All my grandparents together in the big house

In the rear are my dad's parents, Will and Lena Rivers Smith, and in the front are my mom's parents, Columbus and Annie Laura Heath. This picture was taken in the big house, The Curtis Place, or the McDaniel Plantation, as it was earlier called. Mom and all her brothers and sisters called that big house 'home'. They all moved there from a one room house, all 12 souls, when mama was about 5 or 6. The house was already old at that time as it was built around 1840. It was a good and sturdy old house though. My mom's family lived there at least until mom finished high school. I like this picture very much because it has both sets of my grandparents in the living room of the house that I eventually bought and restored. By the time I got it the house had fallen into disrepair and had been vacant for a decade. The windows were rotted and most of the glass had fallen out. There were large holes in the plaster walls. It was a mess. But that is another chapter......

My mom's family and my dad's family lived less than a mile from each other and the two families were good neighbors to each other and the families worked together to get their crops in. My dad's family owned a farm and a house. He says that he never got enough to eat until he left home to join the army. He tells us that mom's family had more and better food than what he remembers his family having. Mom's family were tenant farmers, living in a house and working land that belonged to someone else. Mom says they always had plenty to eat even though it might not be what they wanted. Grandma cooked biscuits every day and they were good biscuits. She told me when she was in her eighties that her mom had made big biscuits while hers were smaller. "I think I make a pretty biscuit", she said. They were distinctly hers and they weren't just pretty, they were good, too. Granddaddy taught us how to hollow them out in the middle with a spoon or finger and pour honey into the hole, just enough so that when you squeeze the biscuit the honey would rise to the top of the hole but not run out and make it messy. They were good.

My mom and dad, you see, were neighbors and they grew up knowing each other, working and playing together. I think that's sweet.

Also in the picture is a little girl. I have been told that it is probably my Aunt Naomi's daughter, Jo Ann.