TO MY HEARD COUSINS:
But Especially for SISTER on
Her Birthday, Feb. 2021
This Blog is written in memory of my cousin FLORENCE ADELE HEARD LARGUIER and dedicated to all my “story-telling,” “big” cousins, whose imaginations nurtured me in my earliest years. Especially I am dedicating it to SISTER for her birthday,. and because she and ROBERT are the ones most likely to correct my errors (although I’m betting that Barbara Anne, Van, Lydia Jane, and maybe others will also have a few corrections to offer).
While I write this Blog about my first-cousins (the grandchildren of James Addison and Clora Frances Nolen Heard), hopefully it will be read by their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren. Farm life in rural Louisiana in the first half of the 20th Century will be far removed from their experience, but perhaps we can help them conjure in their imaginations what the farm was like when we were growing up. I am hoping that other cousins will join this effort, and contribute their own memories to add to this collection.
In my 2011 Blog on Cousins, I stated my belief that the influence of cousins on our development and our lives is under appreciated by psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists. However, I have to admit that this may be because many people are not as fully equipped (read that as blessed) with cousins as we are. In total, I have. 32 first cousins, and 23 of these are my Heard Cousins.
Now two dozen grandchildren would seem a lot to most people, but my Grandmother (Clora Frances Nolen Heard) was heard to say, “Addison and I managed to have 13 children, and raise twelve of them; but all that dozen together could only give us 24 grandchildren.”
My grandparents’ three youngest children, Meredith, Alton, and Lindsey were born just after the end of WWI, as the Spanish Flu pandemic was ending. These three were born in 1918, 1920, and 1922, respectively and all three would fight in WWII. The remarkable element here is that their oldest son (Thomas Pink, T.P.) fought in WWI.
The same year that Lindsey was born, their first grandson, Hewell was born and just over a year later, their second, and third grandsons were welcomed to the family. These were Jerry (Jarrell) and Tommy (Thomas P., Jr.). These three boys were followed two years later by the first granddaughter — Sister (Harriet Elizabeth).
The oldest grandson (Hewell) was born when Warren G. Hardy was in the White House; Al Jolson was singing “April Showers;” and Mussolini gave Italy a Fascist government. When their youngest grandchild (Jennie Lou) was born, Dwight Eisenhower was about to leave the White House for JFK and Alaska and Hawaii became the 49th and 50th states. Elvis was singing, “Are You Lonesome Tonight;” and a group calling themselves the Beatles were playing pubs in Liverpool.
Clora Frances Nolen Heard, was 5’tall and had flaming red hair when she married her former teacher on Nov. 3, 1897. She was 18 and he was 28. Thomas Pink was born nine months later on Aug. 25, 1898, just as the 19th Century was drawing to a close. She was 42 and Addison was 52 when Lindsey (their youngest son) and Hewell (their oldest grandson) were born in 1922, just as the flu pandemic was ending, and Clora Frances was finally allowed to vote.
For four decades, the Heard Farm, outside Pitkin, in Vernon Parish, Louisiana, would host their grandchildren. We came on Holidays and during the long, sweet summers. To every one of us, The Farm (as we called it) was a kid’s paradise, equipped with a creek for swimming, a full-sized “club-house/play-house,” woods for exploring, animals of all sorts for playing, riding, and hunting, wonderful foods, and best of all — lots of cousins.
The oldest grandchildren often told the younger that we had it easy. When they were young (in the 1920-30’s) Grandmaw Heard ran a CCC Camp, with lots of farm work. They said that by the time we came along, the Farm was more like a summer kids’ camp. And in many respects, they were right.
Addison and Clora acquired the Farm through a “Homestead” claim. The land was located adjacent to (and in easy walking distance) from the Nolen Farm, belonging to Clora’s parents, Merida Till Nolen and Maria (pronounced Mariah) Jones Nolen. Sometime in the 1920’s Grandmaw and Grandpaw Nolen moved from their farm to a new house in Pitkin, where the operation of the Pitkin General Mercantile was the primary source of Nolen family income. Grandpaw Till Nolen died in 1927 when the oldest of my cousins were still too little to have memories of him. They did remember Grandmaw Nolen, who lived until 1936, and who was a remarkably memorable character in our family legends.
