Playing: Church in the Wildwood

-----On this page, I would like to write my experiences as a young boy on the Pullins Farm in Mason County prior to the Fall of 1947. Please have patience as I record these memories.

-----This ink and pen drawing of an old barn was executed and sent to me by my King cousin Virginia Petricelli. Virginia, who was born in Pennslyvania but who now lives in Minnisota, drew the old barn from her memories of old barns that she saw on visits to Mason County, West Virginia when she was a child.

-----Until Tom Pullins died in the fall of 1947, I spent a lot of time on the Pullins Farm. These visits to the farm were during the years in which the foundations of my memories were formed. Sights, smells, and emotional experiences are still nestled somewhere in my mind ready to be brought forth by my calling. I believe that I need to record these memories while my mind is still nimble enough to respond. I may add secondary pages to this page for longer experiences.

-----Although no one has lived there for more than fifty years, the Pullins Farm was once a busy place. Situated in the extreme northeastern corner of Mason County on a ridge above Thirteenmile Creek, it is bounded on the north and east by Bee Run, on the South by the Stone Farm, and on the West by the old James Austin "Aus" Livingston Farm. From Bee Run the old dirt raod climbs to the top of the ridge and, after making a sharp turn, runs roughly northwest past the Pullins Farm to the Andrew Beattie place. Here, it is joined by a road that passes the Livingston place and drops down on to Big Spruce Run. The sandy lane that runs past the house to barn once continued out the ridge and then down to the Stone Farm.
-----From The yard of the house, you can look east and see High Knob which is the highest point in Mason County. On top of High Knob is the lone grave of Clark Hill who was born October 13, 1839 and died November 1870. It is said that Clark Hill was a great coon hunter and that he requested to be buried on High Knob. It weas from this high place that he liked to listen to his dogs run.

-----There were plenty of good things on the Pullins farm. There was good food, lots of good clean air, there was plenty of good honest work, and, after 1944 there was a new house. But, there was one thing that there was none of. There was no electricty. Long after most of the rest of the country was electrified, rural areas in Appalachia were still without power. When we had the great power outage here in Southeastern West Virginia this past winter, it was looked at as a disaster. But, back in the forties, not having power was something that was taken for granted.
-----Not having electricity meant that main form of lighting was the oil lamp. These lamps were in three forms. One, the sturdy metal and glass lantern was used outside when chores had to be done after dark or when there was a hunting expedition. Plain glass lamps were used in the kitchen and in the dining room. But, back in the living room, sitting room, and in the bedrooms, there were oil lamps that were works of art. They were of fancy colored and decorated glass and had highly decorated lampshades that often had tassels. Having to use oil for lighting meant one other thing. If you were frugal and responsible, you went to bed early.
-----For the women, not having electricity meant that the tasks, that electricty makes so much easier for women today, were real chores. Unless you had a gasoline powered wasming machine, all of the clothes had to be washed by hand. My grandmother had a wringer washing machine, but it was hand cranked. Without the electric pumps that modern farms have today, all of the water for wash day, or for anything else for that matter, had to be pumped by hand or carried from a spring. And, it took a lot of water on washday. Then the clothes had to be ironed. Forget about the steam iron. All of the ironing was done with "flat irons" that were heated on the top of the wood or coal cookstove. That meant that the place where you stood to iron had to be near the stove unless you wanted to run clear across the house to get another hot iron. Usually one iron was in use while another was heating. I do not know if women even iron clothes today. Sometimes it makes me chuckle when I hear women complain when they have to go to all of the trouble of putting on a load of clothes to wash in their automatic washers. I have seen my mother use a washboard even though she had a "Kenmore" wringer washingmachine.
-----One other thing that not having electricity dictated. You didn't take a bath everytime that you turned around back then. The "Ban Deoderant" folks would not have had the success back then that they have had in these modern times by brain-washing everyone everyone into thinking that "you stink" if you don't take a shower at least three times a day.

