By David Holsted
Published: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 6:09 AM
MARSHALL — It was an anxious time for roosters, those Christmases of the 1920s.
'I remember putting a rooster in a cage and fattening him up,' Huckabee said, her eyes twinkling as the long-buried memory surfaced.

Reba Huckabee, 89, of Marshall smiles as she recalls how Christmas was celebrated in her home during the 1920s. Her father, Lafayette J. Richardson, was left to raise eight children when her mother died in 1922. Though the experience might not have turned out so well for the rooster, it provided a sumptuous Christmas dinner of chicken and dumplings and apple pie for a small girl growing up in remote Searcy County.

When Huckabee was not quite two years old, her mother died during childbirth, leaving her father, Lafayette Jefferson Richardson, to raise eight children. Huckabee, 89, was the youngest.

From the comfort of her Marshall home and the buffer of more than 80 years, Huckabee recalled those tough years growing up. The family had very little — but then, neither did any of the neighbors.

Her father, Huckabee recalled, was an industrious man who always seemed to have something going on. Richardson raised crops, had an orchard and ran a grist mill. He was at one time a Searcy County justice of the peace.

'He was a natural salesman,' Huckabee said of her father. 'Myself, I couldn’t give it away.'

Though it was never anything elaborate, Christmas was observed at the Richardson house. Huckabee recalled her father, around 1928, cutting a tree and putting it up in the house. Candy and gum were hung from the boughs.

Other family members recollected that at Christmastime, Richardson would provide his family with such once-a-year treats as chocolate drops, candy orange slices and Red Delicious apples.

Sometimes, Huckabee’s oldest sister, Alma, would come for Christmas. Using scraps of material, Alma would make ornaments for the tree.

'She was a good hand to sew,' Huckabee said.

That assessment was corroborated by her older sister of two years, Shirley Watts.

'Alma was very deft at taking scraps and making something beautiful out of it,' said Watts, who now lives in Monticello, Illinois.

Huckabee went a few years to the nearby Walnut Grove school, and she recalled that the students would put up a Christmas tree. She particularly remembered the angel on top.

In good years, the Richardson children might get a small gift at Christmas. One year, Huckabee said, she received a Boy Blue doll.

'I plumb wore that out playing with it,' she said.