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chapter 21 Getting an Education The ranch families in Uvalde were meat eaters. Putting food on the table meant raising and butchering animals and curing the meat. Tommie and Lizzie raised cattle and goats for sale, horses for working the ranch, and hogs for food. The hogs ran loose on the range until fall, when the barrows were penned and fed corn in preparation for butchering. Their son John Lee described the process: Usually Papa butchered eight or ten hogs for our pork supply. Butchering took place during cold weather and all members of the family took part. We ground sausage, made lard, laid outside shoulders and hams to cool out before packing in salt and then curing by smoking. We usually used the loins fresh. After the lard was rendered I had the job of making soap with the crackling and lye. Mama supervised the project. Some of the sausage was used fresh but most of it was cured along with the ham, bacon and shoulders. Papa would also butcher a fat cow in the fall and pickle the meat. During the spring and summer he and neighbors would take time about butchering calves for fresh meat. We also butchered goats. We were meat eaters. We not only ate meat but vegetables and fruit. Papa bought corn, tomatoes by the case and dried apples, peaches prunes apricots and raisins by the 25 pound box. Sugar and dry beans by the 100 lb sack—also coffee which was green and had to be parched. We had a good garden and orchard from which we got most of our fresh vegetables and fruit. Goats and cattle were the main source of our income though we had income from pecans that were gathered from the native trees that grow along the Nueces. We had our goats sheared twice per year. One time during shearing Marty went for the mail and brought the paper to Papa. The paper—The Semi-Weekly Express—had an account of the assassination of President McKinley. The shearing crew gathered around and listened while Papa read the account. Christmas was a time we looked forward to, for all the relatives would gather for the day at one of the homes. We would play games and eat. What a feast we would have—turkey, ham, venison, and beef with all that goes with it (except liquor of any kind). Mama would begin preparing by baking her fruitcake by Getting an Education 173 Thanksgiving. Other cakes and pies were baked during the week before Christmas . Christmas was the one time of year that we had apples and oranges. Papa would go to Uvalde and buy a box each of apples oranges and dried cluster raisins . He also bought nuts—English walnuts, Brazil nuts and milked candy. The children usually got one toy.1 Now that the children had grown up so much, the biggest problem was finding schooling for them. School was not free; it cost five dollars per month per child, an amount the Sutherland family could not afford, so they hired a series of girls from Uvalde who had just completed high school to come and teach the children at home. The first years in the canyon, they attended a school with Willie and Emma’s children near their home. However, this was a long way for the kids to go, and with the school term only four months long, the family decided to find a tutor to live with them just to teach their growing family. One of the teachers, Hettie Humphreys, came to instruct the children and to help sew clothes for them. The teachers lasted only one year—that was as much of the isolated life and hard work as they could take. In 1898 the family made a long wagon trip back to Jackson County to visit their relatives. The journey was a costly one. It meant the loss of their goat kids since they had to have the goats looked after by a Mr. Arnold, and he took the kids that were born: “Well, Mr. Arnold is to let Tommie have his goats back and while we feel that Mr. Arnold has been more than well paid for taking care of the goats, we feel that we are lucky to get them back. We do not get them until after the first of October as he will not shear before then. He, Mr. Arnold, is to pay us no interest, get the increase...

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