Poke Greens for Breakfast: True Stories of Rural Arkansas, Oklahoma Dust Bowl Days, & South Dakota Sheep Wagon Tales

By Walta Sorrels Jennings

In this book you will see life through a child's eyes, romping with a pet pig, becoming "hobbled" when you're unable to button your drawer-waist, and riding beside Grandpa in his buggy. You will survive the 1919 flu pandemic, suffer through the Great Depression, know the bitter cold of South Dakota Blizzards and discover strength and courage in the lives of isolated sheepherders in the foothills of the Black Hills. Add to this a bit of humor and a lot of wit, and you'll have Poke Greens for Breakfast!

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 17, 1999
• ISBN: 9781462092437

Walta Sorrels Jennings

Walta Comet Jennings (nee Sorrels) was born in October, 1909, while Halley's Comet was in view, and died in December of 1985 soon after Halley's Comet returned. Her witty style has been compared to that of Mark Twain, who was born and died in conjunction with the same comet. Gifted men and women of every culture have passed down a verbal history, stories which tell far more about the life of a people than history books and faded photographs can muster. Walta was such a "Storyteller" who later committed to writing both humorous and poignant memories of our nation's past. Walta's vivid telling of events, sights, and smells carries the reader to a rural area of Arkansas during the early part of the century, through the Depression years in Oklahoma, to a sheep town in South Dakota and beyond.

Book preview

Poke Greens

For

Breakfast?

by Walta Sorrels Jennings

Writers Club Press

San Jose • New York • Lincoln • Shanghai

Poke Greens For Breakfast?

Copyright © 1999 by Walta Sorrels Jennings

This book may not be reproduced or distributed, in whole or in part, in print or by any other means without the written permission of the author.

ISBN: 1-893652-31-9

ISBN: 978-1-4620-9243-7 (eBook)

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-63324

Published by Writers Club Press, an imprint of iUniverse.com, Inc.

For information address:

iUniverse.com, Inc.

620 North 48th Street

Suite 201

Lincoln, NE 68504-3467

www.iuniverse.com

URL: http://www.writersclub.com

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is a legacy to my children: Robert Lerdo (Bob), William Michael (Bill), Fred Aubrey, Sarah Jane and Nancy Ruth. I do not have total recall, but to the best of my memory the stories I have written are true. I have used the real names of my characters.

I am grateful to my daughters: Nancy, who spent many hours editing, typing and arranging my stories, and Jane, who helped with the typing and editing. I’m thankful for the encouragement of my friends and fellow members of the Clear Lake Christian Writers Club in Houston, Texas and Barton Center in Cleveland, Ohio. I would also like to express my appreciation to all my children, my brother Neil and my sisters, Betty Poulas, Luretha Jackson, Zada Sue Burkert and Patricia Hurley, my Aunt Arletta Bird, and to my cousins, Rosa Adamson and Grace Mitchell, who have been an invaluable help in supplying information that I needed for my stories.

FOREWORD

Walta Comet Jennings (nee Sorrels) was born in October, 1909, while Halley’s Comet was in view, and died in December of 1985 soon after Halley’s Comet returned. Her witty style has been compared to that of Mark Twain, who was born and died in conjunction with the same comet.

Gifted men and women of every culture have passed down a verbal history, stories which tell far more about the life of a people than history books and faded photographs can muster. Walta was such a Storyteller who later committed to writing both humorous and poignant memories of our nation’s past.

Walta’s vivid telling of events, sights, and smells carries the reader to a rural area of Arkansas during the early part of the century, through the Depression years in Oklahoma, to a sheep town in South Dakota and beyond.

Let her tell her own story…

Contents

A NEW COMET IS BORN

PLEASANT GROVE YEARS

THE BIRDSVIEW YEARS

THE WALDRON YEARS

OKLAHOMA

THE SOUTH DAKOTA YEARS

TEXAS

GEORGIA

OHIO

EPILOGUE

A NEW COMET IS BORN

I celebrated my sixth birthday on October second, nineteen hundred fifteen. Early in November, I enrolled at Center Point School.

