Tidbit in time

I was born February 6, 1924 near the horse race track in Hot Springs, AR. I can remember as a five-year-old the day my family: parents; George and Viola Holt, my brothers; Haywood and Henry and one sister; Pauline and I moved from Hot Springs to one of the many country communities that surround Malvern. My youngest sister, Mary Bell, had not been born yet. We were making the move to be close to my maternal grandparents and extended family. It was in 1929 that we made the trip in a wagon with not much more than our clothes and some canned food. The family went back later to get our furniture. Our first house was a small three-room house on the Military Road. We didn’t live there long before we moved to a large two room log house. This house was very peculiar in that the two large rooms were completely closed off from each other by a wall of logs. You had to go outside to enter from one room to the other. The house only had two wooden windows that slid back and forth and two doors front and back with latches.

One rainy day, after having lived there for several months, my daddy and grandfather decided it was time to change the two closed off rooms to a better situation. They proceeded to cutting out logs to make a doorway between the two rooms, leaving a few logs to have to step over. This made a lot of indoor fun for us kids by crawling and jumping over the logs.

In approximately 1935 was our next move. It was to a farm in the Reyburn community. We were advancing, but still as it was country living, had no indoor plumbing. We were blessed with a well and a spring and a two-hole outhouse. I still shudder thinking about how cold it was sitting in the outhouse.

I learned everything on the farm from planting seeds to gathering, to cutting sprouts and harnessing the horses. Mother taught me to make biscuits when I was seven years old. I also learned to make and can pickled peaches, make cornbread and even birthday cakes. I learned to sew and make my own clothes, quilt, embroidery, etc. At age 94, I still to this day quilt and embroidery.

We had several cows that we milked and sold cream. We had one jersey cow that was real hard to milk. She would kick the bucket over when it was about half full and get milk all over us. This happened more than once. The last time she kicked the milk bucket over, I picked up a two by four about 2 foot long and hit her across the leg. I didn’t tell anyone except Mother. That evening, Daddy asked who milked Jersey that morning. I admitted to milking her. He wanted to know if I noticed anything wrong with her. I did not admit noting anything different. It took her a long time to mend, but I’m here to tell you her kicking days were over, thanks to me!

I am glad I was raised on the farm. I learned a great many things.