I remember the days when folks like Pop, Momma, and other Sea Island natives had their own ways. It was the only know-how that island folks had back then. Native islanders believed some crazy stuff. It wasn’t as if they taught us children all of these things, but they didn’t make them secrets either. We just picked up on them as a part of daily living. We would learn about many things during storytelling time around the fireplace or in hearing the older folks talk among themselves.
Many people talk about or treasure facts and fictions of the past, but there is something different about experiencing those facts and fictions firsthand, having lived with them. Folks from the mainland would shake their heads and say to themselves, “Those island folks are crazy.” But no matter what others thought, we had our own way of life. Other folks thought that we were strange because we held onto the beliefs of our ancestors. But, like my granddaddy used to say, “A heap may see, but only a few knows.”
Living on Daufuskie had a certain charm and peace. We knew we would always have clothes on our backs, plenty of food on the table, and a roof over our heads; we lived one day at a time. We made it work because we accepted nature and all that it had to give us.
And part of accepting nature was learning to respect it, including the storms that blew across the island. I never heard of lightning striking anyone during my time on Daufuskie, mainly because everyone had the utmost respect for it and took necessary precautions.
Momma said electricity came to the island in the early 1950s, but it wasn’t until the late ’60s that we got electrical wires run to the old wooden house where we were living. Even so, Momma always kept her oil lamps in a safe place in a corner, ready for emergency outages. At times, bad storms would cause the power to go out, and sometimes it could take days or even weeks for a broken electric line to be repaired.
Those times living on Daufuskie without a television or radio to inform us about the weather made us wiser as we learned nature’s ways. We learned how to read the clouds before a thunderstorm and how to rely on signs from nature telling us about the weather and what would be happening: the high and low tides, the sun and the moon, even the behavior of animals. We learned to live by these signs in nature.
We would take notice of the ways the animals behaved when a bad storm was brewing. They had their own signs. The chickens would start cackling and seeking shelter close to each other; the cows’ mooing turned as the thunder roared; the dogs barked constantly, peeking out from under the house; the pigs would oink and squeal for long periods, staying close together. All would hurry and head for shelter as the heavy clouds formed and blocked the sun, the fast-moving pillows of clouds racing across the sky.
Pop would say that he could smell the rain coming before it started. He would point to the sky, showing us the different kinds of clouds, and tell us what was going to happen. He would look up in the sky, watching a few clouds start. Then they would change, gathering fast. Sometimes he would say, “That weather is headed our way. Y’all churn know what ya gotta get done, so get a move on. Or do I need to give ya sumptin ta help ya?”
As kids, we tried to get in some playtime as we hurried to finish all our chores before the big downpour. We liked to play in the raindrops while we finished up our work if it was not coming down too hard. If Pop felt it was going to hit us hard and last a while, we had extra chores.
More wood had to be chopped and brought in from the woodpile; that was way out in the backyard under the old oak tree during the summer and under the mulberry tree near the house during the cooler winter months. My sisters and I would race one another as the sharp lightning struck and the loud thunder roared; we would duck when this happened as we strained to carry oversized armloads of chopped wood to stack behind the woodstove in the kitchen and to fill extra boxes stacked high on the back porch in a corner.
Before a storm, water had to be pumped by the bucketfuls, carried inside, and covered with a lid or a clean towel. But during a storm, Momma liked to catch some of the rainwater pouring from the rooftop so that we could have plenty of extra water. Momma was happy to know that it was going to rain to help her garden, but the rainwater was collected for other uses too. She would place a washtub at the corner of the house and some foot tubs on the sides, where the rain would pour off the rooftop during the bad weather. This meant less pumping and hauling of water for us.
Pop and Momma both believed that the rainwater we caught for use around the house was the purest and best-tasting water of all. Washing our hair with it made it grow longer, cooking with it kept us safe and healthy, and bathing our bodies with it made us cleaner and blessed all over. Pop would often remind us, “Dat’s God’s watah from up dere and dere’s none bettah,” and Momma would agree with a smile. We would sometimes catch the rainwater for the animals to drink so that they would all get blessed, too.
During lightning and thunder storms, we had to make sure that all our animals were protected. Our work and milk cows had to be brought in from the old field where they grazed, sometimes way down the road from the house. They were then tied near the house for safety. They could not be left in the open field because they might seek shelter under the nearby pine trees, which tended to draw lightning. The chickens would all gather closer in the coop, and we would lock them in so that the lightning and thunder would not scare them off into the woods. The hogs, cats, and dogs were on their own, hiding under the house until it was all over.
Sometimes we would get the outside work done just in time before the downpour would make us run for cover. After the chores were completed and the animals were taken care of, we would get ready for the storm inside the house. Momma would help us gather all the lamps and put them on the big dining room table. We had to fill them with kerosene that was bought from the mainland; the lampshades had to be washed and dried before it got too dark inside the house. One after the other, the lamps were lit and placed in a safe place in each room, on a table or dresser, with the light turned down very low. This way we could see if we had to finish doing something, and our parents thought it was safer to have a little light in case we had to move around.
