ALL WIRED UP

Before radios, telephones, televisions or other modern amenities came to our community; rural electrification had to be introduced. Before I was born my father learned electricity was coming our way and he wanted to be ready.

In 1937 he hired an electrician to wire our home before the first power poles began to move westward toward our farm. He had a ceiling light placed in every room as well as a few base receptacles. When the electrician finished, our house had a fuse box, a meter base and was completely wired.

Eventually, the electric company worked its way toward our community. My father had our house connected as quickly as possible and he had the distinction of being one of the first in the area to have power.

The first night after the electricity was connected he turned on every light in the house. He was basking in his accomplishment when he heard a knock at the front door. It was a man who had been passing by our home and thought it was on fire. He had never seen a house lit up like that so far out in the county.

Others discovered my father had electricity and wanted to come see for themselves. With the coming of the power lines came radios, televisions and numerous other new fangled contraptions. Life in the country had taken a quantum leap forward.

RADIOS

The first radio I remember having at our house was an old Philco. It had AM, FM, short wave and a record player. It stood about four feet high and was made of a beautiful wood laminate. There were push buttons on it similar to those car radios now have for preset radio stations. The speaker in the bottom was huge and had a very nice sound to it.

When we could get it to work we had to wait for the tubes inside to warm up. As the tubes warmed the sound became clearer and louder until it reached the maximum output for the volume control. It was forever blowing tubes and my father would find the blown tube and pull it out. When he went to town he would stop by the fix-it shop and get a new one.

The repairman, Henry Suber, and my father were the same age and had roomed together in college. My father said Henry was always tinkering with television sets and radios. Anything electronic fascinated him.

There was a time when they were in college that guys on their dorm floor had trouble with someone going in their rooms and taking things. His buddy came up with a plan to catch the crook.

Henry devised a trap that involved an electric wire that carried a charge to their door knob. It had just enough current to "hold" the person whose hand happened to be grasping the knob. The on-off switch was controlled by a middle desk drawer. My father’s roommate would sit at his desk, lean back in his chair and raise the drawer with his knee to make the circuit.

One day they were in their room studying when someone came to their door and opened it. It turned out to be the thief. He was startled to find someone in the room, but they played it off like nothing was going on and invited the fellow to come in and visit.

He explained that he thought their room belonged to a buddy of his and he had opened their door by mistake. They acted like it was okay. Henry kept the conversation going while my father slipped behind the guy and shut the door. After a few minutes the fellow said he needed to be going and said his good-byes.

As he grabbed the door knob my father’s roommate activated the electric charge to the knob. When he grasped it his teeth were rattled. Henry lowered the drawer and asked the guy what was wrong.

He said something shocked him. That was when Henry said he had invented a device to catch thieves and it only worked on dishonest people. My father reached over and grabbed the knob. He said, “I don't feel a thing. Why don't you try it again?”

The guy tried it once more and Henry shocked him good for a moment or two and then lowered his knee. The guy was beginning to lose it. Daddy said, "There must be some mistake this fellow looks honest to me. Why is the knob shocking him?"

Henry said, "It is fool proof. It knows an honest man from a dishonest man. Have you been stealing from the guys on this floor?”

"NO!"

"Try the door again."

He tried to go out again and Henry lifted his knee into the drawer and made the circuit. This time he let it hold the fellow. He asked him again. "Have you been stealing from the guys on this floor? If you tell the truth the shocking will stop."

"OKAY, OKAY, I have been taking a few things, but I won't ever do it again I promise! Turn it off. Please, turn it off."

He lowered his knee and the shocking stopped. The man threw the door open and ran out of the building. After that day no one else had a problem with things missing from their rooms.

Eventually, Henry convinced my father it was time to quit spending money on our old radio and get one that was more modern. Daddy bought a small radio that was placed on the counter in our kitchen.

We listened to WLSM, the local AM radio station in Louisville. In those days it was licensed to be on the air from sunrise to sunset. It began and ended each broadcasting day with the National Anthem.

During the summer the station was already on the air when I went into the kitchen for breakfast, but in the winter when days were shorter we would often be at the breakfast table when the National Anthem came on. Every now and then for fun, my brothers and I would rise from the table and stand at attention while the Anthem was playing.

David Childs was the DJ in the morning as far back as I can remember. He was almost like an extended member of our family. We felt like we knew him, though I never remember meeting him, and that was unusual in our small community.

In later years Daryl Parks was DJ’ing and was normally on the air in the afternoons and on weekends. Daryl had a professional radio voice. It was nice, but I always considered David Childs part of our family because his voice was in our kitchen every morning from the time I was a little boy until I grew up and left home.

When I was in high school Fred Vice had an early morning program and he always started his radio show off ringing a cow bell. When WLSM decided to add FM to its station I had a classmate that became a DJ. He was on the air after school and on weekends.

For the most part our local station played Country music, but on Saturday afternoons it played a variety of music and some Rock and Roll. Sunday mornings was always religious music and preaching. From 11 a.m. until noon it alternated monthly between the First Methodist and First Baptist Church services.

As some of us got older and more into Rock and Roll the kids my age listened to WKOR in Starkville, Mississippi. Butch Luke was the DJ at WKOR.

When I graduated from high school my parents presented me with my own clock radio. I loved it because it had an alarm clock with a snooze control. I could set the timer and go to sleep listening to Dick Biondi or Larry Lujack at night on WLS out of Chicago.

Looking back it amazes me how connected we were and still are to the radio. I never thought when I was younger I would be paying to listen to radio stations. Today we subscribe to satellite radio and I can choose any type of music I want to listen to, anything from Bluegrass to Classical. I guess my fascination with the radio will never end.

TELEPHONES

Times have certainly changed. My mother’s father, Urb Foster, worked for years as a telegrapher for the GM&O Railroad. I don’t know if telegraphs exist anymore. Once, I visited with him at his home and he pulled out his old telegraph equipment. It was a lot bigger and heavier than I had imagined. He set it on a little table and began to tap out messages to show me how he had once operated it.

He was in his 90s and could still remember the Morse Code. I was impressed. Unfortunately, I had no idea what all those tapping noises meant. I can only imagine what he would have thought of today’s cell phones.

It seems as if everyone has a cell phone these days. I am somewhat of a hold out in regards to new technology. I treasure my independence and privacy. But, my wife and girls wanted me to get one and when I refused they ended up giving me a TRAC phone one year. … something simple for the technologically challenged old man.

I finally figured out why it is called a TRAC phone. It is my wife’s way of keeping track of me. Little did she realize when she gave it to me I would constantly forget to turn it on or pick it up and take it with me. I don’t even know my own phone number.