During the earliest years of the oldest grandchildren, James Addison Heard was still working for the Pickering Lumber Company. Addison (as Grandmaw Heard called him when she didn’t refer to him as “Mr. Heard”) was a teacher during his 20’s and early 30’s, and worked in the timber industry in his 30’s, 40’s and 50’s.
Professor John McNeese, a young teacher at Addison’s school, Dry Creek Academy, became the most influential educator in southwest Louisiana (and arguably in the state). Dr. McNeese, a former Union Soldier, came to Louisiana after the Civil War (yes, there were good carpetbaggers) and founded the Dry Creek Academy. The Academy was recognized as one of the best schools in the state, and students from other locales boarded in Dry Creek to attend. Subsequently, McNeese completed his law studies, and then became the first superintendent of schools for Imperial Calcasieu Parish.
To advance his efforts to improve Louisiana education, John McNeese opened the first “Normal” school for training teachers. Addison and at least two of his sisters were graduates of the school, which was to become McNeese State University.
The Heard siblings taught in the schools of old Imperial Calcasieu (including Beauregard and Vernon). The children of Dry Creek, including the Heard, Lindsey, Miller, Kent, Bilbo, and Lyles children were influenced greatly by John McNeese, who inspired, equipped, and encouraged them to seek higher education. Several became teachers, while the youngest Heard son, Zachary Taylor Heard, followed in McNeese’s other footsteps and become a lawyer.
It is important to remember that the schools then were not “public” as we know today. Many schools were by subscription (parents paid), but gradually communities were coming together to raise funds for school buildings and teacher’s salaries. However, parents still had to pay for books, paper, pencils, etc. and of course transportation and lunches. Mandatory attendance laws were far in the future, and many children never attended school, or dropped out at early ages. The school calendar was worked around the crop schedules of each area because children were an important labor source on the farms, and crops took precedence over education.
Grandpaw Heard taught in several schools including Dry Creek, Rosepine, and Bluebranch. While teaching at Bluebranch, he stayed for a time in the Nolen home, where he met his future in-laws. Education was held in highest esteem in the Heard and Nolen families. Even after he ceased to teach for a living, Grandpaw Heard helped his children with their lessons, and encouraged them to love learning. He especially drilled them in math. They could all do complex calculations in their heads.
When the oldest Heard children (Thomas Pink, France, and Addie) were born, the area around the Heard farm was mostly old-growth, long-leaf pine forests. The trees were gigantic, some as big as12 feet in diameter. The forest canopy was over 20 to 30 feet above the ground and the trees reached heights of 150-180 feet. They were often 100 to 500 years old. My mother told me that when she was a girl, you could drive a car through the forest under the canopy of the giant pines.
The long leaf pines grew from the east coast of the United States across much of the South. By the end of the 19th Century, the last remaining large stands of Long Leaf pines were located in west central Louisiana, and in the “big Thicket” on the west side of the Sabine.
Early settlers in Vernon and Beauregard (including the Heards) had operated small sawmills, cutting pine, cypress, and oak. A huge cross-cut saw hung over the barn doorway at the Heard home in Dry Creek. We were told that the first Court House in Lake Charles was built with timber cut on that Heard farm in Dry Creek.
During the first decade of the 20th Century, big, commercial saw mills were built in the area. Huge mills with hundreds of workers operated around the clock, milling thousands of board feet. They brought workers into the area and provided housing and commissaries to supply their needs. The two largest mills near Pitkin were the Fullerton and the Pickering operations (each named for a founder of the company).
The Pickering mill opened in 1905 and the Fullerton mill in 1907. By March 6, 1927, when the Fullerton mill closed, the virgin long leaf pine forests of Louisiana were gone forever. The harvesters didn’t even leave trees for reseeding, and free-range and feral hogs dug up the essential tap roots of the young long-leaf seedlings before they could grow.
The younger the Heard children were born to a vista of cut over, deforested prairie land with acres and acres of pine stumps, some taller than a young child. During WWII, these pine stumps were harvested, literally by blasting them from the soil, to provide turpentine and tar for the navy. As a child in the 1940’s, I can remember driving past miles of fields full of holes where the stumps and roots had been removed. It wasn’t until after the War and into the 50’s and 60’s that reforestation efforts, and new species of pines led to the reestablishment of timber forests in that area. And with pride, I note that some of the Heard children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren were involved in the Louisiana reforestation efforts.
