Canned Food

The Man cheated us out of our pay but I had canned enough food from our garden and berries from the woods that we had enough food for about six months.   We have our chickens, twenty now and we have our food so we decided to find another place to live and work.  It is close to Christmas so we wrote a letter to Mr. & Mrs. Moore and to Mama & Papa to come and get us.  Mr. Moore and Papa brought a wagon and moved us back to Cooper just in time to celebrate Christmas with our families.  We had a good Christmas, no presents but plenty of food we ate four of our chickens and we had plenty of  vegetables from our garden.  Mama made a big four layer cake, we didn’t have any sugar but she used honey to sweeten it and it tasted real good. Mr. & Mrs. Moore and the kids all came to eat with us.  Mrs. Moore said it is the first time they had ever been to eat with anybody.  They had never celebrated Christmas before.  After dinner we sat around the kitchen and I started reading the Bible out loud.  Mr. Moore had never heard the Bible until last year, when I first started reading to them.  Mr. & Mrs. Moore had four young kids, Inez, Jess, Less and Tooter.  Mama & Papa had  six younger than me, Leon, Elson, Onia, Omie, Niva Lee and Virginia.  They were all having hard times, there is no work and it is just after the depression.

 The week after Christmas Papa signed up to work for the WPA it didn’t pay much but it would buy groceries.  But he had to follow the pipeline and leave Mama and the kids alone.  Boots and I agreed to stay around close to help Mama with the kids, while Papa was gone.  Boots found a man that offered us a little house to live in, if he would cut wood for the man one day a week.  We took it and started over again, with a filthy, leaking house with cracks in the wall.  But we were as happy as if it were a mansion, It was our home.  Our little house is only about two miles from Mama and the kids.                     

We have had a long hard winter.  Mama told me today she is expecting another baby in July.   I am expecting our second child in August and I pray it will be well.  Boots took me to the doctor today.  The doctor told us we are going to have twins, we both are so excited. We have managed to buy some yard goods to make baby clothes.  Mama and I both have been sewing for a month.  Boots won’t let me work in the fields this time he said it is to dangerous for the babies.  It   is nearing the end of June now and we have everything ready for the babies.  Boots has been doing day work for one of our neighbors for a week now.  I walked over to visit with Mama and the kids, Papa hasn’t been home in four months but he sends money every week.  I started cramping before I was half way there.  I finally made it to Mamas house but I was cramping and bleeding by this time.  Mama sent for Boots and the Doctor.  Boots came right away, it took the Doctor about fours hours. My babies were both still-born.  We were heart broken.  The Doctor said they were blue babies. We didn’t know what that meant so he explained it meant the babies had a heart defect.  So now we have three babies dead.