On December 26, 1910 in Sabine Parish, Louisiana, a baby girl was born to Willie Dell and Epsie Miller Huff. The baby was given the name of Carrie Molissie. When the little girl was ten years old, her mother died. At the age of seventeen, Carrie became the wife of Brown Wilson. They raised a family of eight children. I was their third child.

Mama was multi-talented! She could harness up the old gray mule to the turning plow and work the field. She could help Daddy make staves. They would each have an end of the crosscut saw and lay a huge white oak tree on the ground. With the ax and iron wedges, they would split lengths of the log into staves to be sold. Mama could throw the gun up to her shoulder and bring a squirrel to the ground even if he was running wide open. Not only would she bag a deer as easily, but needed no assistance in dressing and cutting it up to feed her family. Nothing was ever wasted. She tanned the deer hides and used them for the bottoms of chairs she had made from Hickory wood. She tanned cow hides and had a unique way of removing the hair. She split boot laces from the hides. More than once, she tanned a rattlesnake hide and made a belt for a fellow. Mama picked blackberries and muscadines for jelly and also for making wine. The wine was for medicinal purposes; upset stomachs, etc.

Sewing was fun for Mama. She said it relaxed her. She made all our clothes. She could take a bag of hand-me-down clothes and do wonders with it. Later, when we bought cow feed in lovely print sacks, we had clothes made from them. When I was nine years old, a Saturday night possum hunt produced a coal black critter and underneath his fur, was snow white. Mama skinned him and tanned the hide. Someone had given her some gray wool material and she made me a coat. The possum hide made the collar and cuffs. It was beautiful! When I outgrew the coat, it was passed down the line.

Mama gained lots of experience at delivering babies. She and one of her sisters were alone except their three little boys, when my cousin decided to arrive early. I guess Mama did a fine job for they named the baby “Carrie” for her. Later, when I was three years old, Mama delivered brother Jack all by herself. He weighed ten pounds, according to Daddy's cotton scales. She often assisted Dr. McCreight with birthing those babies. The same for the dying. More than once, she would wake me in the middle of the night and tell me to get breakfast for the family and fix Daddy's lunch, also all the school lunches. She would tell me someone had sent for her, they were dying and wanted her there. I got into trouble once when I asked her why couldn't they die without her assistance. I never made that mistake again.

During the Depression, Daddy didn't have any tobacco so Mama borrowed a seed catalog from someone and managed to get fifteen cents somehow and ordered tobacco seed. They sold it by the thimble full. She ordered only one. She grew a beautiful crop and hung the leaves in the smokehouse and smoked it; then she twisted it into long twists. Daddy enjoyed chewing this to satisfy his tobacco habit.

Yes, I do believe Mama had eyes in the back of her head, and woe be unto you if you ever dared to lie to her. She would head you off at the pass mid-sentence and say, “Start over, and this time, I want the truth!”

In Mama's later years, she cut and fashioned a pattern for old-time sun bonnets and sold them in front of her house. She became known as the “Bonnet Lady”. She loved to keep track of how many she'd made and sold. The last time she told me, the count was fifty-six hundred and after that she quit counting. She also raised parakeets for several years and enjoyed them immensely. She had two birdhouses with eight hundred birds in each house. She did a thriving business with them.

In August of 2002, Miss Carrie decided at ninety-two years old, to go to the nursing home. She will be ninety-six years old this December. She still has eight children, twenty-four grandchildren, thirty-nine great grandchildren, and four great, great grandchildren.

Long live Miss Carrie, one of a kind, a dying breed (no pun intended). Happy Mothers' Day, Mama, and thank you for all the years! I love you!