"Painter Comin' Down the Chimney!"

The James Byrd and Laura Wrede Byrd house in Jasper (Hamilton County) FL. Its most recent use is as a storage barn for the present owner's hay.

It was an unseasonably cold night in Madison County, Florida. The cold snap—probably bringing to north Florida the rarity of temperatures in the teens—had already lasted several days.

The children of the family arrived home from school to instructions to replenish the wood box and prepare the chamber pots; no one would want to go outside again before daylight; the only way to survive the cold night would be with a good indoor pile of the seasoned logs already split and stacked in the back yard.

When bedtime came, quilts would be warmed before the fire and then spread across the children and tucked tight against their bodies. For once, the children would not mind that there were not enough beds. The warmth of closely packed bodies would be welcome on this night.

As the sun set, temperatures began to plummet. It was the 1890s; there was no sheetrock or insulation inside the house. The same boards that clad the exterior of the cabin were the inside view as well. In cold weather those boards shrank, leaving gaps between them where cold air burrowed its unimpeded way into the house. Old newspapers pasted to the inside boards denied entrance to the worst of the cold air, but the walls were not the only entry point.

The sharecropper’s meager cabin was built on a foundation of stacked rock columns. Wind whistled beneath the house, too, and cold flew in between the floorboards. Only thin homemade rugs stood between the occupants and that chilling breeze from beneath.

As night fell, the mother built up the fire and lit the kerosene lamps. After a modest meal, most likely of fried salt pork, beans and cornbread, the children gathered around the fireplace. Lacking the warm winter coats children of colder climates might own, they relied on jumping about and staying near the fire to keep warm. Huddling near the fireplace was not altogether satisfying. One side of the body quickly became uncomfortably hot while at the same time the other side continued to ache with cold. Only by constantly twirling back and forth were the children able to keep themselves at least somewhat warm.

Suddenly, a shrill scream split the clear, cold air of the pine and palmetto scrub forest. It was a scream to chill the blood. At that moment, those hearing it would have sworn on their ragged Bible that a woman was being torturously murdered right there on their own property.

“Painter!” my great-grandmother exclaimed.

The children’s eyes grew wide. They had been taught to fear the Florida panther, but so far the tawny cat had mostly been an abstract concept. Maybe they had seen a dead one or two in their brief lifetimes, but certainly they had never experienced the terror of having one threatening to spring through their own front door.

With quickening heartbeats the mother assessed the situation. No doubt the cat was desperately hungry. With the extended cold weather, its usual prey was hidden away in burrows and other warm places. The cat, in his frantic hunger, was doing the only thing he could do; he was stalking the humans whose scent lingered out by the woodpile. With shaking hands, the woman secured the doors and windows as best she could. There were no door locks, only a short horizontal length of board to turn across the slats that made up the door. For a moment she may have considered barricading the door with furniture, but for whatever reason—possibly so as not to alarm the children—she decided against that.

The subdued children clustered even closer to the fireplace, not sure what it was they feared but understanding the look on their mother’s face. Again and again, the panther screamed, coming closer to the house with each utterance. Suddenly: silence. As the family listened, a scrambling sound followed by a distinct thump on the tin roof confirmed the mother’s worst fears.

“He’s on the roof!” several children cried out at the same time.

“Build up the fire!” the mother ordered.

Pairs of small, trembling hands snatched up firewood, tossing in as much as they dared without making the fire too hot and dangerous for the chimney. Again they listened. The only sound was that of padded feet carefully walking across the tin roof. The family remained motionless, hardly even breathing.

Without warning, the unthinkable happened: the panther tumbled down the chimney and into the flames. Children scattered and screamed, but the mother, in a moment of unimaginable speed and clarity of thought, flung open the door. The burning cat raced outside. The door was slammed behind him. Inside, the mother grabbed her children and held them close. Suddenly, the sparseness of the humble shelter and the penetrating cold that filled it no longer mattered. The most important thing was that the panther was gone; once again, the family was safe from harm, with enough wood to see them through the dark hours until daylight arrived to banish their terror.

Go to http://www.defenders.org/wildlife_and_habitat/wildlife/panther.php to hear the sound of a panther.

This story was told to me by my father Henry Collis Flowers (1910-1992) who heard it from his mother Edna Merritt Flowers. Edna was one of the children present in the room when the panther came down the chimney that night. The mother in the story was my great-grandmother Bashaby Wynn Merritt (later Padgett). As far as I know, the story is true. I have added the conversation and details based on general knowledge of the time period combined with accounts from other family members of house descriptions and household routines and my best estimation of what people might say in such circumstances.

Copyright 2008 by Edith Flowers Kilgo. All rights reserved. May not be used without prior written permission and appropriate attribution including a link to this blog.

Strawberries Picked in Childhood Will Always Be Remembered as the Sweetest

William Henry Flowers and Edna Merritt Flowers (Madison County, FL C. 1940)

One of my earliest memories is of walking with my father Henry Collis Flowers through his strawberry patch in Ashburn, Georgia. Never again will strawberries taste as sweet as those warm-in-the-sun berries as we picked them and popped them the very next second into our mouths.

My father always grew vegetable gardens. My childhood snacking was not about scrounging in a pantry for cookies or candy. If I got hungry while playing I knew I could pick a perfectly ripe tomato and eat it right then and there without bothering to wash either the tomato or the hand that plucked it. Later, by the time I was seven or eight I had developed the habit of eating a raw sweet onion out of hand as an apple is eaten. (Fortunately, I gave up this habit before being old enough to date, or I might still be single.)

I think the garden my father grew might now be called a mini-farm. It consisted of several acres and required hiring a man with a mule to plow it for us each spring. We ate what grew there: from spring onions to late fall collards, sweetened by the first frost.

Along with the garden produce for harvesting, there were grapevines requiring attention as well. My mother Winnie Rouse Flowers put up dozens of jars of bright purple concord grape jelly each year. Somehow it all turned out just right; as soon as we opened the last jar of jelly to spread on hot biscuits, the grapes would suddenly be ready to harvest again.

My father also bought one hog to raise and butcher each year, and my grandmother kept chickens that provided both eggs and meat for the family table. I didn’t think much about all this activity in those days. It was just the way people did things in the 1940s, but now I know how rare it was to be brought up in nearly rural circumstances. There, at the beginning of my life, I had the little homestead adventure I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to copy on a micro-scale.

Daddy’s favorite crop was sweet potatoes. To store them, he buried the wooden sides of an old farm truck halfway into the ground. Then each year as he harvested his sweet potatoes, he put them in the part that was underground and covered them with hay or straw on top. It was the south Georgia version of a root cellar. We ate the sweet potatoes both baked and fried.

To make your own fried sweet potatoes, cut a medium sweet-sized potato into wide slices (not strips like French fries) about a quarter inch thick. Fry in hot oil. Drain on paper towels and salt each batch as it comes out of the hot oil.

Copyright 2008 by Edith Flowers Kilgo. All rights reserved. May not be used without prior written permission and designated attribution.