Chapter 3
A MAN CHILD IS BORN.
(My parents, their marriage, the births
of their 4 children, and my life up until I start the 1st grade of
elementary school at the beginning of September 1952.)
I praise and thank God for the most profitable blessing of being
born of Christian parents. That is a tremendous blessing, and a most
valuable “correct start” of my eternal existence.
My Mother, Mattie Ruth Cash, was born in the fall of 1913 in a rural
area of Lamar County, Alabama. She was called by both of her names (Mattie
Ruth). Mother died in March 1954, about 6 months past her 40th
birthday. That was soon after I turned 8 years old. My earliest childhood
memories are from about the age of 4 years. Thus I “knew” Mother for only a
short time, 4 years or so.
I remember Mother as a most moral and upright, modest, poor, and hard-working
farm wife and mother, who sang hymns as she went about her daily toil and
labour. Mother talked much. She worried much, and she wept much. She
appeared tired and weary much of the time. I thank God for a
Christian Mother who daily toiled and laboured endlessly to provide for, and to
take care of her family under very limited and trying circumstances of quite
extreme poverty.
My heart rejoices beyond measure in knowing that since
March 1954, Mother has been in the Perfect Bliss of Heaven, basking in the
Glorious Presence of her Loving Lord and Saviour. I rejoice in knowing that any
second now, I will join her there. “Even
so, come, Lord Jesus!” Reader Friend, please join
me on this earthly journey to God’s Eternal Heaven.
My Father, Pascal Newton Yerby, was born in mid-1917 in a rural area of
Lamar County, Alabama, several miles from mother’s parents’ house. I ponder
what aspirations his parents must have had for him, naming him after Pascal and
Newton. He was almost 9 months past his 85th birthday when he died
in early April 2003. Dad was one of the most upright people I have ever known.
The following 4 characteristics of Dad stand out profoundly in my mind, and
each had a powerful influence on me for good.
1. He was a hard worker. I regularly
watched him daily labour long hours at strenuous,
tiring labour. He required all us children to work hard on the farm. But he was
most fair about it, in that he worked much harder and longer than he required
us to do, setting a more than fair example for us. Mainly because of his
example and him requiring his children to work hard, God made me into a
somewhat diligent hard worker. (To God be the Glory!)
2. Daddy almost never ever complained.
He spent decades in dire poverty. Most of his waking hours were spent in strenuous
farm labour. He had little leisure time, especially until he was 65 years old
or so. Many days, he became extremely fatigued from manual farm labour. But
honestly, I don’t recall him ever complaining about those hardships, about his
lot in life, or complaining about much of anything at all,
actually.
3. He was a man of few words, and his
words were upright.
4. He minded his own business, not meddling
in the affairs of others. Thus, he was not a nuisance to people, nor did he
gossip about others.
Reading thru the Holy Bible, you find many Scriptures commanding the above 4 things of us, and teaching us many virtues of them. I thank God for
giving me such a godly Father.
My parents were married on the 24th of December 1938. I am
most blessed that each of them had received Christ in their youth,
and thus had become Christians before they married. What a bless-ed
heritage I have, having been born of Christian parents. They are now in Heaven.
I look forward to soon joining them in God’s Glorious Heaven. I want you to
join us there also. Whatever you do, don’t miss God’s Heaven!
More than 13 months after my parents married, their first child was
born in early 1940. They named their baby girl, Janiece, pronounced
Ja-niece’.
But a good number of people call her, Ja’-nice,
and write her name, Janice, because that is a more common name.
In mid-1944, their second child was born, a son. They named him Sidney.
While Mother was carrying Sidney in her womb, her younger brother, Vade, had
been drafted into the U.S. Army, and had just begun fighting on deadly
battlefields in Europe.
Mother would daily spend much time kneeling on both knees, bowed
forward, crying out to God to mercifully protect my Uncle Vade and bring him
back home safely. God answered her (and others’) prayers by bringing Uncle Vade
safely home (well decorated for combat valor). But long
hours of Mother’s kneeling position cramped the (soon to be born) baby in her
womb, resulting in Sidney being born with a somewhat bad back and leg. He wore
a leg brace when he was small (and a back brace at times). He frequently suffered
with back pain.