As his family grew, Addison was tempted by much higher earnings to leave teaching and work for the nearby saw mills. Sometime after the sawmills opened in 1905 and 1907, he began working in the timber industry. I have heard him given the title of “woods foreman.” More specifically, I was told that his mathematical abilities that made him valuable to the bosses. Addison was well-known for being able to do complex calculations in his head, and we were told that he could walk through a stand of timber, and by the time he completed his transit, he could give an accurate estimate of the board-feet that could be milled from the timber growing there. He was apparently able to do similar (if simpler) calculations based on counting cut logs. His abilities were somewhere between a calculator and a computer. As I understand it, Addison primarily worked for the Pickering Lumber Company, headquartered in Pickering, LA.
Addison was in his early 30’s when he began working in the timber industry and in his early 60’s when the industry shut down in Vernon Parish. I was told that Pickering wanted to him to transfer to their newer operation in Haslam, Texas, between Logansport, LA and Joaquin, TX, but he declined to move.
In his later years, as his younger sons and older grandchildren were growing up, James Addison was described in newspaper articles as a “farmer” and local “businessman.” He was active in the Masonic Lodge, served on the local school board, and worked on a number of civic projects, including the Board of the Parish Fair.
I was always under the impression that Grandmaw Heard ran the farm. During my years, she planned the activities, issued the orders and supervised the workers (her children and grandchildren), but the farm operation was much larger before WWII. Until after Grandpaw’s death the family raised a few sheep (for wool) and goats for both milk and meat.
Most importantly they had a big herd of hogs that ran free and were rounded up for castrating and marking every spring, and again for butchering in the late fall. The butchered hogs were salted and then smoked in the smoke house that stood behind the main house, about 25 feet from the back porch. The smoked pork was a major portion of the family’s diet. The most exciting stories my Uncles told centered on these hogs. The roundups, marking, castrations, and butchering were exciting adventures with enough real danger to keep everyone literally jumping.
I’m not sure when the free-range management of hogs ended, but by the 50’s there was a pig pen where hogs were kept and fed slops from the kitchen. Usually there was one gigantic sow and her piglets in various stages of growth and development. Grandchildren did not mess with the sow.
There were always two to five milch cows, at least one always with a calf, to supply milk; but until Uncle Simmie took over the farm I don’t remember any beef cattle. The cows, like the hogs were free-range. That is, the farmers fenced in their crops and let their animals roam and graze freely. Unlike the hogs who made their homes in the bottoms (low lying wet lands), the cows came home every night and slept safely in the barn lot. The lead cow (in my era her name was Polly) wore a bell, and you could hear her coming home in the evening, with the other cows and calves walking single file behind her. Any cow with a habit of forcing her way through fences wore a yoke (a Y-shaped wooden and leather neck brace) to curb her activities and keep her out of gardens and fields. I have one of these on the fireplace in my home today.
Where they walked day after day, following single file, the cows wore down trench-like cow-trails. If any cow failed to show up at the barn in the evening, a full fledged hunt for the lost critter was triggered. In the waning daylight, we would follow the cow track calling “Sooo cow,” “Sooo-cow.”
Polly was a special “lead” cow, wiser and gentler than the others. She was gentle and protective to all the calves born to the herd; and her gentle protective nature extended to the grandchildren. Polly was especially partial to the pears that grew on the three big pear trees to the east of Grandmaw’s house. She loved those pears as much as the grandchildren did, and this led to a symbiotic relationship. We would let Polly into the fenced yard around the house. We would lead her under the pear trees, and let her eat the bruised and damaged pears that had fallen to the ground. While she ate, one or two of us would stand on her broad back, and reach high into the limbs of the tree to pick the ripe fruit. However our trick bare-back riders had to stay alert. When Polly began to amble forward to find her next fallen pear, the kids standing on her back had to be ready to either leap to the ground or drop down into a sitting position astride her.
I can’t remember if the cows were milked in the morning or the evening. In summer, they may have been milked morning and evening. I remember morning milking best. The calves were separated from their mothers over night and allowed to suck after the milking. They were always excited, jumping about and kicking. Grandmaw milked into galvanized buckets that she cleaned in boiling water. She washed the cows’ udders before milking. The powerful stream of milk hit the empty bucket with a distinctive clang. At one time or another, all the grandchildren tried milking. I was never any good at it. When you milked, you had to watch out for a kicking cow. That’s where we get the phrase, “kick the bucket.” No cow ever kicked Mawmaw’s bucket more than once.
