“This thread has opened up the floodgates.....”
Getting up at 4 AM to help Dad and Uncle feed hay to about 100 cows on week days finished that in time to ride bike to school.
Hay bails were stored in old abandoned sharecropper houses. Fun handling bails of hay with coons, possums and skunks in the dark at 5 AM on 20 degree mornings.
Mother sewed together flour sacks so late summer brother and I could pick cotton still remember the 25 cents when I first got paid.
We went to school in town but the rural schools all shut down during the cotton harvest so whole families could pick cotton most money they made all year.
Going to cotton gin with grandfather, manager was always a man who had lost one arm to all the machines.
Late 1950’s NE Texas.
Still remember going into my grandmoms house and seeing a huge pigs head in a wash basin. She would make scrapple out of it. She also would gather dandelions and make dandelion wine out of them. She also made root beer out of Sassafras roots. On Saturday afternoon we would all go out and pick huckleberries and grandmom would make a pie for dessert for Sunday dinner. That or go down into the cellar and bring up two jars of Brandy peaches.