The Yankees (Damnyankees, that is)

My greatgrandmother, Gatsy Susan Gray, daughter of Alexander, was a twelve year old girl in March of 1861. Her grandmother Gatsy must not have been all bad for her to have been named for her. I learned the story of the Yankee soldier from her in 1939 when I was ten years old. My cousins and I were visiting her at Aunt Hattie's house where she lived. We had all just seen the hit movie Gone With the Wind, and it was all we could talk about. We related the staircase scene where Melanie, still in bed from having delivered her baby, came down with a shotgun to take care of the Yankee soldier who seemed about to molest them and take their food. We were describing it all to our greatgrandmother, who, to my knowledge, had never seen a movie. She was sitting in her rocker and we sat on the floor at her feet. She began her story by telling us that they were very poor. Their straw mattresses were made soft with huge feather beds stuffed with the small feathers of chickens and geese. She had already saved enough to make one for her own dowery.

Behind the house was a woodpile and a big iron pot where clothes were boiled each Monday. This was a rare day when her mother was making lye soap, taking all the fat saved from frying bacon, etc., boiling it in water to skim off the clean fat and leaving the meat residue in the bottom. To the fat she had added a mixture of lye and cold water. The lye is so volitile it immediately heats the water so that you cannot hold to the glass jar, and when it is added to the lukewarm grease it begins to thicken like gravy. After stirring an hour or so it can be poured into a cardboard box to cool. In three days it is soap.

She had just added the lye, and the thin mixture was strong enough to take your skin off. She stood stirring when she saw a ragged soldier approaching. General Sherman had discharged his army, telling them to find their own way back home. He asked for food, and she told him they were very poor and had none. He argued with her and when she wouldn't answer him, he entered the log cabin, brought out all the featherbeds and pillows, and slowly ripped them open with his bayonet, shaking all the feathers over the freshly plowed ground for the wind to scatter. He was sure he would find money sewn inside. Finding nothing he advanced toward her. She waited until he was close and with the huge long-necked gourd with which she was stirring she threw the thing full right into his eyes.

Her husband was ploughing in a distant field. I can only imagine the flurry of sending a child to retrieve him and the whole family having to dispose of him and keep it secret. If she told us that part, I blocked it out. I'm pretty sure he did not fight in the war. My family had very little to gain by going to war. None of them ever owned slaves, and could not visualize themselves ever benefiting, even if the South had won. I heard a lot about the Yankees. My belly button was referred to as "where the Yankees shot you". We joked about not knowing that damn yankee was two words until we went to university. Next time - the story of my grandparents who had 12 children and why he deserted her after the birth of the last one.