Written by Fern Augusta Frain Whitehead about her mother
A special lady, valued above the price of rubes and then some. A loving wife and mother, much loved grandmother, and very huggable great-grandma to six little munchkins.
Grandpa Hooker built the farmhouse. His friend Oscar Frain pitched in to help and fell in love with his winsome 16-year-old daughter Nancy. Like her mother, petite Nancy was a fine cook, with bright blue eyes and ready smile.
The house overlooked Trout Lake, which is right behind the present Milwee Middle School, which originally was Lyman, grades 1 through 8, until they added four more grades.
Nancy Hooker and her sister, Annie, learned to fish that lake most every day, then show off their catch and share it at the next meal. They learned to swing in that lake, too. They didn’t have swimsuits. Nancy and her sis wore dresses and aprons. Sometimes the girls would capture air in their skirt, kind of like a giant air bubble or float in the water, then they’d use their free hand to paddle around in the lake.
They worked hard, just like everyone did, and the girls certainly did their share, helping in the kitchen, as well as where ever else they were needed. Mrs. Hooker, their mom, was known for good, stick-to-your-ribs cooking, and there forever seemed to be hard working people grateful to eat at her long table.
Also, hungry travelers were often directed to her house for a meal, and/or a place to spend the night. Nancy’s father had cattle that roamed and grazed freely, plus he planted a grove full of orange trees that needed tending. There was a garden for vegetables to be enjoyed and eggs to gather, milk from the cows to be skimmed, and cream to be churned into butter.
Sometimes you had to chase an ornery rooster or old hen that was no longer laying eggs, so Mother Hooker could make them useful in the next meal!
Back then, around 1900, people in Longwood didn’t just go to the store and buy the latest toy. If you had a toy, it was really special to you and might be the only one you had. Maybe a cloth doll that Mom made for you, or a nice strong stick you found with a round stone that you could bat around.
People didn’t drive around in cars, either. They walked everywhere they needed to go. If they had a mule and he wasn’t busy helping the farmer plow the garden or pulling logs, he could pull the wagon and they could catch a ride.
Mules are very strong and very smart. Sometimes they can be very stubborn and refuse to pull the wagon or anything you wanted help with. That’s where that saying comes from: “stubborn as a mule.” You don’t want to act like that!
The girls and their brother did lots of things kids do today, like play with friends, go to school, and go to church. Nancy liked going to church, loved to sing, loved to bring a pretty bouquet of flowers she had grown to the church service for everyone to enjoy.
She also loved sharing food, feeding people and animals. She used to use food scraps (throw away pieces like bruised lettuce leaves or peelings or too-old bread) to feed the ducks, then she’d help herself to duck eggs, which were bigger than chicken eggs and free!
Anyway, Nancy grew up, married Oscar Frain, then at last a precious little baby girl was born to her, and she named her new baby daughter Fern Augusta Frain. She took her to church with her. She took Fern fishing with her, too. She would go with her sister Annie or her cousin Hettie or her special friend who had a baby also, and they would help each other with the babies, sometimes even nursing each other’s hungry babies while one mommy was busy fishing, or they were sitting together on the church steps chatting.
Little Fern learn to walk and walk they did, everywhere! Sometimes, though, they had a fun day off from all the hard work. Fern’s daddy would hitch the mule to the wagon, while she and her Mama Nancy made a nice picnic lunch and packed it in a basket with a cloth to put the food on when they were ready for their picnic. Then Daddy would lift the heavy basket into the wagon as well as help Fern and her mother Nancy climb up into it.
Off the little family would go, riding to the Springs for a fun day of laughter, games, and splashing in the cool spring waters. After a few hours, they’d be tired and hungry. Oh, how glad Fern was that she helped Mama pack their picnic lunch–yum!
Some potatoes were probably in the basket, because Fern’s daddy liked potatoes. eh liked them so much he would enjoy eating them three times a day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Mainly he’d eat them at noon, then at supper Mama would peel whatever was left and fry them for him. Sometimes Fern and her mom ate grits. Dad ate grits too, but he ate them like dessert, with sugar and milk on them. He was from Michigan, where eating customs weren’t quite the same as Florida. He also had an adventure in Alaska, panning for gold. A lot of men went to Alaska, hoping to get rich. They called it a gold rush.
Fern always loved cats, can’t remember not having one. When Fern was very young, Grandma Hooker had a mama cat with kittens and gave a kitten to Fern to love and take care of. Since customers came to the house to buy milk and eggs, Fern’s dad did not want a dog. He felt a dog would bark and scare off potential customers. But a cat could be really useful. Maybe catch or scare off a rat that came to the barn to steal the cow’s feed.
One time, Mama Nancy’s brother Frank brought Fern a guinea pig. He liked to live under the back porch. He’d back himself in, turn around to face you, and eat oatmeal. And when he was hungry, Fern learned you’d better feed him, because he’d cry “wee, wee wee!” LOUDLY. He was black and white and furry, but she liked cats best of all.
There was always a lot to do and quite a bit of time spent to grow and prepare food to eat. In the garden grew potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers. Peas and beans also. You had to go buy flour, sugar, cornmeal, and coffee, but you tried to hard to grow most of your food. It tasted better, too, fresh out of your garden or fresh picked from your fruit tree.
If you had more food than your family could eat, you could dry in the sun some things (dried grapes became raisins, dried corn could be ground into cornmeal, dried plums became prunes, etc.) They could hang and salt meat like ham. They could can some food like jam and peaches and pack honey into jars. Later pressure cookers and freezers and refrigerators were invented to help make food last longer. Another nice thing: people that had more food than they could eat SHARED the extra food with others. Oh, and save some corn or peas or beans to dry for seeds for the next garden. Then with some good weather and hard work, you could have enough food to eat next year!
To wash clothes, no fancy washing machines or dryers. To dry, spread cloth on grass in the sun or hang on a fence or clothesline, pinning with wooden clothespins. Even diapers. No Pampers or Huggies back then. To clean clothes, build a fire outside, make your own lye soap, pitcher pump water or carry it from the lake or spring in a bucket to fill a washpot and heat the water over the fire.
They started very early in the morning. You could scrub clothes on a washboard, Prince the soap out of clothes in a bucket of clean water, then wring the clothes, drying to squeeze as much water out as possible.
Fern’s dad helped her mom with this big job every washday. They were lucky. They had a wringer at the top, crank it and let it do the hard work of wringing and squeezing water out for you. Do the white clothes first, like sheets, shirts, towels, underwear, and diapers. Put them in a clean tub while you load dark or colored clothes into the soapy water in the washer.
Swish and scrub them, then put them thru the wringer, to squeeze out the soapy water. Empty washer tub of water, fill it with buckets of clean cold water to rinse the white clothes first, wring them out, put the dark ones in that rinse water and while they are soaking, hang the white clothes on the clothesline. Then rinse the darks, run them through the wringer, hang them on the clotheslines, empty out the washer tub of cold water.
No one wasted water, either. You could use your bucket to empty tub and pour water on the flowers or garden or wherever there were thirsty plants. It was fun, too, for the little children to play in the tubs of water when Mama was finished using it for washing clothes.
When Fern grew up and became Spence and little Nancy’s Mama, she let them play and splash and bathe in the tubs on the back porch on laundry day. While young Fern’s parents helped each other with the big job of laundry, she had an important job, too. She prepared their noon meal.
She loved making dinner, especially when she could make dessert like puddings and 1-2-3-4 cake. 4 eggs, 3 cups of sifted flour, 2 cups of sugar, 1 cup of butter. Years later, this same cake won the heart of her boyfriend Clyde Whitehead, who fell in love and married her!