The cotton fields grow row after row, we saw them from Grandad's back seat,
The twins and I arms and legs stuck together in the dawg days summer heat.


The cotton fields grow row after row, we saw them from Grandad's back seat,
Until giving way to a palm lined driveway,
Leading up to the mansion in ruins.


There were no slaves then, only Grandad and kin,
Pickin' cotton and workin' the gin,
His name was Jack Hagins
His daddy was Lundy,
His daddy,  James Smiley Hagans.


Alabama to Texas and after THE WAR,
"GTT" nailed up on the door,
"GONE TO TEXAS" they went,
The Garretts, the Harmans, the Hagins and Vardamans, the Fergusons and more...
There  were Sullivans, Todds, and Mathis as well, Salmons and Becks in the flow,


Their Scots-Irish culture they took with them West,
Their Bibles, corn bread and fiddles,
They ate black-eyed peas, hominy, grits,
And corn bread without any sugar.


Texas graveyards laid them to rest,
These dear ones from the Deep South,
A history lesson cut in stone,
As we are wont to remember.
These are my people, these are my people,
Let me ne'er forget, God's hand of Providence in their lives,
He sees, He knows, He cares.


My people were Protestants: Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians too and Anglicans to be found,
Church of Christ as well, were Grammaw House and Granny Harman.
Their faith built new towns, Murphy, Collin Co. was one,
Under suburbs buried now.


To the cotton fields of San Joaquin The Great Depression drove them,
They were despised...these Dust Bowl starvin', Bible believin' folk.


For the South both her Grandad's fought,
But Grammaw never spoke,
She learned her lesson well...ne'er be proud of who she really was,
A Confederate at heart.


But her accent, her food and her faith gave Grammaw and many away,
So they built them their own little colony;
Miz Huckabee lived next door, a widow woman afraid to water her lawn,
From Oklahoma you know.


On Tyler Street in Doyle Colony they gardened and planted their yards,
They put up green beans and tomatoes in hundreds of Ball mason jars.
They talked with their accents, ate black-eyed peas, and said,
"Y'all come back now, y'hear!"


"I do come back, Grammaw, often to see you and hear in my own mind's eye,
I'm fixin' to do it again, Grammaw, as Christmas is here and your dressin' with
Cornbread and left-over  biscuits is fixin' to go in the pan,
Grammaw Hagins, Winningham, House."

Grandad and Grandma lived their lives in quiet before the world,
But the quiet lives they before us lived 
Spoke volumes to the heart of this girl.


From the rising of the sun to the setting of the same,
Predictable patterns shaped their lives.
The sun rose each mornin' o'r Rocky Hill
To shine on their garden...
Maters, beans, corn and peas,
Ball jars to fill with all of these.


Biscuits and gravy, peas with black eyes,
Drippins in the pan... cube steak was a fryin',
Apron wrapped round, I heard Grammaw say,
"Y'all come on in and sit down  right away."


Grandad gave thanks with each head bowed,
For the Lord's great bounty from His heavenly store.
​

"I will lift mine eyes unto the hills
From whence cometh my help,
My help cometh from the Lord,
Which made heaven and earth."  

Sunday of a mornin'... Sunday of an evenin'... Wednesday of a evenin''...


My husband drives the two of us to church. We pass by a white, antebellum farmhouse beautifully situated on a knoll, adorned with green shutters, lovely porches upstairs and down, gabled windows, intricate fretwork adorning both the porch pillars and the gables.  It looks cared for and cherished.


Sitting just a bit below the old farmhouse, both using a private, common driveway off the main road, is the newer farmhouse, probably fifty years or so, a Southern Ranch, red brick, beautifully landscaped with mature trees and shrubs.  Two similar trees stand at opposite corners of the front of the house, each tree in the Spring bearing lavender blossoms and in the Fall bearing yellow berries.


Twas the dawg days of Summer I first took note of the trees... my mind's eye traveling back in time... to a simpler time... to Tyler Street... to Grammaw's China Berry Tree... in the the Spring bearing lavender blossoms and in the Fall bearing yellow berries.


Its leaves lent shade to Grammaw's yard nigh unto her screen door.


"Y'all come sit a spell," she would say.


