Three
Roll Papa into the Icehouse
Spring 1944
“You said that your father died before you learned to read. I am guessing that you were still a child when he died. Did you go to live with relatives after he died?”
“Papa died in the spring of 1944, and I reckon if he hadn’t had me to take care of, he would’ve had to go fight in the war… No, after my papa died, I went to live in the poorhouse or orphanage as they liked to call it. I never knew if Mama and Papa had any kinfolk around here- neither one of ‘em ever talked about kinfolks, and no one came a calling before or after they passed. I am sure they had some kinfolks somewhere. I just know that no one ever came to visit except the man from the bank; he came once a month to collect what …show more content…
Much like anything in life, we can get used to it if we have to. I worked right alongside every other able bodied person there. We swept and scrubbed floors, hung out clothes, folded and handed them back out to whoever they belonged to… chores I’d been doing for a long time- the only thing I didn’t have to do there, was cook.
I spent four or five years there at the Episcopal Church Home for Orphans. I was paraded in front of folks looking to adopt children, but most wanted smaller children. The one’s that did not want to adopt was just looking maids and I reckon I wasn’t big enough for that or they were looking for field hands and usually took the boys. When I blossomed into a young woman, a different set of folks come to look at me; it was men-folk looking to take wives.
They had taught me to read and write at the orphanage and I had grown up pretty good without having too many maladies. I had good teeth and strong bones. I was twelve or thirteen years old when Willie Eubanks married me and took me from the orphanage. He was twenty-four and a sharecropper like my papa. The thing that struck me as funny though, was that Willie was sharecropping on the same 20 acres that my folks had. I ended up right back here in the same cabin where I was born; it’n that
Roll Papa into the Icehouse
Spring 1944
“You said that your father died before you learned to read. I am guessing that you were still a child when he died. Did you go to live with relatives after he died?”
“Papa died in the spring of 1944, and I reckon if he hadn’t had me to take care of, he would’ve had to go fight in the war… No, after my papa died, I went to live in the poorhouse or orphanage as they liked to call it. I never knew if Mama and Papa had any kinfolk around here- neither one of ‘em ever talked about kinfolks, and no one came a calling before or after they passed. I am sure they had some kinfolks somewhere. I just know that no one ever came to visit except the man from the bank; he came once a month to collect what …show more content…
Much like anything in life, we can get used to it if we have to. I worked right alongside every other able bodied person there. We swept and scrubbed floors, hung out clothes, folded and handed them back out to whoever they belonged to… chores I’d been doing for a long time- the only thing I didn’t have to do there, was cook.
I spent four or five years there at the Episcopal Church Home for Orphans. I was paraded in front of folks looking to adopt children, but most wanted smaller children. The one’s that did not want to adopt was just looking maids and I reckon I wasn’t big enough for that or they were looking for field hands and usually took the boys. When I blossomed into a young woman, a different set of folks come to look at me; it was men-folk looking to take wives.
They had taught me to read and write at the orphanage and I had grown up pretty good without having too many maladies. I had good teeth and strong bones. I was twelve or thirteen years old when Willie Eubanks married me and took me from the orphanage. He was twenty-four and a sharecropper like my papa. The thing that struck me as funny though, was that Willie was sharecropping on the same 20 acres that my folks had. I ended up right back here in the same cabin where I was born; it’n that