17th Post "THE PAST IS MYSELF"

Photo at right: Crippled Grandmother's House where the snakes were in the pantry.

BATS IN THE BELFRY?
WE HAD SNAKES IN THE PANTRY.

Although there were bats congregating during the day in some of the outbuildings on the family farm in the Yellow Creek Valley, more reptiles inhabited the environs than bats.

We had the “run of the mill” snakes which were not harmful to humans, garter snakes, king snakes, black racers, chicken snakes and other types of snakes labeled with our special rural labels; however we also had some poisonous vipers that would kill a human in a heartbeat.

Among the reptilian species to “watch out for” was, the Cottonmouth Water Moccasin, (Agkistrodon piscivorous conanti); Timber Rattlesnake, (Crotalus horridus) and the dreaded Copperhead, (Agkistrodon Contortrix).

Whether or not we wandered into the woods or high weeds, the snake’s habitat, we could also find the creatures inside our dwelling places, our habitats.

On a warm Summer’s Sunday Morning in the early 1920s, Bell Adams, my grandfather, was preparing to start a fire in the wood burning cook stove. Bell’s wife Addie, was at the “hen house” preparing to open the doors for chickens to egress. Assorted knives were stored in a crude container beside the “hen house” door to facilitate opening feed sacks.

Behind the cook stove, an enormous wooden kindling box had been installed to handle large quantities of hardwood to feed the fire. Fires were built in the stove in the mornings and continued burning all day until cooking was finished in the evenings

As Bell Adams reached over the side and into the wood storage box to retrieve a piece of “kindling” to start the morning fire, a Copperhead seized his hand and injected the deadly venom..

“Addie, I’m snake bit”, Bell yelled from the kitchen, and Addie stationed at the hen house door, reached and grabbed a chicken with one hand and a butcher knife with the other.

As Addie ran to the house, she inserted the knife into the anus of the chicken and split the bird “wide open”. Reaching her husband she plunged his hand into the chicken’s carcass and yelled for her youngest son to mount one of the horses and “head out” as fast as he could ride, to Dr. Hunt and tell him about Bell.

When Dr. Hunt arrived, the chicken carcass had turned grass green from the poison drawn from the wound. Dr. Hunt remarked, “The chicken carcass, in all probability, is what saved Bell’s life”.
During the remainder of Bell's life, due to tissue and muscle deterioration, use of his damaged hand was limited.

The family had dogs that fought with snakes when they happened upon them by accident, got bit and their heads would swell to four times the normal size, but they always recuperated from the bite.

Every venture into the hills or fields, would be accompanied with a verbal caution to “watch out for snakes“. During the hot, humid, hazy days of the Southern Summers, reptiles were constantly in the forefront of my mind.

Blindly reaching into a hen’s nest without first being sure only eggs lay in wait, I encountered, what felt like a piece of rubber hose, until I pulled it from the nest and found a chicken snake in my grasp. The experience very well could have revealed a Copperhead or Rattlesnake. Experience is a unique teacher. You are given the test first and then you are taught the lesson. I learned to look first when gathering eggs.

Early one summer morning, the cripple grandmother was in her pantry preparing to make biscuits. Down in the flour bin, ready to strike, lay a coiled Copperhead; the snake was removed and destroyed, biscuits were baked and breakfast was set on the table as usual. Life went on.

When retiring for the night, before the coal oil lamps were extinguished, the covers would be turned back on the bed and pillows would be disarranged to inspect and ascertain no reptile was in the bed. There were folks we knew, who, while laying in their beds had actually been bitten by snakes.

Youth in the Yellow Creek Valley learned at an early age, the art of traversing the fields, hills and woodlands circumventing the lair of the reptile.

Our feelings were the only good snake was a dead snake. Times have changed. Environmentalists now are teaching the necessity of the reptilian species for rodent control and other balances of nature.

Personnel from the Wildlife Conservation Department are dropping rattlesnakes back into the wooded areas by helicopter to repopulate what was diminished previously by farm folk. Where in the past, a bounty was placed on poisonous reptiles; a fine is now levied on humans who are caught killing rattlesnakes.

I know hornets are necessary, but I want them to build their nests away from where I live, the same goes for wasps and other stinging insects. I don’t want to find a bat roosting in my bedroom and I definitely don’t want to turn back the covers and find a snake in my bed.

16th Post "THE PAST IS MYSELF"

Photo: December 1953, The first issue of Playboy Magazine

DECEMBER, 1953
(We Owned Marilyn)

Not everything was as religiously pristine as it may have appeared on the surface, in the Chicago Christian High School environs. One song, especially, stands out in my mind:

“We are the Christian Boys
We play with Tinker Toys
And beat up little boys,
We are the Christian Boys”

The area was named Englewood, on the South Side of Chicago, and Marquette Road, (67th Street) intersected with Halsted Street; the North West Corner of the intersection embodied a neighborhood pharmacy. A magical place to purchase a Chocolate Coke, Vanilla Coke, Cherry Coke, Cherry Smash and view the magazine rack which was crammed full, to my adolescent eyes, of every type of magazine on the planet.

Down in the Yellow Creek Valley, no citizen heard of “Cheesecake”, you put cheese on crackers, but not in a cake.

The nearest thing to naked lady magazines, back in the 1940s, was the lingerie section of the Sears Roebuck Catalog, with its slick pages full of corsets, slips and bras with sizes from A to DD.