Center Point was larger than most rural schools in Scott County, Arkansas, at that time. There was the Little Room, where the first through fourth grades were taught, and the Big Room, where the fifth through eighth grades were taught.

Many country schools in those days had only two or three months of school during the winter months. Our school usually had a four month winter term and sometimes we were fortunate enough to have someone teach a six week subscription school during the summer.

J. Y. Peyton was principal and taught the Big Room. Mr. Peyton was a genial, elderly little man with a twinkle in his eye, and a long white beard. He rode his little brown horse everywhere he went and always, rain or shine, he carried his sturdy umbrella, which served a dual purpose as a walking cane.

I don’t recall ever having actually met Mr. Peyton, but I’d seen him and knew who he was. He boarded with my Aunt Corda and Uncle Jack Davis, who lived less than a mile from the school.

When I arrived at the school that first day, someone told me that everyone was to meet in the Big Room before returning to the Little Room. As soon as I entered the room, I saw Mr. Peyton, seated near his desk on the big wall-to-wall stage. He saw me and motioned for me to come to him.

I was a little uncomfortable when he picked me up and set me on his knee. I felt that I was much too big for that sort of thing. I didn’t want to be impolite though, so I tried to hide my discomfort.

I’d like to get acquainted, he said. My name’s J. Y. Peyton. What’s your name? I was sure he already knew my name, but I told him, My name is Walta Comet Sorrels.

Mr. Peyton at first pretended that he didn’t understand me. Who ever heard of a girl named Walta Comet? Was I sure that was my name? He had me repeat it.

I was feeling more and more frustrated. The man obviously doubted that a little girl could have been given such a strange name.

By this time, most of the students had arrived and were immensely enjoying the performance. I had to somehow make Mr. Peyton understand. Finally, I burst out, My name is Walta COMET Sorrels! You know—Comet! COMET with a TAIL on the end of it!!!

The room exploded with laughter, and I wanted to die.

On the night of October 2, 1909, Lerdo Frazier, an amateur astronomer, stood on the front porch of his farm home, gazing at Halley’s Comet through his long black telescope.

Lerdo’s oldest daughter, Willa, lay in labor with her third child, in the big double bed in the east bedroom. She had married at the age of sixteen and had already given birth to two boy babies. Her first born had died prematurely while she lay sick with German measles. The baby had contracted measles before he was born and lived only a few hours. Lucien, the second child, had died of dysentery four and a half months ago, exactly a week before his young father, Walter Sorrels, died of typhoid fever. Walter was buried in Birdsview Cemetery between his two baby sons.

Lerdo hoped this baby would be a boy. He’d like having a grandson. His family seemed to be producing only girls these days. His own children had both been girls and now his youngest daughter, Nora, and her husband, Edgar Tate, were the parents of an adorable little blue eyed girl named Irene.

Nora had come early this morning as soon as the pains had started. She was in the east bedroom now, helping Dr. I. Q. Leming with the delivery. Lerdo could hear Willa’s cries as the pains grew harder and more frequent.

For a moment all was quiet inside the house. Suddenly the angry protest of the newborn infant broke the silence. Lerdo continued looking through the telescope. It wouldn’t be proper for him to go into the house just yet.

Finally, the door opened and Doctor Ike stepped out into the breezeway. Well, Lerdo, you have a healthy nine pound granddaughter, he announced. Could you show me where I can wash up? And I sure would like a good drink of water.

Lerdo led the old doctor across the breezeway, through the large bedroom/living room and into the warm kitchen where a fire had been kept in the cook stove to keep the water hot. He poured hot water from the big iron tea kettle into the blue enamel wash pan on the cook table, and cooled it with a dipper full of cold water from the cedar water bucket which he’d filled earlier with fresh well water. There was a bar of soap in a dish beside the pan. A clean huck towel hung near by.

After the doctor had washed up and had a cool drink, the men sat down at the table and talked for a few minutes to give Nora a chance to make Willa and the new baby presentable. Then they walked back across the breezeway into the east bedroom. What are we going to call this young lady? Dr. Leming asked, as he leaned wearily against the door jamb. I’d like to get this birth certificate made out, then get along home and hit the hay.

