It was cold and rainy outside as I stood with my back to the fireplace. I was enjoying a baked sweet potato hot from the oven. I liked baked sweet potatoes and Mama would usually have us an oven full of them when we came in from school. They were our “snack.”
As I was growing up we had all kinds of animals at home. We had dogs, usually three or four of them, chickens, cats, a cow, hogs, and a mule. There was a time my brothers had rabbits and even pigeons. We had been taught never, never, throw any kind of food into the garbage or into the fire. We had been taught to put scrap food in the slop bucket for the hogs, or to put it outside for one of the animals. If one of our animals did not eat it, then perhaps the wild birds would eat it.
I finished eating my baked sweet potato and stood there with the peeling in my hand. I glanced outside. It was cold and cloudy. But I was warm and did not want to move from the warmth of the fire. I glanced over at Papa. He was sitting across from me reading the paper with the light of the fire. He had his corn cob pipe stuck in his mouth and seemed absorbed in the paper. Not wanting to move from the fire, I quickly tossed the sweet potato peeling into the fire.
It seemed that within an instant I was picking myself up from the floor across the room. Papa had slapped me across the floor. As I got up he told me, “I have told you never to burn any food.”
That taught me a lesson. I have never forgotten it. That was over sixty-five years ago and even to this day I do not like to throw away food. Even though we do not own animals now, I still put it outside and somehow some animal finds it. This time and one other time, which I will you about at another time, are the only times I ever remember Papa slapping or spanking me.