My cousin and I had no idea what those letters represented back in those days. But we “paged” through the catalog when the adults weren’t looking.

Mrs. Addie Adams, the old cripple grandmother, departed this life in 1966 at the age of ninety one. After the family exited the “gathering room” in the funeral home, I was alone with the casket and the body. I lifted the veil, bent over her cold face, and kissed her on the forehead, doing my own silent weeping and saying “Goodbye Mother”. She instilled in me, only the positive and good, I felt she really loved me, I know I loved her.

Mrs. Addie always remembered my birthday and Christmas with a card and a piece of paper money to add some jingle to my pocket. These little gifts were kept secret from my parents, because had they been aware of my receiving money, it would have gone into their coffers and not jingle in my pocket.

Usually, I could make a little money, on the side by “odd ball” employment. Walking down an alley, hearing a voice hollering, “Hey kid, wanna make five bucks”, “Hey, youse wanna make a coupla dollars”?

Always there was a piano to help move to a second or third floor apartment or some other lifting job where the fellow needed help. These types of tasks were good for jingle to feed a craving like chocolate éclairs, chocolate cokes or some other treat that would appeal to an adolescent appetite.

My dwelling place was in the sixty seven hundred block of Emerald Avenue, one street East of Halsted Street. Between Emerald Avenue and Halsted, an alley paralleled in a Northerly and Southerly direction. On the Southeast corner of 67th Street and the alley lived a classmate of mine, Louis Vloedman. Louie, as I called him, could have passed, visually, as a twin brother to his own father, they were an absolute “look alike”. Louie was a lover.

I think Louie had a crush on every girl in high school, at least to hear him expound, the listener would be inclined to believe he did.

Louie knew much about a lot of things, especially animal husbandry in the homo sapiens‘ species. Louie even knew what cup sizes A through DD were all about, I learned from Louie, they were not the sizes of coffee mugs.

I had lived, prior to my teen age years on a farm, I knew all about cows “finding” calves, mares with “new” foals, roosters and hens with baby chicks, hogs with litters of piglets, and I knew what had happened before the babies were born. But when Louie told me, in the eighth grade, that my mother and father “did it”, I could not believe what I was hearing.

The people I lived with, in the same house, just two rooms away from where I slept, they were “doing it”? When were they “doing it“? At night? In the daytime? Louie shocked me, my brain reeled from having been exposed to this deplorable news. Not my parents, they would never do such a thing! Absolute naivety!

In the eighth grade at Englewood Christian School, Louie fell in love with Patricia Carr, at least he talked a lot about her, In Chicago Christian High, Louie fell in love with one of our classmates, Donna Lewis.

Donna was struck down by the devastating disease, “bulbar polio”. When Donna passed away, Louie was devastated. He became withdrawn and said he could never love again as he had loved Donna. I don’t know if Louie ever told Donna about his feelings or not, but he did fall in love again, with Sally Smith, a girl he met on a church sponsored hay ride. Louie married Sally.

Usually when the crippled old grandmother would send me a Christmas Card with the paper money stashed inside, I would use most of it to buy some simple present for my mother and father for Christmas. Maybe a box of Andes’ Candies from the store on Halsted Street for her and a handkerchief from the drug store on the corner for him; just whatever could be afforded from the bill in the card.

December, 1953 was different from other visits to the drug store on the corner of Halsted Street and Marquette Road. In the magazine rack, among the publications of Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Field and Stream and other established periodicals, was an entirely new publication never before seen with my eyes.

A magazine cover with a price tag of fifty cents, a study in black and white of a well known celebrity with her left arm raised as though waving to me and a smile spread across her face. To the right of the famous celebrity facing me, appeared a box with the message:

FIRST TIME
In any magazine
FULL COLOR
The famous
MARILYN
MONROE
NUDE

Also the cover informed the viewer, this was the first issue.

WOW! Marilyn Monroe, and with no clothes on! Did I have enough jingle to buy her? Wait ‘til I tell Louie what I found, I’ll bet he will be surprised!

Did I have enough jingle in my pocket from the paper money the old cripple grandmother had sent me? Why did I go and buy those presents for Floyd and Mary Lee? Eagerly I checked the jingle and mercy be to High Heaven, thank God and Angels, and Jesus and everyone connected with magic, I had just enough jingle to make Marilyn my very own.

Was I ever lucky to have seen her before sitting on the soda fountain stool and ordering a ten cent chocolate coke. I could afford her, now Marilyn would be mine.

I kept Marilyn hid between the box springs and mattress of my bed, realizing the possibilities of Marilyn being discovered sleeping with me, should Mary Lee and Floyd come into the room to “rotate and turn over” the mattress. I knew my sharing Marilyn with Louie was of paramount importance, especially if she were to survive in the Victorian Standards of my environment. After all, Louie was a man of the world, he knew cup sizes and who was “doing it”. Louie had better hiding places and could protect Marilyn.

Louie was more excited than I could have imagined him to be. He stuffed Marilyn down inside his shirt for perfect concealment while performing the clandestine act of sneaking her into his own place of abode. Marilyn would be safe with Louie.

Somewhere in time Marilyn became a part of life that goes away from us. Louie had a cousin, Emil DelMastro living next door to him. Emil attended Parker High School and Louie shared Marilyn with Emil and probably most of Parker High School. Emil, who was not the brightest star in the universe, claimed he lost our prize.

