Pop... By Barbara Eubanks This is a Series of Stories about my Dad, Hugh Cochran, who is 97 years old. These are mostly true as he has related them to me over the years.

That’s what they call me now...

Pop.  But that tag didn’t come until later. When I was a kid, some just called me Hughdie, some, Little Judy Elderberry, but that’s another story. I’ll tell you about that one later. And my nickname was Tooch. I don’t know why by brothers started calling me that, but everybody else had a nickname, and it made me feel right important when they hung that one on me. My parents just called me Hugh - that is when they could remember it. That was my name – all of my name. Hugh Cochran. Being number ten of eleven children, I guess they just ran out of middle names, so I didn’t get one, but that’s okay.   I like Hugh. It’s easy to spell, and God knows I need a name that’s easy cause I can’t spell. I would’ve been the worst speller in school if it hadn’t have been for Bud Frazier. He was the worst. He’s the only one I could set down in a spelling bee.   School was okay, but I’d rather have been outside playing, but if I’d been at home, I wouldn’t have been playing anyway. Papa always had chores for us to do, and we knew better than to buck up about them too. So, I guess being in school weren’t so bad after all, specially if I got to set close to Margaret Jo. Boy, was she a perty thang.  I guess I liked her cause she had red hair like me. Of course, mine was redder and I had more freckles across my nose. I liked to reach over and yank her pigtail when I could get find a chance with the teacher’s back turned. I had to be real careful though about my meanness cause the teacher was my oldest brother Jesse. Jesse was about twenty-five and acted real dignified-like. I guess he thought he was uppidy cause he could read real good and got to be the teacher after his father-in-law, Mr. Hewitt gave it up.   One day me and two of my buddies, Lee Wills and Joe Dendy, went down to the branch behind the school and found us some rabbit tobacco to smoke. We thought we were being real sneaky-like, but when Jesse came out to ring the big bell for us to come back in from recess, he saw the smoke.  He’s awaitin’ for us when we came running up. He had a big stick he’d whail the daylights out of the misbehavers with. That would be us that day. Lee got it first; then Little Joe was next. I felt right sorry for him cause he was little for his age. He couldn’t hardly take it. I set my mind I wouldn’t cry cause I’s too big for that. Besides, my older brothers were there, beings it was a one-room school house, and all the grades were in the same room. I knew they’d tease me enough as it was just for getting caught smoking and for getting a whooping, but if cried, I’d never hear the end of “Hughdie’s a baby, Hudie’s a little ‘ol cry baby, Tooch can’t take a whooping.” I guess Jesse wanted the class to know he didn’t show partiality to his own, so he laid it on me heavy. I didn’t only cry; I farted loud about the third lick. That made Jesse even madder, cause the whole class got into a laughing uproar, so I really got it then. I made up my mind, I was going to tell papa on him when we got home. Even though Jesse was already married to Miss Allie – she’s Mr. Hewitt’s daughter - and lived down the road, I could just see in my mind Papa saddling up ol’ Bessie, that was his old horse, and going down to Jesse’s house and getting’ on to him bad for what he’d done to me.   It didn’t work out just exactly the way I had it fixed in my mind though. When I told Papa and showed him the whelps Jesse had left on my back, Papa said, “Son, if you did something bad enough for Jesse to whip you, you deserved it. Go on down to the barn and I will be there in a minute.”I knew what that meant. Papa’s little, nearly as short as me, and he was kind and gentle, but when it came to handling a brood of children, he was a giant of a man. Papa was a man of few words, but when any of us children were told to go to the barn in that particular tone, we knew it meant we were about to get from Papa. I’s already acryin’ when Papa got there. “Son, I told you, if I’m going to spare y’all from some work so you can go to school and get an education, you better mind the teacher and behave, even if the teacher is your own brother. Papa gave me a switching, but he went easy on me cause he knew I’d already been hurt that day. I couldn’t hardly eat my cornbread and milk for supper that night. Big ‘ol tears kept boiling up in my eyes has hard as I tried to keep ‘em away. The whippings were bad enough, but my brothers teasing me was even worse. I knew not to try to take on the older ones – Ernest, Dewey, Clifford, or Fred, but Ople was another story. He’s just a couple of years older than me, and it made me madder than snuff when he’d laugh at me. I’d had all I could take from him, so after supper when we went out on the porch to take a blow, I lit into him. I socked him in his fat belly before he knew what happened, but it made him mad, he and came after me. He knocked me down on the porch, and we rolled around until we rolled clean off the porch. He had me down perty good and was socking me in the face. I’s astruggling hard to throw him off, but he’s too fat and strong. Although my older brothers had given me a hard time too and called me a cry baby about a hundred and fifty times, they had a heart for the underdog, so without Ople knowing what had happened, one of them, I think it was Ernest, took hold of my feet and flipped me over on top of Ople. That took the fight right out of him cause he started getting a ribbing then for letting little brother beat him. It was all over and forgotten by the next day. In a big family like ours, you couldn’t afford to stay made too long cause we did everything together. We worked the fields, went to school and church together, and always ate three meals a day together at our long wood table. Papa always made the youngest ones set close by him so he could give us a thump on the head if we misbehaved. One thing we all knew was not to never say nothing bad about the food or the cooks – my older sisters and stepmother. My own mama died when I was little, and I couldn’t hardly remember what she was like, but Papa just wouldn’t put up with us spending our opinion about the food. Anyways, it was always good. We never went hungry. They cooked up good vegetables every day and we always had some meat and bread. Sometimes it was just fried up salted fatback, but it was good anyways if you’d been working all day. Lucy, my oldest sister was my favorite. She had red hair too and took up for me when my brothers teased me. She ‘s the oldest girl and they listened when she spoke. Of course, when she’s busy washing up the dishes after supper and they were out of her earshot, they made up for lost time.   One night at supper, I could tell Lucy was acting right fidgety and nervous-like. Then when Papa told us, I knew why. “Lucy is going to be marrying Bill Vandergriff after church Sunday.” As I said before, Papa was a man of few words, so when he spoke, we listened and it meant something. “Lucy, we’re going to miss you. You’ve been a good girl, and I don’t know what I’d a done without you after your momma died. You helped see after these kids until I married Miss Ophelia. You still helped her out a lot with ‘em.” I thought I saw Papa wipe a tear away, but I could’ve been mistaken, cause my eyes were full of them. What would I ever do without Lucy? She must have noticed cause she spoke up then, “Well, it’s not like I won’t ever see you any more. We’re going to be living right down the road. Bill has rented the Amos farm. I’ll be seeing you just about every day.” Then she looked at me and said, “Hugh, you can come down and spend the night with us any time you want to.” I perked up at that and said, “Can I come Sunday night?” Papa grinned and said, “I think you need to let them get settled in a bit before you start that.”

