The Cross Timbers Read Online Free PDF Page B

summer, not only from his own cane but “on the halves” for others in the community who grew sorghum cane and hauled it to the mill. A grist mill, which was a short distance east of Keller, ground corn, taking a share of the meal as “toll.”
    On the whole, the people of the Cross Timbers ate fairly well, though I felt that we fared a little better than most of our neighbors. During the summer there was little fresh meat since refrigerators were unknown and no ice was available to those living on farms. From time to time someone would kill a fat heifer and peddle out the beef, but as a rule chicken, fried, baked with dressing, or stewed with dumplings, was the nearest approach to fresh meat for a Sunday dinner. Ham, boiled or fried with “speckled gravy,” was also quite suitable for any meal when company was present.
    The word “meat” usually meant pork or bacon, sometimes called “side meat.” Almost every family kept a few hogs. Father always butchered three or four every fall or early in the winter. For some days after “hog killing” we lived “high on the hog” with fried liver, baked spareribs, and boiled backbones.
    Our father cut up the meat, trimming the hams, shoulders, and sides, which were “salted” down in a barrel or large box for a few weeks. After the pieces of meat had “taken salt” they were removed, the surplus salt was washed off, and the flesh side of the hams and shoulders were rubbed with brown sugar and pepper. They were then hung in the smokehouse and smoked by a small fire made with hickory or post-oak chips. The “side meat” might only have the surplus salt brushed off and kept as dry salt pork.
    In common with our neighbors we always had a large garden planted with “Irish” potatoes, “English” peas, radishes, onions, “mustard greens,” lettuce, cucumbers, beets, string beans, and squashes of various kinds. We also planted peanuts and a few rows of popcorn. Sweet-potato slips were grown in a bed and set out in rows to be dug in the fall. Turnips might be planted in early spring but more often in early fall as part of a “fall garden.”
    During the summer most families had plenty of green vegetables but in winter they often had only sweet potatoes, which were either kept in a cellar or heaped up on the ground and covered with a layer of straw, on top of which was spread a thick layer of earth so they would not freeze when cold weather came. Cabbage was seldom grown in our community but some families grew collards, but we never did; nor did we ever plant okra,which was a favorite vegetable of most of our neighbors who came from the Deep South.
    One day George and I, while looking for wild grapes in the woods, found a “bee tree.” It was a large hollow post-oak tree with numerous bees coming out or going into a hole about halfway up its trunk. We marked the tree by cutting a cross in the bark and a few days later our brother Tom helped cut it down. The hollow trunk burst open when it fell, revealing a large quantity of honey. Our father made a “bee hive” and Tom, who had half-a-dozen hives of bees and knew how to handle them, helped us to get them into the hive after they had attached themselves in a huge cluster to a branch of one of the nearby trees.
    This started our bee keeping, but we later got three or more hives of bees. We “robbed” them about twice a year and so always had plenty of honey for our own use and some to give to our friends. It was put in stone or glass jars that were then placed on shelves in the cellar. Here were also put the large flat “crocks” of milk, as well as butter, pickles, jam, jelly, preserves, and canned fruit or anything else that should be kept cool. Sometimes a jug of buttermilk would be lowered by rope into the well, for although we could not drink the water it was quite cool!
    Although there was a certain