The fresh (unprocessed and unpasteurized) milk tasted totally different from the “store-bought” milk the younger grandchildren were accustomed to; and some, including my brother Jacky and John Ballis, wouldn’t drink it. It was a creamy yellow in color, with tiny globules of cream floating in it. The care and uses of that milk and its rich cream is an amazing story. The acquisition, care, and use of the fresh milk occupied a lot of Grandmaw’s time, and made the food on her table rich and delicious.
Grandmaw separated the cream from the milk by allowing the lighter weight fatty cream to rise to the top. She skimmed off the cream, and poured it into her churn. She had a large urn-like churn with a dasher on a long stick. The cream was turned into butter by lifting and dropping that big dasher what seemed like a million times. Most of the time we used a churn that consisted of a large glass jar (about a gallon size) with a dasher that was turned by manually rotating a handle. You turned the handle, and the dasher turned and churned the cream until the fatty globs of butter became a solid mass.
After the butter clumped, Grandmaw carefully poured off the valuable “buttermilk.” Grandpaw preferred buttermilk to sweet milk, especially with crumbled cornbread as an evening meal. Also Grandmaw made her famous biscuits with buttermilk. After draining off the buttermilk, Grandmaw dropped the chunk of butter into her butter press. The press gave the butter its shape, and forced the last of the buttermilk out, so the cake of butter was solid. Now Grandmaw’s butter was pale in color, almost white. I learned later in life that the yellow color in commercial butter is actually and additive dye. But what it lacked in color, it made up for in flavor.
I have only vague memories of the Farm before electricity and refrigeration arrived. However, I know Grandmaw had a “well-house” where temperatures were cooler. As with all things Grandmaw despised waste, and found many ways to use her milk and cream. I do not remember her making cheese, but I well remember her making clabber. I didn’t eat clabber, but many considered it a treat, especially with fresh berries or peaches or over a rich cobbler. Two decades after my childhood, in a posh NYC restaurant I was to encounter clabber again. On the menu it was called “clotted cream,” and Grandmaw would have gagged at the price, but it was served, like hers, over fresh fruit.
Grandmaw kept a small flock of geese, who killed snakes, and were plucked every spring for down to make pillows and mattresses. I sleep every night on a pillow made by my grandmother from the down from her geese. I still own 5 such pillows (and am willing to share with any descendant who will use and cherish). The big gander was the boss in the chicken yard. He bullied everyone except Grandmaw. He terrified and chased the Grandchildren, stretching out his long neck, charging the offending child, and hissing louder than any snake.
Grandmaw’s flock of fowl included mostly chickens with a few ducks as well as Guinea hens. Between the geese and Guineas, no marauder (animal or human) came unannounced to the Heard house. Since collecting eggs was the job generally given to the younger children, all of us became very familiar with the inhabitants of the chicken yard, and the strange places where stupid hens choose to lay eggs.
To kill the snakes that ate her chicken eggs, Grandmaw Heard used china doorknobs. She had a few china eggs, but the ceramic doorknobs were apparently cheaper and did the job. Snakes crawled into the chicken nests and swallowed the eggs whole. Then they crawled off, curled up and crushed the eggs inside their stomachs. When they swallowed the ceramic eggs (doorknobs), they couldn’t crush them, and the solid objects in their innards killed them. Grandmaw didn’t waste anything, including used ceramic eggs (doorknobs). The Grandchildren were given the task of hunting the dead snake when one of her nests was robbed. Sometime it would be weeks before we found that snake. The pristine white doorknob would be lying there surrounded by snake bones and skin.
Grandmaw Heard not only collected the eggs from her flock, she saved and sold the excess eggs at the Pitkin Mercantile. This was really the source of her “egg money.” She wasn’t about to share her source of wealth with a thieving snake. She kept a careful eye on all her chickens and always knew which ones were regularly depositing eggs, and which were slacking off. The slackers wound up on the table for Sunday dinner.
