Volume 4, Number 9 - Fall 1972
Three Minute Stories Not in Print
Visitin’ ‘Round
by Mary Scott Hair
For many years prior to Old Age Assistance and other benefits for homeless individuals, Visitin’ ‘Round was an accepted way of life, here in the Ozarks. Perhaps this taken-for-granted practice reached its zenith during the drought and depression years of the 1930s, when homeless people were no longer the exception. We were talking about this one day and Margaret, our granddaughter, found it hard to believe. Her father said, "It’s true just the same, for I remember Norie!" The Norie in my Visitin’ ‘Round.
Visitin’ ‘Round
We saw her comin' down the road
Her satchel in her hand,
"Why, here comes Norie!" Ma exclaimed,
"Don't she look peaked? My land!"
The paling gate flung wide as we
Shouted a welcome gay,
"Mornin' Norie, gee, we're glad
You've come to our house to stay!"
Her wrinkled face all wreathed in smiles
She warmed to Ma's command,
"Take your valise right on upstairs...
You, Mack, give Norie a hand."
Her satchel held her worldly goods,
She wore her only hat.
Her coat was old, though proudly worn,
No use denying that!
With feeble step she climbed the stairs,
I trudged along behind,
"It's glad I am to be back here...
Yore Ma's been on my mind.
"And so," she said, "I told Mis' Long
Today I'll go to town,
I aim to piece Mis' Snow a quilt
While I am visitin' 'round."
So, Norie made herself at home
And started in to sew
The quilt she aimed to piece for Ma
Before she had to go.
Days turned to weeks and winter came...
The quilt was warm and gay.
A shining angel came one night
And Norie went away.
A home Up There poor Norie found,
Now she don't have to visit 'round.
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"Don’t Touch My Waterfall!"
By Mary Scott Hair
History repeats itself. And, fashions do, too! When "the ladies" first began wearing wigs and hair pieces piled high on their heads, I remembered something that happened when I was six going on seven years old. Granny Belle was my step-grandmother, Isabelle Short, Gran’Pap’s second wife. She was a large woman, childless, with no relatives in this part of the country. I loved her dearly, and that love was returned, full measure. She delighted in putting one over on my Mother, even to setting the goose eggs my cousin Fred Steele brought me for a present and which Mom refused to put under her hen. One egg hatched. That gander was the terror of the neighborhood!
But this incident isn’t about the gander, it’s about a hair-do.
"Don’t Touch My Waterfall!"
"Howdy, Granny Belle, you just now gettin’ ready to wash the dishes?"
That was my morning greeting as I sidled into the dining room of the house on top of the hill. It never did take any urging, any time of the day, to get me to, as Mommie put it, ‘‘go see about Granny Belle.’’ She was someone very special to me, and while I had no idea that anything COULD happen to anyone as dear as she, Mommie sometimes worried because she was living alone just then, with no close neighbors.
"I could have had my dishes washed by now," she explained, "but while I was eatin’ my breakfast I got to thinkin’ about my dream last night. I dreamed about Brother Wade. So, I just pushed the dishes back, hunted up my old dream book and I’ve been a-readin’ what my dream meant."
By this time Granny was going back and forth from the dining room to the kitchen carrying dishes to be washed. Every step she took, I took one, too. She put more things on the table than she took off, then carefully covered them with a table spread made out of bleached out flour sacks neatly sewed together. The hems were brierstiched to make it look pretty.
"What did your dream mean, tell me, Granny Belle." My voice had a pleading note.
"You’re too young to know," she said, "But this much I will say: the dream book says when you dream of the dead—and Brother Wade must be dead for nobody has heard from him for years—you will see the living." She was very thoughtful...
"Well, you have, you’ve seen the living! I’m alive!" This I said with all the cheer I could muster up!
Granny Belle gave a chuckle, like she always did when when she thought something was funny. And then laughed out loud as she agreed with me. "Just the same I think maybe it might mean somebody will come along, wanting a home and I’ll tell her she can stay."
"Mommie thinks you’re afraid to stay by yourself," I confided. "Are you?"
"No, of course I’m not! Your Mommie’s scared of her shadder. She’s scared of storms, and tramps and I could name a lot of other things she’s scared of, but I won’t."
"Go ahead, tell me! I won’t tell her you told me." Any time we could get something on Mommie, Granny Belle and me, I sure did relish the idea! To look at Mommie you’d never guess she was scared of anything or anybody. But I figured Granny Belle knew what she was talking about for Mommie was just a. chunk of a girl when Gran’Pap brought her home to mother Mommie and Aunt Lucy.
Granny Belle shook her head, then changed the subject by asking, "What was your Mommie doin’ when she sent you up here?"
"She didn’t send me, ‘zackly, I wanted to come. She was a-combin’ her hair and savin’ every hair she pulled out, so’s she can have another switch made. She said the one she sent off for won’t make a big enough wad on top of her head so she wants another one."
