Stomach Agony in Caldwell
Country
by Mary Lynn Caldwell Morrill
When well water is a forbidden
drink in the country, watermelon juice might be a solution. But understand
that this next best thing about killed me.
The summer I was eleven years old
the family thought it would be a good experience for me, a city girl, to
have a visit in the country with my Grandma Ellie Caldwell, and 21 year old
twin aunt and uncle. The twins were the youngest of Grandma's thirteen children,
lived with Grandma and
had jobs in town. I was one of Grandma's 38 grandchildren. My daddy, born in 1903, was the oldest of the six boys and
seven girls. Baby Warren died of flu about 1918. Grandpa, John McCamey
Caldwell, married Grandma, Mary Ella Shannon, when he was forty two in 1902.
She was nineteen. He died of a heart attack coming back from the barn when I
was three – in 1942. Grandma still lived in the same house on the Matthews-Weddington
Road, about twelve miles from our house on East Boulevard. The two story
wooden house never was painted and got dressed up with white asbestos
shingles not too long after my unforgettable visit there. My immediate family in
the city had a telephone, toilet, bathtub, an electric refrigerator and
stove, home delivered pasteurized milk and clean running water that came out
the faucet. Grandma’s house had none of these luxuries.
SUNDAY
My mother, father, and brothers
drove me to my grandmother’s house on a Sunday afternoon and said they’d be
back for me the following Sunday. I was very excited about trying a new way
of life – to live for a while like my daddy had lived at my age. He had so
many interesting tales and memories of childhood. Before I left on the
forthcoming adventure my mother told me that I was not to drink water from
Grandma’s well. She had been told by another relative that the well water
had not passed the water test when the health department last came around. She
said people can get bad diseases from water if it is contaminated, so I’d
better not drink that well water or I could get very sick. She also told me
to be careful about drinking any milk that came straight from a cow and was
not properly processed and inspected. She said to drink soft drinks,
milk in a bottle from the store or canned or bottled juices. This all
sounded easy enough.
Supper the first night at the round
oak table covered with red and white checked oil cloth consisted of
buttermilk, hard cold biscuits and leftover fried chicken legs, a fried
chicken heart, and wings. I was told the best parts of the chicken had
been eaten for Sunday dinner. I ate a little of the food, and Grandma
said to take my plate to the kitchen. The wood stove in the kitchen had been
there many years. My daddy said when his Mama got pregnant with the twins
when he was 24 that everyone said she cried a lot as she cooked over this
wood stove where water was heating in a kettle. Don had drawn the water from
the well near the hen house. I thought about Grandma’s crying as I scraped my plate remains into the slop
bucket by the back door for the pigs. Dropping my plate, bent, tarnished fork and glass
with a faded blue checked design into
a metal pan of kettle heated hot water on the old kitchen table, I watched
Aunt Dot run a soapy woven faded red dish rag over the supper dishes. She
dropped the washed dishes into a pan of clear hot water and gave me a dish
towel with a hole in it to dry what she washed. Grandma, a little over 60, put a wad of
tobacco in her gum and wiped off the dining room table with a dingy rag. I
thought she was very old and was amazed that she could do any work at all.
She wore flowered dresses and black tie-up shoes. I could see varicose veins
in her legs. Uncle Don asked if all the food was in the slop bucket and upon
being assured that it was he took the bucket out to slop the hogs. After
supper we sat in the parlor and looked at one another. I asked questions.
The old floor was painted a light brown. A wood stove stuck out from
the former fireplace. Curtains had been
made from flour sacks and hung on a string to hide old books on shelves in
the lower part of a flat cupboard made by David Caldwell, my great, great,
great grandfather. John McCamey Caldwell was my grandfather, Dr. Thomas
Caldwell was his father, Dr. David Caldwell, a twin, was Thomas’s father,
and the Rev. Dr. David Caldwell of Greensboro was his father. The Civil War
obviously, in retrospect, had taken a terrible financial and emotional toll
on the whole family. My daddy said that his daddy told him that all that
mattered in the end was having land. He borrowed all the money he could to
buy land. The books in the antique family cabinet were mostly dated before
1860. Reading those books was obviously going to be my sole entertainment as
no one seemed too interested in lengthy conversation with me.
Before supper Grandma had spent a
good bit of time brushing my hair after my family’s departure and now she
said she needed a doze. When working on my hair she commented several times
on its thickness and cleanliness and said she didn't find dandruff or bugs.
Aunt Dot said she needed to file and polish her finger nails for work the next day. She
ironed her clothes with an old flat iron heated on the wood stove, and tied
her hair up in rags. Our iron at home in town had a cord and ran off
electricity. We had lamps with light bulbs. Grandma’s house had one ceiling
overhead light bulb in only a few of the rooms. No room had electric
outlets. There were two parlors, a dining room, a kitchen, a back porch, a
hall and two bedrooms downstairs. Upstairs was a hall and two bedrooms.