For a moment no one spoke; then Lerdo suggested, Why not give her her father’s name? Walter would be Walta if we feminized it by ending it with an ‘a’. Since Halley’s Comet is in view, we could name her Walta Comet. When the comet makes its next appearance in seventy-five or seventy-six years, she can get a better look at it. She couldn’t care less tonight.

Willa muttered her approval. This tiny girl sucking at her breast would carry on her father’s name. He would have liked that.

Dr. Ike filled out the certificate, picked up his kerosene lantern and said good night. It was after midnight and he was bone-tired. It had been a long, hard day, and he had a six mile drive over rough country roads before he could crawl between the covers and get a few hours sleep. The horse knew the way home. Perhaps he’d be able to catch a nap in the buggy.

Lerdo walked across the breezeway into his bedroom and picked up his precious telescope. Wrapping it in the large square of soft muslin which he kept for that purpose, he placed it carefully back in his trunk. The new little Comet slept peacefully in her mother’s arms.

PLEASANT GROVE YEARS

My parents, Walter Hardie Sorrels and Willa Lillian Frazier, were married when Mama was sixteen years old and my father was nineteen. My papa was a farmer. When he was not working his own fields, he hauled logs and sometimes helped on neighboring farms.

As a child, I was told that my father died of typhoid fever at the age of twenty-three. I heard much later that someone had shot Papa through the window while he sat in his chair in the living room of his home. When Papa died my mother was twenty years old, had lost two sons and was four and a half months pregnant with me. Mama sold the farm animals and equipment and the household furniture and went to live with her father, Lerdo Frazier, and her stepmother on their farm in the Pleasant Grove community six miles east of Waldron. My father’s sisters Corda and Arletta had gone to live with their sister Lou, who had recently married Walter Bird.

Mama had a great sense of humor and a hearty, infectious laugh. She was a generous person, often sending food and outgrown clothing to needy families. Her quick temper matched her bright auburn hair; her eyes were the color of amber. When I was growing up, Mama liked to have her hair done at Wilma’s Beauty Shop next door. Money became so scarce that she couldn’t afford to pay Wilma, so she and Wilma decided to trade services. In exchange for getting her hair done, Mama made a pleasant scented, light brown jelly shampoo from ash lye and fat for Wilma to use in her shop.

Mama took pride in her complexion. Hidden in her dresser drawer, she kept a bar of Woodbury soap which she used faithfully every day. No one else was permitted to use it. She used Ponds facial creams regularly, but her hands were always an embarrassment to her, partly because of the heavy, often dirty work she had to do. She had helped Grandpa do some cement work when she was young and hadn’t realized how important it was to keep from getting the mixture on her bare hands. I can’t remember how she said it happened, but she’d been badly burned by the lye in the cement mix. Her hands had been dry ever since and were often cracked and bleeding. She usually wore white gloves to conceal them when she went out, even though few ladies in our small town wore gloves except in winter. Mama made her own hand lotion from rose water and glycerine.

There was little money left after Mama had paid for my father’s funeral expenses and bought modest headstones for his and their two small sons’ graves. All that remained was my father’s log chains, his dress hat, the large pine kitchen table he’d made for Mama when they set up housekeeping, the lamp table Mama had woven from young willow branches and three hundred and fifty dollars she’d placed in savings in the bank for emergencies.

For the greater part of the first five and a half years of my life, Mama and I made our home with my Grandfather Frazier. Mama didn’t want to live with Grandpa and her stepmother permanently, and as soon as she was able after my birth, she started looking for work in town. Waldron was a small town with less than a thousand population at the time. There were few jobs available for women. She had only finished the eighth grade and was handicapped with caring for a young baby. She felt that the only job she was qualified to handle would be cleaning house and cooking. In Waldron, not many people hired help for that kind of work.

Mama’s first job was with the Spates family, who ran a boarding house in town. She had known them for a long time when they had lived on one of Grandpa’s farms which adjoined his home place. Mama worked for Mrs. Spates for several months, cooking and cleaning long hours for low pay and caring for her small baby the best she could.

During the fall cotton ginning season, Mama helped Mrs. Bob Castleberry with cooking and cleaning. Mr. Castleberry owned and operated a cotton gin on Danville Street on the eastern outskirts of Waldron. Their home was a big two story white frame house nearby on the same street.

