“Careful there, Brownie.” Papa glanced over to me, a smile on his face and his corncob pipe between his teeth. Most of the time he called me “Brownie.” I suppose it was because of my brown eyes and brown hair.
I glanced down at the rubber band I was cutting from an old inner tube. I had slipped Mama’s “good” scissors to use while cutting the bands. I know I should have been using the “old” scissors, but they were not sharp enough to keep from hurting my fingers while cutting. The good scissors were so sharp that I had cut a band in two.
Sitting around the fireplace cutting rubber bands and splitting kindling wood was so much fun in the winter time. Papa, with some of the children, would go into the woods and hunt for an old pine stump. We would pick out the richest part of the stumps and dig them up and haul them home in the wagon. Papa would cut the stumps into ten to twelve inch pieces. Some would be no larger around than a pencil. The wonderful pine aroma would fill the room as we worked.
Papa was a big cut-up, full of humor, and loved to talk. He would tell about distant kin-people and about the happenings around the world to keep us entertained as we split the kindling. Some of my most wonderful memories are about splitting kindling around the fireplace with the rest of my family.
As the wood was being split, one of us would tie the kindling into bundles about four or five inches in diameter. We used the rubber bands to hold them together. We would peddle these bundles to people for one cent a bundle. If we could prepare a hundred bundles of kindling and sale them we would have an extra dollar. With that we could buy flour, sugar, and coffee that we could not raise at home.
There was no trouble selling the kindling. The people who bought it would use the kindling to start the coal in their grate to burning. They were glad to get the wood. We would get the old inner tubes from ones we had discarded or ones that other people had discarded. They were scarce, but necessary for making the rubber bands. And I had ruined one by cutting it in two.
I felt sad that I had cut the rubber band in two. Then I looked down at the good scissors. I should not have used them. I knew better but I had used them anyway and I was sorry. I went over to the sewing machine, put them back into the drawer and got out the “old” scissors. Just as I was pushing the drawer closed, Mama came out of the kitchen into the bedroom where we were working on the kindling. I knew that she knew that I had used the good scissors and expected her to say something. But she just smiled, sat down and told me to bring her the old scissors and she would cut bands while I split kindling. And that is what I did. I loved to hold the hatch and split the good smelling pine anyway.