But For the Price of a Pig
© Janice Bumbalough Marler
“Carlos, I have a pig for sale. I only want five-dollars for her. What’d ya say about taking her off my hands?” “Let me look at her first.” He must have liked what he saw, because my grandfather bought my father’s piglet. Carlos was my grandfather’s real name, but everyone in the family called him Poppy. I often thought it was a strange that my grandfather was called Poppy because Spanish children call their father’s Poppy. My grandfather wasn’t Spanish. Oops, I’m getting ahead of my story. It began something like this.
Saturday night, the 14th of December 1935, registered temperatures in the low 30’s; it was too cold outside for man or beast. Winters white snows blanketed the ground with its beauty. The only heat in the two-story, five-room, farm house came from a pot-belly stove in the living room and the large black wood cook stove in the kitchen. One could hear the insensate voice of the wind whispering through the thin walls making it more difficult to heat the up stairs. A chimney stood in the middle of the room but the heat it generated was sparse. On either end of the huge bedroom were windows made from wood. This didn’t help.
The wood stack was located not far from the back porch. Mother’s brothers used a cross saw to cut the already felled trees and an iron wedge was used to split the logs. Some of the split wood was then placed on the back porch, in a bin, and some was kept in the house beside both stoves. It didn’t take long for the wood to burn; that meant another trip outside to the wood stack. It was difficult at best, in the cold, sawing and splitting logs but someone had to do it. They knew a warm fire awaited their icy cold hands and feet when they were through.
It was understood that my uncles were to cut wood for the fire; they were obedient. This was a given. They would have never disrespected my grandfather nor questioned his instructions. They did as they were told to do. If they murmured it was certainly under their breath or out of earshot. Children respected their elders, their grandparents, and their parents in those days of yore. To disrespect my grandfather meant sudden reprimand. It just wasn’t done. My mother, on the other hand, heard a different drummer.
Water was drawn from a well located approximately thirty-feet from the back porch. A long aluminum pipe was lowered down into the well; when it was brought back to the surface, it yielded some of the coldest water Tennessee had to offer up. A water bucket, with a dipper sat on a table beside the icebox. (There was no refrigerator). Everyone drank from the same dipper. Water for Saturday night baths was heated in buckets on the stove then poured into a large aluminum tub in the kitchen.
Irons, to iron clothes, were made out of wrought iron. They too were heated on the kitchen stove. There was no electricity at the farm house. Light was given, in the evenings, by oil lamps. People talked and spun tales in front of the pot belly stove in the evenings. Bed time was eight o’clock sharp because a normal day, in my grandparent’s home, began at four in the morning. The cattle needed to be fed and the cows milked. Grandma would sit by her window in the kitchen and churn the fresh cream from the milk into butter.
My grandfather was a soft spoken man, a man of authority. He was a no nonsense man. There was more to him than met the eye. He was also a tender hearted man; he was a man that loved his family.
Poppy raised cattle and hogs for market. He planted fields of wheat, corn, and tobacco. The corn and wheat were for the animals and the tobacco went to Crossville to the tobacco barns. My grandfather was an enterprising man. He knew how to support and take care of his family.
When my father pulled the wool over my grandfather’s eyes, he never forgave my father. He went to his grave hating him. Poppy’s ego took a powerful blow. He didn’t see it coming. He was blindsided.
My mother was the second child born to my grandparents. She was seventeen when she and daddy planned their elopement. In fact, she had just turned seventeen in October. Dotty was thirteen months older than mother.
They were the oldest of thirteen living children. There was five years difference in my parent’s ages. My father’s family and my mother’s family had known each other most of their lives. My paternal grandparents lived next door to the church building. Oh the power of love.
“Come on. Go with me to church tomorrow.” My mother pleaded with her oldest sister. “It’s too cold and I don’t feel like walking that far.” “Please, please. I will never ask you to walk with me that far again.” She sounded pitiful. The trek to the church building was approximately four and a half miles from the house. Dotty wanted nothing but to stay in where it was warm. This meant if she caved in, and agreed to go, she would have to heat water, fill the aluminum tub for bathing, press her clothes and roll her hair. It meant getting up early to get to church on time. There would be no sleeping in. Dotty shivered when she thought about the long, dreaded walk in the cold.
This was the first time she had ever heard mother plead like she did. Dotty thought she was certainly over anxious to go to church on Sunday. She dismissed her thoughts and agreed to go.
Sunday Morning: December 15, 1935
“Are you ready?” mother asked anxiously. “Just about. Give me a few minutes to comb my hair.” Two or three minutes later she asked Dotty again. Those two or three minutes seemed like an eternity. “Dotty. Hurry up or we will miss the first hymn.” Dotty thought to herself, “She sure is antsy this morning.” Dotty didn’t suspect anything out of the norm.
“Make sure you shut the gate so Shep doesn’t get out.” Mother ordered Dotty. “I always shut the gate.” At first they walked together. Approximately three miles into the long, arduous walk, mother lagged behind. Dotty, on the other hand, wanted to get to the church building as fast as possible. She stepped up her pace as she leaned into the glacial wind, her head bowed, and her hands clasping her coat to her frozen body.
The brisk cold, windy air would wrap its arms around them, freezing them to death before they would sit around the pot-bellied stove, located near the podium in the church building, to get thawed out.
Not at any time did she look back to see where mother was. As she stepped through the door of the church building people began asking her about mother. “She’s right behind me. She’ll be here soon.” “Are you sure of that?” asked my aunt Eula. “Yes, I’m sure. Why?” “Didn’t you know she got married this morning?” “She what?” “She got married this morning.”
Now Dotty knew why mother was lagging behind.
What am I going to tell daddy? I just know he’s going to fly into a rage when he hears this. He’s going to blame me for certain. They were right. mother never showed up for the church service. All the way home Dotty plotted in her mind what she would tell their father. She was right. He flew into a rage. “You knew all about this didn’t you? You helped her!” “I didn’t. I promise you I didn’t.” My grandfather refused to listen to the truth.
He kept badgering her. “I had no idea until I got to church. Eula told me what they had done.” Dotty began to cry uncontrollably. My grandfather relented in his accusations. The deed was done. There wasn’t anything anyone could do about it.
He had been hoodwinked by my father. My father would tell me later that he took the five-dollars my grandfather gave him for the pig to buy their wedding license and a wedding ring. Daddy had made arrangements with a Baptist minister to perform the wedding on the road to the church. He told his family that he would be bringing his new bride home to live with them.
Mother was a slick one. A week after the wedding they finally went back to see my grandparents. Three years later I was born and seventeen and a half years later I was joined by a baby sister. My father was a good provider, a faithful and dutiful husband and father. If he had lived until December 15th of 1995, they would have been married sixty years.