But for a period of time in December, 1953 through February, 1954, Marilyn was ours.

Not everything was crystal clear and pristine as appearance would leave the uninitiated to believe, in the Chicago Christian High environs, after all, “We were the Christian Boys”!

Oh! That was the first and last copy of “Playboy” I ever purchased, too bad it wasn’t archived, what an investment, fifty cents in 1953 to over five thousand dollars in today’s market. Oh well, as my friend and fellow classmate Dutch Huizinga remarks with his marvelous and descriptive aviation vocabulary, “Don’t look back at the runway behind you”!

Thanks Mrs. Addie, wherever you may be, for having made funds available for your grandson and Louie to have owned Marilyn.

15Th Post 'THE PAST IS MYSELF"

Photo below: The Adams Family Tobacco Barn as it stands today. The Lost Dream

Located on the East side of the Edgewood, “one room” Elementary School was a semblance of what today is called a playground. On this dusty, rutted, hard packed and in places, weedy piece of earth, was a “ball diamond“.

I don’t know whether it was a softball or a baseball diamond, but we tenants of that school only had a softball and two very old ball gloves. I don’t know if those gloves were manufactured for softball or baseball, but I can look back now and believe, because of their condition, they were manufactured about the time Abner Doubleday laid down the rules for baseball. At least my memory of the worn out pieces of leather jogs my memory in that direction, they were old.

The type of glove really didn’t matter, because, beside the two old gloves, all we had was a beat up softball and a broken bat which was wired together with baling wire.

The school ball diamond was not what most folks would reference as a ball diamond, nor a sandlot ball diamond for that matter. There was no “catcher” only a “back stop” made from slabs of oak and nailed to two upright cedar posts. The bases were trees and the topography of the area went downhill from the “batter’s box” to the outfield, which was limited by two red out buildings, the boy’s and girl’s toilets. Beyond the toilets was Mrs. Pearl Hunt’s vegetable garden. We gave her free underground fertilization.

I anxiously awaited the arrival of the annual Sears and Roebuck Catalog; I would go and drool over the fine sports equipment for sale. I would lay at night in the big feather bed and dream of owning one of those beautiful sewn leather ball gloves. I never asked for much as a child because I knew nothing would come from my asking, but I did let my desires and dreams for a ball glove be known.

The big cash crop for the agrarian families of the Yellow Creek Valley was “Tobacco”. All the valley raised “Dark Fired” Tobacco, which is commonly known as “Flue Cured” tobacco. Dark Fired Tobacco, when harvested and hung in the tobacco barns would have a fire of Hickory Wood built under the Tobacco and when burning properly, wet sawdust was piled over the fire to create a heavy Hickory Smoke to cure the Tobacco.

Every winter a “plant bed” would be burned to eradicate any weed seeds and sterilize the soil, then tobacco seeds would be planted. The plant beds were sealed at the outer perimeters with logs and then a muslin material would be stretched from log to log and “nailed down” to prevent birds and varmints from disturbing the seed. As the weather warmed in the spring, the plants would be inspected daily to ascertain their growth was progressing properly.

The Tobacco Field would be plowed, spread with barnyard manure, harrowed, leveled out with a drag and then checkered, much like the pattern of a checker or chess board. In the center of each square was placed a tobacco slip. The tobacco slip was the small seedling dug from the plant bed and placed in a bucket with spring water and then planting would begin.

Planting tobacco in my time was hard, laborious and back breaking work. The planter, which would include several of us, children included, would be armed with a peg, shaped similar to the letter “L”, only upside down. The peg would have been cut and whittled from a sapling tree and used year after year until it became smooth and polished from the sweat and calluses of the planter’s hand.

We would walk, bent over, peg in hand and make a cone shaped hole, drop in a tobacco slip, root side down, then a dipper of water poured into the hole and dirt pushed back around the little plant. This went on all day long in the heat of a Springtime Sun on the planter’s back, and your back feeling as though it would break.

Tobacco, being the type of crop it was, came under direction of the Department of Agriculture. Rules were set by Federal, State, and County Agencies. Farmers were granted a “tobacco base” according to the total number of cultivatable acres on their farm. A formula existed which also took into account total acreage of the farm, timber land included, but I never had to do that figuring, the adults tended to that.

All summer long, every day, even on Sunday after attending church, the tobacco field was inspected. The only herbicide was a “gooseneck hoe”, daily each plant was inspected for “Tobacco Worms”, the only insecticide was the thumb and forefinger pulling the worm off the plant and mashing it. (The only humane way we knew to dispose of the worm).

As the summer lazily moved forward in the hot, humid fashion of the South and the Yellow Creek Valley, the tobacco plants grew. As they grew, they formed “sucker leaves” on the main stalk, which if not removed, would sap the strength of the adult leaves of the plant. So the only sucker eradication was to daily inspect and break off the suckers from the plant.

Finally the tobacco plant sprouted a seed pod and bloom on the very top, the farmer would go into the field and break off the bloom and seed pods; this was called “topping the tobacco”.

As summer neared the last days, tobacco cutting would begin. Every farmer realized there would be a loss to some of his crop due to natural causes, therefore several more rows of tobacco were planted than allowed by the government. On the week of the cutting, word was sent out to the County Agricultural Agent to come and measure out the allotment.