Grandmaw’s method for converting a non-laying hen into her famous chicken and dumplings was quite direct. She would enter the chicken yard wearing a full apron and carrying a handful of corn. Moving through the chickens that eagerly flocked around her, jumping over each other in their eagerness to reach the corn, she would single out the chosen one. Her flock was diverse, but favored the black and white Plymouth Rocks and Rhode Island Reds. When the bird of the day stretched out its neck to reach the corn, she grabbed with the speed of a snake. She twisted her wrist and the weight of the bird’s body flipped and the neck was broken with one quick wring. Now that chicken was dead, but it didn’t seem to know it was dead. Grandmaw would drop it, and it would jump around all over the ground, doing amazing acrobatic flips and flops.
Grandmaw had boiling water ready before she grabbed her hen, and holding the chicken by the neck, she dunked it into the boiling water, loosening the feathers. She continued to hold it by the neck while stripping off the feathers (which she saved for multiple uses). Only when the bird was naked did she chop off the head and the feet. She stuck these back to feed to Grandpaw's dogs. She was so efficient, that she could complete the entire butchering process before the other fowl finished eating the corn she had scattered.
Given the animals I have described, it was not surprising that the largest crop on the Heard farm was corn. They grew enough corn to feed the animals and to make corn meal and grits to feed the humans, not to mention the roasting ears consumed during the summer months. The harvested field-corn (as separate from the roasting ears) was dried and stored in its shucks in the big barn. The corn sheller stood near the door of the barn, and when grandchildren were causing trouble or acting bored, or just unoccupied, we were sent to shell corn.
They also grew a small crop of sugar cane which was used to make cane syrup, the staple sweetener on the Heard farm. The corn meal was milled and the cane was crushed and squeezed in a mill located in the center of the chicken yard. In my days it was powered by the farm tractor, but I was told that before the tractor a horse or mule was used to turn a wheel that moved the big milling stone. Neighbors often brought their corn or cane, and used the Heard mill. No formal charge was made, but the neighbor always made a gift of a portion of the product.
Most of Grandmaw Heard’s recipes call for syrup as the sweetener, not sugar. Only a few very special deserts were made with store-bought sugar. The cane stalks were kept after the juice was squeezed, and used as feed for cows and hogs or burned and the ashes scattered in the fields as fertilizer. Some of the best stalks of cane were saved for chewing.
On cold nights, we would sit around the fireplace in the big living room, and chew the chunks of cane. The older grandchildren were allowed to use a knife to strip the outer husk, and cut the inner fibrous body of the cane into bite size pieces. We would chew on the pieces until we extracted as much of the sweet, sugary, slightly sulfurous juice as possible, and then we would throw the chewed wad into the fire. The sugars, and acids in the fibers would flare into brilliant many-colored flames. We would chew and admire the beauty of the fire, while the older cousins or Uncles spun marvelous tales of scary adventures. Memories of such evenings are so very sweet.
The second crop on the Heard farm was sweet potatoes. The sandy loam of the Heard farm was perfect for growing these tubers. At one time they grew and sold sweet potatoes, but sweet potatoes are a labor intensive crop, and as the children grew up, and the commercial sweet potato farms developed, they grew only enough for family consumption (but that was always a lot).
The sweet potatoes available in grocery stores today don’t even come close to the taste of Grandmaw’s sweet potatoes. Hers were a deep red in color (not the pale yellow or orange you see today), and so help me, when baked the skins oozed drops of sugar. Uncle Meredith swore that he could tell where a sweet potato came from by its flavor, declaring that the composition of the soil gave flavor to the sweet potato. Occasionally, I am able to find “Jewel” or “Garnet” yams in speciality grocery stores, and they approach the flavor of Grandmaw Heard’s sweet potatoes. When her children were in school, Grandmaw banked the coals in her wood cook-stove after breakfast, and put in a pan of sweet potatoes. These cooked slowly all day, and when the kids came home from school, their after school treat was a baked sweet potato dripping with homemade butter. Needless to say, Grandmaw gave her grandchildren the same treat on cold winter days. But what I loved best were the sweet potato pies she baked for holidays. I believe I was grown before I ate a pumpkin pie — we had sweet potato pie.
