‘Decoration Day’ At The Old Home Place

Memorial Day, which we referred to as ‘Decoration Day’ in my family, is full of precious childhood memories and nostalgia for me. My folks were of Southern heritage mostly, although I grew up in Oklahoma. We lived in the country, on an acreage we called ‘The Old Home Place,’ because it had been handed down for generations.

We had big ole vegetable gardens. In fact, we called one of them a ‘truck patch,’ because it was so large. Soul food, ya know. Nothing better! The truck patch covered five acres. A truck patch is when so many vegetables are produced, there’s enough to truck them out commercially, although we never did. We gave all our friends and relatives what we couldn’t preserve (can) and store in the cellar. In those days we all shared whatever we had.

We also had a small vegetable garden right behind our house, for every day fresh veggies, such as beds of lettuce. In front, we had a potato patch. In other areas there were blackberry bushes, a pecan orchard, a fruit orchard, plums, blueberries, and so on. We were pretty much self-sustaining.

All of the vegetable gardens were plowed by hand with mules, in rows for planting. I used to help with the planting and canning when I was just a little girl. We also butchered our own chickens, pigs and cattle, and made lye soap in a big ole iron pot outside on a wooden fire…all in the old ways. I don’t miss butchering the critters and to this day, I can’t eat animal flesh, except for fish and seafood.

There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again ~ Elizabeth Lawrence

My heart-parents (grandparents) raised me from infancy and they were really poor. They never recovered financially from the Great Depression, so this was how they ensured that we always had good food on the table, although sometimes my grandfather had to shoot a rabbit when we ran out of meat. And, there was the occasional venison from a deer that met with misfortune.

We also lived next to a river full of catfish, and we had several ponds for perch, bass and other kinds of fish, which my heart-mother fried in bacon grease.

We used to sit behind our old, white frame farm house in the yard in the cool evenings, and shell black-eyed peas, green peas, and prepare whatever needed to be done. We also had a smoke house where we smoked ham and bacon. I could go on and on.

These days, it is my turn to take care of those whom have passed before me, including my grandparents. I look forward to spring time every year and making the trek back to the little cemetery where they are buried.

When you finally go back to your old hometown, you find it wasn’t the old home you missed but your childhood ~ Sam Ewing

Upon my annual return, I no longer have the camaraderie of the sweet and gentle ways we used to share with so much love, but I do have all the precious memories. Those traditions are lost now, just like the fresh flowers we cut so lovingly and respectfully. They have been replaced by plastic flowers, which indeed last longer and are creatively and artfully manufactured. But it’s the sweetness of the heart that they announce to those that care, and that’s a good thing. Still, there’s nothing like the grandeur of the real that’s been left behind in so many ways.

This is what Memorial Day means to me: the humble memories of a time now long gone, when my heart-parents and I decorated the family graves in the little cemetery with fresh flowers picked from our own flower garden at our home. so full of tradition. The flowers were placed in ball glass jars filled with fresh well water, and most of all… love. It was the sweetest time ever.