GREAT-GRANDPA WILLIE

When Great-grandpa Westwood was a boy, things sure were different. He lived on a farm in Tennessee. Grandma says it was a small farm, but it sure doesn't sound small to me! They had woods and a creek and fields and animals and everthing. But there were some things they didn't have - like Grandma said when you wanted to go to the bathroom, you had to go outside to a little bitty shack built back behind the back yard. It was like a teeny tiny wooden room with one door and no windows and no lights either 'cause back then they didn't have 'lectricity. When you went into this shack, there was nothing but a wide wooden box pretty high off the floor. It went from one side of the room to the other and had a big hole in the middle. That's where you sat down. But is was so high that your feet wouldn't toucfh the floor until you were older. And you know what else? They never had any toilet paper! They had to use pages out of an old catalog or newspaper. Yuck!!
Well, anyway, Great-grandpa lived here with his grandma and grandpa, (They would 'ev been my great-great-grandma and grandpa!!)his mom and dad, his Aunt Ad, his four sisters and his two brothers. That's a lot of people in one small house especially one without a real bathroom. Great-grandpa's daddy built the house all by himself - well, maybe his brothers helped him, but he figured it all out how to put it together and everything.
One neat thing about how Great-grandpa lived was that on a farm he could have chickens and pigs and a cow and a horse and a mule and dogs and cats all at the same time. That part would hae been really great. Grandma says that back then the kids had to make their own fun - that since there wasn't any 'lectricity they didn't have Nentendo or television or anything. They didn't even have any kind of telephone and Great-grandpa didn't even have a bicycle or any comic books or even many books to read, so I guess he needed a whole bunch of pets to make some fun.
Grandma says Great-grandpa made up games too. One time he and his older brother, Great-uncle Leon, went into the woods and found these two tall trees growing right near each other. "Willie," said Great-uncle Leon, "wouldn't it be fun to sit in the top of one of those trees and ride it all the way to the ground?"
"It sounds exciting all right," Great-grandpa agreed, "but how we gonna do that?"
After some thinking and some talking, the two of them came up with an idea. Great-uncle Leon climbed to the top of one tree. Then Great-grandpa Willie started to chop at that tree. He swung that old ax until the tree was almost chopped through to the other side. "It's almost ready!" he called up to Great-uncle Leon. "Are you ready?"
"Yeh, I'm ready!" Great-uncle Leon called back down a little bit scared thinking about what was gonna happen, but really excited at the same time.
"O.k. Here goes," Great-grandpa Willie called back. And that's when he took one more swing of that old ax and then dropping the ax, he reached up and gave the top part of the tree a big push. Great-uncle Leon perched up at the top in the branches started flying through the air. Down toward the ground he rode that tree and then just before he was about to crash, he jumped into that second tree that was right next to his tree, grabbed a branch and swung on down 'til he could drop safely to the ground.
"Wow!" he shouted. "Boy, was that terrific!! Come on. Let's find two more trees and you can have a turn."
That was their game. Well, one day they were trying this game again when Great-grandpa's mother, my great-great grandma Lena - came to the edge of the woods and saw what the boys were doing and she had an A-number one hissie fit! She yelled for Great-grandpa to come down out of his perch in that tree right that instant and boy, he could tell she meant for him to slide down really fast! As soon as he hit the ground, she grabbed those two boys by their shoulders and just about dragged them back to the house where she found her hickory switch and made sure they knew exactly how she felt about their tree game!
Great-grandpa had lots of chores to do on the farm even when he was young. One time he3 and his sister cora were supposed to plow the field. They took the old mule, Flattop, out to the field and hitched him up to the plow. But that old mule wouldn't budge. He just lay down there right in the middle of the field. Great-grandpa jerked on the reins, but Flattop wouldn't move. Great-grandpa kicked him; he got a stick and beat his backside, but no way was that old mule 'gonna' stand up and work. So Great-granpa told Great-aunt Cora to start putting cornstalks on top of Flattop.
"Whatcha gonna do, Willie?" she asked.
Just put the stalks on his backside." Great-grandpa told her. You'll see."
So Great-aunt Cora and Greatp-grandpa Willie covered Flattop's back legs and back with dried out cornstalks. Then Great-aunt Cora found out what Great-grandpa Willie was gonna do 'cause he took out some matches and he lit those old cornstalks. Well, I'll tell you, those old stalks were so dry and when that match touched 'em they started burnin' up. And when that old Flattop felt those stalks a burnin' like that, he jumped up really, really fast! And then he started just a runnin' and runnin' right across that field toward home - plow and all! He must 'ev been makin' a lot of noise too 'cause Great-grandpa's daddy came a runnin' out of the barn to see what all the hullabaloo was about. When he saw what was left of the fire and old Flattop a movin' so fast trammpin' over the corn 'n all, he figgered things out purty quick. And that's when great-grandpa found out that his dady could use a hickory switch just like his Momma. Only I bet Great-great granddaddy's switch probably hurt just a little more 'en Great-great-grandma Lena's had!
So I think life at my Great-grandpa's would have been sometimes purty yucky but most of the time lots of fun!