"Vanity, vanity, that’s what the Good Book calls it." Granny Belle pulled her specs down on her nose and looked over them the way she always did when things got serious. Her little wad of hair was done up just a little back of the top of her head, on account of, she said, folks always saw the big wen when they looked at her and they didn’t know how much hair she had. So she didn’t make a show of it. The wen, big as a banty egg, wobbled around just in front of where her hair parted in the middle.
"Don’t you save your combings to have you a switch made?" Every time Mommie combed her hair and looked in the hair receiver, which was a round celluloid business with a lid and hole in it to poke the hair down in, she would calculate how much longer it would be before she could have a switch made.
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"No, I don’t!" Granny Belle’s voice had a sharp edge. "Vanity, that’s what it is!"
"Can I have a biscuit with some jelly on it?’’
"Of course you can, what kind do you want? I’ve got blackberry and apple and gooseberry preserves. . ." before she could name any more I said, "Oh give me goose-berry preserves. You make the BEST ones. Mommie can’t make them half as good as you can.
Standing on first one bare foot then the other I munched the biscuit which was well covered with butter and gooseberry preserves. Granny belle emptied her dishpan, hung it up and sat down in a kitchen chair. She motioned for me to sit in the one next to her.
"Now I will teach you a little song and when you go home you can sing it to your Mommie. Vanity, that’s what it is!"
"All right, I’m through with my biscuit."
Granny Belle chuckled, then tried to get her pitch. And began in a quivering voice:
"You may have my bonnet, you may hold my shawl,
But take care, don’t you touch my Waterfall!"
"What does it mean, ‘don’t touch my waterfall?’ Mommie hasn’t got a waterfall, has she?"
"No, but she knows what it means. Women used to wear their hair in a big wad kinda on the top part, and a little to the back, of their head. The bigger the wad, the more stylish it was. Sometimes a back comb with sets in it kept the wad from falling down and coming undone. And some of them even fastened a veil in their hair. The comb, with the veil and the big wad of hair was called a waterfall. Touch it just right and it all came down—hair, hairpins, back comb and all. Your Mommie had her hair fall down her back once, and she cried."
Quick to catch on to things, especially the ones I wasn’t supposed to hear, I asked Granny Belle to sing it once more, then I repeated it in a bouncy rhythm that made my teacher laugh out loud. As I left, eager to sing my new song at home, Granny Belle was chuckling.
Mommie was out in the garden when I got home and I kinda forgot about it till the next morning. When I saw her combing her hair and putting the combings in her hair receiver, I tuned up and sang with my loudest voice:
"You may have my bonnet, you may hold my shawl
But take care, don’t touch my waterfall."
"Where did you learn that?" Mommie’s voice was stern. Already I was starting toward the door. "Answer me, where did you learn that?"
I didn’t want to tell her Granny Belle had taught it to me, so I said, "Oh, I just thought it up!"
"I know better than that, Go get me a switch!" So I brought in one I didn’t think would hurt very much. And she broke it on my bare legs.
Granny Belle must have guessed what would happen, for she looked at the streakes on my legs later that morning and wanted to know, "Did it hurt very much?"
"Naw, it didn’t hurt at all!"
"I didn’t mean to get you in bad with your Maw, but she is vain."
"I don’t care. I didn’t tell." After all, it was worth a switching just to see the look on Mommie’s face when I sang the Waterfall song.
Mary Ellen’s Corn Bread Recipe by Lucille Adams Anderson
A school friend of mine at the University of Missouri came home with me to Ozark, to spend a weekend. She, Mildred, was a senior home ec student, with a contract already signed for a teaching job at a Kansas City high school.
She said she had never eaten cornbread and was amazed to find that we had some kind of it at least once a day. She was greatly interested in learning that there are so many kinds of cornbread and that custom at Ozark decreed that only certain kinds be served with certain foods. For instance corn pone was served with dried beans whereas egg corn bread could be served with green beans. To deviate from the established pattern was stark heresy.
Mildred was eagerly collecting recipes for use in her home ec classes. She asked if Mary Ellen, who had done housework including cooking for our family for many years, would teach her to make some of the kinds of cornbread. Mary Ellen was a cook of great distinction in our community. She was flat-
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tered that a big city "cookin’ teacher" wanted some of her recipes.
The first session began with Mildred seated on one side of the kitchen table with a pad and pencil at ready for note taking. Mary Ellen stood at the opposite side of the table with a mixing bowl in front of her.
"First you break an egg into a bowl," she said and proceeded to do so. "Then you beat it until it is light. Next pour in some buttermilk."
As Mary Ellen picked up a crock of buttermilk and poured a liberal amount onto the beaten eggs, Mildred, with her pencil raised ready to record the answer, asked "How much butter milk?"
Mary Ellen looked at her in surprise and amazement.
"Why depends on how much corn bread you want."
Then reaching into a container, she sprinkled salt over the milk—a couple of pinches, finishing off with an infinitesmal bit, possibly four or five grains added with a final flourish. And before Mildred could get in a question, she sprinkled baking soda over the milk.