I was their 3rd child, born in early 1946, and was given
each of my grandfathers’ names, Richard Gordy. I was born at home on a cold
winter day. Growing up, I heard talk that at the time I was born; Daddy was in
the creek “bottom” (swampy area along a creek) not far away, helping someone
cut trees for logs. Likely one or more women living nearby came to help with my
birth. Possibly, a doctor came to the house for my birth.
Dad had the heart of a farmer. Up until the year I
was born, he had never owned his own farm. He had lived on 2 or more different
farms, sharecropping or paying rent for the farmland and simple farmhouse they
lived in. Soon after I was born, Dad bought his own farm for the first time,
and moved his family onto it in November 1946, before my first birthday. It was
a typical 40-acre farm with farmhouse, barn for farm animals, a
woodshed/chicken house (both in 1 building), an outdoor toilet, and small, low
hog sheds in the hog pens.
In early autumn 1948, their 4th and last child was born at
home. They named that son, Joe. So, God first gave my parents a daughter and
then three sons, all four born at home, which was typical then. Usually, a
doctor came to the house. Often a neighbor lady would
come to assist with the birth.
I am the 2nd son. I have heard and
read that the second son born unto parents typically has an aggressive
nature. In many ways, I certainly do.
I suppose most parents desire to have at least 1 son and at least 1
daughter for the special joys that each gender brings to parents. God in His
Infinite Wisdom graciously first gave my parents 1 daughter for the joy a girl
brings. Then He gave them 3 sons that were much needed in the family to do strenuous
manual farm labor. And we boys did plenty of that.
Upon buying his own farm as a young husband and father of 3 in late
1946, Dad lived on that same farm until he died in April 2003. He certainly
wasn’t a wanderer. He stayed put. Thus, that farm was the childhood home place
for all 4 of us children. Janiece had started the 1st grade of
elementary school in September 1946 just over 2 months before Dad moved us to
that farm. And we 4 children always had that home to go back to
and visit, until Dad’s death. I am most thankful for childhood memories of an old-fashioned
farm as my home, and for a most settled and stable upbringing in one
location in God’s pleasant nature.
That childhood home of mine was located about 3 and half miles
southwest of Vernon, Alabama on County Road 9, in Lamar County. Vernon is the
county seat of Lamar County.
Dad had 8 other siblings and I have 18 (?)
first cousins on Dad’s side of the family. Mother had 12 other siblings and I have about 30 first cousins on Mother’s side.
The days of my childhood and youth were greatly enriched by having so
many cousins to play with and associate with.
Aunt Linnie B. (Mother’s sister) had 6 children. Her family moved
periodically, renting a farm to live on and cultivate. For 2 or 3 years they
lived on the farm adjacent to ours (down near the creek bottom), when I was 5
to 7 years old or so. We children would walk with Mother down the “old road” (a
dirt road) alongside our fields about 1/3rd of a mile to their
house. Their daughter Polly was just older than Janiece. Their son Bill was
about Sidney’s age, and Fred was 5 weeks older than I. We children had much fun with those cousins nearby.
The majority of my parents’ other siblings lived around Vernon, Kennedy, Millport,
Fayette, and Belk in Alabama, and in the Columbus area nearby in Mississippi.
All these locations were close enough for us to visit most of them more than
once yearly (in those ancient days when people were not nearly as mobile as we
are now).
My 1st memories start in 1950 or 1951 when I was 4 or 5
years old. Though the average life span at that time was much shorter than now,
likely there were some 85-year-old folks around me in
1950. If so, they were born in 1865, the year our nation’s Civil War ended.
Thinking on that, you young people will think that I
am most ancient. How correct you are.
Anyway, my earliest memories in life (1950) are mainly of Mother taking
care of me and of me playing with Sidney and Janiece. (Joe was still an
infant.) I was attracted to the farm animals, as most children naturally are
attracted to any animals around them. We had chickens, hogs, cows, and horses.
Each of those animals gave birth to (or hatched) babies, except our horses.