Behind her slammed the screen,


While tea she poured in colored, tin glasses...I always chose the green.

​
Cottage cheese filled when she bought them from Jack Strange's corner store. Her crocheted glass booties to soak up the sweat. We'd always ask for more.


Grammaw's cat Sam, their old orange Tabby, twined in and out tween our feet. We ate watermelon from Grandad's garden, coolin' off from the dawg day's heat.


​"Lookie," there's Sam at Grammaw's screen door, lookin' in through the screen to the kitchen, 'neath the old gas stove with legs and claw feet, Sam's cat food dish was a sittin'.


"Let him in", said Grammaw, "cats don't eat watermelon you know."


Those old metal chairs with cushions she made, folded up old towels for their seats,
"So your legs won't get burned," as she patted and smiled, "Sit down, take a load off your feet."


Spreading its shade like a parasol round, the chairs they made a circle. We sat a spell, we sipped our tea, neath Grammaw's China Berry Tree.


The Dawg Days, I Reckon,

​July was fadin' into August...it was hot enough to grow cotton...Grammaw had picked her own share of cotton in years past.


My maternal grandmother, Mildred Rebekah Harman, born in 1907, was thrice a widow woman; married to Jack Washington Hagins, (my maternal grandfather), Floyd Winningham, and Lillard House.  She never married outside of her Southern culture, bless her heart.


It was a sweltering summer day, 1951... July fadin' into August... and it was my sixth birthday. 


Grammaw had fixed biscuits and gravy for breakfast as she was wont to do, and after she and I finished eating, she moved the pan of left over biscuits and the big bowel of gravy into the middle of the kitchen table and covered them with a "cup towel" as she called a dish towel, "to keep out the dust and the flies".  They'd be there  she said, "just in case someone has a hankerin' for biscuits and gravy" later in the day or wants to "grab a biscuit" as they go through the kitchen.


Grammaw  washed the dishes and left them to drain by the kitchen sink... she took me by the hand and we went out into her screened-in, back porch .  She did a lot of livin' here in the summer.  On the right side of the door was a summer, porch bed for anyone who wanted to take an afternoon nap.  There was no mattress because Grammaw said "A mattress would make it too hot", so she covered the slightly rusty steel coils with one of her summer quilts she made from unbleached muslin. There were also pots of red and pink geraniums, "easy to grow", Grammaw said.  I still grow to this day, potted geraniums, red and pink.


Right outside the screened-in, back porch under the China Berry tree sat Grammaw's wringer washing machine. My pig-tailed twin sisters and I all three in giggling delight helped Grammaw by holding pieces of washed clothing and taking turns carefully guided each piece of clothing between the rollers and into the tub filled with rinse water.  She always used Mrs. Stewart's Bluing  for her white things "so they would not look dingy hanging on the clothesline".  There was nary a laundry session with Grammaw that she did not say to us three girls, "Now y'all don't get your pig-tails caught in the rollers!"  Mama always tied ribbons on our pig-tails.


What set to the left of the screened-in, back porch door was the reason this hot summer day, my sixth birthday, Grammaw and I spent several hours together...there set Grammaw's Singer treadle sewing machine.  For her "summer sewing" Grammaw had her two teenage sons, Jack and Joe, move her sewing machine into her screened-in, back porch.
 

Yes, it was indeed my 6th birthday and Grammaw said "it's time for you to learn to sew".  My greatest challenge was synchronizing my short 6 yr. old legs with the treadle to achieve the rhythm so the sewing machine would sew properly.  Her patience assured me that soon  I'd be "sewing like Grammaw sews"... I made my first doll skirt.


She thought I needed to learn to gather by hand with a needle and thread and how to sew on a waistband on the sewing machine, which I did with her guiding hand and eye.


Her old treadle sewing machine sits in our back bedroom with her old quilts folded up in a quilt chest. I've set up an old, wood ironing board with a pretty cotton, flowered ironing board cover like the ones Grammaw used to make for her wood ironing board.  Grammaw said "You cain't be a good seamstress if you don't iron as you sew along."


I cherish those memories when summer days moved much slower, tea was understood to be "sweet" and Grammaw House taught me to sew.


Some summer ponderins, I reckon.