THE FABRIC OF OUR LIVES

The indelible impact of country summers and cotton farming, as told by middle McMullen sister, Hedy Carter.

“You’ve got to consider that by this time, we were ‘city girls’,” Hedy said. “And by that, I mean, we lived in town. So going to Granny’s was unlike anything we were used to; they did everything themselves – milked cows, grew vegetables, all of it. We loved it when we got to go out there.

There were a bunch of tiny old buildings. There was the smoke house, the wash house, and the house Mama grew up in, which was, by that point, used for storage and was filled with trunks; we’re talking big, sturdy, real-life wooden trunks. And they’d let us play in all of it.

On one side of the main house, there was a concrete slab porch, and it was shaded by the oak tree in the afternoon. There was no AC, of course, so that’s where everyone would spend the afternoon; where they’d have lunch, where they’d shell their peas, where Granddad would sit and roll his Bull Durham, and where they’d all be our audience as we paraded through in the outfits we’d made from our trunk treasures.

Of course, nothing actually fit us – we were little bitty things -- but we’d turn it all into something. We’d pull up petticoats like sleeveless dresses and belt them and put on gloves and hats and whatever else, and we’d parade down that porch and Grandaddy would slap his knee, giggling. See, all the other grandkids were boys, so they’d get the biggest kick out of us.

Grandaddy would save his tobacco pouches, and we’d fill them up with real cotton we just grabbed from the field and make Barbie pillows. We made whole families – whole villages – of corn husk dolls. We played a lot of pretend out there. Kids just don’t play like that anymore. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”