Most of the time, we had 1 or more cats and sometimes a dog.
A baby animal of any kind is especially interesting to a small child. I
delighted to see (and was fascinated by) the new baby chicks, pigs, calves, and
sometimes kittens.
In 1950, a lot of farmers, country folk, and rural people were poor. I
mean plenty poor! Of
course, some people living in town were poor also. But overall, rural poor folks were further down the poverty scale. My
family was way down that
scale. At that time, if each family in Lamar County had been rated on a scale
of how well off, they were financially, no doubt my family would have been in
the bottom 10%, possibly the bottom 5% of the county population.
Upon creating mankind, our Creator God clearly gave mankind
their life’s work on earth. “There was not a man to till the ground.” Genesis 2:5 “And the Lord
God took the man, and put him into the garden of E’den to dress and to keep it.”
Genesis 2:15 “Therefore the Lord God sent him forth
from the garden of E’den, to
till the ground from whence he was taken.” Genesis
3:23
When Eve and Adam fell from their created, perfect state, mankind
became pawns of the devil to be used to build the devil’s kingdom on this
earth. The devil’s kingdom comprises most of mankind’s activities except:
①. That of working at taking one’s livelihood from God’s
created nature, mainly from the ground. ②. Basic human government ordained of God “for the punishment of evildoers,
and for the praise of them that do well” (I
Peter 2:12). ③. And the spiritual ministries that God
ordained for people who obey and follow God.
The Scriptures call that kingdom of the devil the “world”
(I John 2:15-17). Since the time of Adam, all down thru the ages, in increasing
numbers, human souls have left off tilling the ground and have gone
to town instead, to build the devil’s kingdom. (Please read of
this in detail in my book CREATURE VERSUS CREATOR.) Thus wise, the city
slickers gladly set the stage for the end time worldwide famine that
Jesus Christ prophesied in Matthew Chapter 24. I am most thankful
that God ordained for me to be reared in poverty on a dirt
farm.
My family’s simple farmhouse of 1950 had
been built years before (plenty crudely) by its previous owner, a farmer
(Mr. Otto). It had no foundation as such. Mr. Otto had stacked a few large
rocks together in piles in appropriate points, then laid heavy lumber “pillars”
horizontally upon the rocks, and nailed together a
wooden house from there (topped with a wood shingle roof).
There was neither sub floor nor much of a “skirting” around the house
between the ground and floor. In hot weather our dog would go under the house
to lie in the cool there. In places, there were narrow gaps between floorboards
where we could see the ground below from inside the house. There were
occasional knotholes in the floorboards. When I played with marbles in the
living room, sometimes a marble would roll to a knothole and fall thru it to
the ground below. I would then go outside and crawl under the house to retrieve
my marble, often discovering 1 or more other small items that had literally
“fallen thru the cracks”.
When a cold winter wind blew, the wind would enter the house from this “well
ventilated” floor and the somewhat “ventilated” board walls. It
was primitive living. A round, tall metal wood-burning stove stood in
the middle of the living room with its stovepipe going straight up thru ceiling
and roof. This stove (and the wood burning cook stove in the kitchen) was the
only heat we had in the house against winter cold.
Even stoking its fire hotly resulted in the perimeter of the living
room remaining cold in times of harshest winter cold. At such times, we
habitually sat or stood close to the stove, roasting our carcasses on one side
while the other side of our poor bodies froze, rotating sides frequently to
allow the opposite side of our flesh to suffer the opposite extreme in
temperature. A most pleasant pastime it was (not).
I now have burn scars visible on both elbows to remind
me of the several painful times my childhood elbows contacted the side of that
hot metal stove as I stood with my back close to it trying to stay warm.
Presently (at age 78), I can view those scars anytime to recall those fond
(miserable) memories of long ago.
One of my earliest childhood chores was that of bringing in firewood
from the woodshed behind the house to fuel both stoves. Of course, we used
the living room stove only in times of cold, but the cook stove in the kitchen
had to be fired up 2 or 3 times daily year round to
cook our daily meals. So, I toted in firewood for it year-round. And in the hot
summer, my family enjoyed the adventure of eating our meals in a sauna-like hot
kitchen well heated by that cook stove, plus the summer heat that was well felt
in this wooden shack with no insulation.