When the agent arrived he would measure out the allotted tobacco and ask the farmer what rows of tobacco he wanted to destroy. Workers, armed with tobacco sticks, would beat down and trample all the plants over the allotted amount. To me, the rows that were beaten down had, in my mind, always been the hardest to maintain during the growing season, but that was a way of life and it had to be done.

Tobacco knives similar in shape to the letter “Z “ were used to cut straight down through the tobacco stalk and then at the ground level, pull up with an angled cut, these cuts prepared the plant to be hung on a tobacco stick which was about six feet in length, with other plants to be hung from the many horizontal poles in the tobacco barn. Then the “smoke curing” would begin.

Usually around November when the weather was damp from Autumn Rains and a definite chill was in the air, word would get out that the tobacco was “in order”. The tobacco, now cured from the smoke would be brought down from the poles in the tobacco barn and the leaves stripped away from the stalk. This was called “stripping tobacco” and the leaves would be tied and the “hand” of tobacco gently laid out on a big tarpaulin and prepared to go to market. The stripping was done in the damp humid fall weather because under these conditions the leaves were pliable and would not crumble by handling.

This was the big payday on the farm, when the tobacco went off to market. This was the annual promise of, “when the tobacco goes off to market, you’ll be able to get your baseball glove”.

There seemed to always be something of a “pitfall” in the way our tobacco was raised. If too much rain came, the tobacco would get “rust”, (a fungus) and not bring a good price on the market. If there was not enough rain and the hot summer sun baked the ground, the tobacco would be “burned”, (dried, dead looking leaves, light tan in color instead of dark green).

Every year I heard the excuse, “Well, the tobacco didn’t bring what we thought it should bring, so there’s not enough money for you to get that ball glove this year, maybe next year will be better and you can get it then”.

That dream never came to pass, I never owned a ball glove.

14th Post "THE PAST IS MYSELF"

Photo: FACING DOWN THE YELLOW CREEK VALLEY

TONK ROY and THE SHARED BUBBLE GUM

What I remember most about Tonk was how he would take a forked tree branch from a small sapling, cut it down to resemble handlebars for a motorcycle, and with his bare feet, churn up the hard gravel and dust in the road, holding the forked branch and verbally making the noise of hudden, hudden, RRRrrrrrrPow, Pow

Tonk‘s mentor was Wire Pliers Reynolds, who owned, rode, wrecked and held together with baling wire, an Indian Motorcycle. Wire Pliers real name was Burton, however he was known by everyone up and down the Yellow Creek Valley as “Wire Pliers”. This was because he was always cutting a piece of baling wire with his pliers to hold, attach or keep together, a component to the “Indian”.

"Pliers" as he was usually called, spent time in later life being fed, clothed, housed, and maintained, compliments of the Tennessee Taxpayer. Wire Pliers Reynolds went to prison. I think he used those pliers for more than cutting baling wire and motorcycle repair.

Tonk Roy lived in Wilson Hollow and was one of my Edgewood School classmates. He had a habit of squeezing the skin on the back of his neck between his thumb and forefinger and then snapping his finger. There was a big brown spot on the back of his neck which was the result of this nervous habit and I had to sit behind him and look at that spot every day .

Tonk’s father, Mr. Elgie, worked on the railroad and Tonk was the only student in school who had jingle in his pocket. Nobody knew how Tonk arrived at his jingle, but he knew whenever some new and different commodity was delivered to Uncle Walter and Aunt Annie’s general store.

And not only was he the messenger of a new kind of candy or the arrival of bubble gum, Tonk could make purchases from D. E. Martin’s “rolling store” that traversed the hills and hollows weekly.

D. E. Martin had an old van type truck with a front wheel drive; on the front bumper a section of steel railroad iron, (railroad track) was attached with a length of log chain for added weight over the drive wheels. Sometimes the rolling store man made sales to the housewives by bartering, and rumors circulated in the valley that payment was not always made in chickens and eggs by the ladies, while their husbands were in the fields working. I always wondered why there was a straw mattress in the back of that rolling store, evidently it was not for sale.

Tonk Roy did not always go home after school. Many time his mother, who had a high ratio of Indian Blood in her veins, would roam the valley or have another Wilson Hollow Resident roam for her, in search of Tonk Roy. Tonk would suddenly decide he was going to go home with a fellow classmate and spend the night, without his mother’s knowledge. Problem was, Tonk Roy would “wet” the bed.

Everyone in the fourteen student one room school had a “nickname”. Somewhere in the valley I had been branded with the nickname of “Stooge”. Tonk Roy had a speech impediment and he could not pronounce the letter “S”, so when addressing me Tonk would say, “Tooge, I going home and pend the night wid you tonight”. “Tonk” was also a nickname.

Tonk had an older sister who lived at home with his mother; his father was never home, but with a railroad section gang somewhere on the line, causing the cliché : “Two is company, four is a party, three is a crowd and one is a wanderer” to come into play. Tonk Roy was, indeed, a wanderer.

Once chosen as the host for Tonk’s wanderings, he did not walk home from school with you, but would “show up” at suppertime. Where he was between school and supper was known only to him and the Indian Spirits who protected him.

One night in particular, Tonk arrived at the crippled grandmother’s house to spend the night with me. The weather had deteriorated to a cold night with sleet and freezing rain. The first words out of the spinster schoolteacher’s mouth were, “Does your mother know you are here tonight”?

