THREE SHEETS IN THE WIND -- The old man sitting in the foreground is not as drunk as Cooter Brown but he is, as my mom would say, " a little tipsy." Having been brought up properly, my mom would say," My prudish side would not like people knowing that I knew what "Three sheets in the wind" meant; so she painted the old man, and she hung three sheets on the clothesline behind him. Speaking of hanging clothes on the clothesline, I remember going down with my dad to see a friend of his, Mr. Louis Dees. Mr. and Mrs. Dees were sharecroppers, a term used to describe farmers, who lived in a house belonging to other people and who farmed land belonging to those people. Mr. Dees was primarily a cotton farmer, and when he harvested his cotton crop, he shared the proceeds with the owner of the land. We visited the Dees to go hunting, and as a young boy, I was very impressed with how hard life was, especially for Mrs. Dees. Mrs. Dees was a small, what people used to call, bony woman, and she worked very hard every day. The Dees had a privy, or outdoor bathroom, and an outdoor pump, non-electrified with a long handle that she pumped up and down to draw water. Laundry was done in a big iron pot that she had to build a fire under, fill with water that she carried from the pump and then wash the clothes in steaming pot of hot water with a long wooden paddle that was handmade, for that very purpose. Heating the house and cooking were done on an iron wood stove which was located in the middle of their living room. All clothes back then had to be heavily starched and hand ironed, using an ironing board and two solid iron flatirons that were heated on top of the stove. One iron was used while the other got hot on the stove. When the iron she was using cooled, she would put it on the stove and begin ironing again with the new hot iron. In the winter, Mr. Dees hunted a lot and trapped muskrat, mink and beaver. He would then sell the skins to a fur dealer and pick up a few extra dollars. Life was very hard for Mr. and Mrs. Dees and their five children, but they seemed happy, maybe Mrs. Dees, a little less so." This Three Sheets In The Wind" print is a very popular one and my mom would say proudly, "It's in every bar in town."