There was a door to an attic. I looked in there and saw a dead rat and
quickly closed the door never to open it again. The bathroom, an outhouse,
was down a path out back. My grandpa’s old country store, later destroyed by
a tornado, was across the road. Despite the many places to be on this farm,
I would be spending much of my time in the outhouse with bugs, bad smells
and an array of Sears Roebuck catalogs with many pages missing during the
next few days.
Uncle Don said he needed to go read
a book in another room. Reading the old medical books that evening I learned
how to remove large tumors on the back and how to cut off a leg. I noticed
the most beat up book, obviously the one that had been read the most,
was the one on sexual etiquette. Soon Grandma said she was going to
bed. Aunt Dot said I was to sleep in her bed with her. She said to let her
know if I needed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night as there
was a slop jar under the bed. I had never heard of having a toilet pot under
the bed. I was definitely not going to drink water. I had drunk almost
nothing since my arrival as I had been offered nothing but buttermilk so
far. It was hot July, but I covered up with a sheet as I had
noticed mosquitoes flying around, and I didn’t want to get bitten. Aunt Dot
said that since I was a guest she would let me have the side of the bed by
the window. The bed was lumpy, not at all like the mattress on my bed at
home, but soon I was asleep.
MONDAY
A crowing rooster was the first
sound I heard at daybreak. Aunt Dot said his cock-o-doodle-doo’s got her up
daily. There was no need for an alarm clock. I got out of bed, put on my
shorts and a top, and went to the kitchen. Grandma was cooking biscuits, fat
back and scrambled eggs. She said Uncle Irvin, her son who lived nearby, was
down at the barn milking the cow and would be up soon with milk for me to
drink. I was very apprehensive. I never ate eggs due to my strong dislike
for them, and I couldn’t imagine drinking milk right out of the cow before
it had been in the refrigerator to chill. Grandma had a cellar where she
kept things cool. Two tin doors opened up into the ground behind the back
porch into this cellar. I looked in there during my visit and could see
glass jars of tomatoes and green beans. Some of them looked bubbly and some
jars had burst. I told Grandma somebody needed to clean it up. She said I
was right but that there was so much to do all the time that she never
really did a good job like she would like to do on anything.
Uncle Irvin came in the back door
with a tin pail of milk. Grandma poured the milk in an old pitcher and then
poured milk into a jelly glass for me at my place at the table. I took one
sip of the warm milk and could drink no more. I ate the biscuit and the fat
back. The egg was loosely scrambled with much runny white in it. I could not
put this in my mouth. Dot and Don left for work and said they would see me
that evening. Aunt Dot looked lovely and was always so sweet.
Uncle Don was equally kind.
Grandma said I could comb Laddie’s
hair – that he had the mange and was itching a lot and that it would feel
good to him if I worked on his fur. Laddie was a large, collie type dog with
a docile face and matted up fur with bald spots. There were enormous brown
"moles" – about the size of quarters and fifty cent pieces all over Laddie’s
body. Grandma said they were ticks. Our city dog got ticks, but they would
be very small, and even one tick was a cause for much upset at home. There
would be a big production of removing the tick with tweezers, hitting the
tick on the sidewalk with a hammer, washing our hands, then putting alcohol
on our hands. We knew we didn’t want Rocky Mountain spotted fever. I got
some sticks and tried to pull the ticks off. Grandma said not to worry about
removing the ticks as Laddie had so many. She said that when cold weather
came they would gradually drop off. Grandma was so sensible and matter
of fact about the worst of things.
Sensing my distaste at this dog
job, Grandma said she would give me a basket to go get eggs out of the hen
house. The front yard of the house was hard, hard dirt, and there were a good many
large trees for shade. Chickens ran around everywhere and especially liked
to stay underneath the house. Grandma pointed the way to the hen house and
told me to put my hand down in the straw nests to gather eggs but to look
first as black snakes would sometimes be in the nests as they liked to put
holes in the eggs and suck out the insides. I had my sandals on as my mother
told me manure would be in many places in the country and that people could
get tetanus that way. Even though I had gotten a tetanus shot, I didn’t want
to push my luck. I asked Grandma if she had gotten a tetanus shot, and she
said she didn’t know whether Dr. Black had given her one or not. I
asked her what she did when her children cut their feet, especially in the
barn. She said ashes from the fireplace healed
every wound.