The rain would start to pour, beating hard against the tin rooftop, sounding like music to our ears and sometimes putting us to sleep; shortly after the downpour, some of the rain would begin to leak into the house through the holes in the roof. Momma would have us quickly place buckets, basins, pots, and pans around the house to catch the water.
During bad weather Pop and Momma made sure that we had gathered everything we would need because we weren’t allowed outside or—except for necessary activities like placing pans to catch drips—allowed to move around the house, not even to look outside, until it was all over.
When a big storm was brewing, the loud thunder and lightning warned us to get ready; it was as if we were going to have a spell cast on us. At times like this, the lightning and thunder would be so loud that it felt as if it stroked the house the way it made the whole house tremble. When there was lots of lightning and thunder (Pop and Momma called thunder “loud claps”), Momma would help us hang white sheets over the front door, which was one-third glass, and any big mirrors in the house. This was done to protect the house from lightning entering, and it helped us feel safer.
We had to sit the storm out in a corner in the dark on the floor, trying to be quiet. Being in the dark was fun as we tried to play tag or hide and seek (our own version), hoping Pop and Momma wouldn’t catch us, but they always did. Pop would say, “Stop dat playing. Y’all churn year me? God’s talkin’. He wants ya ta listen.”
A lot of superstitions were associated with storms. Many islanders believed that if it rained shortly after someone was buried, that meant his footprints were being washed away from the earth. And if it was raining and the sun was shining at the same time, that meant the devil was beating his wife and she was crying. The kitchen was off limits for any kind of cooking because a stove with fire in it has heat that draws lightning to it. Pop would say, “If dem lightning hit da stove and ya in dere, it’ll knock ya ta da floor.” We didn’t want to find out if this was so.
Pop and Momma believed all these things and more because they had been taught to believe them by their parents and grandparents or because these things had happened to them or to someone they knew. Changing their minds and their ways was not possible. Their elders’ words were the gospel truth. For centuries, these beliefs and superstitions had been passed down from one generation to another, and they believed what they were teaching us to be true. It was the way we had to survive on our island named Daufuskie.
Some of the other things Pop and Momma taught us kids seem crazy now. If you broke a mirror, even by accident, you would have seven years of bad luck. We didn’t have lots of mirrors, so when one was available, it seemed as if my two younger sisters and I always wanted to use it at the same time. However, we believed that two or more people should not look in the same mirror at the same time because the youngest would die first. (Ha! This helped keep them off my back since I’m the oldest.) Of course, that may have just been a way to say, “Don’t be looking over my shoulder; find your own mirror.”
We had many more beliefs about bad luck. Cats are great pets, and at times we had a few with various color patterns. Neither Pop nor Momma liked having a solid black cat at home, because if a black cat crossed in front of you going toward your left while walking down a road or path, you were going to have some bad luck follow you that day. And when something bad happened or you got a beating that day, you knew that the cause was that black cat crossing in front of you. You would also have bad luck if you walked backward, so even though it could be fun, we didn’t often do it.
You know how sometimes when you comb your hair there seems to be more hair in the comb or brush than on your head? We believed you shouldn’t throw your hair away; you should bury it in a hole near the house right after you finish combing your hair. If you threw it away or lost it and a bird made a nest with it, then you would go crazy.
We also had beliefs about good luck, but fewer than we had about misfortunes. If you were walking down a path or a road, and you found a coin heads up, you would pick it up and throw it over your right shoulder; this would give you good luck. If it was tails, you would leave it there unless you wanted more bad luck. Having a horseshoe over your front door or over all the doors in your house brought your family good luck and kept bad spirits away. If you stubbed your left foot, you stopped and turned around to the right in a full circle one time for good luck, even if it really hurt; you would do the opposite for the right foot.
A lot of our superstitions and beliefs had to do with death and the spirit world. They were related to religious practices and beliefs originating in Africa and widespread in the Caribbean known collectively as voodoo or hoodoo. At one time, if the husband in a couple died first, the wife had to wear totally black clothing every day for six months. This didn’t apply to the husband when the wife died first, and no one ever asked why.
Many folks wouldn’t let their picture be taken, and some will not to this day. They believed that the camera would steal their soul. If you were alone and thought you heard someone calling your name, you would look around to see if anyone was there before you answered. We believed that if you answered and didn’t see anyone, you could be answering to a ghost.
If we were asleep and dreamed that someone we once knew who was dead appeared and asked us to give him or her something, we were not supposed to do it. Folks believed that responding to the request would be giving someone over to death because the dead person wanted someone to join him or her.
