Someone asked me one time what my folks hobbies were. I just looked at them. Kinda like a calf looks at a new gate. Hobbies? I said you had to have money to burn to have hobbies back in the good old days. I told them that church going was an extra time. I said going to Marshall to visit grandpa and grandma was an extra time. And going to East Tennessee to visit was an extra treat. Not a hobby or a habit. If you had children back then you didn’t have money for hobbies. The quarter a day for school lunches was a budget item. Probably cheaper overall than when we carried our lunch. The wax paper, lunch pail, loafbread, and all the fixings was more than $0.25 a day. I never had a lunch pail, just a paper poke. A brown paper poke. Which I was instructed to fold and bring back home every day. My dad got up at 5 AM when he was on day shift at the Enka plant. The Enka bus ran at six and we were almost¼ mile from the road. The best quarter-mile to me because it was across the field and down through the woods beside a pasture and a bull there that I aggravated and then across the creek on the old oak bridge and up through the woods again just a fun walk and run for me. But I guess a good one for dad when he was coming home in place of going to catch the bus. when you work swing shift, raise a big garden, cut wood for heating and cooking, raised chickens and a hog and go to church, you just haven’t got time for hobbies. And mom, washing clothes once a week with the well pump, fixing meals, packing school lunches, sewing something all the time seems like, make a quilt, forever sweeping and wiping something, working in the garden, canning, church time, and then cleaning the outhouse, it was at least once a week out in the woods though it didn’t require a lot of cleaning. I made up for not having to clean the house by shooting marbles and having grass and dirt stains on the knees of my bluejeans and I played in the creek all the time. She just didn’t have time for a hobby. Though she loved to read there wasn’t much time for reading. Reading today is a pastime, not a hobby. You can read anywhere on your phone or tablet. It was a real bona fide blessing to me to be able to read at a early age. I started really young and read everything that I could. Oh and there were fires to build and maintain. Every morning or evening, whether it’s the wood cook stove or the warm morning heater in the wintertime. The cookstove course was year-round but it was not a hobby it was a chore. Mom took great pleasure in quilts and quilting but they were necessities more than a hobby. My dad didn’t hunt and talked about fishing some but we seldom got to go. He talked about the forks of Ivy and the big bass in there, but we never went . Usually when children were present, only the dad worked. On a regular job that is. But really, everybody worked and it was a family. You did things together and you talked to each other and you got your butt tore up for lots of things like making fun of someone, are being rude to an elder or talking back to folks and especially for fighting at school and at times for even bad grades in school. And extracurricular activities at church would get you in hot water, I know, I did business with the devil many times and got the devil whipped out of me. Mostly with the switch from mom that I picked out. Dad’s belt on rare occasions was a bit harder to take. I guess their hobbies was all of the above. Doing the absolute best they could with what they had for the family. But wait, isn’t that why America became the greatest nation in the world? Strong families? You better believe it. later on down the road we all left home, and we came back occasionally or went back occasionally and we would take our own families with us. Mom and dad always asked the question that rings a bell in my insides today, are you hungry? After I left home or was in high school, mom went to work and had her own money. She was such a remarkable, smart mountain woman, independent and tough. I think she treated work outside the home as her hobby. She took care of her money and bought what she want ed. She never drove a car and rode public buses to work. She loved quilting then with my sister Laura and she loved reading and working puzzles. Those were hobbies. Dad retired from the Enka plant. My dad always took care of his cars. I remember he had a hupmobile, that’s all I ever heard it called. And I distinctly remember the 1935 Ford that we had that I really liked, it was a dark green color. Then he had a 1950 Chevrolet black coup that was a good car for us as a family, and the last car that I remember my dad having was a 66 Chevy, 396 four barrel. And occasionally the carburetor get choked up and stopped up because he never drove over SO miles an hour, and he’de have a screwdriver adjusting that four barrel a lot of times and I would get tickled. Then after my dad retired he took up his hobby and that was fixing lawnmowers or tillers. He didn’t charge enough but he enjoyed it so much and was so good at it, he just felt like that charging for something that he enjoyed would not be right. Growing up with money always tight, he just couldn’t charge folks and that was okay. So hobbies? I guess, church, being a neighbor, raising a family, working, killing a hog, cutting wood, feeding chickens, working on off days in the garden, eating supper with your family, teaching her daughters how to quilt, how to cook, how to be a lady. Showing your son how to work by example, taking him to church, showing him how to shave, showing him how to act around elders, I could go on with some of this but I think you got an idea what I think the hobbies really were back in the late 40s and SOs and part of the early 60s. Life was slow and more easy-going and everybody wasn’t in a big hurry, and family was paramount. Mom and dad insisted we sit down at the table and eat together. I don’t remember many conversations we had but I just know it was a part of growing up and it was a part that I treasure. My memory comes alive when I can close my eyes and go back in time to the kitchen at Hollis Roberson’s rental house, and there’s Pa and Ma and me and Leta and Laura sitting around the table having dinner together, or supper it was to us then and it still is to me, suppertime. Pop always said grace always. So hobbies? There just wasn’t any time for hobbies that was too much work to do. Too much other things that were more important than hobbies. But one thing for sure my mom and dad had a right to have a hobby when they retired from raising children. They devoted all their working life to taking care of the family only then and only then, did they take time to do some things for themselves. And I love them for it, and I miss my mama and my daddy.