When I was a child the first phone in our home was one of those old wall hangers. I was little and to use it, I had to stand in a chair to reach the part we spoke into. The ear piece was on a cord hanging on the side and we held it up to our ear to listen. On the opposite side was a crank. To call someone we had to turn the crank a certain number of times to generate electricity and make the phone of the person we were calling ring. Each home on our little phone system had a certain number of rings that they would answer to. One neighbor might answer on one ring, another on four and so forth.

Even when the wall phones became obsolete and were replaced, several older people in the community did not want to give them up. Daddy helped them by keeping several old phones on hand for spare parts. My brothers and I would rob them of the great magnets they had. They were fun to play with.

On occasion there would be a problem with the antiquated system and the older ladies would walk the line and look for the suspected problem. They would contact my father or other men in the community to make the repairs. That, too, fell by the way side as time passed. Those old phones can now be found in antique stores for handsome prices.

When I was in college I dug one out of my father’s junk pile and placed it on the wall in my bedroom. They thought I was starting to collect antiques when-in-fact, I was actually using it as a hiding place for cigarettes. There was a little screw on the front and when loosened the front of the phone opened up. It was a great hiding spot … So much for antique collecting.

I guess I was about five or six when the “real” phone company ran lines out in our community and we were able to talk to people everywhere… in town or in towns far away. It was amazing.

They gave us a smaller black phone that sat on a shelf in our hall. It was not as pretty as our old oak wall phone, but we were wired to the world. All we had to do was pick it up and an operator would ask us, “Number please?” She would connect us with whom we wished to talk to. No more cranking on the side of the phone to make it ring somewhere else out there in the world.

A few years later the phone company came back and took our little black phone. They exchanged it with another black phone that had a rotary dial on it. We were informed a new “dial tone” system was being installed. I must have been ten years old at that time. I remember well the night the dial system took effect. They told us that at 10 p.m. on a certain Saturday night the phones in our area would convert to the “dial tone”.

We were so excited that our whole family gathered out in the hall just before 10 o’clock and my father held up the phone so we could all hear. At exactly 10 o’clock we all heard the “TONE”. I don’t know if I was more excited about hearing the dial tone or the fact I got to stay up until ten o’clock. Either way, it was a very memorable moment.

No longer did we have an operator ask, “Number, please?” We just looked up the person we wanted to call in the little phone book they gave us and dialed it. Of course if we did not know the number we could dial “O” and the operator would find the number for us… no charge. Many times we would dial the operator just to find out what the weather was like up town or if there was any news happening. Whoever the lady was on the other end, she was always nice and friendly. She answered just about any question we had.

One draw back was being on the “Party Line” system. There were no private lines in the rural areas. We shared lines with our neighbors. We had eight families that we shared our phone line with. All of us had different rings we answered to, ours was two rings.

My mother was notorious for going to the phone when it was our neighbors ring and easing the phone off the receiver to listen to all the latest gossip. She was a real pro at removing the phone without it making the clicking sound and rarely got caught. I hated that part of the party line.

I knew if my mother was listening in on other people’s conversations, then other people were listening in on mine. When I was a teenager and wanted to call a girl, I knew there were probably seven other women listening in on my conversation.

It was horrible. It was not unusual for one of them to join in on a conversation. That really upset the girls who were not familiar with party lines. Hearing a stranger join in on what they thought was a private conversation was unnerving to say the least.

Many times I would drive into town to find a pay phone and make my calls. That was the only way to keep everyone from knowing more than they needed to. It was inconvenient, but necessary to ensure privacy.

The operator was also our “911” link in the event of an emergency. Back in those days if we needed medical aid we asked the operator to get an ambulance and she would have one sent our way.

Actually, there were no ambulances where we lived. The local funeral homes would alternate on sending out their hearses to haul people to the hospital. All of them were equipped with a flashing light and a siren. They would put the sick or the injured person on a stretcher, slide them into the back of the hearse and carry them to the hospital. I imagine it was an eerie feeling being put into one, knowing that they had used it to carry a casket just hours earlier.

I cannot remember when the dial tone gave way to “touch tone”. It was not as big an event as the night we stayed up and listened for the “TONE” to break the silence of the old system. But, I do remember my friends in town had touch tone before we had it in the country. I had one friend who learned to play little songs on his phone by pressing the buttons in a certain order. I was not that talented.

The next big move that came along was when I was older and had daughters. Often I had to work overtime on my job and when I tried to call home the line was always busy. Three girls, one phone, understandable. So, we subscribed to call waiting. When I needed to call home I could get through if the girls would “flash” over.

Soon after that we got “Caller I.D.” so the girls could see which boy was calling. That way they could either answer it or have their sisters answer it and create an alibi. That came in very handy, too, when work tried to call me in on my days off!

Phones have come a long way. Presently, we have one daughter living in Alaska and one in New Mexico. We do not get to see them often because of the distance. We can now call them on our computer and see them while we talk to each other. It makes it much nicer than just talking over the phone and wondering how they look.

I would hate to think what it would have been like if my daughters had to contend with the old wall phone we had back in the 50s. We would miss them more than we do now.

Maybe I should not despise phones as much as I have in the past. After all, they have brought people in the world closer together. And that may not be a bad thing.

However, don’t you just hate those companies that have outsourced their help lines to foreign countries? You call for help to questions you have regarding a bill or insurance or computer trouble and…………..well; maybe that is a subject for another day.

OUR FIRST TELEVISION

The first television set we had was a monster Crosley console set. As a child, things usually appear larger than life, but that television set must have been four feet high and five feet wide. Not the picture tube… just the console. The picture tube was probably only 19 inches. The cabinet was made with dark mahogany wood and had two doors on the front. The right door hid the picture tube and knobs as well as a very large speaker. The “HI FI” record player and an AM-FM radio were behind a door on the left.

It was ironic that there was an FM radio in it, because there were no FM stations in our area of Mississippi in those days. But, we were ready in case one ever came along. I was told my father bought the television set after he had had an unusually good cotton crop in the fall of ’54. I have no idea what he paid for it. I am sure it was expensive for those times.

We were one of the few families in that area of the county to have a set in the early 50s. I was two years old when the set was delivered and they said the first thing I did was pull off the volume and channel changing knobs! After I did that my father built a very strong table and raised it off the floor to deter me from tearing it apart.

When I was very young, neighbors would come to our home in the summer months and sit on our front porch to watch the television shows. Our front porch had two large windows facing into our den. There was a swing, three rocking chairs and a wicker bench on the porch. They would fill up all the chairs and crowd around the windows to watch the shows while we sat in the house. The men especially enjoyed the Friday night fights. John Cameron Swayze would announce, “The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports is on the air!”

