Blackberries for shoes

I went and visited with my Aunt Carmie yesterday morning. I took her some cabbage out of my garden as well as Brewer and sons chicken, and a bag of Blackberries. As we visited she told me

about a peddler man that would come to the mountains and drop off buckets with families for them to pick berries and he would return that evening or next morning to pick them up and pay them. The money was used to buy shoes for the winter, and if there was no berries my Grandma Brewer would have to mend the old shoes as best she could, no berrie crop no shoes.

She left the farm when she was 17 for Dayton her and her brother Doc, as Dayton

had plenty of jobs. Doc got a job at Wright Patt air force base doing some construction until he got drafted for World war two. Aunt Carmie got a job in a bakery making chocolate cookies with a walnut kernel on top. She said everything that was produced went to the war effort, they even had a guard watch over them as the cookies were made so that none were eaten or taken. She told me that one day when the shift was over as they were walking out past the guard a woman in front of her was stopped and they lifted the front of her blouse and two packs of those cookies

fell out , she was fired and even blacked balled from getting another job for awhile. The job paid twenty nine dollars a week and her rent was 4 dollars for a month. During the war she said everything was rationed here at home sugar , gas shoes everything, you received a stamp for items and when that stamp gone you did without until the next monthor year on some items. My Grandpa Brewer grew a lot of sorghum molasses and sold for a dollar a bucket. it was used alot in place of sugar. I do not belive that people in here today would make those sacrfies today, I can only imagine the riots that would take place if the government had to ration shoes or gas today.