Looking out the kitchen window toward the barn to the west, just 8 feet
or so from the kitchen wall you can see our water well with its tall hand pump.
As soon as I had grown enough to fetch a somewhat heavy bucket of water,
that daily chore was added to my life. Our shack had no plumbing. The
outhouse (toilet) set about 20 yards out back right
next to a hog pen. It was no fun to journey to the toilet in the dark, rain, or
cold.
We took “sponge baths” (“bird baths”) using a tin washbasin. In cold
weather, we sponged off near one of the 2 stoves. We boys always had to stay
out of the room where Mom or Sis was bathing. In summers, we often filled a
washtub about 1/3rd full of water in the morning and set it out back
in the sun to warm all day. Come evening time, we washed in it on the back
porch at night, one person at a time from the least to the greatest, Dad being
last. On some summer nights, by the time Dad’s bath time came, the water in
that tub was plenty muddy.
We had electricity in the house. (In 1950, a very
few farm houses still did not have
electricity.) In most of our few rooms, a bare light bulb hung down from the
ceiling. Also in the front porch ceiling was a light
bulb (and possibly one in the back porch also). In addition to these 7 or so
light bulbs, we had one old large wooden case radio. These were the only
things in that house that used electricity. (Think on the numerous
electrical devices and gadgets that you constantly plug in or recharge.)
Rural electricity was plenty primitive in 1950. Power outages
were frequent. When they occurred between evening twilight and bedtime, we
would light our kerosene lamp (and the kerosene lantern that we took to the
barn when we went there in the dark) to give us light in the house during that
time of darkness.
We owned no appliance with an electric motor. We did not have an
electric washing machine for doing laundry. Two cast iron black wash pots set in the back yard. On washday, we children usually did
the chore of filling them with water from the well. Mother would build fires
around the pots to heat the water. She washed our clothes by hand on a rub
board put into the washtub of warm sudsy water, rinsed them in the adjacent tub
of cold water, and wrung them out by hand We hung many of the clothes on the barbed
wire pasture fence to dry. Crude life. Those clothes were durable enough to not
suffer much damage from the wire barbs that held them in place.
Mother did not have an electric clothes iron. For ironing clothes,
she had 1 or 2 heavy “flat irons” made of solid cast iron with a
cast iron handle on top. She would set the 2 irons on top of one of our stoves
to heat them, and then iron clothes, switching irons as the one in use cooled
off. One iron heating on the stove as the one in use cooled off. On cold winter
nights, at bedtime she would heat both irons on the stove, then wrap each in a
blanket or quilt, and place one iron each under the covers at the foot of each
of the 2 beds we 4 children slept in, in an effort to
keep our feet warm as we slept.
We 4 children slept on two double beds in our living room,
Sidney and I on one bed, Joe and Janiece on the other. The light socket hanging
from the ceiling had a “pull chain” to pull for “Off” or “On”. Daddy tied a
string from the short chain to the bedpost of Janiece’s bed, so she could pull
the light “On” from the bed when necessary to do so in the dark. Daddy and
Mother slept in the 1 tiny bedroom adjacent to the living room westward.
Speaking of bedposts, when poor children rarely got a
piece of chewing gum or bubble gum, we typically chewed it forever (or even
longer). When a child had a piece of gum, it was a custom to take it out of
one’s mouth at bedtime, stick it onto the bedpost near one’s pillow, and then
again insert it into one’s mouth upon awakening the following morning. “Does
your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight?”
That actually was
the theme of a vain song we heard on our old radio in those days.
Sometimes a child (in any family), went to bed with chewing gum or bubble in
their mouth, and woke up with it deeply enmeshed in their hair the next
morning. Likely that happens nowadays. Good way for the child to choke on the
gum during the night.
