[2] The Real Shack

I chuckle every time I see a tree stump turned into a luxurious piece of furniture in a high-end catalog. For you see, tree stumps were a necessity, not a luxury, in the decor of Annie Mae’s house in the early 1900s.

Natchez, Mississippi was a bustling river town with a chasm between the haves and the have-nots that ran as wide as deep. Shanties for the poor rested along the riverfront in the shadow of the grand mansions on the bluff. Ruby, Catherine, Eunice, Evelyn and Virginia, lived with their mother, Annie Mae and assorted men, in one of those shanties.

Two tree stumps topped with a wide board served as their dining table. Shorter tree stumps nestled underneath for the girls to sit on. Evelyn often bragged about knocking anyone to the ground who dared to sit on her stump! To justify her forceful response, she carved her initials deeply in the bark, so there could be no excuse.

An oil lamp stood in the center of the “table”, as the only light source in the room, until electricity reached their part of town in the late 1930s.

Most nights, Evelyn winced at supper as she watched her mother serve herself last, often having only a spoonful or two of that evening’s meal. On school days, Evelyn wrapped a slice of bread in a paper napkin and placed it atop a bowl of rice for her mother’s lunch. She’d follow the railroad tracks to the box factory where Annie Mae worked on the assembly line to provide for her girls.

Water heated on the wood stove was poured into a bowl to wash dishes and in a washtub out back for the girls to take turns soaking away the day’s dirt. Other personal needs were taken care of behind the farthest tree. When nighttime fell, the girls crowded onto two small mattresses pushed in the front corner of the house.

Annie Mae was her girls’ evening entertainment. Apparently, she was quite a storyteller who filled her girls’ hearts with love and their imaginations with images of faraway places. She encouraged them to dream and dream big.

Evelyn often wandered into Natchez as a young girl to watch elegantly dressed grand dames stroll the streets. She dreamed of one day having a girl of her own who would become a lady like the dames she so admired. I suppose Evelyn never dreamed that dream for herself, because, for her, it just didn’t seem possible. 

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My mother, Evelyn, grew up learning to survive. Discovering she could thrive, came much later in life.

More to come…