-----We have reached an age in which way more than half of Americans cannot remember "life before TV." And, there are a lot less folks who can remember life before radio. But if you lived on the farm back off the main roads in the 1940's in West Virginia, you didn't have the electronic entertainment that is a part of our lives today. "Grandpa" Pullins had a battery powered radio, but the battery was larger than the radio. The only time that he "played" the radio was to listen to a few minutes of news in the evenings.
-----Tom Pullins was an old time "singing master" who traveled around and taught groups of folks how to sing. Some entertainment was had when there was an occasional "belling," "pie or ice cream social," or some other party.
----One of the main forms of enjoyment was the "revival meeting." Sometimes the whole family would walk for miles to go to a revival. Most of the time several neighboring families would walk together. At the "meeting," there would be good fellowship, spirited singing, and "inspired" preaching. The back pews of the church were always reserved for the "sinners." In many of the churches that I attend today, these back pews are the nesting spots of older church members who, a few years ago, would have sat closer to the front. Many of the younger "fellers" and the more hardend sinners would remain out in the church yard. These individuals would come to church even though they had no intention of going inside. This was because the revival was the only entertainment to be had in the community back then.
-----The meeting was not considered a success unless some of the sinners on the back pews found their way to the alter and were "saved." Sometimes even young fellers and the more hardened ones outside would be "convicted" by the Holy Spirit through the inspired preaching or the "alter songs" that were sung during the invitation. These would make their way through the door of the church and up to the alter. With every "winning" of a soul to the Lord, there was (and still is) a great rejoicing from the congregation and from family members. Many a life was "turned around" at these meetings and whole families were given a better life because of one who gave his or her life to the Lord at one of these meetings. Old church cemeteries are filled with folks who served as deacons and elders or were respected "church mothers" and had been "converted" at an old time revival meeting. Probably no other happening strengthened this nation more than these old time revivals.

-----There are two fragrances from the Pullins Farm that I have not found since that time when I was a young boy. The first came from across the lane that ran by the house. In the celler below a large outbuilding, my Grandma Iantha Pullins kept her creamery. When you entered the door, you were met by a smell that was a combination of butter, buttermilk, and fresh milk. Every morning and eveing, grandma would carry in her pails of warm fresh milk and strain it into earthen crocks and jars. Sometimes I would be allowed to help is some small way. Each evening buckets of buttermilk would be carried to the kitchen where they were poured into a wooden churn. Now, steadly moving that handle up and down for what seemed like hours at a time was not my favorite thing. But, ithad to be done. Making good butter was a art that not everyone mastered. It had to be salted just right to be excellent. Both grandma and my mother-in-law Lovell Grimes made excellent butter. There is nothing around the modern house to compare with the smell of that old-time creamery. Oh yes, lest I forget. Sometimes masonary crocks of beans, corn, cucumbers, and cabbage in the pickling process would add their pungent aroma to the celler. The country folks were very fond of their pickled corn and pickled beans, their kraut, and thier pickles.
-----The other fragrance that I haven't experienced for a long time was that of the "pantry." The pantry was "right off" the kitchen at the new Pullins farmhouse. In this little room, the oders from, corn meal butter, spices of all kinds and other edibles mixed to form an inticing aroma. One just dosen't seem to find this aroma in modern homes. "Tiz a pity."
-----Other smells of the farm that I have experienced often were those that came from the barns, the cribs, the hayfields, and the garden.
-----It is always pleasant in the winter time to walk into a barn out of the bitter cold and smell and feel that warmness that comes from the livestock in their stalls. Of course, on the Pullins Farm, there was always that "horsey" oder because everything that wasn't hand operated was "horse operated." There was not a piece of motorized equipment on the place. Well, more about that later. Let's just say that, "There's just something peaceful about a horse or a cow munching their hay while a storm is blowing outside. It's also a pleasure to hear that expectant "whinny" when you remove the cover from the feed barrel.
-----The meadow or "hayfield" in the spring gives the smell of fresh growing grass. When we cut that hayfield, there is a sweet aroma of curing hay. Everyone should have the experience of shuffling though the dust on a country road and enhaling that unbelievably wonderful smell. Now, I should add that, when you are laboring in that same hayfield in the hot summer sun to "put up" that hay, you just do not appreciate that smell quite that much. I was never partial to "putting up" hay.
-----When you plow and "work up" that garden or cornfield in the spring, there is the smell of the fresh-turned earth that farmers have gloried in for ages. Then, when your crop is up and growing, each plant of its kind has an aroma of its own. Then you can add in the aroma of morning glories (some call them "bind weeds") and other things that you didn't plant. As the season changes, the smells change as the fruit "comes on." Then, in the fall, when the garden is standing used-up and withered, there is another aroma that is a perlude to the time of sleep that is to come. Is it melancholy? I don't know...perhaps. Perhaps we can see a parallel in the garden to our human lives. We are planted as seed, we come out into the light of day, we grow, we produce fruit according as we are blessed or not blessed, and our material parts go back to the earth to replentish it. If that is so, why do we encase ourselves in foolishly expensive items of steel and concrete or have ourselves stashed away in some fancy building in a drawer? Is it just to enrich the undertaker and the coffin and vault maker, or is it that we have such an aversion of death that we still attempt to deny its existance by vainly trying to preserve this vehicle of clay that is no longer of any use?

