Papa and Mama Said: Full of Dare County Folklore

By Lucinda Gallop Baum

A delightful look into the good old days in Dare County North Carolina. This charming book, told from the perspective of an 8 year old as she grows up in a large family and close knit community, contains stories and anecdotes about life in the days of the Great Depression and is full of old Dare County sayings. It is a great read aloud book to the elderly. It will bring back memories and they may even have something to share with you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9780997931525

Book preview

This book is a biography about the life of Lucinda Gallop Baum, born in Manteo (1928), and raised between Manteo and Manns Harbor, during the years 1935-1945, as seen through her eyes. References to events, establishments, organizations and locales are all real. The characters and references to people are also real, although their names have been changed to protect their privacy.

PAPA AND MAMA SAID: Copyright © 2016 by Lucinda G. Baum. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Lucinda G. Baum at P.O. Box 130, Manns Harbor, NC 27953.

FIRST EBOOK EDITION, 2018 - The original hardcover edition has been self published by Lucinda G. Baum.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as:

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016951072

ISBN 978-0-9979315-2-5

eISBN 9780997931525

Foreword

This book is not designed to make you feel that you haven’t lived if you haven’t conversed in Pig-Latin, jumped hots, or shot marbles, but to share with you some of the experiences and emotions of what some might call the good ole days.

For some of my characters herein I have borrowed new names, for the sake of privacy, as well as to protect the guilty. I feel reasonably sure that my family and friends will recognize themselves, even though I have told them as I saw them through my eyes. 

I apologize for Papa’s foul language but I would be hard put to depict his character without it.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank my first son, Robert, for being a good constructive critic, my youngest daughter, Becky Book, for her honest criticism and love for my book, my daughter, Christianna, for being my first listener and encouraging me, my sons Kevin and Jonathan and their sweet wives, for hearing my book and having faith in me. I want to thank my husband, Bob, for supporting me in this effort and for liking my book.

I thank Myrkie for the sketch she did of me and for her everlasting encouragement. I thank Sister for helping me remember some of the old sayings that Papa and Mama said. I want to thank my granddaughters Erika and Jenny, and my grandson Robert for their wonderful help. I want to thank my family and friends for their encouragement. I want to thank God for my memory and for helping me along the way.

Contents

Birth, Death and Living

The Layout

Entertainment

Rachael and I

Our Animals

About Our Foods, Mostly

Hog Killing Time

Reminiscing

Excerpts

Uncle Percy

Remedies

On a Sunday

Aunt Nannie Ross

A Roving We Will Go

Waste Not, Want Not

Field Hands and Harvest

Aunt Hett

The Radio and Other Wonders

Papa and the Weather

Lincoln Leaves Us

The Move

Our New School

Life at Our New Place

Spring and a Glorious Summer

Back to School

Friendship

Christmas and Wintertime

Characters in the Neighborhood

Love, Life, Death, and Birth

Growing Up

The Big War

Birth, Death and Living

It was a cold day in January here in Dare County, North Carolina. We spent most of the day in the yard, bundled up against the weather. Mama was in the house having another baby. We were usually invited to Aunt Sudie or Aunt Nell’s house and when we came home we had a new baby sister, but that was not the case today.

The neighborhood was upset about Miss Ella, our next-door neighbor just across the field. She had had a baby before daylight that morning and it was born dead.

We gathered on the sunny side of the house to watch our brother, Lincoln, build a pine box to burry Miss Ella’s dead baby in.

Papa and Mister Oliver were no help at all. They had started drinking whiskey before first light that morning. They always did that when a baby was being birthed.

The bigger ones did their best to keep us busy. They had us pig-pen the wood that had been split for the kitchen stove. If we pig-penned it too high, it fell over and we started again. That was all right for a while, but we always wandered back to where Lincoln was building the box. Lincoln was our oldest brother left at home with us. The two older boys, Hodges and Luke, had gone on to sea before I could really remember them living at home.

Hodges, our first brother, had already helped to fight a war. The ship he had been sailing on was sold to the Colombian Navy and he had chosen to stay with it. It followed that the Colombian Navy did not pay him for his work, so he caught a ship to Rio and worked his way back home.

