George and Rosa Laney are the parents of Mana Laney Carroll.
You can see the family resemblance between Mana and Rosa.
We called our grandmother and grandfather Mama and Papa the same as Mother did. They are buried at Eulaton Baptist Church in Calhoun County, Alabama.
By James Carroll
Mother was born and raised in the Eulaton area of Calhoun County, Alabama. Her father, George Laney was a Christian songwriter. She married Jesse Carroll. She was a lifelong Christian, and was a member of the Baptist Church. When she was young she and her family were members of Eulaton Baptist
Church in Calhoun County, Alabama. She loved her church and talked about some of the good times they had there. By the time she had her own family and had moved away from Eulaton; she joined Wayside Baptist Church in Calhoun County, Alabama.When we were little, I remember her getting up long before daylight, and starting a fire in the woodstove in the kitchen. Then you would smell the coffee and bacon cooking. You would know it was almost time to get up and start getting ready for school.
After breakfast she would go out to the barn and milk the cow and feed the chickens. Then she would put the milk away and take the leftovers out to the hogs. If there were not enough leftovers to make a meal for the hogs, she would mix up some hog ration to feed them. Then she would clean up the house, make beds and mop the floors and clean up the dishes.
Next, she would check the churn of milk sitting behind the stove. If it was clabbered, she would churn the milk for about an hour to make butter and buttermilk. When she had extra milk, butter and eggs, she would sell it to the neighbors.
Before she got her first washing machine, she would go out back and start a fire under the cast iron pot. She would boil the clothes in the pot with detergent, that she had made herself in the same pot. Then she would scrub the clothes on a rub board, then rinse and wring them out by hand. Next she would hang them out to dry, and bring in the ones that were hanging on the line from the day before. Then she would sprinkle them with water and ball them individually and put them in a pillowcase. She could have used any bag to put them in, but a pillowcase was handy.
At some point during all this, she found time to put on lunch. Lunch, or Dinner, would consist of a pot of beans, turnip greens, chicken, and cornbread, tomatoes and onion, and maybe radishes, and iced tea or milk.
Now, while the lunch was cooking, she would iron the clothes that she had ready to iron. While she was going about her chores, she would be singing religious songs. The only time that she didn't sing was when she was churning.
Is it any wonder why we go to graveyard working once a year?
Mother always said; "If you can't say something good, say nothing at all".
Another one was, " The more you stir carrion, the worse it smells".
By James Carroll
George and Rosa Laney
Anniston, Al.