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The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 65
If the hens were laying good, they laid one egg a day. Over the summer and winter you usually wouldn't get that many. A hen might get maybe 12 and quit. Sometimes a hen would steal away in the woods, and when you'd find her, she'd come up with a bunch of chickens, but this was dangerous for her because there were snakes and everything out there. Some people sold eggs. You'd take them to the store to sell if you had transportation. Transportation then was buggies, horses, and wagons. I'm thinking back to when I was 12, 13, 14, 15 years old. The peddler came by. He'd buy eggs. We'd use the money to buy other things from him. The rolling store came through twice a week. That was a truck with a covered back on it. The peddler would start blowing [the horn] when he came through. He had a coop under his truck. You could sell chickens to the rolling store. The Store. The researcher asked about going to the store. McKinley Jones answered: There was no store down where we lived. The only store was close to Elko switch, but we never went up there. The other store was Jesse Brown. All the farmers from this area go to Jesse Brown's store on 9th Avenue in west Huntsville. It's at Triana and 9th Street. A brick store. It has Jesse Brown's name on it. Selling Vegetables. McKinley Jones said: We grew vegetables. We sold vegetables to White people in town. We'd go house to house. Sometimes we sold corn to Jesse Brown. He had a gristmill in back of the store. If we had corn, they'd grind it??"give you one bushel and keep one. A Typical Meal. When asked what his family would have for a typical meal, McKinley Jones answered, “Whatever we could raise.” He went on to say: We grew corn, snap beans, cabbage, potatoes, watermelons, collards, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes. Some things were seasonal. My mother canned peaches, peas, apples, plums and blackberries and made preserves. Grapes were wild. You'd find the grapes in a tree. Wine was made out of grapes. The cabbage came early. Then the tomatoes and corn came in. Then snap beans. You could keep collards all winter. We would set them out in a bed and put a top (brush and wood) over the top to keep the snow off. The 65 - (4098)