Lillian Lorena Smith, Part 2

When Onie (mom) would take us; which was often, we loved to go to the river (Cumberland River) and play in it. We done lots of fishing. We always had a boat that we would run trot lines in. Our mother taught us how to paddle a boat like she did. She would just paddle on one side of the boat the way the Indians did. Other people (men) in our area would paddle a few minutes on one side of the boat and the the other. They always looked as if they were fighting something. When my mother paddled a boat, you couldn't even hear the paddle go into the water and comeback out.

I loved playing house when I was little, but I could hardly get the boys to play with me. They would however walk down to the ditch that was in front of our house, down to the river and back up a ways to find bottles, broken plates and cans. These are what I used as play dishes. I loved making mud pies and sometimes I would use poke berries to color things red. One of our favorite games was to pretend our dogs had hydrophobia and we would call them and when they came we would jump up on the bed and scream like they were going to get us. I would always get so scared. I was scared of the dark when I was little. My sister and I would fight over who was going to sleep on the outside of the bed. I was so scared that I would let her beat me to pieces to keep from having to sleep on the inside.

We had to walk everywhere we went. If it was night when we came home, I would be so scared that I thought I was going to die. If the river was up, we had to go by the graveyard to get to town. Most of the time we had a boat tied up in the ditch if we knew the water was rising. Our mother would paddle us across the ditch and we would go to town or school. When we came home, we would holler and she would come pick us up.

Stay tuned..... there's more to come......