World War II was over at last.

The new Montgomery Ward catalog had gasoline-powered washing machines and unheard of pressure cookers. We ordered them both.

Neighbors came to watch me wash on the new gasoline-powered washing machine.

Boy! It was an improvement on the old washboards. It even had a roller wringer like the homemade cotton gin, so I didn’t have to twist the clothes before hanging them on the clothes line outside. Sometimes if I flooded the little motor I had to stomp and stomp the petal to start it again. I yet had to bring water from outside, but it was much faster and easier.

In warm weather I heated water in a big black kettle outside over a fire and boiled white clothes with homemade soap and a pillowcase half full of peach tree leaves. We hadn’t even heard of bleach yet.

Learning to operate the pressure cooker was harder than learning to use my new computer!

The first trial was cooking a big hen for my mother-in-law. She had wrung the chicken’s neck, scalded and plucked the feathers and tied the legs together. Later she planned to brown it whole in her over.

Instructions said “Caution! Watch the temperature gauge! Moving the cooker to lower heat keeps the temperature from becoming too high! Follow instructions for correct temperature and time for different foods.” They just said chicken so I cooked it for twenty minutes.

When I let out the steam and removed the lid ­– “Oh, Lord!” the disappointed old lady said. There was just a rack of bones. I had cooked all the meat off them. It would have taken hours instead of minutes to do that the old way. Oh, well, it made good chicken and dumplings anyway.

The next mistake I made with the pressure cooker was worse than the one with the old hen. An old bachelor neighbor was a coon-hunting buddy of my husband. He always cleaned the coons and shared them with us after he had soaked them in a spring overnight, then parboiled them with herbs slowly and finished by baking them in the oven with sweet potatoes. Delicious!

He and I cleaned the big coon one night by light from a kerosene lamp. I soaked it overnight in salt water, parboiled it as he had instructed me. Instead of twenty minutes as I had for the chicken, I kept the pressure up for 15 minutes. I slowly let out the steam – PEO-O-O-U-U-U!

So that was why the old guy had told me to cook it slowly with no lid!

The steam smelled worse than 40 polecat sprays. The coon dogs went over the mountain howling. Everyone else in the house ran outside. To make matters worse, I was pregnant. I threw coon, cooker and all out the high back door. One of the old folks nearly had a heart attack and the kitchen smelled awful for days.

The next calamity with the cooker could have been worse. In the summertime I mostly cooked out in the yard on an old time wood burning cook stove. I had a small pan of white beans inside the cooker when I let the gauge go so high it blew the safety valve.

A stream of steam was going up in the sky so hot it was red and blue. Beans were going up like bullets. It was squealing and would have blasted a hole in the ceiling if it had been in my kitchen. Oh, Malarkey!

Alone but never lonely

Usually I am all alone but I never get lonely. I have so much ambition. I’m always quilting, writing, fixing, or remembering something that happened years before. I guess that’s why so many people come to visit me -- to ask how I am and can they do anything for me.

For about 80 years I have written my thoughts on scraps of paper. Sometimes, I wrote with lead pencils sharpened with my pocket knife. When my hands became shaky, as old hands do, I salvaged an old manual typewriter and typed with two fingers. “Hunt and peck,” it’s called.

I talk  to myself even when I’m asleep, I guess. One day after my visitors had left, I said to myself, “Stupid, why don’t you just write a book and sell it  to ‘em. They just come to hear you tell hillbilly stories.”

Well, old lady Stupid went to Poplar Bluff and bought the biggest best computer I could find. It would take time, I figured, but I would sell books to the crowds of company that to see me. That way they wouldn't forget me when I'm gone.

Even though my house had burned when I was 42 years old, I yet had a bushel of scraps of scribbles.

I often call myself stupid when I make a mistake. (I apparently don’t have alheimers since I know it’s a mistake.)

Never have I piloted a plane nor engineered a train. I am not an electrician or a mechanic but I have done many things and can remember back to when I was too small to walk. Editing a manuscript is easy for me; but when I talk I speak the hillbilly ‘lingo.’

When my many visitors come to ask how I am, I tell them I’m fine. They stay just to hear me talk.

Visitors see that my home is like a museum full of everything from rocks to buttons. Pictures of people old and young are everywhere. I have a bedroom which is only used when company spends the night. I sleep on a little bed by the front door. I am a trained firefighter and want to be where I could get out quick if my kitchen were on fire.

This is where I stay busy. I’m even writing another book.

“What are you writing about?” they ask.

“Oh, just whatever I’m thinking” I answer. “I don’t cook much anymore. Let’s go out to lunch and I will pay.”

I will write about cooking for my kids and life on the farm in Kentucky.

What's in a Name?

Researching one's genealogy is easy these days. It's not hard to compile a family tree going back three or four generations. With perseverance one can trace their ancestors back a dozen generations or more. Linking names, dates and locations confirms how you came to be who you are. Looking at those names evoke memories of your grandparents and even your great grandparents.

But beyond that the names quickly become just names.

Polly said it's stories that bring life to the names.

Stories helped you know your ancestors. Someone scoffed at that idea and claimed the stories were made up to help kids go to sleep at night. He said, "Those old stories were just a bunch of malarkey!"

One day at age 90, Polly declared, "that's why I have so many visitors. People come from far and wide to listen to those stories."

Watch for one of those stories, coming soon....