Blue Jay Soup, part 2: The Old ‘Dommer’ Hen

My Great Aunt Addie (Stephens) Jones was born Nov. 30, 1916. I offer the following quotes from a little book she wrote titled, “Roses, Raindrops, and Rainbows of My Life.”

“The Deep Depression had started, the bottom had dropped out of everything.  The banks were closing, and what money Papa had was in the bank and there was no way he could get it. The price of cotton and corn had dropped so low you didn’t make anything out of it to speak of but we had to gather it anyway. For the first time in my lifetime, things sure were looking rough. I mean really rough! Papa and Mama were so worried.”

The Stephens did lose their farm, and Uncle Lonnie and Aunt Addie married on Jan. 5, 1933. My family were literally dirt floor poor.

She continues, “…Lonnie and Mr. Jones had made a frame out of lumber for a one room tent. It was good size and they had bought new ducking, like cotton sacks were made of and had stretched it tight and put something on it so it wouldn’t leak…it was really nice. It had a dirt floor, but we sprinkled ashes down and put water over it, so it was hard. We fixed it real cute. Mostly with orange (fruit) crates, a bed, our wood cookstove, and my table. We were proud of it.”

Due to indebtedness, many in the depression did lose their homes. In comparison, minuscule debt verses the bloated high life of today. And, after decades of easy money and high living – like BBs bouncing off a bull’s hide, lessons from the past no longer penetrate present day. What will be the outcome? Will people be thankful for a dirt floor?

After reading the verses of 1 Timothy 6:5-12, I lay down my glasses and sigh. No, this will not end well.

On a rainy moving trip, in a Model T Ford with no roof, Aunt Addie held a box of straw with a “Dommer” hen on her lap that was settin’ a batch of eggs.  The old hen hatched out 15 chicks on the trip; all on the lap of my rain-soaked Aunt Addie! She stayed the course, for that hen meant future food for them; again, something incomprehensible today.

I remember Uncle Lonnie as kind of quiet and reserved.  No doubt, hard times and walking many a mile in the fields behind a team of mules formed the man that he was. I have heard it said that he was too serious; too sober-minded if you will.

The same has been said of many old-timers from the past.  I heard it again just the other day about a man who has been gone now for over 40 years. Is it true?  Were those men too serious? Or, could it be that “Good time Charlie” and “Hard times Hank” were raised on opposite sides of the track?

Aunt Addie was gentle, but straightforward, a trait inherited from her mother; and even though she was not my aunt by blood – but marriage – her “Mama” was always “Grandma Stephens” to us children. Aside from family visits, she babysat us two older boys a couple of times while mom and dad toured the old home places in southern Oklahoma. As many elderly did, Grandma Stephens, born in 1888, stamped a lasting impression upon my life, that to my shame, I am only now in recent years beginning to fully understand.

The memories of Grandma Stephens remind me of Corrie Ten Boom (in appearance and mannerisms). No wonder, for they had the same father, and both had endured profound hardships, as did their brother. “Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered” (Heb. 5:8).

A sincere Christian, peering into Grandma Stephens’ eyes was like viewing a well-worn map full of dirt roads. She passed in 1983.

My great grandpa, Jesse Barfield, had to travel those same dirt roads, for he also lost his savings when the banks closed – he would never use another.

Times were very tough for my family, and to scrounge food as best they could, my great uncles Frank and Jack Barfield improvised. They rigged up an old screen door to trap blue jays with corn; kind of like a dead-fall trap with the screen offering air passage, like a huge fly swatter.

My Grandma Jones, their sister, shared with me the following: “Why, if it weren’t for blue jays in the soup pot, oftentimes we wouldn’t have had any meat at all. And mother made our dresses from flour sacks that daddy bought at the mill, he would try to sort through them to get us the same print.”

Wouldn’t have had any meat at all? No.

Consider these words from Aunt Addie: “We didn’t have any worldly goods, but we were happy and really so rich in the ways that counted. God had been so very good to us. There were lots of times we only had bread and gravy but usually there was enough of it to go around.”

I want to close this letter with quotes from two different people who served time in prison wrongfully; it mirrors what my Aunt Addie just said.

“You can never learn that Christ is all you need, until Christ is all you have.” – Corrie Ten Boom

“Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life, for there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of a man’s soul.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

To be continued, Lord willing.

Michael Everett Jones is a Texas County native, old fashioned historian and purveyor of traditional Christian values. Email ozarksgrandpajones@gmail.com.

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