Yep, here's another one: JAKE BACHELOR FARM By Wilton Strickland
In January 1945, we moved to the Jake Bachelor farm on a dirt road a mile and a half from the small town of Nashville, NC. I was very happy to be reunited there with school friends I had left a year earlier. We would graduate from high school together in '52. My oldest brother, Richard, his wife and their five-year-old son, George Richard, lived in a small house near us on this farm to fill a gap in the family's work force caused by Carson's entry into the Army in October '44. During the summer, I helped my brother, W. B., build a shower in an enclosed shelter attached to one of the outbuildings. (None of the farmhouses we lived in had a bathroom or any indoor plumbing.) We put a galvanized metal washtub up on top of the shelter to hold water for our showers. We filled the tub bucket-by-bucket, then let the water sit in the sun for several hours to be heated. We simply laid a couple of boards on the dirt floor in the shelter to serve as the shower floor. A gallon Karo syrup can with nail holes in the bottom of it and mounted over a hole in the roof served as our shower-head. I would go up on the roof and, using another syrup bucket, pour water into the "shower-head" for W. B.'s shower, and he would pour for me. We were the only farm boys for miles around getting a hot daily shower. We enjoyed them immensely! Joyce and I would occasionally walk the short distance into town for a Saturday afternoon movie whenever we were lucky enough to have a dime each to splurge on the admission fee. We were "movin' on up," and I began to decide that I was going to do well in school and try to become "somebody." As usual, I was the trucker during tobacco harvest season. One of the mules I had to manage was almost always somewhat ornery - 'probably didn't like taking instructions and orders from a little boy. Near lunch time one day, immediately after I had hitched the mule to an empty truck at the barns, the mule suddenly took off. I was between the back legs of the mule and the front of the truck and was almost run over by the truck. I quickly jumped out of the way, and as the truck came past me, I jumped up on the back of it, trying to stay with the mule and control him. He would have none of that, though, and took off in a full gallop toward his stable. En route he pulled the truck across a large tree root, causing the truck to bounce high in the air and throw me off. I landed hard on the ground on my tailbone. The blow hurt terribly, and I could not get up or walk for several minutes. I finally hobbled to the stables, where I found the mule calmly getting a drink of water. I let him finish drinking, then we proceeded to the field for the last load before lunch. In April we heard on the radio that President Roosevelt had died - a sad time for all of us. We also heard on the radio in May that the war in Europe had ended and in August that the Japanese had surrendered, and World War II had ended. W. B., Joyce and I were so overcome with joy, we jumped in the car and went barreling up and down the road blowing the horn and shouting out the windows. I'm amazed we didn't crash uncontrollably. We were extremely happy that the carnage had ended and that our three brothers and two of our uncles, Mama's brothers, had survived and would soon return home. Often, at the end of tobacco harvesting season, Daddy would barbecue a pig. He would dig a shallow hole in the ground near the tobacco curing barns, lay a piece of heavy fence wire and iron rods over the hole to support the pig halves and use hot, hardwood coals from the barn furnaces to slowly cook the pig all night, dousing it often with his homemade sauce of vinegar, hot peppers and other spices. Daddy sometimes cooked a pot of "Brunswick" stew on the fire with the pig also. This is a delicious, thick soup containing most types of vegetables found on the farm plus small pieces of beef, pork and/or chicken as available. I'm sure some makers of the stew have also included deer, 'coon, 'possum, turtle, rabbit and squirrel when available. (Even some local dogs and cats have been jokingly rumored to have been missing after Brunswick stew has been made on the farm.) Meanwhile, Mama cooked cornbread sticks, made potato salad, slaw, iced tea, etc., to make the celebration feast complete. This is probably how "pig pickins" and eastern North Carolinians' love of barbecue and Brunswick stew started -- in celebration of completing the tobacco harvest.
Wilton
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