This story takes place way out in the country in Fentress County, Tennessee, just outside of Jamestown. The standard of living in 1966 was such that most of us now would think of it as a country farm style of living, or similar to the depictions of the Depression Era. There being very little money around, everyone had a strong “make do” orientation and got along with hand-me-downs, found items, and things you could trade for a few chicken eggs or a good piece of a butchered pig.
I had come to be in the area by virtue of helping my Uncle Joe drive back from California where he had been working for almost two years. My Uncle Joe was called “Junior” by his brothers and sisters since he had been named after his own Uncle Joseph A. Stockton of Fentress County Tennessee. My Uncle Joe was trying to make enough money to fix up an old house at the end of Stockton Road that had been bequeathed to his father, Henry Shelby Stockton by his grandfather Benjamin Randals Stockton. Uncle Joe Jr. came back from California with an old panel truck, which I helped drive, and some amount of money which was not disclosed.
Now, during the two years that Uncle Joe was gone, his wife and their 8 kids were put up in a house in a county housing development. I believe my Great Aunt Dosha (Theodocia Ross Randals), who worked for the City, had something to do with them getting that house. My first night in Jamestown at that time was spent in that county house as the guest of Uncle Joe and his wife, my Aunt Darlene. Their eldest, my cousin Raymond was only about a year and a half younger than I was then, so he was about 16 and a half or 17 maybe. That County house was small. Joe and Darlene had a room, and the 8 kids shared the other two available bedrooms. Aunt Darlene decided I was to be put up with my cousin Patty, about 14 years old, as she had a double bed whereas the rest were twin beds. There is a whole story to go with that!
But anyway, the first thing Uncle Joe did, after shaving off his two-years’ growth of beard, was to send me and Raymond to walk down to the store for an onion, a can of vegetable soup, a loaf of Rainbow white bread, a quart of milk and a Dolly Madison chocolate layer cake. Aunt Darlene was going to make us all dinner!
Me and Raymond tried to siphon off 3 cents to buy a candy bar, but they all had bugs in them so we left it on the shelf and brought home the change. When we got back, the next thing Uncle Joe did was to put that whole cake into a bowl, pour the milk over it, then eat it all like soup! Those 8 kids were near starving and hadn’t ever seen store-bought cake! They all avoided eye contact and left the room while he was eating. But then Aunt Darlene diced up the onion and boiled it in a big pot together with the one can of vegetable soup. As it began to boil, she kept adding water until the whole pot was full of steaming onion vegetable soup, a bit diluted as you might imagine. Aunt Darlene fed the kids first, not including me or Raymond and then washed the same bowls for the adults to eat. The four of us sat and had a bowl of thin soup and a slice of Rainbow white bread for our dinners.
In those years there was almost no work to be had in Fentress County, but my cousin Raymond, the eldest of Joe’s children, had gotten himself a job for fifty cents a day to put out the hay for a field full of dry cows. That was about all the work there was for hire, except jobs at the local chicken slaughterhouse, or the lumber yard, which were much coveted and hard to get. Quite a few local families lived off truck driving and manual labor jobs. There was some kind of family connection that got Raymond that job, but I could never quite discern what it was.
Raymond also had a girlfriend, Beatrice, whose family lived in a shack that was located below the Stockton Family Cemetery. They had lived there for years rent free since no one was really sure who that plot belonged to anyway. Raymond took me out there to meet everyone, the parents Ann and Robert, an older brother (also Robert) who had his own car, and three younger children running around the dirt yard with a few chickens.
The shack was 3 rooms with an outhouse. The previous autumn Raymond had contributed some money to the purchase of tar paper to put on the roof to stop the rain from coming in. They had also bought hinges for the front door, but nobody had tried to hang the door yet. So, the door was customarily left open all day and then propped into place in the evening once everyone was home or whenever it got too cold in the house.
Most nights, Raymond slept there in the one bedroom that their family shared, understandable given the crowd at the county house and that his girlfriend was there too. The shack also had a kitchen with a wood-burning cooking stove and another room that served as parlor, dining room and everything else. Darned if Raymond didn’t go and get me invited to dinner! After the soup episode I was grateful. It turned out we were going to have chicken and mashed potatoes! A feast!
The chickens usually ran in and out of the house through the open front door and usually no one bothered to chase them out. But at this juncture, Ann commanded Raymond to “close the door”. This meant going outside to get the door from where it leaned against the wall, then go backwards up the two steps to the front entrance and drag the door into place as you go. Well, this had the effect of trapping a couple of chickens inside and Ann proceeded to capture one of them. What a madhouse ensued! “Raymond, open that door!” Ann shouted. So he did and the remaining free chicken ran out.
At that point Robert asked me if I had any money, which I did have about eighty-five cents. Raymond had fifteen cents and the younger Robert had a quarter. The old man dug in his own pocket for whatever sum was there, then instructed his son, “go down and get us some wine or beer for dinner, son”. The younger Robert got me and Raymond and an older boy to push that car downhill as far as we could before he started it. It would only start by being put in gear while moving and then letting out the clutch with the ignition on. It was commonly done, and we called it “popping the clutch”. Robert set off in that car of his while the older Robert, Raymond and I started a fire out in the front yard.
There was a galvanized tub laying in the yard, ready to hand, in which we put some water and set it up on some rocks so that it was over the fire. This water never quite boiled, but it did get pretty hot. Ann wrung the neck of that hen and plunged the still kicking chicken into the hot water, holding it by the legs. The feathers practically fell off as she plucked it and got that chicken almost ready to be cooked. After Ann gutted the hen, I got the job of picking out all the little feathers and quills still stuck in the skin while Raymond and his girlfriend had to wash the potatoes. Now these were not potatoes like you might be thinking – no, these had been scavenged from a field that was already harvested. So they were pretty motley, cut and bruised and misshapen. But there was quite a lot of them. They looked pretty good after most of the defects had been cut out. Raymond and Beatrice washed them in the still-warm water in the tub.
Meantime Ann had fired up the cooking stove, which always had a small fire or hot coals saved, and it was blowing big flames out the top. About ready to cook! It didn’t seem long until the younger Robert was back holding up a big gallon bottle of red wine. “It was only 89 cents” he crowed. Red Mountain Wine I read on the label. Ann had already boiled the potatoes and cut the chicken into all the right pieces. Beatrice mashed the potatoes while Ann fried the chicken in its own fat in a frying pan over the open flames of the wood stove. It really started to smell good!
The elder Robert had brought in two 8 gallon wood barrels and a paint bucket from the yard to make up enough seating spaces around their rustic table. There were a total of nine mouths to feed that Thanksgiving.
Ann shouted at the kids to wash their hands, and Beatrice shooed them all out to the warm water in the tub still perched above the embers of the fire. Later when we all sat down, I noticed the place settings were each one different than the others. By virtue of being a guest I suppose, I was given a plate, a fork and a water glass. Others had to use a variety of implements, a used aluminum pie plate, a serving dish, one child had only a spoon and the old man used his pocket knife in lieu of any utensils. The wine was served in tin cups, pewter cups, one cup from a tea set and there was actually one wine glass that was given to Ann. Of course the kids got the worst cuts of chicken, but they all got some wine too.
Raymond put the door back into place in the door hole, and Ann left the old cook stove burning to warm the place. No matter the eclectic collection of odd place settings and the funny barrels and buckets to sit on, everyone around the table was smiling and digging in. Looking back on the whole episode, I have to say that was probably the best time I ever had with my cousin Raymond, and not the worst Thanksgiving I ever had either!