NOW JUST HOW GOOD WERE SOME OF THESE GOOD OLD TIMES

WHEN I WAS A CHILD IN MAIDEN

Lets start with how we use to get meat...
I can remember making a few chickens' death not such a pleasant thing. Then of course you had to scald them, pick them and do the dreaded thing of taking out the insides.
The chicken and dumplings were the best part of it.

New Way... go to Slick's, buy a chicken.

New Way... Go to Linberger's Grocery

Old Way...
New Way... Go to Linberger's, make good sausage

Then cooking this meat was another story.
We did not have electricity until I was about 10 years old. My grandchildren think I was born about 300 years ago when I tell them we cooked on a wood stove, had a coal stove to keep warm and myself and my sister got under the wood stove with the cats and kept warm. Of course, only having oil lamps was just unheard of. And No T.V., this could't be. Of course they think I have lost everything when we discuss the outhouse. And the jar under the bed, oh this was just too much for them to handle.

Think ours was a little higher, we could get under it with the cats.

Of course the most fun thing we did in the summer is make homemade Pineapple Ice Cream. Never changed the flavor, my sister to this day can't stand Pineapple Ice Cream, and still one of my favorites. If it was not ice cream, we would get to go to Clifton Hewitt's store and get penny candy and a drink, now those were the good old times. Those suckers with one on each end, the sugar daddy suckers and all the other tooth decaying things we could find.

Well, Old Maude was our horse. She helped dad plow the field and we used to love to ride on her. One time I couldn't steer this thing too well and she took me against the barn and took all the skin off my legs. My grandmother knew that mother was going to put something that would probably hurt on them and covered them with oil of some kind so it wouldn't hurt. We used to ride the sled in the fields and I got my fingers caught under it several times and took off my fingernails, didn't learn the first time. We would haul watermelons from over about where the Baptismal Hole for the Baptist Church was. Best Watermelons in the world to me.

We use to make our own butter, but our churn was a little different than this one. We always loved to mold the butter into pretty shapes. The best part was the homemade biscuits with butter and jelly, and all the sugar cookies my grandmother use to make. Of course we loved our Aunt Flossie Beard's coconut and whip cream cake and her pound cakes she would always make. My very favorite pie my mother made was an egg custard pie with peach halves on top, I could eat the entire pie. Of course Damson pie was always a favorite for us and also the damson preserves for the biscuits. Living in Washington State now, I have three damson trees in my yard. Can't give the things away, no one out side the south has a clue what to do with them. I also have 4 North Carolina fig bushes at my house, they shouldn't live here either. I come to Maiden every year and bring back my bean seeds from Piedmont Hardware and keep my little part of Maiden in my back yard all the time. As the old saying goes, you can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl.

Now lets talk about those beauty aids.
Well kids back in the old days they did things to make themselves beautiful just like today.

Natural Astringents:
Peeled cucumbers or use lemon juice or rose water

Skin Freshener:
A strong mint tea facial

Instant Skin Cleanser:
Get a lather up with mild soap. Sprinkle some kitchen-type cornmeal in the lather and rub and scrub your face with the mixture. Guess if you had skin left it was a good thing.

Bathing in Vinegar:
Well I like Dial myself, but what ever. My grandmother use to make Lye Soap, now that was a soap. But lots of people say that if you bathe in 1 cup apple cider vinegar and about 8 inches of warm water and scrub with a rough cloth or body brush this will make a new woman out of you. Now of course with no electricity, it was the old wash tub in the kitchen on Saturday night for us. Now those were fond memories.

Toothpaste:
You can use common table salt for a toothpaste or a little baking soda never hurt. If you put a drop of Oil of Spearmint, Cinnamon or Cloves it will help the breath as well.

Hair:
3 tablespoons vinegar per half gallon water will make it shine.

Well judge for your self which you like, the Old or the New, on all of these wonderful things.
There were lots of others, but this is a few.

Making brooms:

The only thing we use to make is kites out of broom straw, that grew out in the pasture and a piece of paper with a roll of string, We also used to fly June Bugs, placing a string around their leg and letting them be our airplanes. I don't remember if we had to make our broom, but we probably did.

New way, go to Abernathy's in East Maiden and buy one.

I know lots of people grew cotton around Maiden. We used to go over to Uncle Marion Williams and he grew lots of cotton. Lots of the family would pick it for them. Don't think we ever had flax, but that was a lot of years ago. We always dreaded summer when the wheat was ripe and all the wheat mites would bite us. One of my favorite memories is, we would always go to corn shucking at Henry Stories' house. This of course, would be in the fall and the children would have a wonderful time playing, and not shucking very much corn. My mother and grandmother would always quilt and it was set up out under the car shed. Mother liked to sew and I had a new dress almost every week for Church. We would go up to the Dixie Mill and pick out the feed sacks we wanted, because back in those days they were printed with flowers or pretty patterns. So this was one of my sister and my favorite things to do, was pick out what material our new dress would be.

Being a child in Maiden was a wonderful experience, we had lots of close family and friends. We were never bored with life and didn't have to sit in front of a T.V., we didn't have electricity. Our toys were usually hand made and we built make-believe houses and tried to can our own food, which of course spoiled, it was water and weeds or something awful we dreamed up in our housekeeping efforts. All of that is what has made me who I am today. I still can lots of things, make all my own flavored vinegars and still do a lot of the old way things. I would talk my sister into the sewing and I would do the cooking, some things never change.


So treasure everything your grandmother, mother or favorite Aunt or Uncle told you to do.
Those Old Days were not so bad in many ways, if nothing more, it is what history is made of and very good memories.

Mary Elizabeth Rink Harbinson
2003