Hodges and Luke didn’t get home very often, so when they did, it was special. We heard exciting and romantic tales. We all sat around the wood stove, the little ones on a quilt near the stove, and listened to the stories of their adventures until we fell asleep.

After Lincoln came Stewart, Sister and Malcom. The last seven of us were girls, soon to be eight. After Malcom came Lillie, Rachael and I. Rachael nor I were never allowed to be nicknamed. Rachael was named for Mama and I for our father’s favorite grandmother. My five younger sisters were called Laura, Minnie, Lucy, Golden, and by afternoon a new baby sister was announced. We dubbed her Dolly.

We never seemed to know Mama was going to have a baby until the day it came.

Now that I remember back, I have heard Aunt Nanny Ross say to Mama, God never put a bird here that he didn’t put a berry for it. I suppose Mama must have been telling her, then, of a coming event.

Presently, Miss Lottie called us to the doorway to see our baby. She was a funny, wrinkled, little, pink thing, but she was ours and we knew, right away, we were going to love her. Now we were fourteen children in all. That didn’t seem extraordinary, since most families had a lot of children, those days.

Miss Lottie told us it was best for us to stay outside a while longer to let Mama and the new baby rest, for they had been through a tough job together.

Miss Lottie was a good neighbor, who acted as a midwife when she was needed. She was usually on hand to help Mama when our babies were being birthed, and our good doctor Hale was there to help bring the most of us into the world.

When something was seriously wrong with one of us, Papa hitched up the horse and cart, and went the mile to get doctor Hale. By the time Papa was back in the yard, doctor Hale would come rolling up in his funny, black car, wearing his black suit, complete with weskit (waistcoat), pocket watch and black derby.

He had a peculiar way of driving. He leaned up close to the steering wheel and worked it as though it took all he had to make it. We wondered how he could be such a good doctor and such a bad driver.

We were forever glad to see him. He always came to save us, somehow. He was what some might call an ugly man, but he was so kind he didn’t seem ugly to us. He stayed a long time at our house that day. When Papa sobered up he would take him a bushel of oysters or a toe sack of potatoes for pay. Papa seldom had the money to pay outright for anything. He most always paid in kind.

We all gathered back around the pine box. Different ones came to stand and talk. The tales from one and another were terrifying, yet we were attracted to them.

One told how a baby was born that would fit into a teacup, and a silver dollar would cover its face. Only love and care could save it. It weighed nine pounds at the age of two.

Another told about a baby being bitten by a rabid dog, and how they had to smother it to death between feather beds.

There was not much psychology used on children back then. Mama had never allowed people to tell things around us that might frighten us, but Mama wasn’t always there.

When the box was finished, the boys took it with the horse and cart, and went to help bury Miss Ella’s dead baby in a little graveyard at the back of the field.

It was a welcome feeling to have Sister call us into the warm kitchen, to share a nice supper she had fixed for us. We had stewed osh taters (Irish potatoes), hot biscuits, with homemade butter, and syrup to dip over a crumbled biscuit if we were hungry for something sweet. It was pleasant to be around the table with Sister helping us, after such an odd day, and such an odd meal at midday.

Lincoln had put a pot of beans on the cookstove to simmer during the morning. In all the confusion of the day, the dishrag had been lost. When we went to eat the beans, the lost dishrag showed up in the pot. So we had had bean soup, flavored with dishrag, and cold biscuits to go with it.

Our house was a story and a jump high, with the kitchen sitting separate from the big part of the house. In the big part of the house were the settin’ room and the bedrooms. The boys gave up their room and slept in the loft when we had company. We crossed a walk to get from the kitchen to the big part of the house. We were glad to cross it that evening and go to Mama.

We crept quietly into her bedroom, a few at a time, so not to wake our sleeping baby. It was a precious sight to see Mama on her bed and our bundle of baby in the cradle beside her. It made the sad part of the day seem far away.