When an elderly family member died, if the youngest family member living in the house was a “hand baby,” that infant was always passed over the coffin during the burial. This was to keep the spirit of the deceased person from haunting or visiting the youngest child while he or she slept. It was said that when a child yelled out while sleeping and would not stop crying, a deceased person was visiting. Many folks believed that cursing would make a visiting spirit go away. We also believed that children are more able to see spirits (ghosts) than older people.
I can recall times when Momma used to hear strange noises although there was no one in the house except her. She would speak out, telling the spirit to go away: “I ain’t got nothing for ya here.” Nevertheless, we were taught to believe that the dead could not hurt you; only the living could do that.
Home remedies were, and to a degree still are, used by some folks in the Sea Islands. It was the only way that we knew how to help our ailing bodies. Island folks have depended on home remedies—the knowledge of nature’s pure and simple ways—for generations as far back as anyone can remember. Island folks ate well and did the things that they knew. Like everyone else, we had to deal with variations in the climate and changes in our bodies, young or old.
Sickness will always be part of life’s package of discomfort. We are only human, and there are some things we cannot control. We lived by the laws of nature that ruled the land, the ocean, and the air we breathed. If we were good to nature, it would be good to us.
Our toughest times were the winter months when the northeast wind would blow hard our way. More had to be done for us to stay safe and healthy, and together we did it. Sometimes the tin on the roof would nearly fly away in the strong, cold wind. Even though it was old, ugly, and beat-up, the tin rooftop used to look beautiful with icicles draped from it. On a chilly night, Pop and Momma would have us pull out our old reliable wood heater from the back porch where it had spent the long hot summer.
The wind whistled as it blew around the house, making it tremble, but we didn’t fear. We had everything on hand because Momma always prepared herself. As the weather got cooler, she would start pulling her handmade quilts out of the trunks where they were stored and putting them on the beds. She spent hours sewing these heavy quilts by hand during the summer months when she got a break from other housework.
These quilts were beautifully made from old clothes that were no longer wearable. We would help rip the old clothing apart and remove the loose threads. Clothes were made stronger then and lasted a lot longer. A dress could make its way through all the females in the family before it was used for quilt patches. When one of Momma’s dresses got torn or became too small for her, she would make a smaller-sized dress for one of us. Material was never taken for granted; everything was used and it was stretched to the limit. All this and more was done by her busy hands; we had no sewing machine. And those padded quilts kept us warm all through the long, cold nights when we would snuggle together to warm up.
The wind would blow so hard entering the house that the kerosene lamp would flicker and almost go out. Pop wasn’t one to “catch fire” in the wood heater until our first good chill, no matter what. “Put more clothes on” was his advice. But when that cold wind began to blow, he would tell us, “Catch dat fire ta da knock chill out.” Then, when we were old enough, we had to get up first to catch a fire in the woodstove and wood heater.
Gathering around the comfort of the first fire in the wood heater meant winter had arrived. Both the wood heater and woodstove helped warm the old, falling-down house. Momma would tell us girls to open up all the doors to the rooms to let the heat warm up each room. By the time we went to bed, our bedroom would be warm enough. Sitting up too late meant burning more wood, and that meant the need to chop fire logs and bring them in. Early to bed meant early to rise in our house so that more could get done during the course of the day.
The houses on the island were built without insulation, and the thin tin roofs had holes. At night, the shutters would be closed tight and everyone accounted for because, no matter what was wrong with what we had, we were happy to be warm inside together after a hard day’s work. We would come together at the table for supper or gather around the wood heater to listen to stories; we felt as if the world beyond us couldn’t get any better than what we had right there.
As the seasons changed, so did our bodies, and being country smart went a long way in helping us deal with the changes. Momma was the best doctor, who really knew her stuff well; she often told us how she learned the different ways of the plants and herbs that once grew plentifully on the island. She learned from her parents and from Grandmomma, who had learned from their parents and grandparents. Remedies have been passed down through the generations for as long as my family and others have been on the Sea Islands.
Remedies were second nature to Momma, and she knew a lot about nature and its cures. When in need, she would go into the woods to pop, break, or dig up what she knew was best for our ailments. She would mix up the things she collected and make a cure that got us going again. And one thing was certain: Momma knew where to go to find the right shrubs, leaves, bark, and roots. Most times what she needed grew right in our backyard or not too much farther away.
Momma knew the right herb to pick just like she knew exactly which holly to pick. “Don’t ya pick da holly wit da red berries,” she would warn us; “da are not good for you.” She sought out leaves with just the right shape before picking them; she would describe which roots were the best; and she knew how to look at the bark on trees to distinguish one from another when they had no leaves in winter.
The woods on Daufuskie are slowly being cleared, and the land on both ends of the island is now being developed, with big houses springing up. Many of the herbs and roots that we knew and used are slowly disappearing, and the native knowledge of their use is disappearing with them. Younger folks are not as interested as those before them had been. We can no longer find some of Momma’s regulars, like sampson snakeroot and black root; even the “like Pulaski” (life everlasting—commonly called “rabbit tobacco”) is harder to find now. So is the toothache tree whose bark helped get us through some tough tooth pain during long nights with nowhere to go for help.
