By Kendall Patterson
Editor
The possibility to be able to live up to 100 is rare. It’s even rarer for someone to live that long and still have the ability to take care of themselves.
This weekend, Chester County’s own Inez Cash will be turning 100 on July 17, and the community will be celebrating with her.
Cash, of Enville, has good health and still is able to take care of herself.
She said she is grateful to be able to see 100 years old.
“I’m just happy I’m still here and as good shape I’m still in,” Cash said. “So far I got mind enough to take care of my business.”
“I just try to live a good life each and every day.”
When she was young she used to play outside a lot and do whatever she could find as fun like swinging on vines.
“We just played out when we weren’t in the fields,” she said.
This contrasts what kids do nowadays she said.
“It’s not like it is now with kids,” she said. “They don’t ever want to go and see what’s going on outside.”
She married Carroll Cash at 16 years old.
As work, she farmed from 1938 to 1942, worked at Salant and Salant from 1942 to 1982 and retired at 62.
Now though she can’t do all that she used to do, she credits reaching 100 years old to years of work.
Over all this time, millions of new inventions and gadgets have been created, but the two things that she was amazed about the most throughout her years is having electric lights and the refrigerator.
She remembers the days of when people were using iceboxes to keep their food cool.
“The iceman would come around for a long, long time. You just had a big ice box in your house, and the iceman would come along every so often to put ice in your box,” Cash said.
When it comes to favorite memories, she recalled going to Washington, D.C. in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was in office. She earned a one week trip there by working at Salant and Salant for 20 years.
A trip to D.C. is a memorable thing, but what made it more memorable is that just later on that same year, Kennedy was assassinated.
“He wasn’t there when we went. We visited all them places in Washington, but he wasn’t there. He was off on a trip, and we didn’t get to see him and he got killed right after that.”
The memories that cannot go unaccounted for are memories she shares with her family.
Her family members shared different memories they have made with her.
Randi Baxter (niece): She used to make us clothes in the summer when we were here… I remember one Thanksgiving, we had a big dinner and we were at my mom and dad’s and daddy had wood that he would cut, and he said “well let’s go out there and stack some of that wood.” Inez was 80 that year, and she was working circles around me. She would stack 4 pieces to my one.
Emily Ervin (great niece): She taught me how to sew and how to crochet… I remember we would go hiking in Chickasaw and Auntie Inez would come with us, and we would be amazed she would walk as far as us and not get tired We always said that Auntie Inez would probably out-live all of us, and there she is about to turn 100.
Jodi (niece): Inez was always a bonus grandmother, she was ready to do whatever we wanted from playing cards to badminton. Always baking or frying pies for us. She made picking blackberries or yard work fun. She always had time for us.
Patrick (nephew): Staying with Inez and Carroll before they moved to town and experiencing things the young’uns have never had the opportunity to experience. Using the outhouse. Pumping water and taking a bath in the kitchen or outside. The RC Cola man dropping off cases and picking up the empties. Inez would never talk on the phone “when it was coming up a storm” because lightening once blew the phone off the wall. Inez would butter bread and cook them in the skillet and I would eat them with syrup. She also fried donuts made out of canned biscuits an made powdered sugar glaze to put on them.
Bev (niece-in-law): Going to Chickasaw for a hike around the lake and Inez out walked us all. She wasn’t even tired. She always offered us popcorn.
Casey (great nephew): Inez always finding ways to keep me entertained. An old board and ball to play baseball with, playing washers out beside the house and endless piles of fried potatoes.
Brooke (great niece): Endless piles of fried potatoes and always digging out our tricycles every year from under the porch.
