Rotten Potatoes
by
Johnny Ponder
My Momma said that she spent her entire childhood eating rotten potatoes. I’m not kidding.
In East Texas everybody was poor and when the depression hit she said nobody knew it because they didn’t have anything before the depression, during or after it. Her Daddy worked very hard every day and they were able to keep food on the table by having a huge garden in addition to his regular wages.
East Texas has very sandy well drained soils which makes it perfect for growing potatoes so they always had a big potato patch. Each year they would gather the spuds and store them in their root cellar.
Root cellar
Momma said they would put down a layer of pine straw or sawdust, then a layer of potatoes, sprinkle a little lime on them, another layer of straw or sawdust, then potatoes and so on until all the taters are stored for the winter.
Through the winter as they were cooking meals, her Momma would send her to the root cellar to get potatoes to cook. She would say, “Don’t get the good ones, just get the ones with bad or rotten places on them”.
By the time they wanted to cook potatoes again there would be more with bad places. That’s why she said she spent her childhood eating rotten potatoes.
Momma said she never did get to eat a good potato.
See books by Donna R Causey
ALABAMA FOOTPRINTS Exploration: Lost & Forgotten Stories (Volume 1)
Discordance:: The Cottinghams (Volume 1)
I lived on a farm and we ate fresh foods that we grew. I had cousins who’s family owned a Jitney Jungle. They had to eat all the rotton food as the bins of veggies were sorted to keep the good things for the public. They were so glad to come to our house to eat as they got to eat good stuff. think about that. I was always jelous of them and they were of me. Go figure.
I’m 52 yrs old my grandpa.told my stories. like that his dad died. when he was 12. he went to work at 12 yrs old in the coal. mine’s. for 3cents a day to help his mom feed his 3 brothers hard times we can’t even think. of …BB
We never had a root cellar, but my daddy stored ou home grow potatoes(sweet and Idaho) in a loft above the barn. We had to climb a ladder to get the potatoes. Holding a bucket and climbing up or coming was hard. Potatoes were precious and delicious. We had them some way daily.
I’m an old-timer now myself but as far back as I can recall, I remember hearing old-timers then echo the same sentiments as in the third sentence of this article: “….everybody was poor and when the depression hit she said nobody knew it because they didn’t have anything before the depression, during or after it.” My grandfathers said it often. Reckon why that was? I never thought about till after I grew up. I did a fair amount of research and I’ll tell you why. It was the same reason the South has always, till of late, been economically depressed. The War for Southern Independence and Reconstruction.
We just don’t realize how blessed we are I can remember eating a jar of mustard because that’s all there was to eat in the house
Why are my comments only visible to those who open the article up? And, why is my profile picture the only one that has been removed from my post?
Not sure, we are able to see you posts and profile image, might be some temporary technical issue.
Thanks.
i can see your post
Why are my comments only visible to those who open the article up? And, why is my profile picture the only one that has been removed from my post?
that’s awful about the rotten potatoes
My grandparents had a potato shelf in their basement, now 40 years later we still see lime spots lol
Yes. I would love it if there were such things as time machines so i could go back to the bad real food and families being families. Having fathers and mothers. Homes peace. Etc versus the world I live in today.
Really makes me appreciate our lives when we were growing up. I don’t ever remember going hungry.
My cousin said our family in Alabama made potato “hills”. Straw. Potatoes. Straw. Potatoes. Straw.
Using the bad ones meant nothing went to waste.
As a sharecropper’s daughter during the depression, Mom ate homemade sogrum syrup and biscuits for supper for days on end, and lined her men’s suitcoat with newspaper to stay warm in the winters. Today’s definition of poverty doesn’t even come close.
Mother said they eat mashed pea s with sogrum syrup for breakfast and corn bread and sogrum syrup also lived in Georgia in a cotton mill village
My father, his older brother and little sister would go down to the railroad tracks and wait for the coal train. They would gather rocks and throw them at the hobos. In return the hobos threw coal. That is how they heated their two bedroom shack.
John Scott Di Carlo I remember mother telling about that
Yep – tough times, strong family.
John Scott Di Carlo Git-r-done!
Kind of makes today’s complaints pale by comparison!!! Some of my dads incredible stories really made me grateful.
My mother was born in 1932 in the East Texas Pineywoods. Her parents were sharecroppers (cotton) but had a big garden every year. Granny sold eggs and butter for money to buy shoes and other necessities. Mama said they never really felt the effects of the Great Depression because they had no money anyway, but there was always homegrown food on the table. She said they kept about 3 other neighbor families fed as well. My daddy said they ate peas, biscuits, and grease gravy three meals a day for a long time because it was all they had.
My father went to a CCC camp from south Alabama to Pennsylvania. After that he joined the Air Corps about two years before Pearl Harbor. His first post was at Montgomery.
When I was a teenager my dad had a garden. He grew potatoes. We always ate the bad ones first. We just cut off the bad parts and ate the rest. Those potatoes he grew in the garden were the best I ever ate bad spots or not!
My grandmother said she knew when the depression was over when a rabbit ran across the road and no one was chasing after it
same thru out rural America
Good stories!
My family is from East Texas. None of them ever said they are rotten potatoes
My grandfather told me many years ago that they didn’t know any different when the depression came because they were already poor and still poor afterwards.
My grandfather sold about 500 acres at 25 cents an acre because he didn’t have any other way to get money during the depression.
John Cork my grandfather worked with the CCC building schools (the ones made of stones, there’s one in Pinson) and state parks, including Cheha.