The wood cook stove stood in the back corner of the drab kitchen. It
had a small water tank of 2 gallons or so built into the left side and the wood
fire heated that water to provide a small supply of hot water. To the left of the
stove was a wooden board shelf (somewhat low) on which sat the bucket of well
water with a dipper in it and a tin wash pan for washing hands and face. We
dipped hot water from the stove and cool water from
the bucket. We all drank from that dipper. When a visiting aunt once asked for
a glass to drink from, I was totally puzzled as to why she didn’t
drink from the “common” dipper.
A 5-gallon metal bucket was placed on the floor under that shelf. We
called it a “slop bucket” into which we put food remains that we did not eat
(both liquid and solid), and fed that to our hogs.
When we children brushed our teeth, we stood over that bucket and spat into it.
On occasion when I accidentally dropped my toothbrush into that mush of slop, I
was made to retrieve it myself, running my arm down into that warm mush. It
felt sickening. Then I would step outside to the well and pump water
onto my arm, hand and toothbrush to wash off all the slimy slop.
The finest of personal hygiene!
“How did you ever survive to tell us this horror story!??”
‘Only by the Mercy & Grace of Almighty God,
thank God!’
To the left of the slop bucket and the stand above it, was a small hole
of 2-3 inches in diameter in the wood floor. The small end of a quite large
metal funnel thrust downward thru that hole, the funnel standing up against
that west wall inside the kitchen. We poured used dishwater and wash water thru that funnel and it
dropped onto a large rock (about 30 pounds) that Otto or Daddy had placed on
the ground below that hole. In warm weather, turning that rock over revealed a
large family of earthworms underneath, that had moved there for the treasures
they gleaned from our wastewater. When we went fishing on the creek, we
overturned that rock and dug fish bait (earthworms) there.
Our eating table set in the middle of the
small kitchen and was handmade of crude wooden boards.
Daddy sat at the head of it in a cane back chair. Mother sat on the window side
beside little Joe’s improvised high chair to feed him.
Sidney and I ate sitting on a crude wood bench opposite to Mother and Joe. And
Janiece sat on an empty wooden nail keg (turned
upside down) at the opposite end of the table from Daddy. Such was our elegant
dinette set. None of the crude pieces matched. It wasn’t needful for anything
to match. It just needed to roughly serve its purpose, which it well
did in its rough forms.
Daddy was our family barber. He would place that nail keg Janiece ate
her meals on, onto a cane back chair for height, and my brothers and I would
sit on that shaky stand one at a time for Dad to cut our hair with old hand
clippers (manually operated) that pulled at the hair. When a boy jerked
at a painful pull of the clippers, sometimes the sideways force of that
jerk sent the jerk of a boy (together with nail keg) tumbling noisily onto the
wood floor. This fall gave the boy a bonus
pain, sometimes followed immediately by a second bonus pain from
a slap on the head by the friendly barber as he angrily commanded the boy to
sit still. Nail keg and boy customer were reinstated into position by resident
barber who continued his cutting with boy customer gritting his teeth striving
not to be a jerk, as the old dull clippers jerked painfully at
hairs.
Some farmer men stopped by individually and asked Dad to cut their
hair. Sometimes, that man would cut Dad’s hair in return. Those tall men did
not need the nail keg on top of the customer’s chair for height. So, we boys
were never able to gaze in amusement at one of them tumbling down. The barbershop
was located on our front porch during favorable weather. The few
passersby could observe its operation. And if they timed their passing
precisely, the sight of a tumbling chair, nail keg, and tumbling boy customer
entertained them.
Instead of a refrigerator, we had an icebox made of narrow
but thick (for insulation) wooden boards painted green. There was an icehouse
in Vernon that made ice in large blocks. The Iceman running rural routes in his
ice truck came by our house from town about twice a week selling large 25-pound
blocks of ice for 25 cents each. When we could afford it (especially in summer),
we bought a block of ice to set into the quite well insulated icebox to keep its
interior cool. We put our fresh farm milk and home churned
butter and such into the icebox. We set a low flat pan on the floor under the
hole made into the floor of the icebox to catch drain water from melting
ice.
