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Porterdale Mill on the Yellow
River |
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Porterdale Mill on the Yellow
River |
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DOWN
MEMORY LANE |
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More visits to Grandpa Chapman’s. These visits were most enjoyable, now after sixty years I can recall so much about them. How many of you have ever been Snipe hunting? This is really fun. I am not going to tell you much about it, because it is something each individual needs to experience. If you have not been, ask someone to take you. Have you ever fished for eels, gigged for frogs? The most frightening experience I had while visiting Grandpa Chapman occurred one dark night. The inside of the house was lighted with kerosene lamps. They older boys stood me at the window looking out onto a very dark porch. All of a sudden to my left on the edge of the porch I saw a red object with white polka-a-dots. This object was about the size and shape of a basketball. I was really scared; then it immediately appeared to my right way down at the other end of the porch. This thing jumped back and forth from one end of the porch to the other. The boys were telling me all sorts of stories about how this thing occasionally showed up and how they had tried to catch it, but could not. Then they wanted me to go help catch this thing. Not on my life, I was too frightened. Later I discovered that it was a scrap piece of cloth, which covered a flashlight. The boys had rigged it up by running wires into the house, which I could not see, and connecting and disconnecting these wires would turn on and off the two flash lights out on the porch. The visits I liked best was when they were making syrup. I think because I could help in doing this. I would help load the cane on the wagon in the field. I could hand the cane stalks to the person feeding them into the cane mill. The smell of the syrup cooking was just wonderful. I guess I was always thinking about the good peanut brittle that we would soon be eating. Maybe it was the hot buttered biscuits covered with the fresh made syrup. No wonder I am so fat. I always felt a little sorry for the poor old mule that pulled the cane mill all day long. The poor thing just walked around in circles. |