Events with my grandparents2

Sweet Potato Kisses was one of a favorite dessert that my grandmother would prepare for us.

The receipt of her potato kisses:

You take a small potato boil it with the jacket on and cook until done.

Peel the potato mash it up and roll it out. 

Add powder sugar and peanut butter to the center. 

Take all ingredients and roll into a ball and slice into pieces.

During the holidays my grandmother would spend hours making our Christmas presents.

She was very handy with a needle and thread. She would make for us sock monkeys, rag dolls, and dresses, every stitch was sown in love. 

My grandmother had very little when it came to income, she could stretch that dollar. 

She always had a Christmas tree beautifully decorated that would light up any room.

When she plugged the Christmas light into the wall sockets, the Christmas lights would start to bubble, the angel hair and icicles gleamed. 

She would make a pot of popcorn that we would string. She would take construction paper cut it into strips that we would glue together to make a rope to string on her tree.

My grandfather loved to smoke that Prince Albert tobacco and when he would run out of his tobacco, he would give us grandkids a nickel and we would walk to the store to buy him some smoking tobacco and white paper.

I loved to watch my grandfather take the white papers and roll his tobacco inside.

I remember once when I was outside playing, I stepped on a honey bee with my barefoot, my grandfather pulled the out stinger out of my foot and covered the swollen spot with some of his Prince Albert tobacco.

I know my grandfather had a kind heart, or my grandmother would have not married my grandfather. As the years progressed my grandfather depended on liquor.

When I was still very young, I remember sitting next to my grandfather on the sofa, as he told scary stories. 

The one I remember most was about bloody bones.

The story would end with my grandfather saying,

Going up one step, going up two-step and he would continue on counting going up the steps when all of a sudden he was shout out “GOT You” we would jump up with fright.

My grandfather loved the feel of earth with his hands. For many years my grandparents raised a vegetable garden that provided for food for them and they sold the access for income.

My grandparent's backyard was filled with apple trees peach trees, pear trees and plum trees that my grandmother would take and make jams and jellies and they sold the access for cash for this was their source of income.

My grandfather had one Chinaberry Tree that produced chinaberries which I never knew the use and they stunk to high heaven.

We were forbidden to climb in the fruit trees but that never stopped us.

My grandfather loved to tease us, he would tell us if we swallow a seed from any plant that they would grow inside of us.

It was my grandmother that introduced me to God and the church. 

I would ride with my cousin and grandmother to a small church on the north side of Sheffield. 

Mr. Ulman, a member of the church, volunteered to take my grandmother and her grandchildren to church for he passed by her house on his way to church. 

Not sure if Mr. Ulman was single but I know his wife never attended church. He was an older man so he could have been a widower.

If it had not been for Mr. Ulman my grandmother would have had to walk to church.

In Sunday class, I learned about Daniel and the Lions Den, about Adam and Eve, about Noah building the Ark, about Shadrack, Meshach, and Abednego and how the angel walked inside the blazing furnace with them. 

Each week we were given a pamphlet, which includes a picture of that week's lesson that we could take home,  which I treasured.

After Sunday school class, we would reassemble in the auditorium for Church.

There would be someone playing the piano and someone playing a (squeezebox) accordion.

It was amazing, the music that machine would belt out, a man would stand while compressing and expanding the bellows while pressing buttons on the right side of the accordion.

One of my favorite Christian songs that we sang during service was “WHEN THE ROLL IS CALLED UP YONDER.”

The preacher would give a long sermon and then he would be dismissed, everyone.

I remember one Sunday night after services and Mr. Ullman was driving us home when the right door on the passenger's side of his car flew open when Mr. Ullman turned left at the red light on North Montgomery Avenue when out flew my cousin right into the street.

Thank goodness we were not going too fast and she only had a few scratches on her elbow and hands.

My mom’s parents depended on my dad to take them places for my grandparents could not afford a car. 

When my grandmother wanted to visit her sister that lived on Penny Lane in Huntsville, everyone would load into my parent station wagon and we would ride to Huntsville. 

It would be a day trip and my aunt would prepare a nice meal for our visit.

My grandmother's father and step-mother lived in Town Creek.

When my grandmother wanted to visit her father, she and my grandfather would take the train from Sheffield to Town Creek. 

The Sheffield Depot was within walking distance from my grandparent's house.

In fact, the train tracks were so close that when I would spend the night at my grandparents, I could hear trains blowing their horns to warn people they were coming down the tracks as I lay in the bed trying to sleep.

Sometimes our whole family would pile into our station wagon, along with my grandparents and we would all ride to Town Creek.

I loved to visit my great grandfather he was a kind-hearted soul, a jolly man and very involved with us kids.

I remember my grand grandfather showing us how to put a straw stick into a hole, wiggle the straw and we would pull out a worm he called Chicken Chokers.

Chicken Chokers are larvae of tiger beetles that ambush predators of other insects, lying in wait in their burrows with their heads flush with the surface of the soil.  

The chickens do more harm to the larvae than the grubs.

My great grandparents lived in an old discarded military dining trailer that they had purchased from the army. 

In the middle of the trailer were three steps leading to the front door.

Once inside to the right was a large, round, oak dining table with a half-round bench encircling it.

A couple steps down was the living room with a couple of rockers and next to the rockers was their bed and standing just out from the wall was a coal heater. 

At the very end was the kitchen which had been build to cook for a large crowd of men at mess time.

My great-grandfather was visiting his son in Lakeland Florida when he passed away at the age of eighty. His body was returned back to Alabama where he was buried. 

The first funeral that I ever remember attending was that of my great-grandfather.