Of course Tonk Roy lied and the spinster school teacher knew it. She told him she “ought” to make him go home, but since the weather was bad and he would have a long way to walk, he could stay. This night, in particular was going to be great because, Tonk Roy was chewing a piece of bubble gum.

As I mentioned, Tonk always had some jingle in his pocket and he had purchased a piece of “Fleer’s” Bubble Gum at the general store.

His chewing made my mouth water and you could smell the distinct aroma of “Fleer’s” Bubble Gum. As he chewed, a small portion could be seen at the corner of his mouth in preparation of sticking his tongue through the flattened area to blow a big pink bubble.

Wow, what I would give for a piece of “Fleer’s” if only I had a little jingle to make a purchase. Each piece of “Fleer’s” had under the wrapper, a waxed paper copy of “Fleer’s Funnies”. This miniature comic strip was almost as enticing as the bubble gum.

After supper, sitting around the old sheet metal stove, Tonk and I came up with an absolutely stunning idea. Since he had only one piece of ABC (Already Been Chewed) bubble gum and there were two of us, he could chew for a while and then I would chew for a while. And that is what we did on that cold, stormy and winter’s night; Tonk Roy and Robert McClurkan share one piece of “Fleer’s” Bubble Gum and chewed until bedtime.

In the winter when the weather was cold and bedtime arrived, entering the cold room under the tin roof, temperature was equally as cold indoors as outdoors. When crawling into the cold bed, between the cold sheets, the coldness made the bed feel wet, but this was an illusion to your senses due to the tremendous cold.

No fires were kept burning in the house at night and before all adults "settled in", someone would go outside, walk around the house and look toward the barn and all out buildings to ascertain no light could be seen anywhere. The reason being, if light could be seen anywhere, then a fire was the source of the light. To be “burned out” at night would eradicate your livestock, your ability to farm, your food source and even the lives of the family.

Every farm in the valley had a dinner bell, however in my childhood, the dinner bell could not be rung except in case of emergency. Anytime a dinner bell could be heard ringing, adjoining farms would come running to assist in whatever way possible. There was one time when this rule of the dinner bell was broken. A message came over the “Atwater Kent” radio that the Second World War was over, Japan had surrendered, I was allowed to go out and pull the rope and ring the dinner bell to celebrate.

In the winter we would place a wooden stick in our water bucket in the kitchen, by performing this act, when the water froze during the night, the bucket wouldn’t burst. Next morning, fires were built in the wood cook stove and other stoves, the bucket was placed on the cook stove to melt the ice and we would go to the barn to do the morning chores. Arriving back to the house, the ice was thawed and we could wash our faces and brush our teeth and my uncle could shave. We always woke up in a super cold house in the winter and it didn’t take but mere seconds to get dressed.

Tonk Roy and I had to sleep in the cold bedroom in the big feather bed and we came up with another brilliant idea; seemed like when we got together we could invent “brilliant” ideas.

Since we knew next morning the spinster school teacher would “holler” up the stairwell for us to get up, long before daylight, we would shock her. We decided to sleep with our clothes on that night, including our shoes, then we could bound out of bed and be downstairs by the fire within a matter of seconds. Contrary to popular belief in other regions of the country at that time, we did wear brogans in the winter, had it been summer, we children would have been barefoot, except for Sunday Church Services.

Long after Tonk Roy and I had fallen asleep, the spinster schoolteacher came upstairs to check on us; our plan was foiled, she made us undress and get into bed without the additional clothing. It was a good thing though, Tonk Roy peed in the bed that night.

Tonk, I found out later, grew up, married a girl who was distant kin on the McClurkan side of the family, went to work in a manufacturing industry, became a supervisor, got religion, joined a church, sang in a gospel group and became quite successful after all.

Way to go Tonk, and thanks for sharing the bubble gum.

13th Post "THE PAST IS MYSELF"

A young man approached his father and announced he was going to marry Rachel who lived in the next hollow; “You can’t marry up with that gal son”. replied his father. “Why not”, answered the young man. “Well son, your mother doesn’t know this, but Rachel is your half sister”.

The young man returned to his father a week later and again announced his intentions on marrying a young lady. “Since I can’t marry Rachel, I decided I’m going to marry Sadie who lives down the creek”. “Son”, his father said, “I’m sorry to tell you this, but once again, you can’t marry Sadie, she, too, is your half sister, but your mother knows nothing about any of this”.

In frustration the young man went to his mother and told her he just didn’t know what to do, because he was in some way kin to all the girls he spoke about with his father.

His mother told him, “Son, marry whomever you so desire, because your father doesn’t know it, but he is not your real father anyway”.

The Preacher and Chris Swapped Wives

Prior to opening this chapter of childhood encounters, I wish to recount a conversation between my wife and a teacher in the Dickson County Public Elementary Schools, the year, 1979.

My wife attended a P.T.A. meeting and in conversation with the teacher, was advised Dickson County led the state in cases of incest. Needless to say, my household was shocked when this information was revealed to us. However, when I went into the town, which was rare, I had noticed more of, what I would call, “retards” than I cared to see. One would have thought “Deliverance” (The Movie) had jumped off the silver screen and landed in Dickson, Tennessee. So, this information pretty well gave credence to my observations.

