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When those dust storms blew and you were out in 'em, it would just coat
the inside of your nose literally. And sometimes your mouth would just get
cottony dry because, well, you spit out dirt sometimes. It looked like tobacco
juice, only it was dirt, when you'd spit. It was pretty awful. But I just
thought that was part of livin'. Everybody else was in the same boat. So I
didn't think anything about it. I just thought I was one of the lucky people,
and I was. I didn't have to do a lotta things that other students or kids did,
because I ... I felt like my daddy took better care of me than anybody. And I
-- I really didn't. We had meager food at that time. Everyone did, and we
lived literally on cornbread and beans and we had milk and Mother had always
made chow-chow out of pic-- you know, cucumbers. And that was our main meal
and at night we'd just have cornbread and milk, but so did everybody else. In
fact, I felt like we had good food compared to a lot of people. So I really
didn't think about it.
Mother just thought of ways to try to keep the dust out of the house and, of
course, as soon as it quite blowin', well, that was the first thing, was to
sweep the kitchen and -- and get a meal and then we'd clean up the rest of the
house. And we always had quilts and blankets hangin' on the line to get the
dirt out so that we could go to bed in a clean bed. And I remember wearing
patches on some of my clothes and I said somethin' about 'em one time and
Mother said, "Patches aren't a disgrace. All you need to worry about's being
clean." So she wanted us clean and -- and healthy.
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