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The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 112
to the east. The chicken house was left of the outhouse. “Mama Chaney” had chickens, turkeys and pigs. There was a corncrib in the barn to keep the corn for the chickens and a loft. Bernice and Frank used Pappa Chaney's mules. Daily Life Working in the Field: Bernice described working in the cotton fields: First, you had to chop. Thin it out, dig the grass out. Then lay it by. When it gets so big, you go through again with a cultivator; it has a plow to go between to rows. Then start to pick around the first of September. Back then we had cold winters and snow. We'd get cold. We'd get out and pick sacks of bolls and then sit by the fireplace at Pappa Chaney's. We picked cotton when it was sleeting and we about froze to death. [What did you wear?] Everything you had, you put on! [Said vehemently] Water Source. We had a well. The Outhouse. Bernice said they had an outhouse that was “out back.” When asked if her family threw things they wanted to dispose of in the outhouse, the researcher again experienced the questioning look and raised eyebrow. Bernice volunteered a comment about toilet paper: For toilet paper, we used the Sears catalog. We could get them free. When we used it up, we'd try to get another one??"Sears or Penneys. There was a saying, “Either that or a corn cob.” [Did you ever know of anyone to use a corncob?] No, I never knew anybody who really used one. The Mailbox. Having joked about using a corncob in the outhouse, and apparently thinking about paper possibilities, Bernice added: “We lived two miles from the mailbox. So, you weren't going to get a newspaper. If we'd got one, we wouldn't have time to read it.” Bernice noted that she and her sister-in-law sometimes rode the mules to the mailbox. Garbage. When asked what they did with garbage, Bernice said: You didn't put dirty cans out. We always washed the cans. We had hog wire around where we put the garbage. I have walked a solid mile to get wire. We didn't have many cans because we had our own stuff. We used glass jars for canning. Back then you could cook jars a long time on the wood stove. On a modern stove, you can put the jars of beans on a cookie sheet in the oven for two and a half hours, and set the oven as low as it will go. We had corn bread and biscuits. We had no yeast back then. I made biscuits out of corn meal, soda, salt, and milk. 112 - (4145)