Mother would have us make ice cream on days that a good show, such as The Red Skelton Show or I Love Lucy would come on the air. Sometimes the people would bring over a cake or a pie. We had a great time watching the shows, but the real show was on the front porch. I can remember the people’s reaction to Red Skelton’s jokes or the predicaments that Lucy always got into.

Those early days of sharing our television set with friends and neighbors were wonderful memories. Little did I know that it was a moment vanishing in time. It was not long before they had their own television sets and they stayed home to watch it in the comfort of their own homes.

For some reason our television set had a rolling problem that TVs today do not have. Perhaps it was because it was powered by tubes. I can remember turning on the set and having to wait for the tubes to warm up before the picture came in clear enough to see anything.

It never failed that in the middle of a good program the screen would start “rolling”. Today’s generation of viewers have never experienced the “roll”. The picture would begin to slowly creep up one frame at a time. Then it would move up faster and faster. At that point we had to make some kind of adjustment.

We kept a hand held mirror on the top of the television set for that reason. There was a knob on the back that had to be adjusted to stop the rolling. We had to get down on the floor near the rear of the set and reach behind it with our left hand while holding the mirror in our right hand.

We angled the mirror in such a position we could see the picture and then we would turn the little knob either right or left to stop the rolling and position the screen into the correct spot on the picture tube. When we had it zeroed in we could take our seat and continue to watch the program.

Just when we thought we had it fixed and had taken our seat we would see the picture start to creep up slowly and the process had to be repeated until whatever demon in the television set was appeased and would let us watch our program.

Thank heavens modern technology has alleviated that problem. The only bad thing about it not rolling is that it has caused us to become couch potatoes. At least we were getting some exercise while we watched the programs.

I look at my home today and I see it is missing a front porch. Few homes are built with front porches now and that is a shame. We sit in our houses focused on the television sets and no longer visit our neighbors like we once did. Television may be a wonderful thing, but it is probably the main reason we have become so reclusive.

As I said earlier the real show was on the front porch. I can still remember the laughter of the folks on the porch and good times we had, but I cannot tell you what the shows were about. Perhaps we should turn off the television sets and build porches on the front of our homes like we had back then. We should get to know our neighbors better and “Reality TV” a little less.

FULLY WIRED

I am thankful we were all wired up by the time I was born. I suppose it is hard to miss what you do not have. While I was growing up we had a few electric appliances.

There was the old Norge refrigerator in our kitchen. It was barely taller than my mother who was a hair less than five feet tall. My father invested in a “deep freezer” which was filled with vegetables from our garden and some beef that we raised. Mother had an iron, a mixer in the kitchen and a few fans…the old finger chopping kind.

As the years passed by we invested in record player which was seldom used. My father discouraged us from buying records because music was free on the radio. But, when I was old enough to have my own car I bought an Eight-Track tape player and hid my tapes under the seat of my car. I did not want him to think I was being wasteful.

Being one of three boys, I never knew there were so many electronic necessities until I married. It was then I found out about blow dryers, electric curlers, hair straighteners and other unknown devices that keep a girl pretty. Who knew?

When my father decided to get “all wired up”, he had no idea what the future would bring our way. He was dreaming about light at the flip of a switch, a fan to cool him off and hoping some day to get rid of the kerosene ice box and own an electric refrigerator.

Had he lived long enough he would have been amazed at the technology we have today that came about because America and the world became “all wired up”.

Ricky, numerum illum non perdet.

(Ricky, don’t lose that number.)

BARNS, BUILDINGS AND BEYOND

THE WILEY PLACE

Our farm was a combination of several farm properties my father acquired over many years. Each parcel he bought or traded for brought different assets with it. Some had old houses on them. Others had barns and buildings in varying states of disrepair.

The Wiley Place was property my father bought from Dick Wiley. We called it The Wiley Place, but actually, it was The Bennett Place. It had originally belonged to my great-grandfather Dionysius Bennett. He had given part of it to his son, Wilbur, when he married. It changed hands a few times and eventually my father ended up owning it.

There was a nice home on it that my father sold and the house was moved to the south part of the county. Also, there was an older home that my great-uncle and aunt had lived in. When I owned that lot, I moved the old house further back into the pasture and had the Wilson Clark house placed where my uncle’s home had been. There was only one building on the Wiley Place. I turned it into a chicken house and a shop after I moved there.

THE WILSON CLARK PLACE

My father bought The Clark Place from Wilson and Hattie Clark in the late 50s. It consisted of 80 acres that joined the south part of our farm. We raised cotton and corn on that property, but in later years we used it for cattle.

There was an old barn on the farm and we stored equipment there. Occasionally, we used the corral to hold cattle. Behind the barn was an old cotton seed house that we never used. A car-house (garage) was near the home with a huge fig tree behind it. There were a couple of other buildings there, too...a chicken coop and a storage building.

The home was in pretty good shape. At first we used it for tenants, but when my wife and I became engaged I talked my father into letting me use it and I had it moved to a lot I owned on old Highway 25. Mr. and Mrs. Clark were thrilled to see their old home being restored and lived in again.

THE CLAUDE CARTER PLACE

My father bought The Carter Place in 1964. The Carters’ had passed away and their farm was sold in an estate auction on the court house steps. There was a man in town who wanted it, too. He kept bidding against my father and drove the price up. He told my father that he paid too much for it and he would never live to pay it off. He was right. My father passed away 12 years later and my brothers and I made the payments until we finally paid it off.

We used that farm, mainly, for cattle and timber. There was a huge hill pasture on the south side of it and we tried raising cotton on it, but rains ran off it too quickly and we soon determined it was better suited for pasture land after all.

That farm had two large old barns on it. Both were in bad shape and eventually had to be torn down. There was a log corn crib there that was made of huge cedar logs. I wish there had been some way to save that building, but it weathered away from neglect.

The old home was probably built in the early 1900s. Originally, it had what we call a dog trot through the center of the home. A dog trot was an open hallway that divided the home into two parts. The living room was on the left and the bedrooms and kitchen were on the right.

In the summer, people could sit on the big veranda that covered the entire front of the house or they could sit in the dog trot or on the back porch. The porches were laid out so there was always a place to sit and catch a breeze. Just outside the back door was another smaller porch where there was a bored well to draw water. In later years, the dog trot was enclosed and made into a foyer.

We began to notice pieces of the old house were disappearing. The light fixtures vanished and then the receptacles were gone. Doors and windows disappeared, along with the front porch concrete banisters. Then one day an old woman came to our house and asked my father if he would consider selling her the house. He thought for a moment and then said he would.