When we were growing up, Momma did all she could to make sure that we stayed well. She kept us padded down with two or three layers of clothes from head to toe in the cold weather, and she would check us over before we left the house, even just to go play or work in the yard. I recall how she made us extra underslips out of the flowery cotton sacks used to hold 50 pounds of rice or flour.
Daufuskie did not have a doctor sitting around waiting for patients to walk through the door. Nor was there a walk-in clinic on a streetcorner to patch up a minor cut or bruise. To get to the doctors on the mainland required a boat ride and lots of organizing. Momma knew that distance and time were not always on our side. Going over to the mainland was much more than just taking a boat ride; you had to get in touch with someone who was available to meet you at the dock with a car and take you where you needed to go. Sometimes this could turn into an all-day trip away from work or home.
At the beginning of the school year, a nurse and a doctor would come over from the town of Bluffton on the mainland to make sure that all of us children had received our vaccinations. How we hated to see those folks coming in their white uniforms; but our parents were glad. They knew that, along with our home remedies, the medicines that the doctor and nurse gave us would help keep us well, and they were free. I remember when the doctor and nurse from across the way gave us a lump of sugar with a drop or two of some pink stuff on it for polio. That tasted OK, and I liked it because it was sweet.
Like all mothers everywhere, Momma just wanted to make her kids’ pain or sniffles go away. When a big hug or kiss wasn’t enough, she would use the remedies that she believed in.
Momma was our doctor around the clock. We relied on her to make every ache and pain go away. A sniffle, a cough, or a little sneeze meant it was time to get fixed. If a batch of one of her remedies wasn’t already waiting, she would gather a bucket and/or a croaker sack along with a hoe and a sharp knife, and head out the back door. Off into the woods she would go, sometimes with us at her side, returning later with all she needed.
We thought we could outsmart our parents, but we didn’t get away with it any more than most kids do. We were warned that they had invented the tricks we were trying to play on them. I found out at an early age that playing sick in order to stay home from school was not a good thing. The minute everyone else had gone to school and you thought you were feeling better so you could get up and play, you were in for a treat. There was always work around the house that needed to be done. If you felt well enough to play, you were well enough to work until the others returned. Once was enough for me; I never tried that again.
Home remedies, like any medicines, are not to be used for fun or as jokes. Never take a home remedy if you are not sure what it can do for or to you.
Knowledge is always the key, so learn about any remedy and be aware of the good and bad sides of it. Even though home remedies can be helpful, they can also bring you great harm if misapplied. There are hundreds of look-alike plants, roots, and berries out there. Don’t assume you know. Educate yourself and learn more about home remedies and the ingredients that go into them before you take a chance on causing yourself harm. And remember that what someone else suggests works for him or her might not be what is best for you. Our bodies do not all respond in the same way.
Here is a selection of home remedies that we used to help our ailing bodies feel better. Momma usually knew what to do for us, though she had to take a chance at times. These are the old ways we used on ’Fuskie. Under no circumstances should these remedies be thought of as a substitute for proper medical attention in the case of a serious condition or complaint. Sometimes we didn’t have any other way, but because Momma learned from those that taught her how to do it the right way, we survived.
When Momma and Pop felt that they were getting a little hard of hearing and their ears needed cleaning, they would send one of us children out to the chicken yard to gather a handful of feathers from a pullet (a female chicken). They examined closely the feathers we brought them and carefully selected the right one for the job. They would never use a rooster feather to clean their ears: it is said that cleaning your ears with a rooster feather will make you crazy. A hen feather was all they used.
Once the cold season began, Momma would enter the woods and bring back whatever she felt she needed, because she wanted to have on hand a fixin’ for whatever was about to ail us. She would use this fixin’ in addition to her hot toddy described in the preceding chapter (page 95). One of her best cold remedies was a mixture of wild holly bush (it had to be the right one, the kind that grows wild on the island and doesn’t produce berries), pine tops, life everlasting, and lemon.
“Come ya, Sallie Ann,” Momma would call. So I would collect the ax, hoe, and croaker sack for our hunt to gather the fixings for her cold remedies. She would show me how to break off certain pieces of pine and holly branches, and she would remind me how to tell the difference between the right one and the wrong one.
Once we found the right ones, we had to shake them to get rid of bugs. Then we would take home all that we had gathered and run cold water over them to wash them. Momma would have us strip the pine needles and holly leaves off the branches; then we would put the needles and leaves in a pot to boil, adding 4 to 6 pieces of the life everlasting herb. Momma would take the rest of the life everlasting, tie it in bundles, and hang it in a corner on the back porch to dry. She would leave it hanging there until she needed it.
