Kay Hively: Growing up in a different era

(Kay Hively is a historian, author, and former editor, reporter and columnist for the Neosho Daily News and Neosho Post.)

I grew up in a large family. I am, in fact, the youngest of 10 children. And what a life that has made.

When I think of this, I am amazed that my siblings and I survived childhood. In my very young years we lived on a cotton farm that our family sharecropped. I was too young to work much, but the older kids worked hard on that farm. They worked freely and, for the most part, cheerfully, without pay.

During those years, there was a loaded .22 rifle that stood in a corner of our kitchen. Everyone was told the gun was not to be touched. As far as I know, it never was. Since we lived on a farm, it offered protection for our animals. Daddy used it to kill skunks in the chicken house or anything prowling around the barn.

None of us kids learned to swim. The story was that when Daddy was a child, he wanted to learn to swim. He got in the creek and spent five minutes trying to learn. He did not learn in that five minutes so he gave up. Because of that, he was afraid of water and never let his children get into any water higher than their knees.

Several of us learned to swim later in life….when Daddy wasn’t watching.

There were other rules that our parents had for us. We were not allowed to fight. We never took anyone’s toy, book, clothing or anything else. We could borrow, if the owner agreed.

But, on the other hand, we were allowed to climb any tree we wanted or the windmill tower, and we were allowed to swing and play wildly in the barn loft. We played ball, “rolled” barrels, killed snakes, rode on top of the loaded cotton wagon as Daddy took it to the gin in town, and played hide ’n go seek after dark. We pushed each other in a little red wagon down the bank of the irrigation ditch that was across the road from our house—which of course was without water when we had these wild rides. (Daddy would not have approved,)

We had a lot of bumps and bruises, and one brother accidentally hit another in the head with an axe while they were chopping wood. But we all survived and this kind of upbringing set our character. To my knowledge none of us ever spent a night in jail, never took welfare, never abused a spouse and all were baptized. We never thought our parents were unfair. We loved and respected them.

We didn’t have electricity in those early years so, of course, we didn’t have a television, radio or a refrigerator. We got a Sunday paper that was delivered by airplane. Each Sunday morning we all washed our hair on the back porch. Since we were all outside we could hear when the little plane was coming. All of us younger kids ran out into the yard and tried to catch the Sunday edition. I don’t think anyone ever did.

Later when the linemen came down our road and brought electricity, we got a refrigerator and a radio. The world had come into our house.

Looking back at my family in those years, I marvel at how we survived, and wonder if another family could be like this. Today, my parents might have been charged with child abuse or child labor. Could a father leave a loaded gun in the kitchen with several kids around and trust that it would not be taken?

Would kids today rebel at the hard work and strong discipline?

Just between you and me, I hope to see such families, but “It ain’t gonna happen.”