He sold her what was left of the house for a few hundred dollars and she made payments until she had paid for it in full. While she was making payments nothing else disappeared. As soon as she had it paid off, she and her sons tore it down and hauled the lumber away to build a new home.

My father said he knew she was the one stealing the house one piece at a time. If he had not sold her the house she would have continued to steal it piece by piece and he would have been left with nothing! That was why he sold it to her.

The Soil Conservation Service built a settlement pool on the north side of that property in the 1970s. Twenty acres of the lake was on our land and several more acres were on our neighbors’ lands. The lake was intended to remove silt and settlement from the creeks that flowed into the Tennessee-Tombigbee River network. At flood stage the lake covered 1,000 acres. At the time it was built they thought it would occur only once every one hundred years, but it has happened twice that I am aware of in the last 30 years.

There were three tenant houses on that farm. One was uninhabitable when we bought it. It was the house our neighbors, the Boswells, were born in. Workers that lived on the farm occupied the other two houses.

THE HOME PLACE

The home place is where my brothers and I grew up. I have written a great deal about it in the chapter “THIS OLD HOUSE”. Most of the buildings were described around the immediate house. But, I did not mention the barn and buildings across the road. Our barn was huge. It was built by my grandfather, father and uncle, Reuben.

I pretty much lived in that barn when I was a boy. We raised horses and cattle. Over some of the stalls were names of mules my grandfather had owned and used to work the farm. Names like Jack, Jake and Pat were written over the stall doors in blue crayon.

When I was little I thought we must have had some very intelligent animals that could read their names and know which stall they were to go into. I would like to know how many mules and horses passed through that barn. At one time we had thirteen horses around the barn.

We had a goat named “Billy”… imagine that! Billy was given to us by our mail carrier, Walter Triplett. He thought my brothers and I needed a goat to play with. Billy had a hard life with three boys and all our cousins who tried to ride him. When Billy got old we turned him out to pasture with the cattle. Eventually, he thought he was a cow. One Fourth of July Billy disappeared. My father thought someone probably invited him to a bar-b-que as the guest of honor. I bet he was really tough and hard to swallow. He was so old he had turned silver.

The barn was another place our cats would go to have their kittens and my brothers and I spent hours turning over hay bales trying to find them. We had Banty chickens that we raised in the barn. At one time we had over a hundred of them. We would find their nests and have egg wars. That was a bit messy, but they did not hurt as bad as the wet corn cobs.

When fall arrived we had rat killings at the corn crib. That was when we cleaned out the previous year’s corn to make room for the new crop. We stationed kids who lived on the farm all around the corn crib with sticks and bats to kill the rats as they ran out into the open as the old corn was removed. The old corn was taken to the feed mill in town and made into sweet feed. We killed dozens of rats. Tow sacks (burlap bags) were filled with the rats and mice our fat, lazy cats had not caught. We should have had more cats!

During the year we placed 55 gallon barrels half full of water in the corn crib and feed shed. Then we hung a wire from the rafters down to the center of the barrel. On the end of the wire we placed bacon or peanut butter to attract the rodents. A board was leaned against the barrel for a ramp. When the rats jumped get the bait they would fall into the barrel and drown. We had to keep the barrels cleaned out or they would smell pretty bad.

On Saturday mornings we would go to the crib and shuck corn to take to the feed mill in town. We combined corn and oats together and the mill would mix molasses with it to give it a sweeter flavor. The milk cow and horses loved it. The aroma was so good that I often considered tasting it myself.

My father had a rule… never, never, ever kill a King Snake. King Snakes ate mice, rats and other poisonous snakes. One Saturday morning we were sitting in the corn crib shucking corn. As we did, we reached between our legs and pulled up an ear, shucked it, tossed the ear into a basket and then tossed the shucks aside. After the corn was shelled we added the shucks and oats before taking it to the feed mill in town.

As we sat there that Saturday morning shucking corn we got into our zone. That being, we had done it so often that our thoughts were elsewhere and we were like zombies doing the work. Suddenly, my father leapt to his feet and started jumping and screaming. At first I thought he had caught the Holy Ghost, then he grabbed a corn scoop and started way-laying the spot where he had been sitting.

When he quit he reached down and pulled up a very long snake he had been sitting on. One of my brothers looked at the snake and said, “Hey, Daddy, that’s a King Snake. I thought we weren’t supposed to kill King Snakes!

To which my father solemnly replied, “Son, there is always an exception to the rule.”

We built forts in the hay and had corn cob wars. The worst were the wet corn cobs we soaked in the horse trough out in the lot. The wet ones were very heavy and if they hit you in the face they left the impression of the corn cob that looked like a pink tattoo.

There were times we would put feathers in the end of the cobs and drive a nail into the other end to make corn cob darts. Those we did not throw at each other. I guess our corn cob wars were yesterday’s version of the modern paintball games.

On the east side was an area where we kept old mule-drawn farm implements that my grandfather had used on the farm. There was a cattle chute and stall on that side, too. The west side was where Daddy kept the milk cow. We kept a milk cow for years and I absolutely hated drinking that milk. Summer time was the worst for fresh milk. Whatever the cow ate or drank is what our milk tasted like … and it was awful.

To the west of the barn was an old cotton gin. The gin and three acres was bought by my father after he returned home from the war. It had belonged to John Woodward. Mr. Woodward operated several gins in the county many years ago. All the ginning equipment had been removed, leaving a lot of storage space.

That was where we stored our hay. The seed house area of the cotton gin was where my father kept the oats from our harvest each year. The gin was a fun place to play hide and seek. It was very big and there was so much hay in it that we had several hidden forts and tunnels. When our cousins and friends from town came to the farm and we had corn cob wars, we had our tunnels and caverns already in place. We could scoot from one area to another undetected. There was nothing better than the home turf advantage!

Everyone was involved when we hauled hay, even our dogs. They watched for rabbits as my father cut and baled the hay. They loved to chase them down. My brothers and I learned by watching the dogs we could locate the rabbits.

We figured out that all the rabbits would run into the center of the hay field as my father cut the hay in an inward circle. Little by little the circle would grow smaller. When the circle of hay was down to a few feet wide we would surround it and wait for the rabbits to run out as my father made the last pass.

Normally, two or three would be in there. We would run after them and try to catch them as they jumped over the fallen hay stalks. When we were younger we had two dogs, Laddie and Tippy. They would help us out. They would get to the rabbits before we did and pounce on them.