After the concoction boiled for about half an hour, it would simmer on the stove on medium heat all during cold season. Momma would add a whole or half lemon before it was time to drink it to help take away some of the bitter taste. Maybe Momma believed that the lemon helped, but we always thought it was bitter and nasty, too. Nevertheless, our bodies got rid of what was trying to start and stopped what was trying to get in. We didn’t have any of the good-tasting grape- or cherry-flavored stuff.
When a pot wasn’t already on the woodstove brewing with some of Momma’s shrubs and roots, and something had to be done in a hurry, Momma would always have a backup in the pantry. She would pull out a bottle of Three Sixes (666’s), castor oil, or cod liver oil, or she would take out the ingredients to mix up the following cold remedy. Pop would be standing by with his belt or a switch in the corner, making sure that we swallowed it all down. Getting the medicine down was the hardest part.
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon vinegar
1 teaspoon garlic powder or juice
1 teaspoon lemon juice
Momma would place all four items in a glass or cup and stir them together well. Since I didn’t like the smell, I would have to swallow it down fast. After giving us any of her cold medicines, Momma would make us go straight to bed and cover up under her warm homemade quilts. We would have a good night’s sleep. The next morning we would be ready to go to school or to work around the house.
Accidents happen all the time. Walking or running with bare feet puts you closer to problems. Stepping on a rusty nail or a sharp object hurts a lot, and on Daufuskie, no doctors were around to provide an antibiotic. Mad and hurting, you have to do something before it gets worse.
For us the cure was a piece of greasy fatback bacon, a penny, and something to tie it with. However, you first took a flat stick or board to beat the poison blood out from the place where the rusty nail went in. It is said that a rusty nail can cause blood poisoning and lockjaw if the wound is not treated properly. This is what worked for us at that time. Today we make sure we get to a doctor.
We used a piece of flat board to spank or beat the area around the puncture for about 2 to 3 minutes until the bleeding slowed. The blood that came out was said to be poisoned blood from the rusty nail. When we’d done that, we wiped or rinsed the area clean. Then we placed a piece of fatback over the area and placed a penny on top of the fatback. We tied a piece of clean cotton cloth around the penny and fatback on our foot and tried not to walk on it for about a day. To this day, I don’t know how this works, but believing is as strong as anything.
Pop said if you eat well, work hard, and have a good night’s sleep, getting sick wouldn’t have time to catch up with you. He said it’s like keeping one step ahead of the things that may ail or hurt you. But in case we didn’t get enough of the right things and got sick, the following remedy is one Momma and Pop believed in. Sometimes it was just a matter of taking it so that it could work.
One of the ingredients, “ether feather,” was something Momma bought at the store; it came in a little blue box with a white swan on front. It looked like little crystal flakes. This remedy was used to help relieve gas pains in the chest and stomach. Ether feather’s real name is asafetida, which we just couldn’t pronounce. A good pharmacist will be able to find it for you even today.
1 teaspoon ether feather
1 pint gin
2–4 cloves garlic, mashed a little
We always had empty pint and half-pint bottles around to use as containers for homemade wine or medicines. Momma would put the ether feather in a pint of gin with the garlic, shake it well to combine the ingredients and let it sit for a couple of days. Momma would say, “Let it draw.” Letting it sit made this remedy work better as it got stronger. My sisters and I were not allowed to take this without one of our parents’ help. Momma would give us a teaspoon of the remedy with a glass of water or a piece of lemon to suck on as a chaser.
As a child I had asthma, and this remedy was given to me for that as well. Momma and others also believed that it was good for a child suffering from asthma to sleep with a cat breathing in his or her face. Momma said the cat would draw the asthma out as I slept. I outgrew my asthma. Whether the cat or the asafetida helped, I do not know.
Growing up with animals was lots of fun. But there was a time when we got hookworm from walking around with bare feet in the yard where they deposited their waste. Walking barefoot in the sand felt good to us, but hookworm was not a good thing, and Momma had to work on her remedy to help us get rid of the hookworms.
Hookworms are invisible to the human eye when entering the body. They are parasites that feed off the food in the body and grow, reproducing by the hundreds and causing the stomach to swell and ache. The host doesn’t get nourishment from the food because of the worms eating it up. The more they reproduce, the more they cause the stomach to swell and become painful.
Many cases needed a doctor’s care right away. But Momma tried to keep things under control by looking out for signs like sleepiness and fatigue, or our having a bigger appetite but not gaining weight. If she saw these signs, she knew it was time to get rid of those nasty worms that were slowing us down, and this is the fixin’ she used to help kill the worms so we would pass them out later. Our bodies would begin to feel better, and Momma and Pop knew we would get our work done better.
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
2–3 drops turpentine
Momma would place the turpentine on top of the sugar in a spoon. We swallowed fast and sucked on a piece of lemon to help with the bad taste.
