People

Here in the People room today we’re reading about Viola (Smith) Jackson, and a few of her personal memories she shared with her eldest daughter, Connie (Jackson) Arnold.  Viola lived 82 years, passing away in 2004.

THE ‘OLE’ BARN

My first recollections are of the tales I told my brothers of the fierce and strange animals I saw in our ‘ole’ barn. They were so real to me that I was afraid to go there alone. I told of seeing bears, and lions, and many other creatures that never, ever roamed our Southern Indiana hills.

That barn played a significant role in the farm life of my family. It set quite a ways back behind the house, past the smokehouse, and through the woodyard; but it could be seen easily from our back porch. It never did have a lick of paint on it.

Every morning and evening, my Mom would go to the ‘ole’ barn to milk the two cows. Sometimes, I would tag along and peep through the cracks between the wide boards to watch the baby calf suck; I wondered what made the milk that dripped from the corners of his mouth look like soap suds as it fell to the ground. When the cow had a new calf, Mom would milk half of the milk into a bucket and then let the baby calf have the rest.

The hens spent a lot of time in that barn, scratching and pecking in the loose hay occasionally finding a bug or worm. They played hide-and-seek with us by concealing their nests and laying their eggs where they thought we couldn’t find them. There was one old Rhode Island Red that Mom talked to that seemed to understand. Mom would say, “Sing, Betsy,” and Betsy would sing. The more Mom urged, the louder she sang.

On the east side of the ‘ole’ barn stood a shed that had a flat tin roof. That’s where we spread out a clean, white cloth and put our sliced apples and peaches in the sun to dry. I can still feel that hot tin roof burning my bare feet, or whatever other part of my anatomy that happened to touch it.

We’d take the fruit down off the roof in the evening and spread it out again the next day until it was just the way Mom wanted it. Then she’d take an empty, 25-pound flour sack and put the dried fruit into it and store it in our attic until time to make pies in the winter. I’ll never forget how good they tasted! My Mom and Dad stored a lot of food in that attic. My Dad’s favorite words of wisdom about some of the food we kids didn’t especially care for were, “It sure will beat snowballs this winter!” And he was right.

The pigeons liked our ‘ole’ barn, too. They nested in the low loft and raised their young. What the cats didn’t catch, the boys would try to get. But, somehow, most managed to survive and multiply.

I often think of the big, wooden bran barrel that sat in the end cow stall. Dad kept it full of bran to give each cow a few dippers full so they would stand still while they were being milked. I thought that bran had a good, sweet taste, and I would enjoy a little bite of it now and then.

Four of our city-boy cousins who lived in New Albany, Indiana, came and stayed for a long summer vacation on the farm. Since my Mom had eight kids of her own, you can imagine what she had to look forward to every summer. The oldest cousin, Junior, found the bran barrel in the barn and developed a taste for it. Now if you know anything about the effect of excessive bran intake on the digestive system, you can imagine his dilemma. His legs couldn’t move faster that his bowels as he ran for the outhouse. He decided to leave the bran for the cows.

As we grew older, my sister, Alma, and I inherited the milking chores. We would don our heavy coats and make our way out in the cold, early morning to milk the cows before we went to school. This was during the Depression, and there was no money for bran and truly little hay for the cows. We threw stalks of corn fodder down for them to eat while we milked, following them from one stalk to the other until we got our buckets full. You haven’t lived until you have milked a cow in zero weather, having your face slapped by a cow’s tail isn’t the most pleasant feeling in the world. Worse yet, is to have it hit you when it’s heavy with manure after they have lain on it all night.

I loved to sit on the hay under the barn’s tin roof. On rainy days, I’d listen to the gentle, soothing sound of the rain splattering down on it, my mind busy with plans and dreams of the future. I didn’t mind the spiders spinning their webs above my head, and they didn’t even seem to know I was there.

My Mom found another use for that ‘ole’ barn. In the privacy it afforded her, she prayed many prayers and saw answers to them. I don’t think there were many times, though, that she went to the barn when one of us kids didn’t yell at her about something: Audrey asking for a piece of chocolate cake; me yelling, “Leslie threw Dad’s old shoe at me and knocked down your and Dad’s wedding picture plumb off the wall”; Alma explaining that she had the feather bed all plumped with the broom and smoothed out—even had the sheet on it—and Betty Jo jumped smack-dab in the middle of it! I wonder how many times that ‘ole’ barn heard Mom say, “Lord, give me patience.”

All of us kids rode the bus to school. I’ve seen Dad hang the big iron kettle over a wood fire in the front yard on Mondays before full daylight and before he went to the fields, heating the water for Mom to do the family wash. When we returned from a day at school, she would just be hanging the clothes on the line to dry. In Mom’s immediate family there had been only two children, and she was pampered by her parents and older brother. Not much training to become the dedicated matriarch of a brood of eight children, two others dying at birth.

Mom loved to read: her mini-vacation time. The kids knew that if they could catch her reading and pose their questions, she’d say, “ok”, and continue reading. That’s usually when Audrey would ask, “Mom, can walk to Ella Pearl’s house and play?”

World War II was well upon us when I realized prayers could be prayed and answered from that ‘ole’ barn. My husband, Bud, shipped out with the Army to Germany in the late fall of 1944, leaving me and a beautiful, little, blond-headed, three-year-old girl with my family at the farm. Another baby was due in the spring. I made many trips past the smokehouse, through the woodyard, and out to that ‘ole’ barn. My soldier came home in April 1945 wounded, but God had spared his life.

My Dad had died of cancer in December 1941. To help Mom with the farm, we continued to live with her for two years after Bud returned home, but then we moved to a little house of our own. A few years after we moved out, Mom no longer wanted to live in the country, so she sold the farm and moved to the small town of Bedford, Indiana. By that time, she only had one child at home: my youngest sister, Betty Jo, who was a teenager.

Our two lovely daughters have grown up now with homes and families of their own. Bud and I bought the farm that borders the old homeplace where I was born, grew up, and gave birth to our first child. Not many months ago, I watched the new owners tear down the few old boards and slabs of tin remaining from our ‘ole’ barn. It gave me a sad feeling deep inside.

 But then, I thought, “Don’t be sad, it has served its purpose well and seen many things accomplished. It has had a good life!”

And then I thought, “When this ‘ole’ house that I live in is torn down, I hope the same can be said of me!”