For some unexplainable reason I had decided to move from Nashville to Dickson County, retreating to a more rural setting, away from the frantic pace of urban dwelling. Supervision in “Network Facilities” at Bell Telephone was pressure enough. This routine of having to travel such an extended distance from home to work, work to home, and the constant unexpected “call outs” when problems developed in the communications facilities late at night, taught me a valuable lesson; my stay in Dickson County lasted only eighteen months. I moved back to Nashville.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Living on the Maysville Road, (it was called the May Road in my childhood days) was an itinerate “Primitive Baptist” preacher. Down in one of the hollows off the Maysville Road, lived a Spanish American War Veteran, who was rumored to have charged San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders.

What I remember most of old Chris, the rough rider, was at the end of World War Two, when a motorized cycle called a “service cycle”, came on the scene.

Chris owned one of these contraptions; and the peculiar sound from the engine revealed who was coming off the May Hill whenever Chris was traveling through. This was also true of rattles on all motorized vehicles at this time. We could lay in the dark and identify who was passing in the night, by the distinct sound of their conveyance.

Chris would have both hands in a death grip on the handle bars, elbows bent, body straining forward, goggle covered eyes in a “tunnel vision” looking straight ahead without his head ever turning, even slightly. You could shout “HELLO” to Chris and he wouldn’t even turn his head or take a hand off the handlebars to wave. I remember once throwing a rock at him and hitting his backside with it and he never even slowed down. Of course later he told the spinster school teacher about my actions and I received a thrashing. Chris never did like me, the feeling was mutual.

Old Chris, as I have heard the story, awoke in the middle of the night and claimed he had a vision from the Lord. “He was told to trade wives with Roy, the Baptist Preacher”. Next morning, Chris walked with his wife over to the preacher’s house to fulfill the Lord‘s Command. He related to the preacher what the vision had commanded.

Old Roy, the preacher exclaimed, “Well, if the Lord told you that is what is to be done, then it is His will that we do it”, and they traded wives.

From information I could gather by listening, a group of the local citizens were going to Chris’ house to lynch him when a local constable on horseback rode up and told them they had better disperse and go home, which they did. This action saved the day for old Chris.

The woman who accompanied Chris home on that wife swapping day, was kin to a woman married to one of the unholy McClurkan Clan. This particular McClurkan was a distant cousin of my particular McClurkan bunch and not a whole lot of information was spoken above a whisper, at least not when I was within hearing distance.

There were people in the hills, hollows and surrounding communities who were “kinfolk” to me. I never knew, nor had any knowledge of the relationship until the last decade of the Twentieth Century. Some of these kinships I didn’t want to know about, however you can choose your friends, but you cannot choose your kinfolk. About the only thing I ever have had in common with my father’s side of the family was the surname.

I never knew anyone who associated with Old Chris except people the spinster school teacher talked bad about, which was normal with the matriarchal society of the crippled grandmother’s offspring. Many times the cripple grandmother would admonish her daughters, when they were congregated, and “bad mouthing” folks.

I rarely heard, if ever, any complimentary remark vocalized about anyone. I was told, not too long ago about a Sunday visit from one of the one room school teachers in another community. (There were four one room schools in the valley, “Tick Grove, Union Hollow, Edgewood and Wesley’s Chapel”.)

The Tick Grove teacher, on arriving, was greeted by the matriarchal society with all the accolades, warmth, affection and positive heartfelt embraces for which anyone could ever wish.

The teacher, Bud Gibbs brought another fellow with him on this particular visit and when they were departed Bud’s friend remarked, “My but they sure do make you feel welcome”, “I believe they were really glad to see us”. Bud Gibbs replied, “Yes, but when you leave you had better leave in a hurry or you will hear them talking about you”. That is what I’m doing here, getting a little revenge and ”talkin’ about ‘em”.

I liked Mr. Bud Gibbs, he had an old 1931 Chevrolet Roadster Car with a “rumble seat” in back and sometimes he would come by, load me in the rumble seat and take me for a short ride. My, that was the best treat a country boy could ever have.

12th Post "THE PAST IS MYSELF"

HENRY VAN DYKE

I first heard this story during my senior year in high school, the spring of 1955. The story was read in “chapel” by a member of the faculty, Mr. John Rooze. Immediately, from the moment I heard the reading, I was hooked on Henry van Dyke. The following year, I began searching for Henry van Dyke’s books, poetry and writings. Presently I have a large collection of his literary works that are first edition and out of print. Mr. Van Dyke was the author of such stories as “The Other Wise Man’, “The First Christmas Tree” and other well known pieces. This particular story comes from the book, “The Blue Flower” and has touched my life to the point I memorized the story.