Some Things Treasured...

Being one of a dozen or so siblings was like being one potato in a hill. That’s why visits to my Granddaddy Gray’s were so important to me. It was there that I felt special because I felt individually loved. Sometimes when Papa was on his way to town for supplies, he’d drop me by and let me stay a few days.  I vividly remember our porch times. Sometimes Granddaddy Gray and me would just sit out there and watch the wind blowing the limbs on the big old oak tree that shaded the house. Granddaddy would whittle on a piece of wood, chew his cud of tobacco, and spit on the stump which was about three feet off the corner of the porch. It didn’t matter how many times I watched him do it, I never ceased to be amazed at his accuracy. He would purse his lips and spray a stream of juice which always landed right slap-dab on top of the stump. One day as the two of us were lolling out there on a hot summer day, we could hear my grandmother shuffling around in the kitchen as she prepared our dinner. Now dinner was what we ate in the middle of the day; not some fancy night meal. Granddaddy looked over at me and grinned. Then he broke the silence by voicing his private thoughts. “Boy, listen to that. That gal’s sashaying around in there like a sixteen-year-old.” The twinkle in his eyes spoke more than any ol’ book of love poems possibly could. It wasn’t until many years later that I understood,in part, the pleasure and comfort of the mere sounds of a life’s companion going about her daily chores. It was still many more years before I fully understood. After the death of Willie, my life’s love and my wife for seventy-one years, the house’s silence replaced the music of her presence. I then thought of my granddaddy’s words.

Life on the Farm - Part One...

You didn’t ask questions about some things; you just did them. For instance, I’s much older before I even bothered to question Papa why we had to plant cotton thick, just to have to go back and chop it out later. Now they’s a difference between hoeing cotton and chopping cotton, as any farm boy could tell you. Hoeing came later in the spring.  Chopping had to be done as soon as the cotton sprouted up about two inches. Then we’d go to the field with our hoes and make a pass, taking out a hoe’s width of the newly sprouted crop and leave two plants; then we’d make another pass with the hoe and then leave two more sprouts. I later learned that this gave the cotton which was left a better opportunity to absorb the water and fertilizer and to grow into a strong producing stalk.  As a kid though, I just did it because Papa said to. If Papa told us to do something, we just did it. Chopping cotton weren’t so bad though cause they’d be a bunch of us out there doing it together, even the girls helped with this. I’d be going down a row making a whack, leaving two sprouts, making another whack, leaving two til I got into a nice rhythm. Gladys would be on the row next to me, and before long she’d start singing a hymn. “Glory to his na-a-ame, glory to his name.” She had a smooth perty soprano voice and mine was still high enough to match it, so I’d start singing along. Before long I’d hear Papa join in on the base from the terrace below. Then Ople’d add the tenor. I was a little jealous cause he could always add that harmony. The others soon would join the chorus and we’d chop and sing, chop and sing. Somebody else would start another song as soon as one ended, but when Gladys would start singing “When They Ring Those Golden Bells”, the rest of us would drop out cause that was the most beautiful sound you’d ever want to hear, specially when she’d hit those high notes and hold ‘em out. They’s just something special about the way her voice would sound out there in the cotton patch. Sometimes we’d get a little bored with the hoeing and chopping and start having a dirt clod battle. I know Papa had telescopes for eyes cause he could be at the other end of the row and still know we’s goofing off. All he had to do was let out one of his ear-splitting whistles. We’d all start scrambling to get back to work like a bunch of scared mice.  Dewey was older than me, and with a lot of practice, he learned to imitate Papa’s whistle. His favorite thing to do (I learned much later) was to find us slacking off a little, and he’d slip down below the terrace row out of sight and let out one of his whistles. We’d think it was Papa, and we’d rush to get back to the business at hand. Of course, Dewey would show up in time to act like he was hurrying back to work too. I always wondered why he had that sly grin on his face. I don’t guess it took a lot to entertain him back then.