-----Like all working farms, the work was divided into two catagories: Work centered around the house and field work which included livestock and the raising of forage.
In those days, farm life was not tainted by the spector of sexism . Unless, as in the case of my mother's family, there were no boys to do the field work, the women and girls labor centered around the house. But, this work was not confined to housework. it included, except for the plowing and harrowing, the growing of the "kitchen garden," the raising of chickens and other fowl with all of the chores connected with that, and the processing of dairy products which often included the milking. Sometimes the husband or the boys would milk. There was not a plainly marked boundary between men's work and woman's work. Sometimes both male and female would be called on to help out on some chores when there was a need to get somthing accomplished quickly, when the job was just too large, or when there was illness that interupted the normal flow of activities. There was one thing that was common to nearly all of the farm chores, they were not easy.
-----The raising of chickens and other fowl was mostly entirely confined to the farm. Some chicks may have been "ordered" through the "mail-order catalog," but many were raised by the saving of eggs to put under a "setting" hen. Sometimes, more than one old "biddy" would have broods of chicks at the same time and the old hen which was highest on the "pecking order" would attempt to steal the socially lower hen's chicks. My grandmother would go out at night and tie the old hen's leg to something with a cord to prevent her from stealing chicks.
-----Besides the chore of feeding the barnyard fowl, young roosters and old hens were killed for food with the roosters being fried and the old hens being roasted or cooked. Hence, we had the favorite: "chicken and dumplings." Killing and dressing a chicken was not an easy task. I have watched my mother kill a chicken two ways. One, she would tie the chicken to the clothes line and cut off its head, or, two, she would just hold the chicken, cut off its head, and then let it flop until it quit. She never "wrang" and chickens neck. Then, the chicken would have to be dipped quickly in boiling water to loosten the feathers which were then "plucked." After the chicken was plucked, a small fire was built in order to "singe off" the pinfeathers." Then the bird was taken inside where it was dressed and washed in water." Sometimes as many as five or six chickens were killed at one time and often were "canned." If company was coming, or there was a holiday, several chickens might be readied for the table. In those days, turkey for Thanksgiving was almost unheard of and the turkeys on the old farms were a different kind of creature than the turkey that is on the market today.
-----There was one task for which every member of the family was called up to help in: hoeing the long rows of field corn. On the Stone Farm, adjacent to the Pullins Farm, my mother and her sisters were called on the work in the large cornfields in the creek bottom. Side by side the would go up different rows of corn chopping the weeds that grew in with the corn. Lord help the one who chopped a stalk of corn along with the weeds. My wife would not have done very well. She is dangerous with a hoe. Under a hot summer sun, those cornrows could seem endless.
The men and older boys usually handled the tasks that called for handling the horses. As I said earlier, all of the heavy tasks were accomplished with the help of real horsepower on the Pullins Farm. Although his neighbors may have aquired tractors, Tom Pullins still clung to his horses.
-----There were a number of horsedrawn machines on the Pullins farm. Two of these had to do with haying. The hay was cut with a horsedrawn mowing machine which had a pair of tall iron wheels and a blade that had a number of moveable sharp teeth. As the wheels turned, the teeth would move back and fourth shearing off the tall grasses. This was a potentialy dangerous machine to both man and beast. I remember watching the haying once and seeing a relative, who was helping out, get down from the mowing machine, bend over and pick up a mostly sawn asunder carcass, and yelling, "Anthey! Is this your cat." I heard my grandmother say, Oh! That was my favorite cat.!"
----The horse-drawn hayrake was the other machine used in haying. After the hay had dried, the rake was used to make windrows. This machine also had two laarge iron wheels with a an iron seat for the operator to set upon. The operator had a lever that he used to raise and lowere the large rake that had a long row of curved tines.
Another piece of equipment that was esential was the haywagon. This was simply the old farm wagon fitted with hayracks. Now, manpower was introduced to the operation. The hay that was in windrows had to pitched onto the haywagon with pitchforks. This was a backbreaking job. It was also an itchy job, because the loose hay would get down the neck of your shirt. With all of the "sweat," having hay down your shirt was not pleasant. My Uncle Gilbert Thornton, who lived over on Little Mill Creek, had somewhat of a modern convience. He had a horse operated "hayhook" that ran upon a rail in the hayloft. Once the haywagon was in position in the barn, one horse was unhitched and hooked to the hayhook. The hayhook was pushed into the load of hay, raised by leading the horse forward, and moved to the spot in the loft where the hay was to be dropped. This was another machine that could put hay down your neck. Haying was a grueling operation which modern machines and baling has made much easier. Of course, I was too young to help with the hay on the Pullins Farm. Just about all I could do was "get in the way." I did have to help Uncle Gilbert some though. But, being a town boy, I probably wasn't much help.

TO BE CONTINUED