I know this is hard to believe, but they would hold them down with their front paws until we were almost upon them. Then they would release them and watch us chase after them again. I don’t know who was having the most fun… the dogs or us. If we did manage to catch one we would play with it a while and let it go near our house.

The rabbits we tried to keep for pets died. We learned not to keep them long. It was more fun to set them free and watch them flee across the pasture.

Behind the barn, a few hundred yards away, was a tenant house and across the pasture was a house that another family lived in. At one time there was a house down the hill from the barn near a large walnut tree and across the road from it was a very old box board house in which no one lived. Well, no humans lived there. Our horses, Big Red Trigger and Little Black Trigger, lived in a side room we had converted into a stall.

The house near the swamp had a spring down the hill from it. My grandfather had dug a hole in the middle of the spring and inserted a hollowed out oak log to keep the sand from filling it in. That was where the tenants would get their drinking water. They kept a kettle by the spring to do laundry and they filled the kettle with water to heat over an open fire.

As a young boy I loved to go to that spring and peer into it to watch the minnows, crawfish and frogs in the bottom of it. There was a gourd dipper hanging on a post nearby and we used it to dip up a cool drink of water. I am sure the EPA would not approve of that today.

Most of the buildings that were on the farm have melted into the earth now. Time, weather and neglect took their toll after I moved away. One thing that hastened the demise of our barn was the removal of the tin roof.

The barn was falling in and someone contacted my brother and wanted to buy the tin off the roof before it fell in. A price was agreed upon and the man came and took the tin. He never paid for it. My brother could not remember who the man was and the man either could not or would not pay for it. Such was our luck at times.

When I sold my part of the farm all the memories overwhelmed me. My father’s black stallion, JB was buried there. Our dogs that we grew up with were buried there. Lots of cats… the lazy cats were buried there. The front porch where I would sit and listen to the “old folks” talk of their “olden days” was there.

I realized how strong my bond with the farm was when I signed the final papers. It took a long time to come to peace with that decision. It was my home. And it was the home of my parents, grandparents and a portion of the property had belonged to my great-grandparents.

When people come to my home in Kentucky now, they probably notice the magnolia pictures in every room, or they may notice the large sandstone rocks scattered around the yard that were once the foundation pillars for buildings on the farm. They may even notice the oak trees planted on either side of my driveway. But chances are that even if they do notice, they cannot understand why they are there unless they know the stories behind them.

They are there as a subtle reminder of another place and another time… a place where good memories live forever. Sometimes, I can close my eyes, concentrate and see my folks sitting on the front porch after a Sunday dinner or I can see my grandmother coming up the driveway in her old 36 Chevrolet with the dogs running along behind her car. I can see Daddy’s black stallion running along the fence in the pasture by the road.

I see the dust devils blowing up corn shucks near the old corn crib…. and stirring up more memories than can fit on a piece of paper.

Viridis, viridis gramen domus.

(The green, green grass of home.)

CALVARY COMMUNITY

I had wonderful neighbors where I grew up. The area I lived in was first called Coulter, but became known as Calvary around 1914 after Calvary Baptist Church was established. Most of our neighbors were members of Calvary. We were Methodist and our church was in Louisville, but Calvary was a large part of our life.

Traveling south on the road that runs by the church is an area local residents refer to as The Negro Head Woods. It was there legend says a great Indian battle occurred in ancient Winston County history. Legend has it that two brothers, Chacta and Chicksa, descended from the inhabitants of a Mexican tribe known as the Chickamacaws and they decided to move northward to escape the bloody wars of their land.

Along the way they parted company and Chicksa’s group traveled to what is northern Mississippi and southern Tennessee. Chacta and his followers crossed the great river in the vicinity of Natchez, Mississippi and traveled east.

The leader of the Chickamacaws was angry because the brothers had fled to the north and pursued them. They were to return to their homeland or face execution. The Great Chief was closing in on them and they felt their demise was inevitable. They prayed all night to the Great Spirit, to save them from being slaughtered.

The next morning Chief Chickamacaw was heard bellowing his orders to surround the fleeing Chacta followers. As the army of Indians began to descend upon the Chactas the ground beneath them opened up and swallowed their Great Chief. The event scared the army so badly they fled to their homeland and the prayers of Chacta followers were answered.

It has been said that over the centuries rains have caused the earth in that area to settle and the petrified head of Chief Chickamacaw can be seen in the form of a large sandstone protruding from the earth in those woods.

The followers of Chacta continued eastward following their sacred spear until it stood still and erect where Nanih Waiya is located in southern Winston County. There they settled and became the founders of what we call the Choctaw Nation.

Our nearest neighbors around the farm were the Boswells. Miss Mary Boswell was the matriarch of the family. She lived in a large wood framed home west of us. Her son, Ervin, and daughter-in-law, Margurite, lived with her. They had one daughter, Sue Ann who was a few years older than me.

Their property was originally homesteaded January 6, 1835 by Alfred Leach. In 1859 it was deeded to David Hamilton and upon his death it passed to George and Missouri Dulin. Then in 1900, Smith T. and Mary W. Boswell purchased the property.

They continued to live in the original log home until they built a new one in 1904. It was that home I remember as a child. The old home was torn down when I was a boy and a new brick home was built where the old one had stood. The most vivid memory I have of the old house was being in the front sitting room. Miss Mary had a little snow globe and she let me play with it when I came to visit her with my grandmother.

All of Miss Mary’s children lived close by in the community. They were Wilkes, Ervin, Hattie Maude (Hat) Clark, Mattie (Matt) Metts, Nannie (Nan) Loue Carter and Cornelia (Cap) Lucius.

Ervin loved to fish. There were many times we would be traveling across the farm and find him sitting on the bank of one of our ponds. He did not discriminate. He fished in everyone’s pond in the area. He loved to fish. I remember he once said if people did not want him fishing on their property they could run him off, but no one did.

Margurite was a school teacher. She graduated from Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in 1930. At one time she taught first through third grades at Calvary Consolidated School and that is where the 29 year old Miss Margurite Callahan met her husband, Ervin. He was 35. Later, she taught at Fair Elementary in town. She was fortunate not to have me as a student, although, she may have requested it be that way.

Sue Ann taught me in a music appreciation class when I was in junior high school. She was always a lot of fun. She dated and later married Howard Ryals who became my chemistry teacher. They had three children: Kevin, Ginger and Bobby.

Wilkes Boswell married Nona Cockrell and they lived across the road from Miss Mary’s house. They had three children: Deedye Francis, Doris, and Jimmy. All were a few years older than my brothers and me. In my father’s letters to his mother during World War II he often mentioned the Boswell girls.