Got to go fast? The human body has a way of letting you know when it needs help to make it feel better. For us, Pop and Momma believed that keeping it simple worked best. Momma would have us drink a cup of very strong brewed tea or eat a slice of dark brown or burnt toast. The trick was to digest either one, and then you would slow down.
As children we had a lot of impetigo, those bad sores that also left scars. All we knew at the time was what our parents and island folks believed. We always got up early in the morning while the grass was still wet with dew. We had to feed the chickens, hogs, dogs, and cats, and move the cows and horse to the field where they grazed before we went to school. The early morning dew on the grass and bushes would coat our legs and feet. After a period it would cause us to break out with small, itchy bumps. We would scratch them, and the sores would break out all over our legs and feet. Momma would have us clean the sores with soap and water—they were very contagious. She would have us bathe in a tub of warm water using Octagon Soap, a lye soap, which would help them heal faster. Sometimes when Momma went to the mainland she would bring home peroxide to use as a wash for impetigo and other ailments as well.
We washed lots of things with Octagon Soap. Besides washing our bodies with it to get them good and clean, we also used Octagon Soap for things like our clothes, dishes, and floors. I’ve included a recipe for making lye soap at the end of this chapter.
Living in the country, we got many scrapes and cuts. If someone got a scrape or a cut that was not bleeding seriously enough for a trip to the doctor across the water, we would reach up in a corner of the house or the porch and pull down a handful of spiderweb.
We would clean the injury with water, then dry it and place the spider-web on the affected area, making sure it was covered; the spiderweb would stop the bleeding and help seal the injured area. A piece of cloth was then wrapped over the spiderweb and tied, and the excitement was over.
Spiders of many kinds made homes for themselves all over the corners of rooms in the house we lived in or outside around the front and back porches year-round. We never bothered them and they never bothered us; they would come and go freely. Pop always said, “If it ain’t bothering you, you should not bother it.” We believe they do the job they were put here to do; we weren’t scared of them from a distance. We were taught that they were around for good reasons, but we believed that all spiders were poisonous, so we never played with them as pets.
Sometimes you get a sore throat when you least expect it. Your throat swells and gets very painful in a short time. It becomes inflamed, and it hurts to swallow; sometimes you run a fever. When this happened, Momma would have us gargle several times a day with warm salt water, with a squeeze of lemon if any was around. She would encourage us to swallow a little bit of the water, too. We were also given a piece of hard rock candy medicine when it was available; we would suck on it to help ease the pain.
There were some home remedies that only the adults got to use. Momma and Pop let us know that we would have plenty of time later on to find out what aching bones and joints were all about.
We always had horse liniment around, whether it was for the horse or for our parents. We would rub down the horse or mule after it had had a hard day’s work. This would help it feel better for work the following day. Momma and Pop would use the same liniment for the aches and pains in their muscles.
If Pop and Momma had gotten swollen, sore muscles from all the work that they tried to get done in one day, they would have us go into the old field to pick some of the wide, soft leaves with a flannel-like feel on a plant called mullein. Some people called it deer tongue because they said it felt like the tongue of a deer.
Momma would make a hot compress and then wrap it around the sore area, leaving it on until it made her or Pop feel better. Mullein grew everywhere, even near our yard. “Go yondah and bring me da mullein plant, churn,” Momma would demand for her aching leg. Momma had made sure we knew exactly what plant to look for, so we would run off and pick a big bunch for her.
Momma and Pop always told us that ringworm was catching. We got it a lot in our scalp (so we called it “wigworm”) and sometimes over our bodies. Our cure for getting rid of it was right in the backyard. We would go to the fig tree, pop off a leaf, and a milky substance would come out. We would spread that on the spot and coat it from day to day, and it worked every time. When Momma braided our hair and we had it, she would part our hair and leave the affected area open so it could “catch air”; she would never braid over it. She said that the fresh air would heal it faster, and it did.
If there’s one thing you don’t want to have, it’s an earache when the doctor is too far away. It hurt so badly sometimes when I was little that it would make me cry. And we didn’t have much to help ease the pain. Momma and Pop knew that there was little to be done, but Momma would keep a bottle of medicine called “sweet oil” that she bought on the mainland. This was a medicine her parents had also used for their ears when they hurt. It came in a small brown bottle. You would put several drops into the ear that hurt and then place a piece of cotton in the ear to keep the oil in and the wind out. Keeping the ear closed off with cotton helped relieve the pressure that you felt.
Having a bad toothache can be one of the worst feelings imaginable. Not having a dentist around to help ease the pain wasn’t a good thing. But at least Momma knew a way to help ease the pain, and to get what Momma needed we didn’t have to go far—just out to the toothache tree that grew in the woods. We would cut off a small branch or chip off a small piece of bark, bring it back to the house, and boil it. When the tea was boiled and cooled, we would take a big mouthful and hold the liquid on the bad tooth until it helped ease the pain. Then we had to spit it out. Sometimes placing a small piece of the unboiled bark on the sore gum helped. Even though we called it the toothache tree, Momma said the real name of the tree is prickly ash (but some folks called it pickle ash) or devil stake.
