28
The War Cry | FEBRUARY 2014
A mail carrier came from the little hamlet of Doddsville about
six miles away. Probably the highlight of the mail delivery was
the long awaited day when the new Sears�Roebuck catalogue
came. We spent many hours poring over the pages. If the cotton
crop was good, my mother got to order a few things.
Winter settled in with a vengeance in 1942. The cold was quite
severe in the drafty house. The only sources of heat were fireplaces
in the front two rooms and a wood stove in the kitchen.
There was no way to get warm, even though we
huddled as close as we could to the fire. We baked our
frontsides, while our backsides remained freezing.
Our mother, Annie Ione, whom we affection-
ately called mama, was a very loving and re-
sourceful country woman. She could have
survived pioneer days with her ability to rise
above hardships. She was a very tender
and thoughtful mother, even though she
did not have a good pattern to follow
from her own family��her mother
had died at an early age. She and
her sister Katie had to be shifted
to the care of two different aunts
during the summer months,
while their father worked at
his carpenter job.
Brand X Pictures
by
PEGGY PARK
Warm
Love
T
he scene was a shotgun house in a rural
area of Mississippi known as Linn.
There
were three country stores and a Baptist and
a Methodist church serving the farmers and their
families. It was the early 40s. My sister, Wanda Sue,
and I were growing up on a cotton farm. We were the
youngest of five children, also including Dot, Bud, and
T.K. Bud had gone off to serve our country in the army
.