Deedye Francis was married to Bob Mitchell. She was a school teacher and Bob worked with the Co-Op in town.

Doris married Darwin Young and they had one son, Dennis. Doris worked with the Bank of Louisville for many years. Her husband was an electrician. Darwin was tragically killed in a work-related accident when Dennis was small. After several years Doris married again. Her second marriage was to Bill Crenshaw.

Jimmy married Betty Mann and they had two sons, Judd and Zach. Jimmy was closer to my age and he loved to hunt. I remember he once had a favorite bird dog who was hit in the eye and they had to sew it up. The one eyed-dog was still a good hunting dog. One day Jimmy was working his dog out of season and the dog jumped a covey of quail beside their home. Jimmy instinctively shot. He hit a quail just as a game warden was driving by. They both saw each other about the same time. He quickly retrieved the quail and tossed it under their house. When the game warden pulled into the yard he was getting on to Jimmy about hunting out of season and shooting the quail.

Jimmy said he did not have a quail. He must have been mistaken. About that time the one eyed dog climbed out from underneath the house with the quail in his mouth. Jimmy got a ticket.

Wilkes and Ervin farmed. They raised cotton and corn. They also had a few cows. It was their well house that kept me in frogs. For some reason frogs loved their well house and they did not mind if I went in there and got them out. Many times I filled a little pail up with frogs and took them home to play with.

Wilkes loved to smoke cigars. I was in their barn once and noticed cigar boxes everywhere! He nick-named my brothers and me the “Lee” brothers; Terry Lee, Tonny Lee and Ricky Lee. I was thankful he did not call us “Home-Lee and Ug-Lee”. Nona was a wonderful person. I loved her cooking and her fried chicken was the best I ever had. I wish I could go back in time and eat at her table again. She was a wonderful cook.

Mattie (Matt) Boswell was married to Albert Metts and they lived on Shiloh Road. The name of the road has since been changed to the Dick Allen Road. They had two children; Betty and Deedie. Albert was a dairy farmer.

Betty married Bud Fulcher and they had three children, Bobby, Beth and Rebecca. Beth was my age and she was my girlfriend when I was in the eighth grade. After Bud passed away Betty married John L. Long.

Deedie and Mary Metts had four children, Mary Ann, Martha Jane, Margret Ellen and Jimmy. We rode the same bus. Mary Ann was a year younger than I was and we often played together when we were little.

My father was older than Deedie and while Daddy was away during the war Deedie often stayed with my grandmother and looked after her. He worked at Taylor Machine Works until he retired. Mary was a nurse and often looked after the people in the community when they were ill. It was Mary who took time to check on my father and make sure he was getting proper care.

Hattie Maude (Hat) was married to Wilson Clark. He was a farmer and my father, eventually, bought his farm because it joined our farm on the south side. It was their house I fixed up and lived in when Tina and I first married.

Hat was often sick and Wilson joked that she had been dying since the day they were married. At one time, Wilson led the music at Calvary Baptist Church. They were probably in their nineties when they passed away at a local nursing home.

Cornelia (Cap) Boswell was married to Judge Luther Lucius. I really don’t remember much about them except Luther was the constable in our district and often held court in a house near Shiloh Road.

Nannie Loue was married to Brooks Carter. They had one daughter Mary Louise. Nan Loue died during World War II, so I do not know much about her. I do know in my father’s letters home during the war he often asked about her. She was very ill at that time. Brooks had three brothers, Frank, John Wesley and Claude. It was Claude who served our county as a state senator.

Mary Louise was an only child and could not live on her own. She lived with Brooks until he died and it was not long after his death she moved into a nursing home. There she remained the rest of her life.

We rented some land from Brooks to plant cotton and corn on. He had a scuppernong arbor on the edge of his field and I often climbed to the top of it and sat there eating those grapes until I was nearly sick.

Brooks, also, had a dog he named Bulldozer. It did not take long to figure out why he had that name. If I am not mistaken there was a Bulldozer, Sr. and Bulldozer, Jr. If I was riding my bike by the Carter home I had to peddle fast or Bulldozer would try to plow me down. I learned that the road belonged to that dog.

Mr. Carter, also, had another type of watch dog in the form of Guineas. They were a strange looking fowl that looked like little helmets running around his yard. They were excellent for eating ticks and other nuisance insects. They often roosted in trees around his house and when someone came around they would “raise the roost” and make a terrible racket.

Lester and Fannie Hamill were our neighbors on the east side of the farm. Lester was a farmer and a game warden. I never realized there were hunting seasons when I was growing up. I hunted all year long and Lester never bothered me.

They had one daughter, Virginia. We all called her Snooks. She was several years younger than my father and married Bo Crowson. They had three children; Dianne, Debbie and Steve.

Lester and Fannie were good to me. Lester and I even shared the same birthday. He once told me why he never bothered me when I hunted out of season. When he first moved to the community they were struggling to make it. His mule died and he was afraid they would starve to death. He said my grandfather came over to his house one day leading a mule.

He told Lester to keep the mule until he could get back on his feet again. Lester never forgot that and always looked after me. When I moved the Clark House across the road from them and was fixing it up, Fannie would walk across from their home and watch me. She always had some advice. I did not necessarily take it, but she gave it out anyway.

Lester had a speech impediment. He was what we called, tongue-tied. He was fun to listen to. He had a wonderful, outgoing personality and one day he was walking down the street when he met a woman with an arm full of kittens. Lester was trying to be nice and said, “Lady, tat shore is some fine looking titties you have there.” As soon as he said it, he realized how it sounded. She was shocked and he was mortified. He said, “I’m so sorry. I mean TATS lady, TATS!”

Lester and Fannie gave Tina and me a pair of lawn chairs for our wedding present that we still have to this day. They, also, gave us several baby chicks the spring after we married. As it turned out, all but three were roosters! My city-girl wife learned a lot that first year.

During the late 50s and early 60s I would go over to Lester’s pond where there were fishing rodeos and “coon on the log” contests. Folks from all over Mississippi and several surrounding states would gather there to see whose coon dog could pull a raccoon off of a log that was stationed several yards out into the pond.

I remember the air was filled with the sound of old coon hounds howling and baying as they pulled at their leashes to get to the raccoon chained to the platform in the water. The dog that could get the coon off the log the quickest was the winner.

There were various trophies given out for each breed of hound that entered the contest. I was always pulling for the old raccoon. He seemed to get the worst of the sport. He was chained to the log and it was only a matter of time until a hound pulled him into the water.

However, there were a few times when I saw an old boar or sow coon leap from the log onto a hounds head as he neared the log and take him under for a baptism. When that happened it was the hound that usually lost. There were men stationed out by the log to rescue the coon if the hounds became too vicious but, occasionally an old raccoon would not let go and some of the hounds drowned.

