More Molly's Country Memories

Mule Teams and Pig slop....
When we moved back to Brookhaven from New Orleans in 1949, we had a family that lived down the lane from us. Emmel and Clementine Hudson, they had 12 kids, 4 close to mine and my Sister’s age…. Together we were bad to the bone, poor Clementine…lol…
A little background..... My Grandfather not only farmed over a hundred acres and had cows and pigs, (did I ever mention I hate pigs.) He made a decent living, he never got rich, but that was never important to him. He also had a freight hauling business for nearly 45 yrs. He was know as a drayman, he hauled freight by mule team. We had a railroad that ran through Brookhaven and he would haul freight from the train station to the little communities near by that didn’t have a Rail Road.
That was so awesome to me. I loved the mule teams.

This is not a picture of them but what they looked like.

They were extremely big Jack’s and very ill tempered, no one but Granddaddy or Emmel could handle them, but if Shirley happen to be around them, they wouldn’t move a muscle, she could crawl all over them and they wouldn’t even swat a fly with their tails…isn’t it amazing how Animals can sense a special child. Anyhow he had switched to a truck in the late 30s", but had kept the mules for working on the farm..

Back to Emmel, he had worked for my Grandpa for about 12 yrs helping load and unload freight, remember Grandpa had a wooden leg so he couldn’t do a lot of carrying. Grandpa started going down around 1945 he had a heart problem, so in 1949, he gave up his business and stopped farming the 100 acres. The problem was my Grandpa was a special person, he loved the man working for him and couldn’t stand the thought of Emmel being out of work, so he made a deal with him, he could move his family into a house on the place that he’d built for my uncle, when he first got married, Uncle Reggie had since moved to Beaumont, TX, in the 30s and didn’t live there, it was just sitting empty. And he could farm the land, Grandpa didn’t want to see the land go down and lay ferule , neither one of his boys cared for farm life, they had long moved to the city. He was not going to be a share cropper, Grandpa didn’t want him to give him anything for the house or the land, he was to take care of it as if it was his own and what ever he earned was his, I only mention this because so many people think that if a Black man worked a white man’s land in the South it was as a sharecropper, but this wasn’t the case, all Granddaddy asked of Emmel was when he died for Emmel to look after Mom and make sure no one mistreated her.

My Mom and Uncle Norman in front of the Farm House 1953

Granny and Jimmy in 1952 in front of the old gate.
Even though my Granddaddy was a kind and loving man, the same could not be said about my Grandmother, she was a cruel, mean, hateful woman, and even though GD loved my momma dearly my Granny didn’t, she had 1 child and 1 child only and that was Uncle Norman. She hated us being there, she didn’t love my little Shirley at all. She called her that retard…can you imagine your own Granddaughter, and an Angel on top of that? To be totally honest, I didn’t know you were suppose to love your Grandmother, I was always so in awe and couldn’t understand when kids at school talked about their Grandmother doing this or giving them that…the only think my Granny gave me was the back of her hand or a cussing, and boy could she cuss. Poor Granddaddy he loved her, why I don’t know. I do believe when she passed she still had the first penny she ever made. I remember ever Sat morning while Momma worked she would load me, Dean and Shirley into her old ‘41 Dodge and make her rounds to all the big shots houses and gathered up the week’s worth of slop to take home to feed the pigs rather than buy pig food, Granddaddy would tell her, Molly you don't have to get slop, we aren't that poor. But she wouldn’t listen. You've never lived till your known as the slop woman's grand child. We lived in a small town and everyone knew everyone . . Grandpa lived untill 1950...we loved living with him, I remember setting on his wooden leg combing his white hair, he had beautful white hair. He would set for hours and let us comb his hair and tell us stories about his freight hauls.
I don’t want this to get too long, so I will stop and write more later, be sure and stop back by and check out the next edition…. Mary, Grandma, Bear, Bug, and the sunken boat.....