Spare Time

Seems I have a lot of that these days, Huh Wonder Why?
Anyway I was re-reading "Looking Back to See". I saw some parts that my Mom had told me about, and this time they registered.
The Browns were a farming family, first, before the logging industry took so many of them. Farming was hard and paid little. If you did not have the money to put in the crops, you did not have a crop and your family had less to eat in the winter. This was mostly in the depression.
My Dad and uncles, Uncle Harvey, Uncle Floyd, and maybe a couple of others would trap in the winter for food and pelts to sell. They trapped Mink, Fox, opossum, Anything that will sell, in fact I have a photo of Uncle Harvey with a board about 6 foot tall and 4 wide holding Mink, for sale. I believe he got about 1200 dollars for that group. 1200 was a fortune in those days. It fed a lot of people and it bought seed for crop.
Familys mostly stayed together, When my Great-Grandpa Tuberville died, My Grandma rotated between homes of her children and as I got older I realized she also visited one Granddughter she was proud of, My MOM. Great Grandma was a wonderful lady, she often told stories of how she fought off indians in the mid to late 1800s. She was a tough but kind woman, and funny, she was so funny. You never knew what was going to come out of her mouth.
When my grandpa Brown died, Grandma Brown moved in with children too. Now she was not one you wanted around a lot, Grandma T on the other hand could stay forever. David became especially fond of her, she always teased him and called him Bill Bailey. She told him often, you remind me of Bill Bailey. So he in turn called her Grandma Bailey. They had a thing going, mutual love and admiration.
When the Browns worked they worked hard,My mom was an equally hard worker, she wanted better for her children than she had. They worked all day in the fields, picking cotton, or tobacco, or whatever, Then the women would take care of the homes. Feed the family, and keep having babies.
The Brown boys, My dad and uncles, played in a Brown Band. They played for Barn Dances, or whatever, Country folk. Something to keep a family going in rough times. They got paid a few nickles, but My Mom did not like my Dad at these functions, she refused to go out when she became pregnant with her first, or go out to dances. My Dad decided go one night, over her objections, When he left she bolted the door, Well Daddy came home a few hours later and she would not let him in, Guess you can imagine the rest, He broke down the door, To my knowledge he quit the band. But he loved music anyway. Mama later regreated her decision to make him stop but in those days she felt everyone would look at her "sticking out" her words not mine.
It was shortly after that Uncle Floyd hurt his hand pretty badly and could not play the guitar anymore. So the band had to stop anyway.
Roy gained Daddys talent for the guitar and several of us gained the love of singing and music. Music, I can not imagine a day without it.
We spent a lot of evenings around a radio listening to the Grand Ole Opry, It was funny, to think back now, My grandpa had an old Radio like ours, He had poor reception and it was battery operated. He would sit with his ear right up to the unit, listening intently while Grandma was telling us kids to "Keep it down, Your Grandpa can't hear with all that racket". I never understood how he could hear it anyway it had so much static. I am not sure how he got batteries to operate it, but he was a wheeler dealer. He could get anything just by bartering.
So such was the life of the Browns or part of it, You all need to read the book, It is insightful.