It was then that I saw grown men cry as they waded out to retrieve their expensive animals. There came a point in time when the contests were discontinued. I suppose folks decided it was probably not a fair contest… to the raccoons or the dogs.

Harvey Lee and Mavis Hudson and their two sons, Keith and Kenneth, owned 80 acres that connected to what we called our “Back Forty”. The Back Forty originally belonged to Harvey Lee’s parents who sold it to my grandfather in 1934. The deed states the property was sold for $10 and other considerations. I was told the other consideration was a mule.

Mr. Hudson was a carpenter by trade. He owned a few acres and raised cattle. He and Odeal Scott often worked together on building projects. They were the carpenters who remodeled our kitchen in the late 50s.

Mavis was a quiet woman. She worked at the Ben Franklin Store in Louisville for many years until it was bought out by another chain store and then she continued to work for them until she retired.

Pruitt and Lucille Lee lived near the Hudson’s. They had three children: Jan, Kay and James Eddy. The Lees moved to Calvary Community from the Mississippi Delta in November of 1927.

At one time my father owned some property on Shiloh Road that Mr. Lee bought when I was a young boy. And, for many years he owned and operated a tractor dealership that was located in what was known as the Poor House Curve near Louisville on Highway 25.

He and my father often helped each other out on their farms as neighbors often did in that community. They helped each other repair flats on tractors and pull each other out when their equipment became stalled in the soft spring soil during cultivating seasons.

During World War II he was serving our country as a pilot on a B-17 bomber over Germany when he was shot down on his 29th mission. He was wounded and remained in the hospital for six weeks. He was one of many who served our country that deserve our thanks and gratitude. Without men like Pruitt Lee and the other veterans we may not have the comfortable lives we enjoy today.

Down the road from their farm lived Odeal Scott and his wife, Burdice. Their granddaughter, Barbra, shared a story with me about the time Mr. Scott built his home in Calvary Community. He had started building a home on Shiloh Road and it was almost finished except for the roof over their bedroom.

They decided to move into the home before the roof was finished and as luck would have it, the first night they were in their new home it snowed. They awoke the next morning to find three inches of snow covering their bed.

Mrs. Scott loved to quilt and there are probably many of her quilts scattered over Winston County and the state of Mississippi.

Odeal had one eye that did not look in the same direction as the other one. I can remember when he and Harvey Lee were remodeling our kitchen, Harvey Lee was talking to Odeal and he could not tell if Odeal was actually looking at him or off somewhere else.

Harvey Lee said, “Hey, I’m talking to you. Are you paying attention?” Odeal replied, “I know that. I’m looking right at you!” Then they both laughed.

Hayes and Ollie Kirkpatrick lived a few miles west of our farm. They had two children that I remember. Sue married Bruce Mitchell. Bruce was a brother of Bob Mitchell who married Deedye Boswell. Sue and Bruce had three children, Judy, Mike and Jan. The Kirkpatricks other daughter, Martha, married Leo Dubard and lived near them.

Leo often fished in the pond behind my house. It was Leo that taught me the quick way to clean a bass. Many times he would stop by our house on his way home and leave a stringer of fish. He loved catching them, but he loved to share his bounty, too. Their children were Lynn, Michele and Bridget.

The Kirkpatricks farmed. They raised fruit trees in later years and when my father was sick they would bring my parents fruit and vegetables from their garden. They were truly wonderful caring people. Hayes had a brother, Randolph who was Winston County’s Tax Assessor for many years. Randolph lived near Hayes and Ollie. They had two sisters, Ira Lee and Mary Elizabeth Kirkpatrick.

Bruce and Sue, also, worked on the farm and taught at Mississippi State University which was about 35 miles away. They were all hard working people.

Ernest and Lucille Boswell lived near Bruce and Sue Mitchell. Mr. Boswell had a little store in his front yard near the highway. I can remember my father driving folks to his little store when they needed a “chaw” of tobacco or some Rose Top Snuff. His little store was the precursor to the modern Minute Marts and Quick Stops.

There was a time many years ago when Mr. Ernest and my great-uncle, Lester Bennett, went in together and bought a sawmill. Those were probably the years when people were clear cutting their land to make way for crop land.

Near the Boswell’s lived Everett and Ruby Carter. Everett was the nephew of Claude Carter whose farm my father bought at an estate auction. Ruby Carter was one of our good neighbors who sat with my father when he was ill.

Their daughter, Barbra, married Lonnie Stringfellow and lived next door to them. They had three children; Robin, Cindy and Tracy. It was on the Carter farm that my brother, Terry, and the Carter’s nephew built a cabin. They spent many weekends camping and fishing on the Carter’s property.

East of the Stringfellows lived Mr. Cooper Roebuck. Mr. Roebuck was married to Martha Lucy Ethridge who passed away in 1944. They had nine children: William Levi (Bill), Walden, Clyde, Fronie, Earsel, Rosie Mae, Earma Jean, Eugean and Archie Brown.

While working at my first factory job after graduating high school I had the privilege of working with his daughter, Jean. She would come and sit with me during our lunch breaks. She was quite a bit older than me and for some reason I always thought she was special.

She told me stories about her father. When he was younger he would drive into town in his Model T. He always had his black and white dog with him. The dog loved to ride beside him.

After the old vehicle had seen its last days he went to town in a wagon. He would hitch his mules to the wagon and he and the dog would make the trip into town for supplies. He did that for a long time until something happened to his mules.

When the mules were gone he walked to town alone. Normally, someone would stop and give him a lift. He loved riding with people because it gave him someone to visit with.

Mr. Roebuck lived on a high hill west of our farm for many years. His home had seen better days and his children wanted him to build a new one down the hill, closer to the highway.

Over a period of time he managed to build a nice little home by himself. It amazed me that a man his age could do all that work by himself. I watched as the walls went up and then the roof began to appear. It took him a long time, but he accomplished his project and moved into the little house. Such was the determination of the people in our community.

Near Calvary Baptist Church lived the pastor and his family. Reverend Robert and Mable Jones had two sons, Charles and Ronald. Charles and I were the same age and we often tore up the road riding our bikes between our houses on weekends.

The first parsonage was near the old Calvary Consolidated School building and across the road from the church cemetery.

The Henry Mitchells had a farm that joined our land on the east. I do not know much about them, but their son, Vernon and his wife Virginia lived near them, too.

Vernon and Virginia Mitchell had four children, Caroline, Dale, Ronnie and Sue. They were about the same age as my brothers and me. Ronnie and I were the same age and played together growing up. Vernon farmed and worked at the Creosote plant in Louisville.