Papa and the Association Meeting...

Papa made a trip to the Baptist Association Meeting once a year since our church, Union Grove Missionary Baptist, always elected him as their delegate.  To us kids, he made it sound like the most important position in the whole world as he hitched up the wagon to go to whatever town it was meeting in that particular year.  I just about busted with pride as I would watch Papa sitting on the old wagon bench dressed in his Sunday suit. "Gitty up, Bessy," he would say as he started down the road, leaving a cloud of dust to block my view.  In hindsight, I guess Papa looked forward to getting away to a quieter place and leaving the farm chores to the eleven of us kids for a while. Actually, the responsibility of keeping the farm work going rested on the shoulders of my older brothers, but I took whatever chores they assigned to me as my important share in helping Papa go to Meeting.  Jesse, Ernest, Clifford, and Dewey did the plowing.  I went ahead of them and picked up any rocks that might dull the plow points.  One day when the sun was straight overhead we knocked off for dinner - that's what we called the noon meal -, just as we always did.  Ernest unhooked the old mules from the plows and tied them to posts in a grassy spot so they could graze while we ate a hot vegetable dinner.  After filling their bellies with fried okra, creamed corn, green beans, all the tomatoes and onions they could hold, and huge slabs of buttered cornbread, the older boys got the rockers on the front porch to "take their blow" while I was left to stretch out on the wooden planks for a rest, but not for long.  Duty called and we went back to the field. Long before we reached the spot where the mules were tied, we all knew something was wrong.  Ole Dan, the mule Dewey plowed, looked strange.  He wasn't standing, but he wasn't lying down either.  I ran ahead of the rest and found the ol' mule dead.  Somehow he had twisted around and got the rope tight on his neck.  He must have struggled to get loose, but instead the rope just tightened until it cut his wind off.  In a large family like ours, we knew the distinct lines between people and animals and didn't treat animals like people, but, still, a pall of sadness fell on our group as we dug the big hole to bury a faithful member of our farm. Two days later Papa returned.  Although he was saddened at the loss, he weren't mad at all.  He took the mule's death in stride, just as he did everything else.  "Boys, it weren't your fault; it was just an accident.  It could just as well have happened if I had been here." (I later learned Papa was giving us a living example of grace and mercy.) A few days passed, and Papa went over to the Johnson farm and brought home a new mule he had traded  some of our good ole sorghum syrup for.  I knew that meant some of our biscuits would miss some of that dark, thick, golden sweet emulsion that we normally drizzled over them. The next year passed quickly.  Before we knew it, we were saying goodbye to Papa again as he left for the Association Meeting.  Since I was bigger, I was assigned more important chores that year.  Ople and me shucked corn for the mules and put fodder in their troughs.  Of course, Ople never thought I did stuff the right way.  He would go behind me taking a handful from one trough and putting it in another.  "Now why did you do that?" I'd asked.  "I believe Ol' Jim pulls a little harder than Sam, so I gave him more to eat."  That'd make me so mad cause he always found fault in whatever I did. Later that afternoon we were supposed to put the cows from the far pasture to the one closer to the barn. "You'd better let me take care of that cause I'm bigger," Ople said in that bossy tone.  Although he was just two years older than me, you'd have thought he was an adult by the way he wanted to take charge of everything.  I guess he got his pay back though.  When he was trying to herd the cattle through the upper pasture gate, about three of the calves had minds of their own and wandered over to the weeds by the ditch.  Ople knew he'd better get the rest of them secured before he worried with trying to round up the strays.  Since he had earlier acted like such a no-it-all, I didn't offer to help.  I just watched him and grinned.  By the time he got the stubborn bovines through the gate, they had already mowed down the ditch bank.  Little did we know, the older boys had put a concoction on the ditch bank to kill the grass.  Well, instead of killing the grass, it killed those three calves.  When Papa got home to the bad news that year, again he failed to scold us. He merely said, "Boys, I don't think I can afford to go to the Association Meeting any more."  And he never went again.