The final significant crop on the Heard farm (at least from the perspective of a grandchild) was watermelon. The farm was only a few miles from Sugartown (where many believe the world’s best watermelons are grown), and the same sandy loam that was ideal for sweet potatoes is excellent for watermelons. My strongest memory of Grandmaw and watermelons is of the “waste.” At our house, we were accustomed to consuming every eatable bite of a watermelon; but my Grandmother, who otherwise wasted nothing, ate only the heart of a melon. She would have one of the men or the older boys to fill a wheelbarrow with the ripest watermelons. Then she would take this enormous butcher knife (with a curved blade over two feet long), and with a single stroke she would chop a big melon in two. Then with one twist of the knife, she would extract the heart in two halves, handing each half to a waiting grandchild. Then she would chop open the second melon and extract the heart, and discard the rest. If an opened melon didn’t look or smell perfect, she just threw the whole thing into the waiting bucket. Sometimes she would go through a dozen melons and feed only the very best pieces to us (and to herself). Grandmaw Heard loved watermelons almost as much as she loved fresh peaches, and always ate her fair share. The only fault that could be found with Grandmaw’s watermelons was their temperature. Grandmaw firmly believed that melons were sweeter at room temperature. She cooled her melons under the beds on the sleeping porch, and felt that was the perfect temperature for a melon.
Of course she didn’t really “waste” all the discarded melons. They were fed to the hogs, and to the chickens. The hogs consumed every scrap while the chickens picked the halved watermelons clean right down to the green rind.
Our favorite way of eating Grandmaw’s watermelons was to take two or three to the creek. We anchored the melons so they wouldn’t float way in the current, and they cooled while we swam. Then we cut the melons in half and ate them while lying around on the sand. We always carefully cleaned out the half-shells of the melons, so we could use the watermelon rinds as boats to race down the creek. Then we engaged in watermelon fights, washing the sticky juice off in the cold creek water.
The Heard Family (Addison, Clora Frances, and the 12 children) had a good life. They were far from wealthy, but they were never in need. Only two tragedies marred the first three decades of the 20th Century. The first was the death of their ninth child, John Tillus Heard. Little John Tillus was born on Sept. 15, 1914, the same week the allies stopped the German advance into France. He was one month old when he died, probably of SIDS. In the last days of her life (54 years later) his mother still mourned her lost baby, and talked about seeing him again in heaven.
The second tragedy was the burning of the Heard home. We don’t have confirmation of the exact date, but is was around 1925. The oldest children had left home, and the middle crew were all at school on the day the fire destroyed their home.. Mawmaw had taken the youngest four boys and gone somewhere for the day. Grandpaw Heard was working in the field when he saw the smoke. He tried carrying water to extinguish the flames, but it was too late. Instead, he began to carry their possessions into the yard. He made trip after trip, venturing into the burning building to rescue precious belongings. He was exhausted and had breathed too much smoke. His hair had caught fire, and his face and hands were burned, but the yard was filled with things he had saved. Then a spark from the burning house ignited the things in the yard, and these too began to burn. In the end, all Addison managed to save was the mantle clock.
By the time neighbors saw the smoke and came to help the home and belongings were burned, and Addison was exhausted and injured. The fire had many long term impacts. The skin cancer that killed Addison developed where his face had been burned. The hill where the old house stood became a sort of sacred spot for all the children. In years to come they would pace across the plot, and tell their children what rooms had stood where. When the grandchildren played there, we could find broken dishes and flatware or mangled metal pots.
And that old mantle clock became the family “Heirloom.” In Grandmaw’s will, she refused to leave it to any one child. Instead, the clock was passed around so each could proudly take turns displaying it in their home. Every grandchild can remember that clock as it stood in their parents’ home. In the last year of her life my mother enjoyed looking at it. It brought joy to Vera when she and Lindsey were the last of the Heard children; and then it was Lindsey’s. In the summer of 2020, four years after Lindsey’s passing, a hurricane-spanned tornado destroyed Lindsey’s house and Bob and Lydia Jane’s home. While the storm roared outside, Bob had to return to the living room to retrieve the clock, and bring it into the safe spot beneath the stairs where the family took shelter. Thanks to his courage, the CLOCK which survived fire in 1925, also survived the tornadoes of 2020.
After the “Old House” burned, it took more than nine months to build the “New House,” which we believe was completed in 1926. The new house was smaller than the “Old House,” since the family was growing smaller rather than larger as children left home. The wood frame house with the wide front porch and twin chimneys is the only Heard home remembered by the grandchildren.