The farmers would drive in to town with a wagonload of cotton, late in the evening after the pickers had their last weigh-in and had gone home. A good warm supper would be waiting for them in Grandma Castleberry’s big cheery kitchen. There were plenty of beds upstairs where they could sleep ‘till morning, when their cotton would be ginned, baled and waiting for them. They could take their cotton to the cotton yard and drive back to the field in time to weigh in the first sacks of cotton picked.

Mama and I liked staying at the Castleberry’s. Grandma Castleberry was a kind, motherly lady and I loved her dearly. She baked large batches of gingerbread, which she cut into generous squares and kept in a stone jar on a table on the screened back porch for her grandchildren and me. She would graciously leave whatever she happened to be doing and go with me to the back porch to give me a piece of the delicious concoction when I asked for it.

After ginning season was over, Mama and I would go back to live on Grandpa Frazier’s farm, where Mama helped with milking and caring for the farm animals and the family laundry.

In those days we slept on feather beds made of small, soft feathers. Our pillows were pure down. The geese had to be plucked once or twice during the summer. I was allowed to help Mama entice the unwary birds into the barn. We closed the door and kept them in the hall while Mama coaxed one or two into a stable by throwing corn on the floor for them to eat. Suddenly Mama would grab one by the legs with her right hand, transfer it to her left hand and turn the screaming, squawking bird so that its head protruded between her body and her left arm. The bird was held firmly against her body while she plucked the down from the underside of the protesting goose with her free right hand. The operation was over in a flash and when I opened the door to let her go, the outraged fowl would waddle hurriedly back to the barnyard, complaining bitterly in goose language as she went.

I loved riding into town in the buggy behind one of our mares on shopping day. Grandpa bought ice for the big ice box on the back porch and whatever groceries that were needed. He raised his own meat and vegetables and fruit. His bees provided honey. There were always plenty of eggs, milk and butter. Grandpa didn’t drink coffee or tea; about the only groceries bought were hand soap, flour, baking powder, soda, salt and sugar. Grandpa took his own corn to the mill in town to be ground into meal. Several times a month during late fall and winter, he killed a hog or a yearling calf and peddled the meat. It had been customary with Grandpa all his adult life to take enough farm products to town to pay for everything he bought. Usually there were a few dollars to deposit in the bank.

After Mama had done her shopping, we often walked a short distance up Danville Street to visit Mama’s life-long friend, Lottie Harvey (Mrs. Barto) and her daughter, Delma, who had been my best friend since we were babies. When Grandpa was ready to go home he came by and picked us up. If there was time, he would stop the buggy in front of the Castleberry home so that I could run in and exchange hugs with Grandma and receive one of her gingerbread squares.

Grandma Rodecker

My maternal grandmother, Minnie Lee Gillilan Frazier, and my grandfather, Lerdo Frazier, had marital problems for many years. When Mama was twelve years old and her sister, Nora, was eleven, Grandma left Lerdo and the children. She attended Teachers’ Normal in Norman, Oklahoma. As soon as Minnie Lee was qualified, she taught school in Heavener, Oklahoma, where she met an exciting man who swept her off her feet with his flattery. He said he was madly in love with her and wanted her to be his wife. When she insisted that she wanted to get her Bachelor of Arts degree before she considered marriage, he promised that if she would marry him he would pay for her to complete her education. He owned a large ranch and was rather affluent, so he could easily afford it. He told her his wife had been dead for several years and his two grown sons were in their twenties.

Minnie Lee was gullible and soon succumbed to this charming Lothario’s insistent wooing. After a short honeymoon, he took her home to his ranch.

She was horrified to find that her two adult stepsons were severely retarded, incontinent, unable to feed themselves or even sit up in bed. She wanted to turn and run, but divorce was not respectable in those days, and she had already had one marriage fail. She had made her bed, she would have to lie in it. Her days were filled with feeding, changing soiled diapers and bedding, bathing and washing the smelly clothes by hand.

To add to her unhappy situation, someone told her that her new husband had a mistress—an Indian girl who lived on the ranch. At first