In my mind's eye, I still see Hollis as a bustling farming town that reeked of many flavors during cotton harvest - the cotton seed mill smelled like backbones and rice - which we had as a real treat during "hog killing" time - farmers would get together on the first cold spell (killing frost) and kill hogs for one another, split them open, gut them,and dip them in vats of scalding water to get the hair off and would singe the remainder of hair that you couldn't get off by scraping them - do you remember those days?
Growing up in the country was a real learning
experience in the late 30's, 40's - everyone was poor but we never knew that we were poor - we were loved, had clean clothes, food to eat and work to be done.
In my Mother's house, there were three (3) books: the Bible,
the dictionary and the Sears Roebuck catalog - the catalog being a very
important book in its own right, providing paper dolls for the children,and the non-slick pages hung in the outdoor privy - for obvious reasons known only to country folks..
We were to learn a new word each day, how to pronounce it, spell it, know its definition, and use it in a sentence - and she never told us the definition of any word, her words were: "look it up".