Mama didn’t get many new things for a baby, but Papa had indulged her this time, with a shiny, new piece of brightly printed oil cloth for the baby to lie on. We didn’t have rubber pants for our babies and it smelled bad if the baby wet on the homemade cradle mattress, many times.

In a day or two, Miss Ella came to visit. Mama was already up and in the kitchen. Most of us were around the kitchen with her, including our new baby sister. When the baby began to fret and cry, Miss Ella picked her up and nursed her. We didn’t like seeing our baby at Miss Ella’s breast. We wanted only Mama to nurse our baby. We must have looked at Miss Ella very strangely. She paid us no mind. Dolly was soon satisfied and back to sleep.

I was sure glad that Mama didn’t feed our baby with a black nipple stuck on a pop bottle, the way some folks did. It looked just terrible to see an ole black nipple in a baby’s pretty, pink mouth.

In about three months, Dolly was sitting in a corned beef box, receiving a taste of scraped apple from Lillie, while the young’uns played around her. Lillie was already saying to her, Open your mouth and close your eyes, I’ll give you something to make you wise, and we imagined Dolly was responding.

The corned beef box was a mother’s friend. It was a small wooden box, just the right length to sit a baby in, with no room on the sides for the baby to wobble. It was just tall enough to fit nicely under the baby’s arms. All of our babies had liked it.

Mama and the neighbors had saved enough wooden thread spools to make the baby a little chair-like swing to hang from the kitchen rafters.

Papa used to sit in the kitchen with a baby on his knee and a little one toddling around him. If one stumbled and fell, he’d say, Come here and I’ll pick you up.

Papa loved the babies. He never minded when people made jokes about his many children. When someone said he had to burn off the marsh to count his young’uns, he just grinned.

Papa was an awesome man, daring to do what he thought was necessary, whether it met the approval of others, or not. He went about life as though rules were made to be broken, or weren’t meant for him at all. Sometimes he was brash and crude, and sometimes he was tender.

When he launched an operation, he went about it with a mighty firmness. He delegated jobs to the boys and accomplished whatever he set out to do, with some success.

Papa was not tall nor short, but of medium height. He wasn’t fat or skinny, just plump. He wore a mustache and smoked a pipe. He looked like a Papa ought to look.

Mama was noble, always with high ideals. She loved Papa with an unwavering, almost worshipful love, no matter what unscrupulous deed he might have done.

When Papa was twenty-five years old, his first wife, Matilda, died and left him with two little boys, Hodges and Luke.

Papa ran the mail boat at that time. He took special pains to carry my mother’s mail to her, personally, to the country school where she taught Papa’s younger brothers. Papa courted Mama that way.

The day the wedding was to take place, the mail boat didn’t come in, as usual, and Papa was feared lost. It had been a stormy day. Papa finally made it in later in the night. He had been caught in a waterspout. Papa being a determined man, the wedding took place at one o’clock in the morning. Mama enjoyed telling about her unusual wedding.

She told how an old friend attending the wedding sat down on some sticky flypaper. When he got up to leave, it was hanging from the seat of his pants. That just added to the odd wedding.

Now, there were Papa, Mama and fourteen children.

Being the ninth child, it was easy to get lost in the crowd. I was too little and skinny to be considered one of the big ones, though I felt like it, and too big and bossy to be one of the little ones. I think I led my five younger sisters.

I was accused of striving for attention when I sucked my thumb, or if I held my breath when I cried.

If I was terribly disappointed about something, I held my breath to make a point, because crying just didn’t do it. Sometimes I was in as much doubt as Papa as to whether I was going to catch my breath or not. I usually did when he grabbed me and ran, and stuck my head in the horse’s water trough.

I sucked my thumb for comfort. It tasted good, at least my right thumb did. My left thumb had a strange flavor. I could never alternate.

They got worried about me when a blood blister-like place formed on my lip, right where my thumb rested. It didn’t want to go away. I never meant to worry Mama and Papa, but sucking my thumb was second nature to me. It wasn’t easy to give it up.

The older ones in my family repeated this poem to me:

The Scissors Man

Mama said to Lucinda one day,

Lucinda, you mind while I’m away,

There’s a great, long-legged scissors man,

That comes to little girls, who suck their thumbs.

