Identifier: highwaysbywaysof00john (find matches)
Title: Highways and byways of the South
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: Johnson, Clifton, 1865-1940
Subjects: Southern States -- Description and travel Southern States -- Social life and customs
Publisher: New York, The Macmillan company London, Macmillan and co., limited
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Into this mortar or rice mill the rice was put, and then was crushed with a wooden pestle. That done, it was transferred to a shallow basket called the rice fanner and shaken free of hulls. The rice sheaves were stored in a barn about six feet square along with the cow peas and blade fodder — the last being bundles of corn leaves pulled off while green from the stalks standing in the field. Adjoining the barn was a pig-pen of rails that barely allowed the porker room to turn around, and beside the pig-pen was a cart of aboriginal pattern with wheels made of solid disks of wood sawed off the end of a large log.
The family raised cotton and corn as their chief crops, but I noticed they also had considerable patches of sweet potatoes and peanuts. Each peanut vine spread out in a close network over a circle three feet in diameter. Some of the vines had been pulled and turned roots upward to allow the peanuts that clung to them to ripen and dry. Later these nuts would be
276 Highways and Byways of the South
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Digging Peanuts
picked off and those that remained in the ground dug. The crows like peanuts and had been making regular raids on the patch. "And while they were getting the peanuts," said the woman, "one ole fellow stay up in the top of that daid tree there, and, soon as he see anybody comin', 'Awk!' he cry, and away they all go. But now we made this scarecrow yo see hyar. We
The Cotton Patch in Harvest Time 277
jus' set up a stake an' put a hat on top, an to make the rest of the man, we fasten together these New York Sunday papers my son in Brooklyn send us; an since that the crows come an' set on that daid tree an' have their powwows, but they doan' dare come no nearer. Yo' see this stick out at one side? That is his gun, and this piece of paper hung on it by a string is his shot-pouch. Yes, those Sunday papers from New York make the bes' scarecrow what ever there was." Ruthie and John, the woman's children, were bright and attractive, and they were gentle and polite, not only to me but to each other.

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