Timber and rocks – that’s about all it was, on that Arkansas homestead where we lived after I was 3 years old. When we went to town, we had to stop the wagon if we wanted to hear each other speak because the wheels made so much racket on the rocks in the road.
On that farm we raised feed and broomcorn, and my daddy made brooms. We grew cane and made molasses, had a garden, and put up kraut and pickles, dried apples, picked and canned wild berries, and took corn and wheat to the grist mill to be ground into meal and flour. We made very few trips to town for supplies and food.
Before we came to Arkansas, Daddy bought a pump and a hand corn planter. He put the pump in our well and people thought it was the funniest thing they had ever seen. And they would come to watch him when he put in his corn with that little planter.
The black snakes were so plentiful that our parents wouldn’t let us children play in the yard by ourselves. When we went to church, Daddy always walked in front of us so he could kill the snakes in our path.
Mrs. Lena Foster
Galt, Missouri
