Mother McCray, July 30, 2014
We were living on a part of the land my father was left by his father. We raised colts, chickens, cows and horses. My grandfather planted okra, string beans, cabbage, mustard greens and sweet potatoes. We had a well – sometimes you’d go to the well and it had frogs in it. Or snakes. We had a persimmon tree, a pear tree, we had a fig tree.
And we had a horse named Pearl. I was so stubborn, I was bad. They called me Pearl after the horse, because she was stubborn too. After 90 years I still have that name.
My grandmother would dry fish on a line. They’re called shoe-pick. We used to catch crawfish. We had a little stick with a net on it. We’d put salt pork on a string, hang it in the water. When the crawfish come to get it we’d pick ‘em with the nets.
We used to kill the hogs, we’d use everything but the hair. We’d use the blood for blood sausage. Before that we’d give all the neighbors pieces of hog. We ate everything on the hogs – the ears, the chitlins (that’s the guts). My grandmother used to take the hoof and make tea for when you get pneumonia.
We’d use palm of crystal leaf to thaw out fever – put them on your chest. My grandmother used to make tea for us with all sort of flowers and grass. Most of these plants you can’t grow anymore. That was before people went buildings and constructions. We used to go out and get wild mustard and wild onions in the swamp land. You ask people now what a pepper grass or wild mustard is, they’d be like “what is that?”
In the winter time, my grandfather would go to the sugar house and have sugar cane turned into syrup. They cut the cane in the winter.
You even ate a possum. We ate possum and coons. We had traps. You open them, put the food in and then crack! We ate the possum with some good sweet potatoes.