A HANDFUL OF CLAY
by Henry van Dyke
B. 1852 - D. 1933

There was a handful of clay in the bank of a river. It was only common clay, coarse and heavy; but it had high thoughts of its own value, and wonderful dreams of the great place which it was to fill in the world when the time came for its virtues to be discovered. Overhead, in the spring sunshine, the trees whispered together of the glory which descended upon them when the delicate blossoms and leaves began to expand, and the forest glowed with fair, clear colors, as if the dust of thousands of rubies and emeralds were hanging, in soft clouds, above the earth. The flowers, surprised with the joy of beauty, bent their heads to one another, as the wind caressed them, and said: "Sisters, how lovely you have become. You make the day bright."The river, glad of new strength and rejoicing in the unison of all its waters, murmured to the shores in music, telling of its release from icy fetters, its swift flight from the snow-clad mountains, and the mighty work to which it was hurrying- the wheels of many mills to be turned, and great ships to be floated to the sea.Waiting blindly in its bed, the clay comforted itself with lofty hopes. "My time will come," it said. "I was not made to be hidden forever. Glory and beauty and honor are coming to me in due season."One day the clay felt itself taken from the place where it had waited so long. A flat blade of iron passed beneath it, and lifted it, and tossed it into a cart with other lumps of clay, and it was carried far away, as it seemed, over a rough and stony road. But it was not afraid, or discouraged, for it said to itself: "This is necessary. The path to glory is always rugged. Now I am on my way to play a great part in the world."But the hard journey was nothing compared with the tribulation and distress that came after it. The clay was put into a trough and mixed and beaten and stirred and trampled. It seemed almost unbearable. But there was consolation in the thought that something very fine and noble was certainly coming out of all this trouble. The clay felt sure that, if it could only wait long enough, a wonderful reward was in store for it.Then it was put upon a swiftly turning wheel, and whirled around until it seemed as if it must fly into a thousand pieces. A strange power pressed it and molded it, as it revolved, and through all the dizziness and pain it felt that it was taking a new form.

Then an unknown hand put it into an oven, and fires were kindled about it - fierce and penetrating, hotter than all the heats of summer that had ever brooded upon the bank of the river. But through all, the clay held itself together and endured its trials, in the confidence of a great future. "Surely," it thought, "I am intended for something very splendid, since such pains are taken with me. Perhaps I am fashioned for the ornament of a temple, or a precious vase for the table of a king."At last the baking was finished. The clay was taken from the furnace and set down upon a board, in the cool air, under the blue sky. The tribulation was passed. The reward was at hand.Close beside the board there was a pool of water, not very deep, nor very clear, but calm enough to reflect, with impartial truth, every image that fell upon it. There for the first time, as it was lifted from the board, the clay saw its new shape, the reward of all its patience and pain, the consummation of its hopes - a common flower pot, straight and stiff, red and ugly. And then it felt that it was not destined for a king's house, nor for a palace of art, because it was made without glory or beauty or honor; and it murmured against the unknown maker, saying, "why has thou made me thus?"Many days it passed in sullen discontent. Then it was filled with earth, and something - it knew not what - but something rough and brown and dead-looking, was thrust into the middle of the earth and covered over. The clay rebelled at this new disgrace. "This is the worst of all that has happened to me, to be filled with dirt and rubbish. Surly I am a failure."But presently it was set in a greenhouse, where the sunlight fell warm upon it, and water was sprinkled over it, and day by day as it waited, a change began to come to it. Something was stirring within it - a new hope. Still it was ignorant, and knew not what the new hope meant.One day the clay was lifted again from its place and carried into a great church. Its dream was coming true after all. It had a fine part to play in the world. Glorious music flowed over it. It was surrounded with flowers. Still it could not understand. So it whispered to another vessel of clay, like itself, close beside it, "Why have they set me here? Why do all the people look toward us?" And the other vessel answered, "Do you knot know? You are carrying a royal scepter of lilies. Their petals are white as snow, and the heart of them is like pure gold. The people look this way because the flower is the most wonderful in the world. And the root of it is in your heart."Then the clay was content, and silently thanked its maker, because, though an earthen vessel, it held so great a treasure.
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Time Is (a quote by Henry van Dyke

Time Is . . .

Too slow for those who wait,

Too swift for those who fear,

Too long for those who grieve,

Too short for those who rejoice,

But for those who love,Time is Eternity.

11th Post "THE PAST IS MYSELF"

NORTHERN LIGHTS
(There’s more than the Aurora Borealis)

Magnetic North is the way I sometimes think of it, moths being drawn to a flame. Southern Appalachian peoples trying to find a better life than the poor rural south. Poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, the Great American Depression and the absolute need to hear some jingle in the pockets.

Cities like Chicago, Illinois; Detroit and Niles, Michigan and Louisville, Kentucky, along with other points North, became magnets, drawing from the oft times wretched life of the Southern Peoples to fill the need in America’s great expansion.

My father and three of his brothers migrated to Chicago, as did my mother, Mary Lee and two of her brothers, while another of her brothers migrated to Detroit. Not all of the family members spent a goodly portion of their life in the North, only my mother and father.

Then there was the Winstead Family. Old Mr. Ed Winstead had died long before I became a member of the human race, but I certainly knew his wife and his offspring, one especially, who intermarried with the matriarchal family of the crippled grandmother. The spinster school teacher, married up with the bread man, who was a “dyed in the wool” Winstead.

The Winsteads sent forth to the North, ten of Mr. Ed and Mrs. Lizzie’s issue to populate and I’m certain, sometimes infuriate residents who, due to tenure, had seniority in their neighborhoods.

I have never figured in my mind, just why most of these people became involved with “food service” establishments. A&P (The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co.), National Tea Company and other chains like IGA (Independent Grocers Association) were employers of many of the Southern Migrants. Most of the Winsteads worked with A&P while Mary Lee and her siblings were drawn to National Tea.

Robert Leroy Parker and Harry Longbaugh, better known as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, were not necessarily the only “Wild Bunch”, from stories I’ve overheard. In the early 1940s we children were to “be seen and not heard”, by having to “not be heard”, our ears were wide open and we heard much.