Off to the unpainted chicken house
I went with the old basket. I pushed open the door. Some hens were
sitting on nests and peered at me. I looked around in the empty nests and
spotted some eggs. They were quite dirty – not clean like the eggs I saw my
mother crack at home. Some of the eggs had holes in them, and I was sure a
black snake must be near. I quickly collected a few of the eggs near the door
and got out of there. Grandma said the hens must not be laying much due to
the heat. She didn’t know that I made a quick entry and an even quicker exit. About
that time I started thinking I needed something to drink. I knew I was not
to drink the water. I asked Grandma what she had to drink, and she said she
had that milk still sitting on the table that we had had for breakfast. She
said they couldn’t afford coke, juice and such. At that point she
told me I might like to go get a watermelon out of the field for supper. She
pointed me in the direction to the watermelon patch.
Across the road I went to the
watermelon patch. Grandma gave me a knife to cut the watermelon off the
vine. Once in the hot field I was thirstier than ever. It occurred to me at
that point that with the knife I could cut open the watermelons and that
would give moisture to my dry mouth. I found a small one, cut it open, and
my thirst was quenched. I had found the way to solve my drinking
problem. I knew that I just couldn’t drink any more of that milk right out
of the cow, buttermilk was not my thing, and the water might kill me. Thank
the Lord for these watermelons.
Lunch was not much - some more fat
back in a biscuit and a plum from the plum tree in the side yard. Grandma
said she could open a jar of those tomatoes from the cellar, but they looked
unsanitary when I saw them so I told her "no thank you." A tomato sandwich
would have been delicious, but Grandma said store loaf bread cost a lot and that
all the tomatoes seemed to have the rot this year. Grandma said I could
brush her hair before her nap. I told her "okey." Her hair was
mostly gray, thin
and down to her waist. She always wore it in a bun, so I was surprised to
see all this long, stringy hair. I brushed and brushed, and finally she said it was
time for her nap. She said I could read some more of those books in the
cabinet since I seemed to enjoy them or sweep the front yard with the broom. I decided to read the books
some more, as I didn’t want to be in the yard with Laddie, his ticks and
mange and with those chickens which had already pecked on my sandaled feet.
It dawned on me that I should go to
the bathroom. I was able to put this off as long as I had due to the fact
that I was not taking in much liquid - until I got to the watermelons. The
outhouse was down near the pig pen. The wood door creaked when I opened it.
I looked down in the hole and thought how awful it would be if I fell in. I
could see spider webs down in there too. I remembered Miss Muffett and her
spider. I sat on the edge, and urinated as rapidly as possible. My stomach
had little food in it so I was finished in a hurry. My legs got scratched on
briar bushes going back up the path. I took a quick look at the pigs and
remembered that all the dish pan water was put in their slop bucket that Don
carried to them. They grunted at me, but I didn’t hang around.
A neighbor with a car drove up with
Aunt Dot and Uncle Don around supper time. Grandma had put a pot of green
beans on to cook. For supper we had green beans, more of those biscuits,
more fat back and buttermilk. Dessert was the watermelon I brought up from
the field. That was also my drink for the evening.
Monday evening was about like
Sunday evening. I ended up reading some more in those old medical books.
This time I learned how to remove bullets from bodies. I was not feeling all
that good but didn’t say anything about it to anyone. I couldn’t call home
because the old wall telephone was out of order. Soon I was back on the
lumpy mattress thinking I’d better get to sleep because that rooster would
be crowing soon.
TUESDAY
The crowing took place just like on
Monday, and I was out of the bed. Breakfast was the same as yesterday. Dot
and Dot left for work. Here I was spending another day with Grandma. My
stomach hurt a little, but I didn’t mention it. Grandma said I might like to
go see the cows in the barn. I told her that would be fine and to give me
the knife so I could get another watermelon for supper’s dessert – that I
loved watermelon. On the way to the barn, there was a repeat of yesterday’s
trip. The liquid was wonderful, and I sucked and sucked on the watermelon.
Down at the barn I looked around at the cows and was glad I had not drunk
the warm milk. Flies were everywhere. I looked at all that manure and
thought some more about tetanus. Back in the watermelon patch I "drank"
more juice. Then I returned to the house with a melon for supper. Lunch was
the biscuit and fat meat. Grandma said to go get some figs off the fig bush
for dessert. She poured me another glass of warm milk which I did not drink.
I brushed Grandma’s hair, she went down for a nap, and I felt a need for the
outhouse. Cramps were beginning in my stomach. I was in pain. I found myself
in the outhouse quite a bit on Tuesday afternoon. I read the old medical
books for a while, learned how to draw blood for nervousness, and then back to the outhouse. I couldn’t get anything to
come out. If something would come out maybe my pain would go away. I decided
to search the old medical books for stomach pain. Back with the books I
found a number of remedies for stomach disorders, but the information served
no good purpose, as I had no way to get to the recommended medicines.
