Stories From Those Who Came Before

  When my brothers and I were growing up, many a late summer evening found us gathered around the living room at my grandparent house watching Ranger games, performing a ritual as ubiquitous as to be a rite of passage in the south. I am of course talking about shelling peas, shucking corn, and prepping vegetables for storage after harvest. I remember dreading shelling peas before we got started but then enjoying it all the same, especially when Papaw started telling his stories. Many of you found yourselves during harvest time gathered on front porches, living rooms, or kitchens huddled over washtubs or buckets while parents, grandparents, or even great grandparents shared stories to pass the time. Storing vegetables was crucial in times where money could be tight, in hard times, meat could be acquired through hunting, fishing, or butchering livestock but vegetables could only be had in certain times of year and some like beans and potatoes were hardy and could nourish large famili

 How do you know where to dig a well? Religion and Superstition has a long history in the south, the lines between often blurring, not truly together, or separate. Where these diametrically aligned forces meet, one could find many uses like telling the sex of a baby before it’s born, or when to plant crops, or where to dig a well. This is a story about using this mixing of religion and superstition to dig a well. Now here in Texas, there are only a handful of natural lakes spread across the states. Unless your home or farm is situated along a river or large creek, you must rely on wells, cisterns, or manmade lakes “tanks” for water and not just for your house, but for crops. My great grandfather, Emmett, needed to dig a well. The land where they lived and farmed was good land, but there were no large creeks or rivers close at hand. They lived about a mile away from Chamber Creek near what is now the shoreline of Richland Chambers Reservoir. Before he started, he went a got an old

  Did you know it is a sin to sell a dog? It is not by the way, but according to my great grandmother it is. Now we need some context, my great grandmother, Georgia Land Rash, was born in 1902 in Eureka, Texas. Her and my great grandfather were poor cotton farmers in Eureka, Texas. Her faith was something that she held dear and strove to impart on her children and grandchildren. My memories of her were limited. She died when I was in junior high. I remember visiting her with my grandmother and my middle brother. I remember her at family fish fries and get togethers. My recollection that has stayed with me the most is one that is a little sad, but I will share. She had Alzheimer’s and I remember my grandmother taking my middle brother and me to visit her in the nursing home. She would pat our hands ask us every few minutes if we picked cotton. We thought it a little funny, not grasping the gravity of her illness. Now we called and still call my grandmother “Mamaw.” My great gran