The George and Edna Wood’s property connected with our property, too. The Wood’s property had belonged to my great-grandfather, Dionysius C. Bennett, many years before they bought it in 1926. The home that is located there was built in 1903 by my great-grandfather.

The Wood’s children are: Esther, Earline, Lorene, James and Lucille.

Esther Wood Duncan taught elementary school for many years and died a few years after retirement. She had one son, Jimmy. Jimmy and his wife, Debra, are both school teachers and have two children, Brandi and Greg.

Earline Wood died when she was a young lady about 20 years old, well before my time. I did not know her.

I knew more about Lorene than the others. Lorene was a photographer for our hometown newspaper, The Winston County Journal. She had a photography business on the side and she was our photographer when Tina and I married. When I served on the school paper staff as a photographer I often saw Lorene along the sidelines of the ballgames as we both tried to get an action shot.

James Wood married Mary Ann Willis from Alabama and they had two sons, James, Jr. and Scott. He retired from the United States Air Force in 1974 as Lieutenant Colonel after serving 26 years. He moved back to the family farm and built a home there shortly after I finished high school.

Lucille was the women’s basketball coach at East Central Junior College. She, also, taught Health and Physical Education and was honored by the Mississippi State Legislature as the person with the longest tenure of teaching in the Mississippi Junior College system. She taught a couple of years at another Junior College before going to East Central Junior College where she has taught for over 50 years.

Ervin Harper’s property connected with our farm on the northeast side. By the time I was born he and his wife, Tommie, were pretty old and he no longer farmed. They had a small garden and rented a few acres that someone planted crops on. When he was younger he was a Blacksmith. He repaired guns, clocks and did various metal work.

Their property was on a dead end road that branched off another dead end gravel road. Their road had no gravel on it. For those that are unfamiliar with dirt and gravel roads, it is preferred to live on a gravel road rather than a dirt road. When it rained, a dirt road became nearly impassable. A gravel road has better traction to it and is much easier to drive on in wet weather. I have been told their property had been in their family since shortly after the Civil War. His parents were Jim and Lou Harper.

At the end of the dirt road they lived on was a little church which a lot of people in our area attended. Everyone referred to it as Harper’s Chapel. The Harpers had donated the property for the church.

In the summer the church was, also, used as a school. Once a young boy was missing. People were looking everywhere for him. Even the “High” Sheriff was called and after much searching he was found sitting in the school house with the students. As it turned out he was playing in the yard when he saw children walking down the road going to school. So, he followed them and it may have been the first case of integration in our county.

To the west of the church were a small cemetery and a coal pile. Coal was used in the potbelly stove in the center of the church for heat. The cemetery had a few graves in it. Some had markers, while others had only sandstone rocks or no markers at all. The only way to tell there were graves there were by the depressions in the earth. Over time the coffins had deteriorated and the ground above sank several inches.

The last time I was in the area visiting I drove by the Harper property. There was a huge water tower on the corner where the dirt road connected with the gravel road. The tower provides water for several hundred in the community. As I looked at it, I thought about the Harpers and how they had to draw water from their well with a narrow well bucket and pour it into a pail.

Mr. and Mrs. Henry Goodin owned and operated a little country store two miles west of our home. It was called, GOODIN’S GROCERY. The parking lot was gravel and there was an old gas pump out front by the porch. It reminded me of a scene out of a John Steinbeck or a William Faulkner novel.

Henry and Myrtle had three children, Laura, Edward and Erin. When Mr. Goodin was a young man he taught school and Odeal Scott who lived in the community was one of his many pupils. Evidently, the teaching profession ran in the Goodin family because his daughter Laura became a teacher, as did two of her children.

If someone needed gas Mr. Goodin would waddle out to the pump, turn a little crank on its side and pump their gas. It was a very slow pump. The numbers on its face seemed to take forever to rotate around. That did not bother Mr. Goodin. The slow pump gave him more time to visit with the customers.

There was a kerosene tank on the porch that was there for those that still used kerosene lanterns… or “Coal Oil” as some people referred to it. The inside of the store was somewhat dark. There were a few light bulbs hanging from the ceiling to brighten the store up a bit. It was not a general store, but it had enough in it to get a person by until they could make it into town on the weekend.

A lot of the workers that lived in the community relied on GOODIN’S for a chaw of tobacco, snuff, cigarette papers or Prince Albert smoking tobacco. On any given day there would be a pulp wood truck or two parked in the gravel lot while the men were inside getting a cold drink from the ice box.

There was a little bedroom in the back of the store. From time to time they used it to take a nap. And there were nights Mr. Goodin slept out there to protect the store from anyone who may have entertained thoughts about breaking in.

They lived in a house behind the store and Mr. Goodin also had a small farm. They operated the store together until Mrs. Goodin passed away. After that Mr. Goodin went to live with his daughter, Laura, in Wiggins, Mississippi. He was 103 when he passed away.

When the store was operating it was not unusual to see Mr. Pierce Butler Dallis there. He and his wife, Lavada McAlilly Dallis, lived on a back road behind the store that connected to Highway 14 near Whitehall Methodist Church. Mr. Dallis was often there to pick up the latest news like many of the older men in the community.

Mr. Dallis had a bad back. He told me he was thrown from a horse when he was a child and as a result had a large hump that caused him to be very stooped. That did not prevent him from working. He had a small farm and provided well for his family. At one time Mr. Dallis was the Chancery Clerk for Winston County.

Mr. and Mrs. Dallis had one daughter, Linda. She had two daughters about my age. They went to the Methodist church in town that we attended. Her daughters were Alexa and Roselin Runnels. Roselin followed in the tradition of her family and became a Methodist minister. Linda taught at the Choctaw Indian Reservation near Philadelphia until she retired.

Near the Dallis Place was the home of Mr. C. C. and Mary Huntley. Mr. Huntley was our County Supervisor for many years and took care of the roads in our beat. He was the kind of neighbor everyone loved. If we needed help Mr. Huntley was always there to lend a hand. Mr. and Mrs. Huntley had four children; Dean, Martha, Jimmy and Brenda. His father, Mr. Champ Huntley, ran a store down in the country for many years.

Calvary Community was a great place to live. I could not have chosen a more wonderful place to grow up. Our neighbors were caring people who worked hard, and always looked out for each other. It was like growing up with many guardian angels who watched after me.

Vetera amicitiae effluator...

(Should old acquaintance be forgot…

Continued in Beyond the Cotton Fields, Part 3

_______________
Rick Algood
December 12, 2017