Freeman Hughes was a countryman and farmer, a husband and a father.
He leaned forward over his deep freezer, choosing the meat he wanted for supper. His forehead served as the prop to keep the freezer door open. He was cooking for more than just himself that afternoon.
It was June 3, 1979. He would be eighty-two on his next birthday.
Someone was there to interview him about his life and his living conditions at the time. He was eighty-two and owned 500 acres of good timber but didn’t own a fancy house. But he lived well and had everything he needed.
He was of average height, maybe five foot six. He wore low-back overalls and a dark green long-sleeve button-up shirt. His hair was white and neatly combed. He wore round spectacles, and his eyes twinkled when he smiled.
He walked into his kitchen. “You know, I never had a Pepsi-Cola. I think I drank a Coca-Cola one time.” He had his thumbs hooked in the sides of his overalls. “I never drank any of that stuff. I used to drink sodee-pop once in a while.” He turned toward the stove.
“What was soda pop if it wasn’t Coke?” The interviewer questions.
“Hmm.”
“What do you call soda pop?” The interviewer asks again, louder.
“Oh, orange and grape.” He stirs the liquid on the stove. “And things like that.” He raps the metal spoon on the edge of the pan.
His wood stove stands a foot and a half from the wall. A pipe runs from the back of it up the wall and exits near the ceiling.
“Is there a trick to cooking on a wood stove?”
“Any tricks?” He paused. “Yeah.”
He continues, “The biggest trick I can find is to build up the fire just to its very hottest. Right then, it’s getting ready to go the other way.”
“Why do you still cook on a wood stove?”
“Well, I’m not very much of a hand for change. I don’t, uh, I don’t like to see things change too much.” He explained. “And I have five-hundred acres of timber here, and a man’s a blamed fool to pay for electricity when he can, uh, pull out and cut his wood that’s falling down, rotting on the…” he goes back to stirring without finishing his thought.
“When’d you get that stove? Can you tell us anything about it?”
“Yeah. I got somewhere ‘tween ’34 and ’40. I don’t know what year it was. Its cost, as I recall, was about $85. I can remember the shipping weight on it was 485 pounds, crated. I can remember that ‘cause I had to carry it ‘bout as far as from here to the creek after I got it home.
“When we bought it, we were poor.” He continued. “We didn’t have a lot of money. Practically, no money. And, uh, I told my wife, I said, ‘Now, you go ahead and pick out the kind of stove you want because it might cost you $15 or $20 more to get the kind you want, but you’ll likely use it for twenty years. The extra cost won’t amount to anything.’ Well, we’ve used it for over forty years.”
“And I still feel like that’s good advice. Buy a good piece of equipment, take care of it, and generally, you can use it longer.”
He passed away on August 13, 1990, aged ninety-two.
He was someone who forged a life and raised a family in the backwoods of the Ozarks. He blazed a trail. He was someone to remember and admire.
And now we know him a little bit better.
to the legacies in the Ozarks,
– Caleb
caneymountainblog.com 