LIFE ON THE KIDD FARM
	LIFE ON THE KIDD FARM WASN'T EASY, BUT THEY HAD THEIR FUN… Peggy and Rose used to tell how they and their brothers & sisters loved to play in the cottonseed bin or the corn crib, play hide-and-seek in the cornfields, play house or church under the peach trees, play 'hide the thimble' in the old brick fireplace, and especially how Peggy and Rosie loved making paper dolls from the Sears & Roebuck catalog using paste made from flour. When they played church, brother Robert would be the preacher and would tell them that Jesus was coming back soon.
Randolph Kidd, 1796-1852 Mt Moriah Cemetery, Blount County, TN (Maryville) ~~~~~~~ PICKIN TIME I got cotton in the bottom land, It's up and growin' and I got a good stand. My good wife and them kids of mine, Gonna get new shoes, come pickin' time. Get new shoes come pickin' time. Ev'ry night when I go to bed, I thank the Lord that my kids are fed. They live on beans eight days and nine, But I get 'em fat come pickin' time. Get 'em fat come come pickin' time. The corn is yellow and the beans are high, The sun is hot in the summer sky. The work is hard til layin' by, Layin' by til pickin' time. Layin' by til pickin' time. It's hard to see by the coal-oil light, And I turn it off purty early at night. 'Cause a jug of coal-oil costs a dime, But I stay up late come pickin' time. Stay up late come pickin' time. My old wagon barely gets me to town, I patched the wheels and I watered 'em down. Keep 'er in shape so she'll be fine, To haul my cotton come pickin' time. Haul my cotton come pickin' time. Last Sunday mornin' when they passed the hat, It was still nearly empty back where I sat. But the preacher smiled and said that's fine, The Lord'll wait til pickin' time. The Lord'll wait til pickin' time. Lyrics from 'Pickin Time' by Johnny Cash.	LEARNING THE HARD WAY... Peggy told the story of how sometimes on Sundays, Grandmother Kidd (Rachel Susan) would ride the train out of town to within a mile of their house. Son Ammie would pick her up there and bring her to visit. Grandmother Kidd dipped snuff, and she would send the kids out to the peach tree to get her a twig to dip with. Peggy said she would watch her dip the snuff out of the little metal can with the peach twig and it looked so good, like cocoa and sugar. So she waited until Grandmother wasn't looking and crawled up on the table and got a big mouthful. Ooph! Nasty! It tasted SO AWFUL and made her choke and cough! She said she never did want to taste that bitter stuff again! BOYS WILL BE BOYS... When they were grown and had kids of their own, Fred and Robert would tell of the time during winter they were playing with matches out in the pasture and caught it on fire and the whole pasture burned. They were in big trouble with Daddy! Robert said he thought they were going to have to run away from home as Daddy was so mad! They would also tell of how after gathering eggs from the hen house one day, they got into a tussle over who was going to take them to Mama. They wrestled and wound up slinging and breaking the whole bucket of eggs on the ground. In those hard times, a loss like that of valuable food affected the whole family. "Ev'ry night when I go to bed, I thank the Lord that my kids are fed. They live on beans eight days and nine, But I get 'em fat come pickin' time. Get 'em fat come come pickin' time." Lyrics from 'Pickin Time' by Johnny Cash. HARD LESSONS... One other time Fred and Robert were swinging little brother Clarence in a swing on a rope with a steel tire ring tied to it for a seat. They made it swing big and little Clarence got scared and jumped out. But the ring swung back, hit him on the head, and knocked him out cold. It scared Fred and Robert so bad they ran to the house screaming "Mama! Mama! We've killed him! We've killed him!" Of course little Clarence had a big knot on his head. He was Ok, but boy did his brothers get a scare and a hard lesson! DON'T MESS WITH MAMA... The kids learned you didn't mess with Mama. One day Peggy and Robert were running away from her down in the pasture for something they had done, and when she caught them she broke her big wooden spoon on their backsides spanking them. Once Fred and Robert got caught in the attic of the house where Mama and Daddy had hidden Christmas presents. Uh-Oh! Making too much noise! Mama caught them and she was some kind of mad. Robert said she sure had some long switches! You didn't get out of Mama's reach so easy! FACING DANGERS... A story that Robert shared was about a time when he was about 5 years old. Mama had sent him to the mailbox which was about a mile down the road from the farm. About half way there was a man and a woman parked in car on the side of the road. Robert said when he passed by their car the lady got out, walked toward him and said, “Come here, little boy”. He said he turned and ran all the way back home! NOTE: Around that time criminals were known to hide out in rural places in Tarrant County (think Bonnie & Clyde). Could our young Robert have had a close encounter with some serious bad guys or bank robbers? Maybe! A story Peggy liked to tell was about a fire on the railroad track that ran near their farm. The train had stopped, which it had never done before at that place, so the family knew that something must be wrong. Out in the pasture Daddy had seen that a wheel was burning on one of the railcars, and that scared little Peggy so bad that she hid under the kitchen table. Stormy Weather... When it began to look like a storm was coming, the family would take shelter in the root cellar. It was not a very fun place to be as it always smelled so musty and damp and there were creepy crawlies like snakes and scorpions to watch out for. Fannie kept her canned jars on the shelves of the cellar, as it was always cooler there than in the house. Peggy always said to her it was like a prison. North Texas thunder storms were often dangerous (still are), packing high winds, heavy rain and often hail. Plus, north Texas is smack in the middle of what's known as 'Tornado Alley'. Its no wonder people who lived on the blackland prairie didn't take chances on being out in the open during storms! Another time the family was out in the field picking cotton and it came up a sudden thunder storm. A bolt of lightning struck the ground right in front of where they were working! Robert said they thought for sure they would all be killed! It did not take the family long to get out of there and under shelter! Thieves of the four-legged and two-legged kind... The family