Posted on November 25, 2025

By Keith Paxton

“I was the 17th child of a family of 18 that lived on our 80-acre farm. My mother died when I was four years old. The front part of our big house was made out of logs with two huge rooms that measured about 20-feet by 20-feet. When I was ten or twelve years old my father, who operated a general merchandise store, remarried and he and his bride lived in a house at the back of the store. My grandmother came to live with us – all thirteen. Some of the older boys were already married and did public work like cutting logs. My grandmother enjoyed young people and always was there when we needed her.

“We had more to play with than most of our friends. Our toys that we played with were mostly homemade. We used to place horseshoes in our hands and pretend that we had real horses by making prints in the sand and making horse noises. We would pull big leaves off of trees, pin the leaves together and make bonnets and hats. We had one doll apiece, and we would spend hours making doll houses out of rags in the ragroom. The ragroom is similar to what people nowdays call a utility room. Whenever clothes got too ragged to wear they would be put into a big trunk in that room. In the spring my brothers would roll the rags up and tie them together, set them afire and hang the smoldering rags over the horses necks. The smoke would keep the flies and mosquitoes away from the horses.

“We had a steep hill behind us with a creek at the foot of it. On the creek bed we would make roads with our hands and with a wagon we would ride down the hill. Sometimes we would be going so fast that we would go straight into the water. We also had a bag-swing that my brothers made that hung across a wide ravine – or gully as we called it – and we would swing back and forth across it all day long.

“Our house was fixed up better than a lot of our friends’ houses at that time because my father added onto our house another large room where all my brothers stayed. The room was large enough to house four double beds, two or three big trunks, a huge dresser, two big chifforobes – which are similar to chester-drawers. In it was one of the first Victrolas that ever came into the county. You had to wind it up tight or the record wouldn’t play all the way through.

“We got up at four o’clock every morning and milked the cows. One of my responsibilities was to clean the room that I shared with my sister, Catherine, who was 14 months older than me. Her job was to wash the dishes and clean the dining room and part of the kitchen after breakfast.

“We walked a mile-and-a-half to school and on cold, rainy mornings we were terribly cold since we had no gloves, and it was difficult to carry our books. At school we played Pop the Whip, in which we all stood in a line, grasped arms, and swung around and round until the one on the end fell off. The school had a high fence around it with a concrete walk going out to the gate and beyond the gate was a well at which hung one dipper that we all drank from.

“When we went home in the evening, if it had rained, we had to wade the waist-high deep water in order to get home. As soon as we got home we would draw water from our well, heat it on our big wood stove, take a hot bath and put on dry clothes so we wouldn’t get sick.

“We had an aunt that lived about a quarter of a mile down the road from us, and we would always go to visit her. On the way to her house there was a small creek that we often saw fish, and we always played there. One time on the way back from our aunt’s house me and my sister walked up to the creek, and I said to Catherine, ‘Oh, look, what a pretty kitty sitting there, and it’s got the funniest tail I’ve ever seen.’ She said, ‘Oh no, leave it alone!’ ‘It’s just a cat and I’ll take it home,’ I said as I picked up the animal and petted it and hugged it. She begged me to put it down, so I did and went home. When we got home we told one of my brothers about it and he said, ‘Oh my goodness. That was a ‘possum! It’s a wonder that it didn’t bite your finger off!’

“In the winter months we had a lot of snow and on one side of our house the yard was built low, and the snow and sleet would collect there. It got so deep that we would skate on it and the more we’d skate the harder and thicker the ice could get. So, we had our own private skating rink.”

-- Maxine Ida Paxton, 69, October 1974. My grandmother.

Back in high school my class was given the assignment to interview someone and find out something about their history. I chose my grandmother.

If you had spent any time with this kindly little old lady, you would immediately discern her sweet and gentle spirit and recognize her solid faith in Jesus. This little woman with wispy, white, thinning hair, her stature slumped with old age, still had a twinkle in her eye when recounting memories from long ago. As each scenario drew back the curtains of her memory, it was as if she were taken back to another place and another time where she was spry and full of energy. It was a joy to witness this momentary transformation.

I would later spend many lunches with her at her kitchen table, drinking iced tea that she had brewed from an ancient, little pot on her stove, and discussing the events of the day. But no conversation was sweeter, more meaningful – to me, and to her – than that afternoon in ’74. And at that brief moment in time, she was young again.

The Bible speaks of the elderly:

· “They still bear fruit in old age; they stay fresh and green.” (Psalm 92:14, NIV); and

· “Even to your old age and I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you.” (Isaiah 46:4, NIV)

“Mamaw” would often ask me “Do you know something?” And of course, I knew what it meant - it was our short-hand for- “Do you know I love you?” To which I would reply: “I do. Do you know something?” 

She would give a gentle nod. We both would smile.

In this season of Thanksgiving, I am so grateful for those who have gone before, for their life stories, and for their legacy that still remains. I am thankful for my family, whom I cherish as the years pass by, and with whom I never get to see enough. My prayer for them – wherever they may be – is to reflect on the past as you live in the present and face the future trusting in the One who has led us all in our life journey.

*****

Keith Paxton

Executive Producer, Master Life Coach Training Institute