I spent last month’s New Years Eve with my Me Ma in her nursing home.  She can barely hear, and being 97 years old she has good days and bad days.  Sometimes having conversations with her is a struggle because her mind is a fog, other days her mind is clear and you can chat for 3-4 hours.  Her mind is like a satellite on a cloudy or clear day, the reception coming and going.  Luckily that night she was chatty and in the mood to reminisce.

I want to record some of what she and I talked about for posterity, before I forget the details, and because they are simple stories of a bygone era.

We talked about her growing up on her farm.  Back then, everybody in the dairy farming community drank Jersey cow milk, not the black and white spotted holstein milk we all drink today.  Jersey milk costs more money to process so you don’t see it being used on a mass scale.  Me Ma’s family had a Jersey milking cow.  She would tell me how her mother would make cream from the milk, and they would take it down to the local train station and sell it, where it would depart on the train, destination unknown.  This would have been 1925-1930 and the trains were not refrigerated in those parts.  Me Ma remarked about where in the world was that cream going off to where it would be okay without refrigeration, and what were they going to use it for?  She shook her head in wonderment.  We’ll never know.

We talked about Miss Essie.  Miss Essie was a Native American woman who lived at the end of the long dirt road that my family had their farm on.  As a little girl in the 1980s Me Ma and I would stop and visit with her in her home nearly every time we headed out to tend to the farm animals and gardens.  Her house sat up on really high stilts, with a rickety porch and she took in stray cats so there were dozens and dozens of cats always milling around.  Miss Essie wore her hair down to the floor, and she always had something cooking on the stove.  Me Ma tried for years to get her recipes for her teas and soups as they were delicious and medicinal but she refused to ever write them down.  I would sit at her kitchen table while they chatted and eat a cookie or some other treat.  I sat at many kitchen tables as a kid in those farming communities.  Most of the farmers were World War II vets.  Some, in the case of Miss Essie’s husband, were World War I vets.  He died before I ever had a chance to meet him.  His lungs were scarred by the mustard gas, and he was never well after the war.  The entire time I knew Miss Essie she lived by herself.  On this particular New Years Eve down memory lane Me Ma mentioned how the nursing home recently served them sauerkraut as part of their dinner.  She said it had made her think of Miss Essie, as she kept a large ceramic pot of sauerkraut on her back porch that had a big piece of wood over the top of the pot with a big rock to hold it down.  When Miss Essie would be chatting and cooking at her stove sometimes she would step outside, remove the lid, bend down and take the lid off while using her bare hands to scoop up a big handful of sauerkraut.  It was never kept indoors.

Me Ma’s dad was best friends with the town banker, a man named Mr. Prim who started the first bank located in the city.  Mr. Prim and my great grandfather had been horsing buddies growing up, meaning they rode horses together out in the pastures as young lads.  This was the late 1800s rural Texas equivalent of being drinking buddies.  The county and surrounding counties of this era were not only rural but also dry so there weren’t any bars around, and none of them really drank anyway.   Mr. Prim came to my great grandfather for advice on banking and business when he went to start the first bank as my great grandfather was a savvy businessman.  He also came to him for other things.

On New Years Eve Me Ma told me a story I had not heard before.  She was around 4-5 years old when this event happened so this would have been 1924-1925.  Mr. Prim came to the house one evening, late.  Me Ma said at that age she used to hide behind her dad’s pants leg so she was always with him.  Mr. Prim was a towering man to her so his presence always intimidated her.  That particular night he told a story to her father about how the KKK was planning on running out a new black family to the community that had just moved in.  Unfortunately the KKK was very active in this area in the 1920s, and had been setting many fires and conducting lynchings.  Mr. Prim wanted my great grandfather to go warn them before the KKK had a chance to reach the family first.  Me Ma said she never understood why Mr. Prim couldn’t do it and wanted her dad to do it.  Nonetheless that same night after Mr. Prim left my great grandfather loaded Me Ma up on his horse and they rode across the community to this farm house.  Me Me said the woman who answered the door was as nice as she could be, she scooped Me Ma up in her arms in a hug and gave her cookie.  Me Ma said she could still remember how delicious that cookie was.  The floors were made of dirt, and there were the whitest most cleanest curtains hanging on the walls over the windows.  My great grandfather sat at the kitchen table and talked with the husband and wife while Me Ma had a 2nd cookie.  They then left.  The next morning the family was gone, Me Ma said she never saw them again.  They had escaped.

We talked about the animals.  Animals were always a big theme, from farming animals to strays to wild creatures.  Me Ma told of how my grandfather (her husband) in the 1950s wanted to raise pheasants.  He had big plans, they spent a ton of money building huge pheasant runs and pheasant houses, until one day the game warden stopped by and told them it was illegal to keep them contained and that they must immediately set them all free.  Me Me said they dutifully did as they were told, and watched them as they flew/ran away across the fields.  She said a one of them decided to stick around and made a nest for himself in the big group of trees at the end of the dirt road by turn off at the two lane highway.  Me Ma talked about what great joy and pleasure it brought her to be on the lookout for the pheasant each time she drove home down the highway, until one day she was driving home and saw a man passing her in his pickup in the other lane.  He spotted the pheasant, reached back behind his head to where he kept his rifle on his gun rack, and while still driving leaned his shotgun out the open window and shot and killed the pheasant, and kept on driving.

Me Me and I sat in silence after this for many seconds, the beeps from the foot compressor machine intermittently going off.  She asked me if I wanted a bite of her brownie the nursing home had delivered with dinner, it still wrapped tightly in saran wrap and sitting on her tray table.  I declined.