The
Peddler
Judy
Ricker
A
little ways down the road, about sixty or seventy years down the
road, was a wondrous and memorable icon in the White Rock section
of Madison County, in the form of Mr. Earl Rice’s rolling
store, better known to us as the “Peddler.” Wednesday
became our favorite day when we could sit out on the porch and
listen for him to make the turn from the main road and start up
our remote, rocky, and bumpy road. As he came by Jesse Wallin’s
house, he had to change gears to start up the hill. The engine
would roar and the gears would grind as he shifted into “bulldog.”
By the time he got to Rankin and Emily Wallin’s house, he
was coming on pretty strong. There was a huge rock that crossed
the entire road between Rankin’s house and ours that years
of rain and wear had made quite a step up if you were coming up
the road. When it rained, the water would stream down the road
over that rock and make a small waterfall that fascinated us into
standing barefoot and letting the cool water splash over our feet.
But when Mr. Rice’s truck hit that rock, it started a racket
that you could hear for miles. Galvanized pots and pans were tied
to the sides of the truck on nails and they would clatter and
clang together as the truck jolted from side to side. The chickens
that were in the coops would squawk and cackle and we knew we
would have time to get from the porch to the road before he stopped
in front of our house. Granny never seemed to be filled with such
a wonder as us and kept on working until she heard him stop. Then
she would come on down to the road with her trading goods. She
had a little black leather change purse that she kept in her apron
pocket. It was worn from many years of opening and closing, and
we knew we were in for a treat when she opened that metal clasp
on the top. I think she knew Mr. Rice wasn’t going anywhere
with a bunch of younguns standing in the middle of the road yelling
and waving like a bunch of banshees.
That
truck was so filled with wonders that it would be impossible to
list them all without leaving something out. The bed was all weathered
wood with a tin roof, so tall it swarped the low branches of the
trees as it swung by. On each of the outside walls hung galvanized
pots and pans of all sizes and shapes. They were hung on nails
and tied with hay baling string. There were cast iron skillets
and stove eye lifters, shovel handles and axe handles. The chicken
coops were tied to the bottom where there was a small running
board that he could walk down and get things off the side of the
truck, or to put a chicken in a coop if someone had one to trade.
He had enamel pots, but he kept them inside as they were easy
to chip and everyone knew an enamel pot would leak after it was
chipped. There was a big wooden 55-gallon barrel of coal oil that
he had strapped to the back. The coil oil was used to start fireplace
fires and wood cook stove fires and huge fires at hog killing
time to heat the water that scorched the hair off the sides of
the hog so you could scrape it. Granny had a gallon tin can with
a little spout on the top and a screw lid to pump the oil into.
She kept a corn cob in the spout and when time came to build the
fire, the cob was used as a starter as it was most already soaked
with oil. Once we got the coal oil out of the way, we could concentrate
on all the other goodies that lined the shelves once you passed
through the “golden” door that was swung wide to display
all his wares. There was an aisle down the middle of the truck
with a wooden floor. The floor planks were wide oak with tongue
and groove, sturdy to hold all the weight of the goods. Shelves
lined each side from bottom to top with the back of the shelf
slanted downward to keep the wares from sliding off in the floor
as he made his way across the rough and rocky roads of Shelton
Laurel.
All
the wonderful smells and aromas, filtered through the lens of
childhood, make me think of soap and camphor and horehound candy
and peppermint and leather all rolled up together. There was a
25-pound cake of hoop cheese with a red rime around the edges.
It came in a round wooden box with a lid and special people got
first choice of that box when it was empty. Granny had two of
them, one she kept her yarn in and the other was filled with quilt
scraps. Flour came in 25-pound sacks, sugar in 100-pound sacks
and salt usually in 10-pound sacks. The sugar came in bigger sacks
because sometimes the sugar was used for more than just making
cakes (especially when mixed with corn). Mr. Rice also had various
kinds of animal feed, like cow feed and horse feed in 100-pound
sacks, but we usually grew our own feed, kept in the corn crib
beside the barn. In the winter time, Granny would add a cup of
molasses to the corn to give the cows and horses a little extra
energy to weather the snowy days. The flour and sugar sacks had
special cotton prints that were saved and sewn into aprons and
pot holders and dresses for some. I remember one lady who had
made a dress out of a feed sack and it had “100 pounds net
weight” written right across her behind. Below the bottom
shelf on the floor were wooden kegs with screws, nails, horseshoes,
horseshoe nails. He also had a keg of crackers that he sold by
the pound. That was before saltine crackers came in a plastic
tube inside a square box. There were jars of liniment, tins of
salve and various tins and bottles for all cures and ailments.
Granny
did the bartering for most of the goods. She would have a big
fat hen already caught with its legs tied together to trade. Mr.
Rice would take the chicken and hook the legs on a hanging scale
to tell how much it weighed so he could give an equal amount of
goods for the weight of the hen. Granny had already crossed the
hen’s wings and tied them so she wouldn’t flop about
and squawk. He then would put the hen in one of the cages on the
outside of the truck if there was room, but he also had a trap
door in the middle of the aisle that led to a coop beneath the
truck and sometimes he would put the hen in there. Granny had
big fat Dominecker hens and also had several red hens, Rhode Island
Reds, but we laughingly called them Red Island Rhodes. She kept
these hens because they laid big brown eggs with thick yellow
yolks that made the cakes richer and gave a golden color to her
pound cakes. If we had been especially good, and Granny always
led us to believe we had, even though we knew we hadn’t,
we would each be given a big brown egg and Mr. Rice would trade
the egg for a bag of candy. But first, he had a rolled-up tube
of paper, kind of like a paper towel holder in nowadays times.
He would hold that tube up to his eye, hold the egg to the other
end and hold it up to the sun to see if it had a chick in it.
Of course, he couldn’t sell an egg with a chicken in it,
so Granny always made sure our egg was fresh and wouldn’t
be hatching out a baby chick when someone was getting ready to
bake a cake.
We
stared with wonderment at the ribbons and lace and thread and
sometimes wanted to trade our egg for some of that just so we
could look at it, but Granny said you can’t eat ribbons and
lace, so we didn’t trade for that. She would trade shuck
beans or “leather britches,” ‘cause some city folks
didn’t have the chance to grow beans for leather britches.
Shuck beans are green beans that have been strung and broken into
pieces and sewed onto a thread and hung in the attic to dry. It
takes five pounds of green beans to make one “mess”
of leather britches, but after they are soaked in water all night
and cooked with a piece of side meat, there is no other taste
like it. She always said a green bean without a string on it ain’t
worth a lick. Granny usually traded for a piece of camphor that
she would put in a jar of alcohol and use to rub on your chest
for a cold or sore throat. She would trade for some Garrett’s
Sweet Snuff, salt, and sometimes flour and baking powder, cinnamon
and sugar. After all the trading was done, Granny would buy some
extra candy and take it in the house to hide from us so she could
dole it out on special occasions, but we always found her hiding
place and thought she didn’t miss the pieces we had taken.
Then
Mr. Rice was off on up the road and we were content and happy
with our wares, our mouths all sweet and sugary and blowing bubble
gum bubbles that would burst and stick all over the front of our
face. We’d see who could blow the biggest bubble, then reach
over and make it pop all over their face. We would be content
and happy and wait until the next Wednesday when we would sit
on the porch and wait again.
***
Judy
Ricker was born and raised in the remote mountains of Mars
Hill, Madison County, North Carolina. Her stories are currently
being published in the News-Record & Sentinel in Marshall,
North Carolina.
©
Judy Ricker