I find it impossible to do a tribute to my mother in one sitting, so this is Mable Robinson Week. Each night I will add to her story, a life of selflessness, sacrifice and hope. However bad her circumstances, she hid it with a ready smile. If my dad saved any money from his year "on the water", it was gone by the time my brother Bill was born. I was 2 1/2, and I remember it so well, because my uncles were digging a well, their clothes covered with yellow mud. They pretended to try picking me up, but I ran, screaming. I always tried to stay clean. My dad came in saying he had something to show me, a pink little boy in my mother's arms. They farmed that year, and I began to care for my brother. He was asleep on a quilt on the floor when he was a few weeks old. I was told to watch him, and go to the barn as soon as he woke. It was awfully boring, and after a few minutes I decided to go to a neighbor's house. My dad must have seen me leave the house, because he caught up with me before I got there, and with a switch he had cut on his way he hit my legs as I ran all the way home.
We were to spend the next 16 years share cropping, borrowing money for everything we bought, paying it back when the tobacco sold, and starting the new crop with borrowed money. Before I was three we had moved to the dilapidated Civil War mansion in Craven County. When winter came my little brother had no warm coat, so Mama took a very worn wool blanket which was threadbare except around the sides, and sewed him a little coat by hand. It was large pink and brown checks, and I must have had a fashion sense, even then, because I thought it was the silliest thing for a little boy with bright red hair!
During those depression years we were never on welfare, because we could grow things, and Mama sewed our clothes by hand. She could make the tiny stitches look just like a sewing machine had sewn it, by back stitching each one. Daddy was able to supplement their income
through some homemade brew operation he had going in the woods. Prohibition had given many people in the south a clear conscience, and he always had connections, law officers he paid off, but his partner was caught, and sent to prison for a year. The family were our best friends, and they had no income while their father was away. They were invited to live with us that year, in the upper floor which had two nice rooms and a fireplace in each. Miss Emmy cooked for her two daughters in the fireplace. I thought it was fascinating. My mother loved having them there, because normally she had nobody to talk with except me. I wore her out, she said, because I asked so many questions. It was during those years that stock car racing started in North Carolina, in the sand hills of Rockingham, near Charlotte, or so the story goes, with bootleggers in their old jalopies, trying to outrun the "revenuers".
Daddy enjoyed living on the edge. Gambling was another vice which worried my mother. One of the few times I saw her cry was the year he got in a poker game with all the money he had brought home from selling the tobacco crop. He lost every cent and could not pay the debts for the previous year. I am sure he spent a lot of time in the woods the next year in order to catch up. Most evenings he spent at the country store gambling, not for high stakes, but with small wrapped candies. It was wonderful when he won. I especially loved the peanut butter ones.
The store was warm. Our house was cold. He hated cutting wood. During the winter days my mother stayed in bed most of the time. She would take a "tow sack" made of burlap and scour the woods for fat pine so she could have a fire in the heater when we got home from school. As soon as we ate we went to bed with a hot brick at our feet. Some of the later houses were very difficult to heat. You could see through the walls in places. Mama decided, when I was about ten, to get a job in town at the new shirt factory. She loved the companionship of the other women who worked there. We loved the variety of food she began to bring home. Of course when the weather warmed up she had to quit and help work the farm.
Still she sewed all of our clothes by hand. She could only afford to buy black and white thread. I remember a skirt she made for me from a remnant she found on sale. It was peach color, and she determined it would look tacky sewn with white thread, so she pulled raveled threads out and wound them together to top stitch all the pleats in peach thread. She was always busy. I cannot ever remember seeing her resting. Daddy seemed to always be resting, usually reading Wild West magazines. After working all day in the factory she would come home, cook a meal and before going to bed she made a small tub of hot water and washed his feet!
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