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certain time to meet and clean up the land and have a decent cemetery. So that's what they did, gathered on Saturday and each family took a basket of food, coffee and etc, etc. and my daddy had one of those big horses like they have on T.V. pulling the beer truck. Joe Murphy told me he had seen my father hitch his horse (Dandy) to stumps and logs that a yoke of oxen couldn't have pulled and he said Mr. Daniels would say, come on now old boy and show folks what you can do and he said he'd seen Dandy almost get on his stomach to pull those stumps and logs out. Joe said with two Saturdays work they had a pretty cemetery. So then they got up money to put a fence around it. This was back in 1899 and the cemetery is almost filled up. This is May 29, 1988.
When I lived with Emma and Jahue by the Pearl River I used to like to stand on the bank and watch a bunch of men drive their cattle, horses & hogs across the river. The colts, calves and little pigs would all put their head on their mothers backs and swim across. It was fun to watch them. You could hear the men hooping and hollering for a half of a mile until the animals were all safe on the other side. There was a certain kind of cane that grew in the swap and the animals thrived on it and got rolling fat. Then in October the men would drive them all back out and when the farmers got their corn gathered they'd turn the hogs in to the corn patch for a couple of weeks to eat what corn was left, then they'd turn them into the sweet potato patch after the potatoes were dug, then come the hog killing time. Mr. Hover (Willies father) and boys would bring from 8 to 10 big hogs and put them in a pen back of the barn and bring two at a time to the lane by the house and have the big washpot full of boiling water and had a hole dug in the ground slanting where they had a big wooden barrel in the hole and they'd put hot water in it and cool it down to a certain temperature then dip the hog in it back and forth until the hair would rub of, then they'd pull the hog out onto some boards and a couple of men would scrape until they were perfectly clean so then they would hang the hogs up on a scaffold and pour cold water on them until they were as white and clean as could be. Now heres where the women come in, when the men got the hogs cut up a couple of us women would start cutting the fat up for lard and cracklins and some of the men would cut two or three hogsheads up into four parts and fill the washpot with them and cover with water and let boil until tender then take them up, cool and cut into tiny pieces. Then put in a No. 3 wash tube (brand new) bought for to mix hog head cheese
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Hover, Eva Pearl Daniels Autobiography-082
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