Dot and Don arrived home. Supper
was like Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. I was sure thinking about home and how
nice my mother made everything. Dot said
she got some cards in town today and that we could play "Go Fish" before she had to
get her things ready for work the next day. I told her my stomach hurt. She
laughed and said everybody gets the stomach ache. Soon we were in bed again.
WEDNESDAY
Wednesday morning was a repeat of
Monday morning and Tuesday morning with the rooster crowing and all. I had
not bathed since I got there. I took a bath at home everyday. This was
getting to be an upsetting situation. Dot and Don left for work, and Grandma
said I could go get more eggs from the hen house. She worked on my hair
some. I told her I needed to go to the outhouse. I went several times that
morning. Everything continued to be stuck, my urine was scanty, and my
stomach was feeling terrible. The odors in the outhouse brought on waves of
nausea. I looked up and stinging critters were buzzing around a good sized
nest in the corner of the outhouse. Grandma said all stomachs hurt and that
they always get better in time when I told her my stomach felt bad. I was
thinking Sunday was a long way off but that a glass of iced tea might help.
I asked Grandma if she ever boiled water to make tea. She said tea cost a
lot and that it wasn’t good for children. She didn’t have any. Besides,
where would ice come from for iced tea? Thinking about the iced tea my
mother made with lemon and sugar and kept available all summer almost threw
me into a state of delirium. I was soon off to the watermelon patch thinking
that sweet juice would help alleviate my misery. Soon I was back for the
biscuit lunch, brushing Grandma’s hair, Grandma’s nap, reading the medical
books and going to the outhouse. Today I made a quick trip to see the mule
and the horse in the barn to the right of the house. Everything always
looked so colorless. I opened the door to the corn crib and saw mice scurrying
around. Aunt Vernon and Aunt Verla, Grandma’s twin daughters, her second and
third children, came for a
visit today. They sat on the porch in the swing. They had nine children
between them but only brought about five. I was in pain and didn’t feel
much like playing hop scotch in the dirt front yard. Even jump rope was too
much for me. I guess these first cousins thought I
was unfriendly. It's just hard to be sociable when you have an aching
stomach.
Dot and Don came home. For supper I
noticed some of those canned tomatoes in a bowl on the table, along with the
biscuits. Country ham was on a plate too. Grandma said Vernon brought her
some already cooked and wrapped up in waxed paper. The dishes were done in the pan of water on the table,
the dish water and leftover food were dumped in the slop bucket for the
hogs. Don slopped the hogs, Grandma put snuff in her jaw and said she
thought she’d sit a spell. Dot and I played Go Fish, I read the medical
books behind the old curtains and told Dot I needed to sit on her slop jar
awhile. I told her my stomach was worse and I thought I needed to go home.
She said my stomach would be better tomorrow. During the night I sat on the
slop jar a lot but got no relief.
THURSDAY
The rooster crowed. I went to
breakfast feeling awful. Dot, Don, Irvin and Grandma had no idea how
miserable I was. Dot and Don left for work. I told Grandma I was going to
the outhouse. She said she noticed I liked the outhouse a lot more now that
I had gotten used to it. From the outhouse I went to the watermelon patch
with the knife and drank more juice. My stomach felt worse and worse. I had
never felt pain like this in my life. I laid down in the field and cried.
Then I started praying. I was sure death was on the way for me the pain was
so wretched. I could not stand up straight. Grandma was oblivious to my dire situation.
We went through the same routine despite all as on Monday, Tuesday and
Wednesday with lunch, the nap, the hair, wanting to know if I’d like to work
on Laddie’s fur, sweep the yard, get eggs, visit the cows, etc. And here I
was thinking tomorrow I might not be alive to do any of these things.
Dot and Don came home. I told Don
that he needed to go call my daddy to come get me due to my severe stomach
pain. He said he would have to go five miles into Matthews to get to a phone
and that he would call my daddy tomorrow when he got to work. I started
screaming and crying saying that he had to go now. Dot told him he had to go
now. Grandma said she was sorry my stomach was hurting so much. Don
went into town and made the call. My daddy arrived within two hours. I
was so thankful to see him. Everyone had been very kind to me, but I just
couldn’t continue living the way I had been living since Sunday.
THURSDAY NIGHT
Home at last. My daddy carried me
into the house as I couldn't walk. My mother was upset that I was in
such pain. She called Dr. Adams. He said I needed liquid. I drank a lot of
my mother’s wonderful tea, got in the bathtub, washed my hair, and started
feeling better. I went to the bathroom where there was real toilet paper and was soon in my own bed. Friday I slept very late.
There was no rooster to wake me up. I have never had any desire for country
living or being in remote places since that time. |