Straight From The Hart
By Joan Rowden Hart
That Silver Haired Daddy Of Mine
I was born in 1943. My parents are both still alive and in some ways
in better health than I am. If you do the math it will be obvious
that I belong to a rather elite group of senior citizens who still
have their parents with them. You can believe me when I say I know
how fortunate I am.
My dad has spent a lot of time writing his autobiography, thereby
giving me a first-hand glimpse into the kind of life he had growing up
as a boy in these Ozark Hills, and of my grandparents’ home and family
life.
On this Father’s Day weekend, I am sharing with you some of his
stories. He can write better than I can, but in the interest of
getting as much into the space allotted to me through the generosity
of the Lebanon newspaper, I am going to paraphrase his writings.
He was born to Lloyd Melvin Rowden and Amanda Jane Smith Rowden in
1923. They had met while in their teens and “courted” by riding
double on his horse to go to pie suppers, or church services held at
Brice, Mullicane or Conn school.
Grandpa Rowden would play baseball on summer Sunday afternoons. He
played shortstop on a local Brice team called “The River Nine”.
When my grandparents got married they moved into an old vacant
farmhouse on my great-great uncle Bill Burns’ farm, and my dad was
born one year later. The house was called the Bennett House because
my grandpa’s sister had lived there for a while with her husband who
was a Bennett.
The house was in disrepair and Grandpa Rowden would get up many times
during a winter’s night to put more wood in the stove to keep the
sweet potatoes which were stored under the bed from freezing, and also
to keep Grandma Rowden’s jars of canned fruit and vegetables from
freezing and bursting.
Irish potatoes were buried in a hole dug about 18 inches deep in the
ground. It was about 5 feet in diameter and filled with layers of
straw about 12 inches thick, and potatoes layered down in and under
the straw so they could be kept all winter without freezing.
Grandpa Rowden had to chop all the wood used for cooking and heating.
He used a double bit ax, and it took an hour to cut enough wood to
last for one night in cold weather. He would cut extra wood in the
fall and stack it by the back door in case there was a long blizzard
or he would become sick with the flu and couldn’t chop wood.
They ate what they were able to raise or kill, including fish,
rabbits, squirrels, quail, blackberries and wild grapes. They ate
wild greens, poke, dock, lambs quarter, snake tongue, square weed,
dandelion and wild onions. Grandma would season the greens with jowl
bacon.
They would boil roots or bark of the sassafrass tree in the spring and
drink the tea. Grandma Rowden would make cobblers from sheep sorrel,
a small sour plant she harvested from the pasture which tasted like
rhubarb.
They gathered hazelnuts, black walnuts, hickory nuts and especially
butter nuts, which were easy to crack with a rock and tasted like
English walnuts but shaped like a big pecan.
There were paw paws, persimmons, and black haws which grew in clumps.
They were the size and shape of a bean and had seeds in them and,
according to my dad, had a very unique flavor. (I will take his word
for it.)
From their garden they had lettuce, radishes, potatoes and onions in
early summer, and later on they would harvest tomatoes, cabbage, corn,
sweet peas, sweet potatoes, and melons.
One of the few things I can remember about my Grandma Rowden is how
delicious her green beans always were. I didn’t get to visit her a
lot but when I did, I always scraped out the last green bean from the
bowl before getting up from the table.
The Niangua River was only a half mile from their house and my Grandpa
Rowden loved to fish. He used a pole and line in the summer and went
gigging in the winter with a homemade gigging light fueled by gas and
made to reflect the light down into the water.
He fished for carp, drum, buffalo, red horse, white suckers and bull
head catfish.
My great-great-grandfather, Jim “Grandpap” Burns, had a farm which
bordered the river. Directly across the river was the Noah and Pearl
Keith farm. Down river and adjoining Grandpap’s place was the Clark
Place, a large farm owned by Phelps and Mary Jane Clark. Their son,
Bryan, married my Grandma Rowden’s younger sister, Gertrude. I knew
them of course as Aunt Gertie and Uncle Bryan.
The Clark Place had some of the best fishing spots anywhere.
Apparently my great-grandmother was quite the fisherwoman. Daddy says
she was either fishing or talking about fishing every day. That’s one
family attribute I definitely did not inherit. But after skipping a
couple of generations, my granddaughters “got the bug” and would go
fishing every day if they could, especially if their Papa Hart was
taking them.
It was several years later before the Conservation Dept would stock
the Niangua with goggle-eye, and this fish became very popular
because they were easy to catch with minnows or soft shell crawfish,
and made very good eating.
I’m going to close out this column by wishing my dad, Fritz Rowden, a
very happy Father’s Day, and also to all you fathers who read my
column. I appreciate your kind comments which are usually shared with
my husband at the barber shop, who passes them on to me, or with my dad at the Senior Center
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