civil war story
... and cooking. But all of that is over now I recon that there’s not much left. We left for Texas more than two weeks ago, on our way back from fighting in the war. My brother and I, we believed in the confederacy and thought we could win. But we didn’t and It was the most terrible thing I have ever witnessed. All of those good men shot and killed by one another. My best friend before going out to war, Robert Smith got killed right in the middle of a battle and we had to tell his momma. We lost him to a Yankee bullet in Pennsylvania about 2 weeks after we got there and word still hadn’t been sent to his Momma. . It’s sure going to be hard to tell her that we didn’t look after him like we promised we would do. Mr. and Mrs. Smith live just a Little way down the road from our house. Robert and I used to go Raccoon hunting down on the river just about every night. I doubt that things are going to be the same without him. It sure does seem that it is taking a lot longer to get home than it did for us to get up here and go to war. The whole way back Jacob kept on talking about all of the farms and al of the crops he had burned that had belonged to Yankees. It’s sure is a shame to see this place looking like it does now. It used to be full of beautiful houses and plantations, with lots of green trees and fields for as far as you could see. Now all I can see is blackened soil where the grass, and wildflowers, and crops once grew. The smell of crops burning brings back memories though. It reminds me of when Mamma used to have us burn the fields in the fall. Mamma and the younger kids would sit out on the front porch and watch as we would start the fires. Those were the best times I think I have ever had, watching momma like that. I miss mamma terribly bad. I can’t help but worry about her, she‘s not as strong as daddy was. But I don’t think it‘s to far from where we are now; I think that I can see the old McGuffy’s place just ahead. That’s just about five miles from home if we keep following the road down through town, but we’ll probably cut through the old woods to save some time. The old woods, when we were kids was the place that we would hide from Daddy and hunted. That’s where Robert and I did our Raccoon hunting, and Jacob and I used to hide in there every time Poppa got after us with the razor strap. Mamma would get mad over the littlest things we did when we were kids. I remember one time Jacob was playing with poppa’s old muzzle loader and accidentally shot mammas best laying hen, boy, I have never seen momma so mad. . I bet she chased Jacob for at le...