always had chickens on their farm, and chicken thieves were always on the prowl. It was so scary to the children to be suddenly awakened in the night to the sound of loud, squawking chickens and Daddy grabbing the shotgun to run out and see if it was people or wild animals that was looking for a free chicken dinner. FALL WAS HOG KILLIN' TIME... At the first good freeze in the Fall, it was hog killing time. That was a big all day job for everyone, and often several families would come together to share the work. Everyone would pitch in to process the meat. Of course, food had to be cooked to feed everybody and fresh pork cooked over an open fire was a special treat. Sure was good eating, and still is (think grilled pork chops). Fresh pork was a welcome thing to the family's usual vegetable diet. The hog fat (lard) was rendered for cooking and for making lye soap. In those days there was no such thing as home refrigerators or freezers, so there was no way to keep the meat fresh unless the weather was cold. Fresh pork had to be salt cured so it would stay safe to eat for long periods of time. Salt pork is made by layering salt and thin layers of meat, then soaking it in a brine mixture. (Photo courtesy Statesboro Herald- Statesboro, Georgia) COLD WINTER NIGHTS... On cold nights when the kids were young, Fannie would warm a brick in the fireplace or on the wood stove and wrap it in old newspapers and rags and put it in the bed at their feet to try to keep warm. There just weren't enough blankets for the really cold nights. Grandmother Rachel Kidd gave them the newspapers. HOLIDAYS WERE SPECIAL... Christmas was especially looked forward to. Fannie's sister in Arkansas, Rosa and her husband John, would send a Christmas package every year for the family filled with wonderful goodies. Peggy said the homemade divinity candy that they sent was a really special treat! With the great depression in full swing, traditional Christmas trees were in short supply, even if you had money to buy one. So the family would find and cut a little cedar bush that grew in the wild and decorate it with popcorn strung on some of Mama's sewing thread, and some little brass candles that clipped on the tree. Grandmother Lindauer had brought them with her from Germany when she came to the U.S. and had passed them on to Fannie. On Christmas eve, Fannie would tell her children to get to bed and go to sleep or Santa would not leave them anything. That would just make it all the harder to go to sleep! NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION... Older brother Fred was especially adept at making toys to play with. When you have but very little, you learn to make do with what you have on hand. Once he made sisters Peggy and Rosie a little car out of an apple box. It was so cute, and it had a door with leather hinges. One Christmas he made his sisters a little doll bed and mama Fannie made a little quilt to go on it. Another time Fred made a giant yo-yo out of two phonograph records. I was so big and the string so long he had to get up on the rooftop to have room to make it work. NEIGHBORS LOOKED AFTER ONE ANOTHER... The Kidd kids went to Forest Hills school which was about 3 miles northeast of the home place, and had to walk most of the time. One time it started to sleet as they were walking to school and it was hitting them in the face, so they covered their heads as best they could and started walking backwards. They knew there were no excuses from Mama for missing school. Another time walking home from school it started to rain very hard, and a neighbor lady called the kids to come into her house to get in out of the rain until the storm passed. Home Birth Dangers (or How 'Butch' got his nickname)... When Ammie & Fannie's youngest child, Walter Marion, was born the doctor was late getting out to the Kidd farm to deliver the baby. The neighboring farmers wives got word that it was a difficult delivery and that Fannie was in need of immediate assistance. Two of the closest neighboring wives rushed to Fannie's aide and in due time a bouncing baby boy was born. By then the doctor had finally arrived and determined that Fannie was in immediate need of a blood transfusion. One of the neighbors older sons volunteered to give the needed blood. The neighbor boy's nickname was Butch, and in gratitude for his selfless gift, Fannie nicknamed her new son after him. So for the rest of his life, Walter Marion Kidd was always known to everyone as 'Butch". Later, eight men who were either neighbors or church friends volunteered to donate blood in payment for Fannie's transfusion. FIRST RECORD PLAYER, FIRST RADIO... These days we can't imagine life without electrical power, but it wasn't until the mid-1930's that electricity was available to rural farms in north Texas. In those days AM radio was king. In the Dallas-Ft Worth area, radio stations WFFA, WBAP, and KFJZ were the main sources of news and entertainment. One would specialize in country-western music, another would air popular music, and another would air classical/serious music. Television was still very new and few people anywhere could even afford a TV set. Color TV was unheard of, broadcasts were in black and white. Animated color cartoons in movie theaters came out in the early 1930's, and live-action movies in color were only being produced by the late 1930's (think Wizard of Oz). The Kidd family got its first record player and it had country singer Jimmie Rodgers records to play on it. Soon after the family got its first radio, A.R. would come to the house and tie up the mule team he was plowing with and listen to the fiddle band music on one of the Dallas radio stations. A western swing band named 'The Lightcrust Doughboys' featuring the now iconic Bob Wills was popular at the time. Bob Wills went on to form his now famous fiddle band, The Texas Playboys. Life for the Ammie Ruble and Fannie Lindauer Kidd family on the farm was very typical of those days and times. Most folks didn't have a lot of money, but they grew and produced what they mostly needed by the work of their hands. And they had each other. Electricity did not begin to be available to most rural north Texas areas until the mid-to-late 1930's. Lamp and candle light were all most folks had. "It's hard to see by the coal-oil light, And I turn it off purty early at night. 'Cause a jug of coal-oil costs a dime, But I stay up late come pickin' time. Stay up late come pickin' time." Lyrics from 'Pickin Time' by Johnny Cash.
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