Photographed at First Monday, Canton, Texas
One of my favorite finds at First Monday in Canton last week was this old cast-iron pot. It brought back memories of my grandmother ~ at least one of them. One of my grandmothers was fairly affluent. After about 1936 she drove a new Buick every year. Even though she lived in the country, she got up every morning and put on makeup and jewelry and stockings before she donned her apron.
My other grandmother was a little less privileged. I remember when she still stoked a fire under a huge iron pot (much, much bigger than this one) to do the weekly laundry, when she churned butter, when she got her first indoor toilet in the early 1950s. She is the grandmother that came to mind when I saw this pot. It was probably no more than 20 inches in diameter and I barely had the strength to pick it up. It was for sale for $30. My grandmother probably paid 2 bits for hers (that's a quarter to those of you who don't know).
As I often struggle through the day to get everything done that I want to accomplish, I often think of her and what her life was like. She got up before dawn every day of her life, built a fire in the fireplace and the wood stove, made biscuits from scratch, sliced bacon from a slab that she had fetched a few days before from the smokehouse, ran out in the cold and found a few eggs in the chicken coop, fixed breakfast for her husband and a bunch of little kids who were always hungry, got the husband off to work in the fields and the kids on their way to school ~ a walk of several miles. After breakfast came cleaning the house, working in the garden during the spring and summer, mending and sewing clothes from flour sacks in the winter, canning the vegetables in the late summer and fall, milking the cow, feeding the chickens, slaughtering one for supper, baking a pie, scrubbing the floor on her hands and knees. At dark the kids and the man would come in from the fields expecting more biscuits or cornbread and a hot meal, which seldom was enough to sate their appetites. She washed the dishes in a big metal bowl with hot water from the stovetop, got the kids ready for bed, said prayers with them and kissed them goodnight. All this while she was pregnant nine months out of the year. How did she do it I ask.
And I think about picking up this pot that I can barely lift and I think about her, sweat rolling down her brow as she cooked beans or potatoes or something to fill their bellies, and I scream out to her and say, "You go girl. You made us what we are."
Her name was Era Pullen Strong. All us grandkids called her Mama Strong. And strong she was.