Hillbillies courting Northern Women, when taking them home in their Maxwell or Hupmobile Automobiles, would remark, “The snow is on the ground and no girl of mine is going to have to walk up that sidewalk to the door in this weather”, and they would drive across vegetation, shrubbery, dormant flower beds, benches and everything else to deposit the fair maiden, or whatever she was, at the front door of her apartment building.

My father’s twin brother, Lloyd, (my father was Vester Floyd and his twin was Lester Lloyd, they went by the name Floyd and Lloyd), worked at the Wrigley Chewing Gum factory in Chicago, while Floyd drove a “Chicago Motor Coach Company” bus. The Motor Coach Company was owned by the “Fifth Avenue Coach Lines” in New York.

Lloyd lived in a house at the intersection of West 64th and State Street with his wife Julia who migrated North with him, Floyd and Mary Lee lived at 7021 South Wabash Avenue.

Somehow child bearing came into the picture with my family. Mary Lee’s brother, who was instrumental in bringing Floyd out of the tobacco fields and into the industrialized North, married a Chicago Native, and one of the Winstead women married her brother. Sometime in early 1936 something happened to cause passions to rise, impregnation to happen and children to be born.

The Winstead woman had a son and immediately her brother in law, Mary Lee’s brother, had a son born into his marriage and jealousy took hold. Nine moths later Lloyd had a son Harry, and eight months after Harry entered the world, on March 15, 1938, at 10:51 A.M. in St. Bernard’s Hospital, along came me, delivered by Caesarian Section in the eighth month of her third trimester. The hillbillies were expanding.

All of the cousins lived with their families except Floyd and Mary Lee’s son, he was shipped off to Tennessee at age three, so my childhood recollection of Chicago is limited to occasional train rides for a week’s visit. In the 1940s, a family member could just tell the conductor where the young one was going and the conductors would look after the child until the destination was reached and another family member would meet the train. My, those giant Mikado Locomotives with their thundering steam driven pistons were a sight to behold. The ground could be felt shaking as they would thunder into the station with air brakes screeching and enormous drive wheels thrown into reverse.

These excursions for a 5 day visit to the Chicago Parents came only after the climax of World War II. During the Second World War all public transportation conveyed military personnel as the first priority and important business people after that. A country lad visiting his mother and father was of the least importance in the war effort.

The Winstead family in Chicago must have been, from the overheard word of mouth gossip, a study in degenerative human behavior. One of the Winsteads from the Yellow Creek Valley was associated with a burlesque theatre and married a “performer”, came back to the yellow Creek Valley and had a house full of kids, three were my elementary schoolmates.

Back in the childhood of my life, when neighbors went to help neighbors on their farm, womenfolk would prepare dinner and feed the help who came. The “burlesque” lady touched my sympathy one day as I followed my uncle to help in a haying operation on the Winstead Farm. Come dinner time, she didn’t have enough plates to serve everybody and some of us ate on tin pie pans and then others had to wait until plates could be washed and reused by others. Their house was a ramshackle cabin and I knew she was accustomed to something better in Chicago, just like old Colman Jones’ wife Eunice from California had to be in a state of culture shock when she arrived.

Another Winstead got married, sired an offspring, divorced and moved back to the Yellow Creek Valley to become a “Holsum Bread Company” Bread Man and later a thorn in my side.

Eventually, the majority of the Northern Travelers returned to the Yellow Creek Valley, either dead to be buried, sick to be nurtured to health or eventually buried, or alive and well enough to raise holy hell in the valley. Of course the hell they raised was subtle because, “what would the neighbors think”?

The Hunter family had a son who migrated to Michigan for work. Several months passed and he “showed up”, back in the Yellow Creek Valley driving an automobile with jingle in his pockets.
One Saturday, when a group of the farm folk gathered at Uncle Walter and Aunt Annie’s General Store, this fellow came “driving up” in his Michigan Automobile and went inside to purchase a pair of “brogans” with that impressive jingle.

Uncle Walter took the shoe box off the shelf with the size of brogan requested. “How much are those ?”, the Hunter fellow asked. Uncle Walter told him, “Five Dollars”. “Don’t you happen to have any that are more expensive?”, Hunter replied. “Nope, this is all I have and this is the only price” . “Well, I was looking to spend more for a pair of brogans, I was looking for a pair that cost at least twenty dollars”, continued Hunter.

Uncle Walter thought for a minute, scratched his head and said, “Come to think of it, I do have a more expensive pair that a fellow ordered special and I don’t think he picked them up, unless he came when Annie was in the store”, “let me check back under this here counter”.

Uncle Walter bent over and pulled out another pair of brogans, the same kind and the same size, and scribbled on the box $25.00. When he passed them over the counter he told the Hunter fellow, “yes, they are still here but I’m sure you won’t want them because these were more expensive than the price you wanted to pay, these are twenty five dollars”.

The Michigan Traveler was absolutely delighted. “Now we’re talking, this is a much better pair of brogan shoes than those cheap ones, I’ll take them!” So, Uncle Walter collected the price of five pairs of brogans and sold only one. The ego returning with the Northern Traveling Hillbilly was unsurpassed in anecdotal gossip around the valley.

I’m certain they held their heads high, chests out and walked in step to the music created by the jingle in their pockets. Wow, a twenty five dollar pair of brogan shoes, Wow!