August 13, 2008

Part four

Vicksburg was an important railroad town during the 1920s and 1930s. The Yazoo and Mississippi Valley served the Delta, and the Illinois Central connected with runs from Chicago to New Orleans. During the Depression, countless men of all ages rode the rails in search of work, and they needed food along the way. At some time my mother must have been her usual caring self and fed a hobo, who spread the whereabouts of a lady who would have mercy on a hungry man. Although we were dirt poor, we always had something to eat, and Mother was willing to share it, even if it was only pieces of fried salt meat on left-over buttered biscuits and a glass of iced tea. She was a good judge of character and reasoned that anyone who would walk 6 miles out of town in search of food was not likely to be a criminal. Often as not, the hobo would split or saw wood in return for food, or if Dad were home, he would help in the vegetable patch. I never saw a female hobo.

The gypsies were a different story altogether. In retrospect, I now know that they were real Romanies, not the Irish Travelers based in South Carolina, who made the rounds conning gullible farmers. The gypsies would send two at a time to a farm home. They would drive up in a beat-up old car, leaving their bigger, newer touring cars parked in a circle in the Vicksburg National Military Park. While a usually young and attractive woman, in a flamboyant but dirty costume, begged food or money from whomever answered the door, the male of the couple would case the place to see if anything could be lifted. Often, the woman would offer jewelry or gimcracks for sale. Stories about gypsies abounded, including their kidnapping children. They didn’t, of course, because they wanted to avoid, not invite, confrontations with the law. No gypsy ever offered to work for food.

We had food on hand because we grew most of it. We bought tea, coffee, flour and sugar, but ate a lot of the vegetables we primarily grew for market, supplemented with homegrown chicken and pork, salted or smoked, and the’Although we were dirt poor, we always had something to eat, and Mother was willing to share it, even if it was only pieces of fried salt meat on left-over buttered biscuits and a glass of iced tea.’ game we could get by hunting or fishing. My dad was a law-abiding man, but he had a family to feed, and would gig frogs or fish in season or out, and hunt rabbits at night when he could afford the 3 cents cost per shell for his 12-gauge single-shot Stevens. He couldn’t afford to miss, and often took me along at night, trailing him and his carbide lamp that would pick up the reflection of rabbit eyes. One shot usually killed them, but if they were wounded, he would keep the light on them while I went into the briars or brush to retrieve the wiggling beasts.

A steady diet of rabbit gets old quick. My dad had the bright idea of eating possum, and on a fall night when the persimmons were ripening, he sent me shinnying up a tree to shake down a fat possum. He penned up the hissing animal and fed it milk and vegetables for a week before persuading mother to cook it. She gamely consented to try, providing Dad would clean it. She put the thing in a baking pan, fired up the wood-burning oven, and straightaway the whole house smelled like cooked carrion. I can still remember my mild-mannered mother threatening “Ed Wilson, if you ever bring another possum in this house, I will run you off!”

At the price for shells, Dad could not afford to hunt birds, but I remember once his watching grackles gather in enormous flocks in trees in our front yard. He came in the house, picked up his gun and shot at the densest cluster of birds in the tree. Nearly two dozen blackbirds fell and Mother, bless her heart, scalded, plucked and eviscerated every one of them and baked them in a blackbird pie. It was good, even considering that we had to spit out lead shot like watermelon seeds.

Deer and wild turkey were long gone, except for a few in swamps. Squirrels were fair game but you wouldn’t waste shotgun shells on them when .22 rifle shorts would do the job. Occasionally, we had to ask people from town to leave our farm, because they were hunting the same game that we depended on for sustenance.

It has nothing to do with the Depression, but I think that every male reader can identify with the situation I faced one very dark night. I was 6 years old when my dad took Mother over to Grammaw’s place to birth my little sister. Dad left me at home with Charles, age 11 and Earl, age 9, and left word for us to join them that night after milking the cows. We left as a group on the 3-mile walk, but my brothers wanted no part of a little kid holding up the parade. They left me to brave the dark. There was no moonlight and, of course, no street lights, so I found myself feeling for the crown of the road with my bare feet and sensing objects along the road. I navigated the trip without running into any barbed wire fences, partly because I had walked the road many times and had a map in my head. The experience served me well on later camping trips and when I had to fly in formation at night.

Jim Wilson, an honorary Master Gardener in eight states, was a presenter for 10 years on PBS’s “Victory Garden” and is the author of 10 gardening books. He now lives in Missouri and in this series remembers his youth in Vicksburg. Mail reaches him at 4200 E. Richland Road, Columbia, MO. 65201 and e-mail reaches him at gardengeezer@centurytel.net