[Granville-Hough] 14 Oct 2009 - First Times

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:26:06 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>

FIRST TIMES

One can remember with great clarity many of lifeÆs first experiences,
some worth retelling, and others not. Here are just a few which stand
out in my experience.
In May 1929, we learned my uncle Luther Hough had died, and was to be
buried in Mendenhall. I was selected to go with my father to the
reception or wake at the time of the funeral. I was six but not yet
seven years old. It was the first time I had ever been to such an
occasion, and I was over-awed by the adults and absence of young people
my age. I remember Aunt Jenny, the widow, as being kind to me, as well
as the other ladies. I do not remember a church or burial service, so I
think we only got to the reception. Someone gave me a sandwich, the
first I had ever had, and it was made with light bread, which I could
eat quite readily with my small teeth. It had a delicious taste, more
like cake to me. I do not know why it was called light bread, but it was
certainly lighter than the corn bread which I normally ate. Later, I
learned to call it white bread. So I learned town folks ate white bread,
and us country folks ate plain bread, or just bread. By the time I got
into high school, the terminology was reversed, and most of the USA ate
bread, and I ate Corn bread.
I can also vividly recall the first hamburger I ever ate. It was a year
or two later, and I got to go to Magee with my father to sell a carload
of peaches. It was in the depths of the Depression, and the peaches were
not selling well. When it came lunchtime, my father gave me a dime to go
buy a hamburger. I had never bought anything like that to eat before,
but I could observe that people sat on round stools at a long counter
and ate their food. I followed suit and sat on a stool when my hamburger
came in a round bun that looked like a big biscuit. I saw some bottles
on this counter in front of me and one looked like a catsup bottle. I
knew about catsup, as we had learned to make it at home; and I was
really fond of it. Without too much ado, I took a liberal helping from
this bottle on my hamburger. When I tasted my hamburger, my mouth
practically burned. The red stuff was tabasco sauce, really the original
hot kind from Louisiana. I was not one to waste a dime, so I slowly and
manfully ate my tabasco hamburger. I did not know you could ask for a
glass of water, and the person who ran the operation did not provide
any. After I got out of that restaurant, I looked for water, and finally
found a hose hooked to the side of a house. I turned it on and drank and
drank. It was a hot summer day, and the water in the hose was hot. That
made no difference to me. Soon I had a belly full of hot tabasco and hot
water. I did not feel too well, but I did not tell my father what a
boo-boo I had committed.
When I was about thirteen, my brother Rudolph was home from college for
a few days, and he learned I had never seen a movie (picture show). So
he took me on a shopping trip to Magee and took me to the local movie
house and got me a ticket and sent me in. The movie was one of those
Saturday afternoon shows which repeated over and over, but I did not
know that. I had gone in when it was about half over, so I missed the
plot. Then that showing was over, and everybody got up to leave. I did
the same and walked out, not realizing I could stay and see the first
half in the next showing. Rudolph asked how I liked the picture show,
and I said ôFine.ö I actually did not see the first half of that movie
until about 20 years later when it showed up on an early TV rerun. I
also remember that the second movie I ever saw was ôSergeant York,ö
while I was a student at Mississippi State. Movies were not part of my
educational experience.
When I was about ten, I got to take our bushel of corn to the grist
mill. We ate a bushel of corn meal every two weeks. I thought it would
be a great adventure. Tom Gill had his grist mill on the county line
about three miles away. So we saddled old Ada (our gentlest mule) and I
climbed into the saddle and they put the bushel of corn in front of me
in a sack evenly divided so that it would not fall off.
I remember nothing about the trip over to the mill, but when I got
there, someone helped take the sack of corn into the mill. (A bushel of
corn weighed 56 pounds, and I weighed about 90 pounds.) Then,
afterwards, someone helped me get back on the old mule Ada and put the
corn meal in the saddle. Now, on the way home, old Ada was more
enthusiastic than when we were going away. I also felt more adventurous.
When we got to Concord Church, there was a long slope down to a culvert
at the bottom of the ridge. I thought it would be nice to let Ada run.
She went into a trot, which was very jarring, and it caused the meal to
begin shifting to one side. By the time I realized what was happening,
most of it had shifted and I was hanging on to the sack for dear life.
It was still a mile and a half back home and I had to hang on to that
sack of meal all the way. When I got home, someone was able to grab the
sack just before I let it fall on the ground. I was bare-footed, of
course, and the pressure of the sack of meal against my foot in the
stirrup had caused a bleeding abrasion which took weeks to heal.