed to sour. The cream rose to the top, and it was skimmed off and saved to go to the creamery. There were crocks of milk sitting everywhere.
We had a large five-gallon can with my mother’s name and address on it. On creamery day, that can was filled with cream and sent to the creamery. A truck would stop every Monday and pick up the cream. In a few days, my mother would get a check. It ran from four dollars to twelve dollars a week. We watched every Saturday for that check.
One of the men who drove that truck was Dale Rollyson. Dale is now deceased, but he was my neighbor for many years here on Union Ridge. Dale would pick up the cans, put them in the truck, and josh with the people on his route. Dale said one of the things he remembered about those days was the goodness of the people. He always took time to talk with people, and they loved him for it.
Blackberries
Aside from the economic aspect of the wild blackberries, there is a rich but forgotten lore that is as entwined in childhood as the vines of those berries and sometimes as scratchy as their briars. Picking blackberries was hard. We had to dress against the pricks of the briars. We also had to dress our legs heavily to protect them from snakes as we made our way through the berry patch. The whole family picked blackberries.
When we got to where they were growing, some patches of berries were thicker and nicer than others. We looked for those patches. There the berries hung heavy and inviting and sparkled like black diamonds. I remember placing my fingers around the first berries of the summer and hearing the dull thud as the berries hit the bottom of my four-pound lard bucket. I always picked with a small bucket tied to my overall galluses. I left a large bucket at a place I could find later to dump my small bucket into. I was as lazy as any kid. I filled my small bucket quickly, and then I would lie in the grass and look up at the sky and daydream until I thought the other kids had filled their small buckets. I wasn’t much afraid of snakes since I always made so much noise that a snake wouldn’t dare linger.
Just about everyone picked blackberries. In my young days, if you didn’t pick berries, you were looked down on as the dregs of our community. A family that didn’t pick blackberries when they were available for fresh blackberry pies, jams, jellies, and for canning to use later need not ask for help come the winter months.
I really can’t say I liked to pick blackberries, but I loved those home-made pies and jelly. I also liked being close to my mother. She was the only one who could fill a bucket faster than I could when I wanted to. She usually filled her pail and then helped everyone else fill theirs.
We picked gallons and gallons of blackberries. My mother wanted them picked clean. She didn’t want any leaves, bugs, or twigs left in them. The first nice berries were sold on the market in Huntington, West Virginia. They were sorted and placed in crates to go to the market. My cousin, Harold Spurlock, would put them in his truck along with eggs from our farm and sell them for my mother. Harold would stop about every week and pick up Mom’s things for market. As I write this, I have to dodge splotches of tears on my paper, tears that I shed as I recall how good Harold was to our family, especially after my father died. I honor him.
The blackberries hang on the vines today, but only the birds and rains take them. I still eat the blackberries and spit the whole world in the eye.
Cinnamon Rolls and Coffee Cake
One of the bread companies in Huntington was the Mootz Bakery. My cousin by marriage, Gomer White, had this old re-done Mootz Bakery truck. The truck wasn’t remodeled. It was revamped. The enclosed back portion of the truck had been cut away making it into a flatbed. Gomer used this truck for everything. Every Friday evening he would make a run to the bakery to work and get surplus bread. I believe he cleaned for the company, and his brother Carl was a mechanic for the company.
All of us waited for the roar of the old truck coming up the road on Friday evenings. Gomer would stop, and all the kids would climb on the truck with the metal barrels that he took for the bread. While the grown-ups worked, we kids rode around on the bread carts. When the adults had finished, the kids who had fifteen cents went to see a Western movie. When Gomer was financially blessed, he paid our way into the movie. Unfortunately this didn’t happen very often.
We got a sack full of surplus bread for one dollar. Oh, what we might find in that sack! This bread was supposed to be hog feed. There were a lot of two-legged hogs in those days. As we looked through that sack, we would hold up our first prize. “Wow! A package of cinnamon rolls.” We’d give it to the other kids so we could dig deeper. Someone would say, “Jeepers, here’s a coffee cake,” or “There’s hardly any mold on this package of buns.”
Who could ever forget “Miss Sunbeam” on the outside of the bread package? She smiled on all of us Depression kids.
Samp and Rags
My story of the Depression would not be complete without including the man who kept so many people afloat during the Depression year after year. His name was Samp Tripett. He lived on the lower end of the valley. I don’t know how Samp got his money. As far as I know, he was always a farmer. I never actually knew this man, and I can’t remember ever meeting him. Through the years I remember yellow bits of paper stuffed in the kitchen cabinet with the words “I owe you” or I promise to pay” written on them. My brother Werner said if you borrowed money from Samp, whether it was five dollars or several thousand dollars, you had to sign a note. He said Samp would tear off a piece of a brown poke, or any writing material that was available, and say, “You sign here, and if you don’t pay, I’ll sue you.” I understand that was the rule for his own family as well. I don’t think Samp ever turned anyone down. He carried most people all year long or from crop to crop. I went to the Spurlock reunion held on Spurlock Creek one summer in recent years. One of my cousins told me she went to housekeeping on fifty dollars that they borrowed from Samp.