The indigent family somehow survived the next two difficult years. After his father died , Daddy told of his moving in a battered old one-room shack sitting in a open field occupied by a bull and herd of cows. It had been a barn, just unpainted planks and unfinished interior walls The rusted tin roof with its nail holes topped the open rafters. The cows offered little threat, but the Jersey bull raged when the cows came in heat. Mettie and the kids had to always had to keep a look out for the old devil when they stepped outdoors to do laundry or fetch water from the creek. Mettie kept the little girls at hand in case they had to make a run for the house. She and the older boys made sure the bull was nowhere to be seen before climbing through the barbed wire to attempt the open field surrounding their house. One evening, the old bull was on a tear. Enraged, he had the family cornered in the house. A time or two, one of the boys slipped toward creek for water only to be run back, the bull crashing into the door behind them. He raged, assaulting the shack time after time, bashing his head against the walls and doors, venting his hormonal rage. Inside, expecting the bull to explode through the doorway at any second, Mettie and the boys had hoisted the traumatized little girls and themselves to the safety of the rafters to wait out the madness. The next day, they packed up and moved to Mettie’s Brother Albert’s farm, even though it was miles and miles from town.
A battered, unpainted house awaited them. Again, it was free. They could get milk and butter from one of Albert’s cows if she helped with the milking. Albert’s wife,Mary, kindly gave her a hen with twelve chicks and young rooster. They could eat from Mary’s garden if she and the girls would help with gardening and canning. They settled in. The wind sailed through the unchinked walls of the house. Rain poured through the ancient roof. The uncles put the boys to cutting and splitting wood for shingles, then set them to roofing. A toilet leaned crazily out back, but the deep well provided cool,clean water. Of course the rural farm had no utilities, no matter since she wouldn’t have had funds to pay for them. Her brothers, Willie and Albert, did what they could to help, from plowing her garden, promising her a pig to fatten and slaughter in the fall. Willie traded a fine sow with a litter of pigs and gifted her an ancient milk cow. Fortunately, when the old cow freshened, it was a heifer, ensuring Mettie would have a young cow to replace her when the old cow inevitably died. This was a Godsend. A family without a milk cow was in trouble.
Life actually improved upon her husband’s death in 1937. He had been out of the home for four years by that time, so Mettie’s grieving was likely long over. Daddy only mentioned his father twice to my recollection. On the first mention, prior to starting school, he was supposed to be following his father down a row in the cornfield, dropping four corn kernels in each hole his father made. In the way of small children, he soon tired of this, burying the whole lot at the end of the row, covering it with sand. Upon germination, seeing what he’d done, his father beat him. Another time, for some unrelated failing, his enraged father ripped the bed covers off the sleeping boy and brutally beat him with a razor strap! Daddy visited the same behavior on his own children more than once.
Mettie Knight Swain, my paternal grandmother was an Amazon of a woman an imposing figure at near six feet tall. Her gorgeous, silver hair stood around her head in a soft halo, made more striking by her pale blue eyes. She turned heads. Her physical stature alone inspired respect. She was vaguely friendly toward her grandchildren, not surprising since she had more than forty. I personally admired her penchant for stepping in if it looked as if one of the grandchildren might be about to get a swat. That alone made her my hero.
When Eddie died in 1937, the four younger children qualified for seventy-four dollars a month, Aid to Dependant Children, a veritable fortune. She promptly moved closer in to town. The same year, her eldest son joined Civilian Conservation Corp for which he was provided clothes, wages, food, and lodging for working on government conservation projects. He was paid the princely sum of thirty dollars a month, twenty-five of which which went directly to his mother. Three years later, the second son joined. The boys had never lived dressed or lived so well. At thirteen, Daddy was six feet tall. He was able to pass for fifteen, snagging a job on an nearby oil rig as a night watchman. He slipped home most nights to eat a late supper. All three boys had given up school long ago to look for work. At any rate, Daddy said they couldn’t face the taunting of hateful kids in their bedraggled clothes.
Nutsrok 