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Now then Grandma Holland, her name is
Sarah Elizabeth Wright and her and Grandfather was born and raised in the same
community and I don't know if that was true for all their lives but at least
that's were they were before Grandad left there and came to Augusta and bought
these two farms and then brought Grandmother there. I suppose she traveled
there by herself... and they lived at these two farms near DeView and
Grandfather died in 1895 and left her a widow. And as far as I knew, no other
man visited her or anything other than cousins of her by the name of Wright.
These Wrights I have not been able to exactly find out about their relation but
I do know she called them cousins and I guess that's what they were. They
called my grandmother "Sally Sack" and I would like to find out very much if I
can where that nickname came from because that's what it was. Her name was
Sarah Elizabeth but they called her "Sally Sack." And she was a very fine lady
and she took care of me a great deal and her little pension from Grandfather's
services in the Army was only about 36 dollars a month...
The yard that we had we had lots of flowers in it.
On the left hand side, we had a huge flower bed. Grandmother and I worked in it
constantly everyday keeping the Bermuda grass from growing in amongst the
flowers and the flowers were all nice and spade up with the dirt and turned
over and manure put on them so they would grow beautifully. My Aunt Daisy and
Uncle Bill Neely gave me three grape vines and I brought them home and planted
them but I got them too close to the apple tree and they later took over the
apple tree when I went there some years later for a visit -- for just a short
visit and the tree was all full of grape vines. Back of the apple tree was a
chicken yard and Grandmother told me on day -- she said, "Take this grass, this
old Bermuda grass, and put it on that old piano box that's out behind the well
house and the smoke house." There was this smokehouse, and as far as I know, no
meat was ever smoked in that particular building but that's what we called it.
So I took the grass out there, quite a bunch of it and put it in that box and a
few days later I was out there playing in the garden because the garden was
were that box was and there was an egg there in the grass and I got the egg and
took it into the house and showed it to my grandmother. And she was tickled to
see the egg and all, but she said, "Joe! You mustn't break the egg but you must
take it back and put it back in there because if you break the egg the hen
won't lay another egg in there. But if you put that back in there they every
day you can get one of the eggs out and bring it in the house and she will keep
laying." And sure enough for about two or three weeks there, why every single
day that hen laid an egg every day, never missed a single day, she would put an
egg in that box. Well, one day I went there and there was the ugliest old hen
-- old double-necker hen, you ever saw without any tail -- the tail had all
been pulled out or something. Anyhow, she didn't have one and it mad me mad to
see that old ugly hen in there on my hen's nest so I grabbed her by the neck
and I jerked her out of there and threw her as far as I could and went in the
house and told Grandma about that old ugly hen being in there in my next and
she said, "Now Joe, you shouldn't have taken her off the nest because that's
the hen that's laying the eggs. Just because she's not pretty doesn't mean she
can't lay a nice egg for you everyday. So you leave her alone, and if you see
her in there again you don't bother her." Sure enough, the hen went right back
and kept laying the eggs everyday. In fact she didn't miss that day I threw her
off. I guess I wasn't much away from there until she laid another egg there.
Another funny thing that happened in those days was there was this lady named
Miss Myra Jeffries lived next door to us. And she had two very beautiful young
girls, daughters, about my same age -- one a little bit older then me and one a
little bit younger than me and any how Miss Myra liked to make me scared and
which I was a scared little boy about that time and she wore false teeth and
one day she came over and stuck her false teeth out at me and said something
about it, "I'm going to bite your head off and it scared the pee out of me and
one day after that she was out in the garden working on the garden and I
thought now it's my chance to get even for scaring me so bad. There was a piece
of brick bat laying there, it was a small piece laying on the ground and I
intended to make it fall close to her and scare her but sure enough I threw it
up in the air and when it came down it hit down right on her straw hat. Luckily
she had on that straw hat and it protected her with it and she was jumping up
from there and running up to her house and then down the sidewalk to our house
and run in there and told grandma what had happened and both her and grandma
came out there and gave me a good lickin'. Now I didn't get many lickings when
I was a little boy because I tried to be a good boy and not to get into trouble
but I did get in some because of various different things that would happen.
One day my sister Helen and I were out and we found a limb that was real
springy on a peach tree and a peach tree is not the right kind of tree to jump
on you mustn't jump on the limbs because the limbs are not fastened on like
they are on an oak tree or a walnut tree or any kind of other kind of big heavy
grown tree but they just peel right off real easy and true enough while we were
bouncing on this limb, it tore loose and it ruined just about a pound of
grandmother's peach that year. We both got a lickin' for that. |
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