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Notable Relatives - Mary Ellen Dennis Hamilton
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To me she was “Mama” and now some thirty years after her death I still think of her by that name. Of all the people I came into contact with in my life Mama probably did more to shape my character and personality, my sense of what is right and wrong and my feelings toward others than any other person. It was when she was in her early forties that I spent much time at the farm and came to know her best. From the time that I was four in 1931 until I was 13 in 1940 I spent three months oif every nsummer and all long holidays at the farm near Plainview Texas where she and my granddad tried to scratch out a meager living by sharecropping. Those were the depression years in the U.S. and in the panhandle of Texas the height of the Dust Bowl years.My grandparents were dirt-poor. The only time there was any money from crops was in October when the cotton was picked and the rest of the year a trickle of money from the sale of eggs, cream and occasional sales of alfalfa hay.
But to see my grandmother you would never have thought that she was poor and didn’t know where her next nickle was coming from. She was a remarkably cheerful woman. She loved life and above all she loved children. She was never happier than when her house was filled with me and my cousins. She had one good dress which she wore to church every Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday evening and to town where she rarely went. It was always a difficult choice for me whether to go to town with my Grandad on Saturday or stay at the farm and “play” with Mama. Saturday was her baking day and she made cakes, cookies, pies and mountains of homemade bread on Saturday so as to have them on hand for Sunday lunch without breaking the Biblical sanction against labor on the Sabbath. I was her chief pot licker when she made cakes and pies.
Mary Ellen was a deeply devout Christian woman. The church we all attended was a small rural church in Aiken, Texas some four miles west of the farm by unpaved road. Mama was a Sunday School teacher there and my grandfather was Superintendent of the Sunday School and served as a lay preacher when The regular preacher, Brother Apple, could not make it through the mud or snow. Mama once told me in all sincerity, “Charles, it is a good thing that I am a Christian woman because I so love alcohol, tobacco and sex that I would be a fearful sinner if I wasn’t.”The church at Aiken was officially non-denominational but its doctrine and dogma were essentially Baptist or country Methodist which in those days were indistinguishable almost.The pastor was normally invited to eat at my Grandfather's house one Sunday of every month.
Despite the poverty at my grandparent's farm life was not grim. There was always plenty of food. Mama always had a large garden and she possessed the proverbial green thumb. The growing season on the high plains was not long but Mama always managed to make super vegetable crops which she canned with her pressure cooker so that there were vegetables for the table all year round. There was always chicken to eat and the first norther in the winter time brought about hog killing and much pork to cure and eat fresh. And Mama was an outstanding cook. Three meals a day were a social function as well as a means of sustenence. We all ate at the same time and it simply was not permitted to miss a meal. By common accord unpleasant subjects were not discussed at table.
Children were taught table manners and ritual and they atayed at table until all were finished unless they asked permission of Grandad to leave the table for some particular reason. Mama made cottage cheese at home, churned butter, made homemade ice cream, baked all the bread the family ate and cooked three sit-down meals a day for anywhere from five to fifteen people.And our clothing while patched and mended was always clean every day thanks to Mama's efforts with the gasoline powered washing machine in the back yard. All clothing must be starched and ironed also according to Mama's dictum including overalls and work clothing for the field.
She was a great game creator. Mama did not believe in boredom and the statement “I am bored” from one of us children received a stern lecture. She believed that every person had a duty to make the best of whatever circumstances surrounded them and to change those circumstances if we did not like them. Mama did not believe in being a victim, of anything. She taught us to make vases for flowers by coating Mason fruit jars with papier mache made from old newspapers soaked overnight in water. After sculpting the jars with this product we would let them dry and then paint them with watercolors or crayons as decoration. She taught us to lie on the top of the barn and study the clouds to see what figures could be made from them. She bought our warts for a penny apiece and bound them up with some kitchen concoction and on the third day we could remove the binding and the wart would . She taught us how to make kites and fly them. She knew dozens of kid's games to keep children occupied on rainy days and she frequently in the summer would go outside in the rain with us just to get wet and have fun. She taught us tio make "whizzers" of a length of string and a large button that made a delightful noise and was excellent for getting tangled in girls hair. And we were always Mama's advisor at the kerosene cooking stove getting tastes of things as they were cooked and offering our judicious opinion of whart was needed. When she cooked a chiken it was anatomy lesson time and she pointed out every internal organ in the chicken and explained its function. The anatomy that I learned there was every bit as accurate as Comparative Zoology later at the University. She was a great hoirticulturist and would explain how to graft or bud trees or select scion wood from a tree or how deep to plant seeds and why to do so.. Mama was our teacher.
It has been said that West Texas is hard on women and horses. The summers were hot and dry, the winters were windy and bitter cold. There was no carpeting, drapery or central heat or cooling in the farmhouse It was the height of the Dust Bowl and when a "duster" hit it filtered into the house. Mama was an immaculate house keeper and I have seen her shovel sand from her kitchen and living room floor with a grain scoop and then mop the floor with a rag mop maybe five or six times until it was clean again. There was no electricity. Lighting was by kerosene lamps. Refrigeration was in the "milk trough" on the back porch or by means of a thirty pound block of ice brought from Plainview on Saturday and kept covered in a quilt in a wash tub until it dwindled away on Tuesday or Wednesday. Cooking was done on a kerosene range with oven and there was a pot bellied stove in the living room that burned coal when we could afford it or corn cobs or scrap lumber when we couldn't. There was no heating at all in other rooms of the house. There was a privy about thirty yards from the back door that sufficed for personal needs twelve months of the year. Despite all of these difficulties there was almost no sickness in the family. Mama had five children under these conditions with the local physician arriving after every birth to look at the tying of the cord and to check expulsion of the afterbirth. Mama had three sisters living in the area, that is within fifteen miles, that were passable midwives as she was herself.
Sickness was almost non-existent on the farm. We all got plenty of exercise and a good healthy diet. Mama kept an eagle eye on everyone in the household and definitely believed in the efficacy of the old country doctor's dictum to "Rest a fever and keep the bowels open". She always had a box of "Black Draught" laxative handy and was not hesitant to poke it down your gullet at a moments notice. Minor farm injuries, splinters, blisters, cuts, abrasions and insect bites were Mama's specialty and she had a standard cure for each. She was quick to recognise the standard childhood diseases and we never consulted mna doctor on those.
Mama spent many long hours telling me stories of her childhood, of her days in school at High Mound in east Texas. She told of her brothers, her grim and stern father and her gentle caring mother who I remembered from my earliest memories. Mama laughed a lot. She remembered the funny things that people said. She would quote poetry that she had memorized in school and her take off on some of these poems was entertaining to a child.
She could make us all laugh with her rendition of:
Mabel little Mabel
Face against the pane,
Looked out across the night
And saw the beacon light
A'tremblin' in the rain.
This poem was rendered with maximum drama and accompanying gestures and many more verses about Little Mabel whose father never came back. We never tired of hearing Little Mabel's troubles. I have no idea who wrote the poem or any of the other verses.
Mama talked to us kids as equals. She solicited our opinion about political, religious and social matters. She would describe the marital disputes in the community and ask us what we thought went wrong that caused them. There was no subject off limits ar area of discussion too delicate for Mama to discuss with us---and she listened more than she talked. She loved us and she told us so. I miss her and do not think I shall see her equal again.
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