MY Childhood

Thought I would tell you about my childhood growing up in Southwest Va. a town called Pound,

Pound Va

not that is so exciting, but will give me something to do today.

My family consisted of Mom, Dad, one brother, two sisters and my grandmother and her father (my great grand-father( Grandpa Andy) on Mom's side stayed with us for several years.

Grandpa Andy we called him. was an interesting fellow, I was very young then but I remember him setting in a chair out in the yard over looking a small creek that ran in front of our house, he always wore a black suit with bow tie, white shirt and round derby type hat, I do not remember him looking any different from day to day. Grandpa  Andy was born December 9th 1855 and died June 13th 1955, looks like he almost made it to the 100 year mark. Granpa Andy was an ordained minister in the Old Regular Baptist Church.I'm sure he had some interesting stories to tell but I was to young to be interested at that time. I never knew his wife my great grand-mother Ollie. My mothers side of the family were known as Mullins and they are a bunch of them today.

Our homestead consisted of 7 acres, here we grew most of our food. We also had 1 horse, 1 cow, and a couple of hogs,the hogs were slaughtered in the winter time and that made for a long day. Let me tell you about hog killing day.

The day started about 4 am, way before daylight. Killing hogs back in those days on a small place like ours was all manual labor, we had to go into the mountains the day before and gather wood for the fire to heat the water in those big ole tubs. When the water was at the right temperature one of the men folk would go to the hog lot and shoot one of the hogs, hook our horse to it and drag it to the boards we had laid out like a table, here you layed the hog and covered it with blankets and poured the water on the blankets, this loosened the hair and made it easy for hair removal.

After all the hair was removed and the hog washed nice and clean we would hang it up by his back legs, using a singletree, this exposed the belly, so the men could remove all the intestines and any other parts you may want to keep.

After this, the hog would be cut into sections and take to the smoke house and processed. Here you would finish cutting up the hog into what ever pieces you wanted, hams, shoulders, sausage, tenderloans, etc. Now keep in mind this was  in the winter and it would be cold outside. Most of time it would be about 9 or 10 o'clock in the evening before we would have our dinner meal. Now here is the good part. Mom would have biscuits and gravy, hot coffee, and some of the tenderloan right out of the hog that we just butchered, as they would say back home in those day "that would make your tongue slap your brains out" it would be so good.

Dad was a coal miner and Mom was a housewife and we enjoyed ourselves as a family. We were poor in a financial sense but rich in everything else. Growing up, we had neighbor kids that we played with, we spent a lot of time in the mountains, my dad told someone that we spent so much time in the woods that we smelled like a rotten stump, and I imagine that was so, we we loved it.

Some of favorite games were Cowboys and Indians, we played in the mountains, a section called "The Buzzard Cliff's,  there were a lot of big rocks you could hide behind and wait to bushwack your opponent. Back in those days you had no drugs, no gang viloence, no breaking and entering, just a little moonshine for those who drank it.  In the summer time we had no airconditioning, at night we just slept with the screen doors open and they weren't locked. Things were laid back and no big hurry to do most things.

I think I had better hush for now. Sometime in the future I may tell you about the time I cut my foot with an ax, or the time I fell out of the barn loft and got my little finger caught between two boards. I looked like a lizard hanging on the side of the barn. My Dad had to take the boards off to get my finger loose. About the time a dog scared the horse I was riding and the horse threw me into the ditch along side of the road. OH! well those were the good ole days...

Leave me a comment if you found something interesting or funny in this story.

Howard