Mama had scarcely turned her back,

When the little thumb went in the crack,

The door flew open and in it ran,

The great long-legged scissors man.

Snip, snip the scissors went so fast,

And Lucinda’s thumb was off at last.

Mama comes home and Lucinda stands,

Looks quite sad and shows her hands.

Ah, said Mama, "I knew he’d come,

To little, naughty, suck-your-thumb."

Now, I thought the poem was charming, and I knew it by heart, but I wasn’t going to let any scissors man daunt me. I went right on enjoying my thumb.

Papa had a friend, a jeweler from New Jersey, who came each year to go fishing with him. He noticed my lip and told Papa he had just the right thing to help me stop sucking my thumb. When he returned home he sent Papa a thumb-sucker for me. I wasn’t impressed with it. It was two small rings with chains between them. Mama put it tight on my thumb, but not tight enough. As soon as I could hide away, I worked it off and sucked my thumb again.

Mama finally decided it had to come to end. She was going to do away with my thumb sucking, once and for all. She made a little drawstring bag to fit over my hand, and sewed the strings together, so I couldn’t take it off.

Being an active, industrious child, I found it impossible to tolerate a bag on my hand. After a few hours of this I came to the conclusion that, being five years old, if I was old enough to make a doll quilt, I was surely old enough to give up thumb sucking.

I was obliged to bargain with Mama to take the bag off my hand so I could finish my doll quilt, promising never to suck my thumb again. She took it off, on my honor, and that was, indeed, the end of my thumb sucking.

I did a lot of growing up while I was five.

Once, when Mama was out of the house, I took it upon myself to try the sewing machine. I’d been thinking about it, wistfully, for some time. I had watched Sister sew for us many times. It looked like a pleasant thing to do. I was sure I could do this. All I needed was a chance. I took a scrap of cloth and sewed a nice, straight seem. There!

I ran outside to show it to Mama. She was down the path, and through the big gate, near the sugar pear tree, milking the cow.

I liked the big gate, for Papa had put a weight on it, so if you pulled it back just a little, it would close itself. Papa didn’t always have time to get the cow back in if someone left the gate open.

I, proudly, showed my sewing to Mama. She praised it and agreed that I was ready to use the sewing machine now.

I felt that a whole new world had opened up for me. That blessed sewing machine that had done so many wonders for us was now at my disposal. If I didn’t pay heed to what I was doing, apt as not, I sewed my left forefinger right along with the piece of goods. It took a lot of coordination to work the treadle with my feet and guide the sewing all at once, but I had a good supply of determination and managed it pretty well for a young’un.

From that day on, I was privileged to use the sewing machine to my hearts content. At first I created a few successes and a whole lot of messes. I adopted an attitude of never give up, never ever.

When Mama saw me getting too nervous with my sewing, she’d say, Walk away a little while. When you come back it will work better. I found it so.

I soon thought I was a good seamstress and began to offer my services to my younger sisters. After all, I had to help raise my family!

The Layout

On one side of our yard was Mister Budley’s dairy farm. A large part of that was meadow-like pasture. Through the middle of the pasture ran a drainage ditch, along which we picked briar berries (wild black berries) when they were in season. At the back of the pasture was a separate pen for Mister Budley’s two bulls. Their pen led on into the marsh.

The bay was behind us. A ditch through the marsh ran from the bay nearly to the house. There, Papa kept the boats.

On the other side lay the field, where Papa grew sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, peas, beans, corn, popcorn, watermelons and a variety of other things.

Beyond the field, Miss Ella lived with her family.

Across the road was the new ground which Papa and the boys had cleared for more farming.

While getting the new ground ready for planting, Papa had plowed up a wooden shoe. That shoe put a lot of wonder in our minds. Our brother, Malcolm, got to take it to school and show it around.

Down the road about a quarter of a mile, lived my mother’s relations. I had heard Mama say that Grandpa bought that tract of land when he was a young, single man. He built a large, two-story home on it two years before he was married. His sister, Sally, kept house