The house design is one that has been called a “double.shotgun.” There are two entrance doors on the front porch. The door on the right opens into a row of three rooms — large living room, with a wide opening into a large dinning room, behind which is the large kitchen with pantry and larder. The door on the left opens into a row of three rooms — the front bedroom (where Grandmaw, Grandpaw, and the youngest children slept); the middle bedroom; and the sleeping porch. Behind the sleeping porch was the open back porch. There were two fireplaces, one in the living room and one in the front bedroom. The kitchen was heated by the big iron, wood stove.
If you are wondering where the bathroom was located, well, in 1925, it was about 50 yards out the back yard behind the smoke house and far from the well. The well was behind and to the left of the back porch, and the smoke house was near the well. Of course, you didn’t bathe in the outhouse. In winter the family took their baths in the kitchen in a big galvanized tub filled with water drawn from the well and heated on the wood stove. In the summer they bathed in the creek.
Each of the bedrooms had 2 double beds, and the sleeping porch held three beds. The beds could sleep 14 easily, but I remember over 30 of us sleeping there, with children sleeping 4 or 5 to a bed or on pallets. The front bedroom and the sleeping porch were best in the summer when it was hot. Sometimes the kids slept on pallets on the front porch, but that meant fighting the mosquitoes.
Cooling the house in the summer was a matter of opening the front doors and the back doors and all of the windows. The design created a draw that pulled a breeze through the house. After electricity came in the 1940’s, ceiling fans and eventually an attic fan made things cooler.
In the winter, heat was supplied by the fireplaces and the wood stove. The fireplaces and the wood stove burned during the day, and the coals were banked at night. Grandmaw had bricks that she warmed near the fireplace in the evening, and then wrapped in flannel scraps or old quilt pieces to use to warm the cold beds. It was cold running to the beds at night, but no one slept alone, and I don’t remember ever being cold while curled up with my cousins in one of Grandmaw’s feather beds. Grandmaw and Grandpaw, the first ones up in the morning, stoked the fires and warmed the house before the kids got up.
As I write this, it is February of 2021, and a week-long, “once in a century cold snap” with freezing temperatures and snow has left the Texas power grid dismantled. People are trying to cope without electricity and in many cases running water. Panic and even deaths are in the news, even as I remember those days when people had no electricity, no running water, and no telephones.
Sister was the first girl born into the Heard family in a decade (her Aunt Vera having been born 10 years earlier), so it was no wonder she was tagged as “Sister.” I don’t think I knew her real name (Elizabeth) until she married.
I tend to group those oldest cousins, Hewell, Jerry, Tommy, and Sister, as a special contingent somewhere between Uncles and Cousins. As a really little girl, I had difficulty distinguishing Hewell, Jerry, and Tommy from my youngest Uncles, Alton and Lindsey. In my mind, these six stood somewhere between adults and children, in a special category of God-like creatures. They had the powers of adults, but they still retained the understanding and dispositions of children. It was absolutely wonderful when they petted and spoiled you, and absolutely hell when they ignored you. I would do anything to please them or to avoid their displeasure. Sister, maybe because she was a girl, was the most approachable. She was the one I could go to if I needed help. She was the “Mother-cousin” for all us little ones.
The second contingent (or peer group as an anthropologist might label them) consisted of the what might be called our “Depression Era” cousins, born between 1929 and 1935). These four included Tommy and Sister’s younger siblings, Florence Adele and Robert, along with Bette Lois and Toney. Like the four oldest Cousins, Hewell, Jerry, Tommy, and Sister, Florence and Robert were frequently at the Heard Farm. Their parents allowed them to spend time on the farm, supervised only by their grandparents. Bette Lois, and only child, was at the farm for holidays and when her parents visited.
The third cohort included Jerry Don (Toney’s sister), Frances Ruth (me), Sara Jo, and Ragan (Hewell and Jerry’s much younger brother). Only three years separated us, and we were close. I think of us as the “Pre-War” Cousins. The first tragedy of our lives was Ragan’s death when he was only five. His death coincided with the closing months of the War. It was my first direct encounter with death, and never to be forgotten. I think it drew the three remaining cousins closer. It also meant our numbers were reduced and we spent more time playing with our older cousins (when they would have us) and with our younger cousins.
TO BE CONTINUED —
