My Little Mountain Home (and me)

Lou-Ann come into the world one cold, snowy night in January. I slept through the birth ‘cause I was the baby one and had jest turned four years old the month before. Our new baby was a weakly little thang and jest wanted to sleep most all the time. Mama let us all hold her and wrapped her arms ‘round mine so I wouldn’t drop the baby. I admired her perfect little pink fangers and toes. She was the most perfect little sister that ever was.

The oldest girl in our family, seventeen year old Ila Mae, claimed the baby for her very own. She changed Lou-Anns die-dys and set and held her a lot. Ila helped Mama a whole lot with ever thang that needed doin’ ‘til Mama got up and around.

 Little Lou-Ann took sick with the croup a few weeks after she was born, her little chest a heavin’ as she coughed and rattled. Mama and Daddy doctored her with ever thang they knowed to do, but ‘fore daylight one morning, she jest stopped breathin’. Now, I don’t ‘member much of any-thang ‘bout the funeral, I jest ‘member the panic that night she died and Daddy tryin’ to warm her up and get her to breathe. 

They weren’t no money for no doctor back then in 1948 where our big family lived in South Eastern Kentucky so it was probably new-moanie that my little sister died of. Newborn babys was very lucky to survive when they was borned in the wintertime in the 1940’s.

Well, I was borned in the wintertime in the forties so I guess that tells you a little of MY nature. My name is Beth Ann Amberson and I am the boyish red haired odd-ball middle child in our big family of black haired people.

They’s five year’s ‘tween my younger brother Jonnie and me and little Lou-Ann was ‘tween me and him.

Now that happened to my baby sister ‘fore Ila Mae married. She was a good housekeeper and learnt from Mama how to cook real good, too. She cut all us girls hair and made us new underwear out of cloth flour-sacks with real ‘lastic ‘round the waist. When she didn’t have ‘lastic, she put in drawstrangs. She helped Mama sew patches where our clothes wore out or got tore. Most times, you couldn’t never even tell where it was patched. Sometimes, though, we wore headlight patches on the seat of our britches, when the seat material got too thin.