My avatar may be a bantam rooster? The ones your mom is talking about, we called Rhode Island Reds. They laid brown eggs. We also had several varieties of chickens. Growing up, we very seldom lived anywhere we couldn't have a garden, cow, calf, couple of hogs, and 15 to 20 chickens. Each spring when we traveled (most time by Central Texas Trailways Bus) to Waco to buy clothes, etc., at Montgomery Wards, Sears, and a couple of men's clothing stores, we would also order a couple or three dozen baby chicks. When they were big enough, we had fried/boiled/baked chicken! Mom and Dad were very good at 'wringing' the chickens head off. Also, Dad was 'Dead-eye Dick' when it came to hitting a chicken with a rock to the head. Only saw him miss once or twice. When I was about 8 or 9, I did a couple. It wasn't as easy as it looked! I remember a few times riding the 'Interurban' (sp?) that ran from Ft. Worth to Waco. If you're not familiar with that term, it was about like the San Francisco Cable (trolley?) Cars. The bus took over later. We raised most of our food. We had some men that came each fall and took a couple of the hogs to their place and butchered them and wrapped the meat so we could take it to the local locker place. It was about half way between our house and Mom's and Dad's work place (the textile mill). They walked to work and would stop by the locker on the way home to pick up some meats. It was only about 4 blocks from home to work. We also had a barely grown calf butchered every few years. So we had our meat, (some of the beef was store-bought), eggs, milk, garden-grown vegetables, and Mom baked a lot. We had 4 peach trees and some wild plum trees. We made a trip (walked) to town on Saturday to the grocery store and purchased what we didn't grow. If it was a large amount, Dad and I would walk home while Mom and Sis rode home in a taxi with the groceries. Sometime we had the groceries delivered by some of the independent grocers. When Safeway built a store, that was when we put Mom and Sis in the taxi with the groceries. We bought our first Fridgidaire refrigerator in 1950. Before that we had an 'ice-box'. We had the old square white cardboard sign with '10', '25', '50', and '100' pounds. We turned it so that the proper amount was upright and pinned it to the screen door. When the delivery man came down the street he could see the amount we wanted and didn't have to come to the door and ask. I sometime think life was more 'fun' back then, than it is now. I remember Dad and I going to S. H. Kress (Kresses 5 and dime store, later K-Mart) and purchasing a little 'table model' radio for Mom on her birthday. I remember sitting out on the front porch with Dad, listening to the 'Grand Ol' Opry' and the 'Louisiana Hayride' on Saturday nights. I believe it was in 1948 that we turned one of the bedrooms into a bath room. Before that we had and old '2-holer' about 100 feet from the back door. We bought the house in 1947. It still had 'outside' wiring. The wires were run across the ceiling to the light-cord that hung from the ceiling. Most of them had a string to pull to turn them on/off; but the one in the living room had a turn type (knob) switch by the front door. Of course the wiring run up the wall to the ceiling and to the light. When the bathroom was built, the house was wired properly; wiring in the walls and attic. Also, a kitchen 'sink' was purchased and installed when the bath fixtures were installed. There was no water piped into the house when we moved into it. Just an outside faucet in the yard, just off the back porch.
And we think we have such hard lives today!!!
Gee, I still have a lot of memories that I hadn't thought about in quite a while. Well, that's enough reminiscing for today!!
.....was doing some research when a flash of yellow darted by. And landed in the Mulberry tree....