I don’t recommend that you use tobacco for anything, but we sometimes used it also to make a toothache feel better. A wet pinch of tobacco from a cigarette or a cigar placed on the gum of the bad tooth helped to make the bad pain ease up, giving some relief.
Pulling a tooth can be scary, whether the tooth is hanging by a fine thread or is down in the gum but needs to be removed. One day Pop thought that it was time to show us a quick and easy way to extract a loose tooth without knowing it was gone. You would first cut a piece of strong thread or string about two to four feet long. Tie one end to the loose tooth using a slipknot tie. Then tie the other end of the thread to a doorknob. Distract the person’s attention, then quickly slam the door: out comes the tooth. After the tooth was pulled, you would rinse your mouth with warm salt water to help heal the sore gum—and then put the tooth under the pillow for the tooth fairy.
Having a gumball in your mouth can be pretty painful from beginning to end. You don’t hear much about gumballs these days. A gumball is an infected area on the lower or upper gum in the back of the mouth that starts out as a little ball and then swells up painfully. When a gumball occurs, there’s very little you can do until it comes to a head or “ripens” (meaning the infected area is ready to burst). There was a method we used to help it get to that point a little more quickly and less painfully. Momma, like most other island natives in this situation, would scoop up a tablespoon of cool ash from the woodstove and place it in a bowl, mixing it with half that amount of salt. When the salt and ash were combined, she would take a pinch and lightly rub it over the gumball.
This was not easy to do without hurting, so she had to be gentle when she did it. In a day or so the gumball would come to a head; sometimes it would then burst on its own, but at other times it needed a little prick to open it up and let it drain. The pain would then lessen; we repeated putting the ashes and salt on the swollen gum as needed until it cleared up and stopped hurting.
Spanish moss adds character to the trees all over Daufuskie Island. Visitors and natives alike see the moss hanging from the trees as beautiful. Not only was it plentiful when I was a child, it was also useful in many things that we did. Like many islanders, Pop and Momma believed in doing all sorts of things for comfort. During my parents’ younger days, Spanish moss was used for stuffing mattresses and pillows. We fed our cows and horses the Spanish moss.
It was also said to be good for treating high blood pressure. If you put some green Spanish moss in your shoes, it would help bring down your blood pressure. They put in only enough so that they could still wear their shoes comfortably. They allowed the moss to stay in their shoes until it was dry, then removed it and repeated the process. Folks somehow knew when the green Spanish moss had helped lower their blood pressure.
I never understood how the Spanish moss helped, but it worked for island folks. It was their belief and nature’s way. For them it worked, and that was all that mattered.
Pop was quick to remind us, “I fa know what fa do, cause all dem [doctors] want is ya money. It don’t coss a dime to put dem moss in me shoe ta feel better.” Most times there was a story behind the remedies, and Momma would join in and agree with Pop. Sometimes country folks had to do things the way country folks were taught to believe.
Pneumonia was one sickness everyone tried to stay away from, but every once in a while, an islander would get it. Long before anyone would get sick Momma would fix up her cure as a precaution. It came from one of the very animals we raised. When a hog was killed, Momma would make sure she used every part of the hog possible for something. She would make sure we saved the black hog hoof. Sometimes she saved all the hooves, no matter what color they were, but there was something special about a black one. She would clean it and bake it in the oven. Then she would cool it, dry it, and break it up.
She would put it in a jar with some gin or homemade moonshine, add some fresh crushed garlic cloves, and let it sit for a week or more. When we had to drink this concoction, we just opened our mouths wide and swallowed it down. We did not dare spit out our medicine or say we did not want it.
A wart is a growth on top of the skin. Sometimes it can be a nuisance, but we knew how to remove it with a few strands of horsehair. We would pluck a few strands of hair from a horse’s mane or tail, choose one, and tie it around the wart as tight as we could get it. Then we would slowly, slowly tighten the hair to a knot. The sharpness of the horsehair would cut the wart off safely, with hardly any bleeding. Some people are bleeders, and using the horsehair somehow worked even for them.
Sometimes it’s the littlest thing that you believe in that matters the most. For example, when a baby on Daufuskie had hiccups, we would tear a very small piece of brown paper bag (about 1/4 inch or less), wet it, and place it on the forehead of the child. After it had been there for a while, the hiccups would go away. Another method we used was to take a broomstraw, break it evenly into two 1-inch pieces, and make a cross over the “mole”—the center soft spot in the hair, right in the middle of the head. We left it there until the hiccups went away.
