Memories of Iva Della Robinson (as told by family members and transcribed by granddaughter LaDell)
By Wilma Robinson Payne (fourth daughter of Iva Della)
We use to get up at 4 a.m. to milk approximately 30 cows most of the time.
Mom always took a nap (which we all should) but you know 3-5 kids playing Annie-over, Blackman, Hide And Seek, etc. could not be quiet. So when we would wake her up, she’d find very good use of the many, many elm trees Dad had planted around our home. I was smarter in books than Fred but he would scream before he was hit and I would be beat to death. When I’d go around the corner of the house, he’d be laughing at me. Why I couldn’t figure that out, Tarus the Bull stubborn, I guess.
When a neighbor was ill, Mom and Dad went to visit and we played cowboy and outlaw, climbing the trees. I got up in this huge elm tree and a large limb broke and we fell down on the one-row binder. Carney told me how much trouble I would be in when they got home so I ran the large limb up to the west pasture so they wouldn’t find it.
On Sunday, mom always cooked enough for Coxie’s Army. She didn’t know what family of kids would come in of our Aunts and Uncles. We’d chase the chickens down before we went to Sunday School. She cleaned them by cutting at the breast and skinned them after she would wring their heads off. One day she was gone and when we killed them, we had to chop their head off with an ax. I said, “I’ll wring their necks off. I twisted their body around several times while I was holding the head and knew I had the neck off, but when I threw it down, the chicken got up and ran away. So we had to chase it down again and use the ax.
I always had to take the feathers off to the gully in the pasture. I was going through the barn lot and we had a new calf (or Red did). As I came through the lot, she started to chase me and I know I went under the four-barbwire fence. But Carney and Fred were getting wood between the house and barn and Carney said that I jumped the fence. I did cry but they laughed and laughed and I didn’t get any sympathy at all. Whatever happened to the bucket and who brought up the wheat in the bucket for the chickens, I do not remember because I went to the bedroom and cried. I was scared.
We had gravy 3 meals a day. Plenty of milk and Mom could bake the “Best Biscuits” ever. For breakfast we would have gravy, eggs, oats, biscuits, syrup, jelly and cow butter. Dad always got cases of Penny syrup. I think it was half-gallon cans. I would always have my syrup and butter mixed with a fork and sop my syrup with the delicious biscuits. Milk was our beverage too.
We had a front porch before Dad and Mom built on the 2 front rooms. We were playing tag out there and I was a smart aleck I guess. Anyway, I was kicking my legs up and fell on concrete. I got up and made it back to the edge before I got caught. Carney died laughing, saying the only thing that saved me was all the syrup and butter I had eaten.
Mom use to enjoy us girls cutting her nails, toenails too, and fixing her up pretty. We’d use matches for eyebrows; naturally burned ones to make her brows blacker and put rose on her cheeks and all.
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