Then Mildred did ask timidly "Could you tell me how much soda, Mary Ellen?"
"Depends how much butter milk you use" came the stolid answer.
Mary Ellen then picked up a large sifter filled with corn meal and began to sift meal into the mixture, explaining as she did so, "Now don’t put too much meal else your corn bread will be stiff and dry."
At this point Mildred dared to ask if Mary Ellen could give her just an idea of how much meal to use.
That did it! Mary Ellen laid her spoon down, put her hands on her hips, glared at the questioner in exasperation, almost belligerently and said, "It all depends!! If you want just a little bit of corn bread, use just a little bit of everything; If you want a right smart of corn bread, use a right smart of everything."
That squelched Mildred and Mary Ellen completed her culinary art work with only one more interruption.
Before she started the corn bread project, Mary Ellen had put some bacon fat into a black tin baking pan and placed it on the back of the stove to melt. Mildred had not noticed this so had made no inquiry about the amount of fat. There probably were about two tablespoonfuls. Mary Ellen sloched the melted fat around to coat the sides and bottom of the pan, then poured the excess fat into the batter, mixed well then poured the batter into the pan.
We cooked on a large iron range. Adjusting and controlling the oven heat required graduate schooling. Mary Ellen rated a doctorate in it.
As she slid the pan into the oven, Mary Ellen admonished Mildred "Don’t have your oven too hot and don’t have it too cool. Have it just right, and your corn bread will come out as light as fine cake." (Mary Ellen’s always did.)
Mildred did muster a last feeble question. "How long do you bake it?" And got a final definite answer, "Until it is done!"
After we left the kitchen Mildred showed me her notebook, the page unsullied except for the one entry "one egg.
Mary Ellen is one of the cooks who does not like to give her recipes away, isn’t she?"
"No," I assured her, "she thinks she gave you her recipe. To me it seemed a pretty good one. I could make corn bread from what she told you.
Later when I saw Mary Ellen again she said to me, "I don’t think your friend from the university is very smart." "Why?" I asked.
"Why, you couldn’t learn her nothing about cooking."
My Family
By Harriet Howard Massey
My great-grandmother, Mary Montomery Howard, followed several of her children to Missouri from North Carolina after the death of her husband, Francis Howard, Jr. At the time of the battle of Wilson’s creek she was living with her daughter, Mary Frances Sharpe. The battle vas fought on a part of the Sharpe farm. It is elated that during the battle Mary refused to take refuge in the cellar with the rest of the women and children. She urged the others to go saying they were young and had their lives before them, while she was old and near the end of her life, and besides she didn’t believe a Yankee bullet could kill her anyway. Although a cannon ball and several musket bullets hit the house, she was uninjured. She is said to have been about eighty years old at
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the time but she lived nearly two years longer and died May 14, 1864, near West Plains, Howell County, to which place the Sharpes had removed.
My father, Andrew Jackson (Jack) Howard was about three years old at the time of the battle of Wilson’s Creek and was living on the family farm near Delawaretown at the mouth of Wilson’s Creek. He remembered hearing the cannon fire of that battle.
My grandfather, Francis Calvin Howard, had come to Missouri about 1837 from North Carolina with his brother, Woodson. He settled in what was then Greene County (Later Christian) on the east bank of James River, opposite the mouth of Wilson’s Creek. In 1840 he and Sidney S. Ingram built a grist and saw mill on the James River about two miles below his home. He was still operating this mill during the Civil War and was well known in these operations. After the close of the war there was much violence and lack of law and order. One night Grandfather was awakened by a loud knocking on his door. Answering it, he was confronted by robbers who demanded his money. He had made a practice of keeping a gun under his bed but, as luck would have it, his daughter had cleaned the room the day before and had failed to return the gun to its usual place. This fact, of course, may have saved my grandfather’s life as the intruders would not have hesitated to kill him if confronted by a gun. As it was, he gave them some money but they were not satisfied and demanded "that damn long pocketbook", which they had no doubt seen him use at the mill. My father, who was about eight years old at the time and sleeping in the bed with his father, slept through the whole episode. The gang was later captured but my grandfather’s money was never recovered.
My father, Andrew Jackson (Jack) Howard, was instrumental in establishing the Bank of Billings in 1889. When he died in 1950, at the age of ninety-two, father was cashier of the bank, which post he had held from its inception. He was not inclined toward looking back and reminiscensing, preferring to dwell on the present and the future; However, during one of my last visits with him, something reminded him of a happening during the panic of 1893. He was still a bachelor at the time and living above the bank. One night a friend aroused him by throwing rocks at the window of his bedroom. When father opened the window and looked down, the friend called up in a whisper that there was to be a run on the bank the next day and he should not open the bank. My father had no intention of following that advice and opened up as usual. There was a line of people waiting to draw their money out and he proceeded to give it to them. When they found that they could get the money they started coming back and depositing again. So a crisis was averted and the Bank of Billings didn’t close during banking hours until forty years later when federal officers came and demanded that father close during the bank "holiday" of 1933.
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