A Tobacco Farmer's Daughter

You might be wondering what I used if not the "johney"? Well, I had a favorite bush at the edge of the yard, far enough away as not to offend anyone, but close enough to the house to feel safe! In the daylight I went into the woods to do my business. "You gotta do what cha gotta do!"

When I did brave out there I always faced the issue of toilet paper. Heck, for awhile I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a roll of squeezable soft paper designed the wipe the--

What I did find in the "johney house" was the old Sears and Roebuck catalog. Yes, it’s really true. It wasn’t in there to browse through, if you get my drift. I did feel quite proud of myself when I discovered that by folding and crunching a page over and over the paper became quite soft and therefore bearable. Of course after using leaves from a tree or whatever was available in the woods, the pages of the Sears and Roebuck catalog were quite a luxury.

Late at night I didn’t dare venture to the johney house or to the dark and scary woods to do my business. At night mama put the white enamel "pot", also known as a chamber pot, on the back porch for the whole family to use, daddy included. Many times, much to my dismay, that "pot" would turn over when I tried to sit on it! What a mess! When the pot didn’t get turned over poor mama got the pleasure of emptying it in the mornings. After being used by six people you can imagine the rancid smell! So, I am appreciative of modern technology!

Hot water in the house was another luxury we did not partake of in my early days. A double stainless steel sink in the kitchen only ran cold water. The pipes often froze in the winter due to lack of insulation. There is nothing like getting ready for school and finding that not only do you not have hot water, you don’t have any water!! "Mama, can I stay home"?? Well, no--anyway daddy would cuss and mama would follow him outside with a light bulb on an extension cord to help thaw the pipes so that precious water ran freely once more.

Mama recalls one year in particular when the old, rusty pipe in the pump house "froze up". The pump house looks like a little out building with a tin roof. To gain access to the pipes you had to slide that tin roof off and climb up and over.

Daddy wasn’t around that particular day to help, so my Grandma gave mama some ideas about defrosting the pipe. Grandma told mama to take hot ashes from the wood stove and put them in a bucket. She then told her to hold the bucket of hot ashes under the frozen pipe. Not such a great idea after all, those hot ashes touched the frozen pipe and that pipe "sprung a large leak!" Mama quickly covered the hole with her thumb and sat there inside the cold pump house wondering what the heck she was going to do! Daddy was working at the sawmill and grandma was two miles away; all the way down at the "big house"! Mama just squatted there with her thumb over the pipe pondering what she should do. Fortunately she heard a truck "pulling in." Mama then started hollerin’ to get the attention of whoever it was. The truck was delivering farm material from Southern States. The driver followed the sound of the hollerin’ and found mama crouched inside the pump house with her finger over the busted pipe. (What a sight that must have been.) He happened to have some electrical tape in his truck. Mama was ecstatic to see somebody. She took her finger off the busted pipe and got out of the pump house as quickly as she could. The Southern States man then jumped in and taped that hole right up! The Southern States man saves the day!