Juanita’s Memories of Mama Carr’s Soft Side

I was the recipient of Mama’s wrath many times but also the recipient of the practical expressions of her love many more times.

I remember one year she set her sewing machine out in the yard where it was cooler, put the old kerosene lamp on one leaf of the machine and sewed far into the night so that I would have a new dress to wear for the first day of school the next day.

I also remember the winter that I had the measles. I was very, very, sick for quite a number of days-fever, no appetite, etc. Mama, trying to find something to “tempt” my appetite, asked me if there was anything that sounded really good to me and I told her that ice-cream sure did. We had no electricity, therefore no freezer to keep ice-cream in and no car to go to town to buy any. It was late in the evening when I made my request. It was so cold that the creek down in the pasture had frozen over. Yep, you guessed it. Mama went down to the creek and got enough ice to go in the ice-cream freezer bucket, got out the ingredients to make ice-cream and before I went to sleep that night I ate a bowl of some delicious homemade ice cream.

I can still remember how good it tasted.