Older children and adults would hold their breath and count to ten or swallow several chunks of dry bread or drink big gulps of water fast. The key is to trick the hiccup as you breathe. Older folks used to say that when a child gets the hiccups it means that he or she is growing.
We ate a lot, but we did not eat enough of the right food. Momma and Pop would line us up every so often and give us a big dose of castor oil or cod-liver oil. It was nasty stuff, but it kept us regular.
Having a bad headache can put everything on hold. Headaches can start at any time for anyone, whether you are young or old, sick or healthy. Allergies, stress, or specific medical problems can cause a headache.
Watching your diet and being kind to your body can help prevent headaches. But today, when they do occur, we have all sorts of painkillers to help. One way we used to help ease the pain without medication was to relax and elevate our feet. Sometimes a cup of warm soothing tea could help. Lying down for an hour or two sometimes helped. If a headache was caused by a bump on the head, we tried to see the doctor. All headaches hurt, and some are signs of serious problems, so it’s better to see a doctor than to take chances.
Eating as many fish as we did, we sometimes got a bone or two stuck in our throats. We island folks learned how to eat a fish for its meat, not its bones, but, as Pop would say, even the best get caught off guard and make a mistake. Bread was more than just part of a meal for us when we needed to clear a fish bone caught crossways in our throats. Momma or Pop would have us first try to cough it up. If that didn’t work, we would have to swallow a nice chunk of cornbread or light bread (store-bought bread). Most times, after a few tries at forcing the chunk of bread down, the fish bone would dislodge. A little sore throat was the result, but gargling with warm salt water took care of that.
If Momma noticed us trying to bring in too much wood, she would remind us not to carry so much at one time. She believed that straining to carry too much would hurt our young backs and would make us have weak bladders, causing us to wet the bed nightly. Some kids are just born with weak bladders. Island folks believed that the cure for this was to drink water from a conch shell that had been boiled to remove the meat. As with a lot of these folk cures, whether it worked or not was all in your belief.
Ticks and redbugs were bad during the hot summer months on Daufuskie, and if we went into the woods, we got them on us. Nine times out of ten they would hitchhike a ride back home with us or our animals. We spent a lot of time in the woods for both work and play. Sometimes we would not know they were biting into our flesh until they were halfway in. Momma knew we spent a lot of time in the woods, so she would have each one of us lie across her lap after a bath so that she could look over our body from head to toe. Even though Momma’s eyes were good, she would sometimes miss the biting bug in our skin. My sisters and I would also take turns looking over each other’s bodies.
Momma had her way of getting rid of the biting bugs. She would have us put a few drops of kerosene, bleach, or liniment on top of the bug. The bug would wiggle itself out.
Jumping fleas were treated the same way. There was no cure for bedbugs except to get rid of the mattress that was infested with them.
Lye soap was a long-lasting soap, and we used it for many things in and around our house. We washed clothes, dishes, our bodies, the floors, and more with it. But as much as we used lye soap, we didn’t make much of it. Momma had more than her share to do without taking on that job. And we could buy Octagon Soap. The few times Momma made lye soap, we were at school. Here is the recipe as she remembers it.
1 gallon leftover grease (not burned)
4 gallons water, divided
3 boxes Red Devil Lye
Strain the crumbs from the grease and place it in a large iron kettle or washtub. To start, add 2 gallons of water to the grease in the kettle; add the lye and boil for about 30 minutes, stirring constantly, until the lye eats up the grease (the mixture will become lighter and lighter). Then add the other 2 gallons of water. Continue cooking, stirring constantly, until the mixture is the consistency of honey. Remove from heat and let cool in the pot for several days. Cut it out of the pot in the size and shape of your choice.
Have you ever put rice on to cook and not turned the heat down enough—and the next thing you knew, you smelled burning rice? If the rice is so badly burned that it has browned on top and around the edge, just throw it away and start over. Otherwise, try this method to help you save the rice for dinner.
Remove the rice from the heat. Remove the lid from the pot; tear a piece of brown paper bag large enough to cover the opening and place it over the rice pot, then replace the lid. Turn the heat on low, let cook slowly and check often until the smell is just about gone. The brown bag will absorb the smell from the rice, and the bad, burned taste will be gone, too, so you can eat the rice (and no one else needs to know you burned it). The burned rice will still stick to the bottom of the pot, so be careful not to scrape any of it up when you serve the rice. If the smell of burned rice lingers in the air, see the next tip.
A watched pot won’t boil. But the minute you turn your attention to something else, it will not only boil but boil over. And it will surely make a mess or burn up a good dinner. Here is an easy, old-fashioned way to help eliminate the burned and smoky scent from your house and furniture without spending a bundle.
Combine equal parts water and distilled vinegar in a medium to large pot and let it boil. The steam from the boiling pot will fill the air, and the scent of the vinegar helps eliminate the smoky odor. It will get rid of the bad smell and leave a fresher scent.