Looking Back

Cool spring breezes, going barefoot, and hot, dusty days remind me of a free and peaceful childhood.

Fond childhood memories take shape growing up on the farm.

Some of my fondest childhood memories are from our home on the creek about a mile from the now-defunct town of Swords in Morgan County, Georgia. I lived there from ages 2 to 7. Our home was nothing more than a shack, much like a lot of the other homes in rural Georgia at that time. I never knew we were poor, and I enjoy waxing nostalgic about 1950s country life.

We had no running water and no plumbing. The electricity powered only the ceiling lights hanging in each room. Our heat came from the fireplace, and we cooked on a wood stove. Most of my memories are from outside the house. I loved the outdoors: the massive old oak trees in the backyard, the creek down the hill behind the hog pen and chicken coop, the fields, and the barn across the road.

Although I didn’t realize it then, times were very hard. My father and mother worked from daybreak until dark six days a week to put food on the table and clothes on our backs.

It was hot in the summer and cold in the winter with no air conditioning or central heat. That’s why I lived outside for the most part—it was just as comfortable as being in the house.

Daddy raised beef, hogs and chickens for meat and eggs. He processed the meat for sausages.

Oh, could Mama cook some good fried chicken! We drew water from a backyard well and toted it to the house for washing and cooking.

Stove wood for cooking came from the scraps discarded by many local sawmills. You could still find sawdust piles scattered about the woods in this area into the late ’60s.

We were a happy family living a quiet farm life that I wouldn’t trade for any other lifestyle. For a small child with young, hardworking parents, the rural way of life in the early 1950s was a simple one, an easygoing world of play and of my fascination with nature.