There was a natural water spring in the very back corner of our pasture
where our horses and cows drank water. Often, after milking our 1 or 2 cows in
the morning, Mother would strain most of the fresh warm milk into a tin lard
bucket, push the tin bucket lid firmly into place, and then one of us children
would take that bucket to the spring and set it down into the cool water to
keep it cool (another of my early age farm chores). Then at lunchtime, one
would go retrieve that bucket (about a 12-minute walk roundtrip) to drink milk
from it with our meal. Some farm families that had a windlass with a bucket on
a rope to draw water from their wells (instead of a pump like ours), would let
their bucket of milk down into their cool well water (on a rope) to keep the
milk cool.
We had a ceramic churn in which we would pour fresh milk and set it
near one of the stoves in the winter to warm the milk to cause it to “clabber”.
Then one of us would do the churning by hand, grasping the handle of the wooden
plunger protruding up thru the hole in the middle of the churn’s lid and
bringing it up and down till it churned the milk into butter. After molding the
butter that was produced, farm families drank the fresh buttermilk,
or used it in making delicious cornbread and biscuits.
In those days, farm children typically romped around wildly inside
their houses. Occasionally they knocked over the churn of milk setting near the stove, spilling the milk out onto the
floor. The guilty child or children typically got a stinging smack from the
nearest parent. Then the dog and cats were quickly called in to lick up all the
milk they possibly could, before it seeped thru the cracks in the floor. (Put
that milk to the best use possible.) The hungry dog and cats were happy when
such spillage occurred. Parents were not happy at all.
When the weather turned cold each November or
so, we would then butcher a hog for our family to eat. It was sort of a special
event. We children helped build the fire to heat the barrel of water to scald
the dead hog so we could more easily scrap off the
hair. I liked to turn the sausage grinder and watch the ground meat come
squeezing out the tiny holes in fine streams. We enjoyed the fresh bacon and
sausage for breakfast. The following morning or 2, fresh hog brains would be
mixed in with the scrambled eggs on our breakfast table. I couldn’t stand the thought
of eating brains, so I hungrily did without eggs for breakfast on those
occasions. Daddy salted the 2 shoulders and 2 hams and such large hunks of meat, and sealed them as well as possible in the meat box in
the barn to preserve them till we ate them all. Some years, we gave our pastor
at church a ham for his Christmas present.
In addition to the ice truck, the “rolling store” also came by
on schedule twice a week or so. Country folks were not so mobile to zip to town
often. So (to a degree), the town came to us. Similar in appearance to the ice
truck, the rolling store was a truck with a completely “closed in” bed (tall
sides and roof). It was packed with basic items farm families bought. When we
had more fresh eggs than we needed for ourselves, Mother could trade eggs to
the rolling store merchant for some of his goods. Mother also traded eggs,
butter, and such to stores in town for their goods she needed. Occasionally,
she would get one small candy treat for each of us children.
A tinker also made his rural rounds occasionally, stopping at
each farmhouse to ask if they had any pots, pans, buckets or such in need of
repair. All such vessels were made of metal (no plastic in those days, and
likely no aluminum). When a hole wore thru the metal, the tinker would insert a
short slender bolt thru it with a large thin washer both on the outside
and the inside of the vessel. Then he would tighten down the small nut tightly
while shaping the thin flexible tin washers to fit snuggly against the inside
and outside of the vessel in hopes of preventing any leakage. It was a sight to
behold such vessels in use. It was not the “age” of disposables, or the “age”
of replacing such an item simply because it had developed a defect. In our
poverty, we used each item as long as possible.
Another chore I inherited at an early age was that of gathering eggs
from the hen house out back. That was a simple chore, and
would have been pleasant except that the hens often wanted to “set” on their
eggs to hatch them into a family, tho our family
wanted to eat the hen’s family before it came into existence.
Mother would send me on that mission by firmly telling me to just slide
my hand under the warm “setting hen” sitting on the straw nest, slowly feel
around under the hen for the eggs, and extract them one by one. Then I would
slowly walk to the hen house in fearful dread, to face a stubborn hen
with a mean look in her eye that clearly told me: “Little Farm Boy, on this
fine morning, if you want to save that little hand of yours from some painful
pecking that just might deform it too badly to ever pilot a military jet
aircraft, you had better think twice about sliding it under me to rob me of my
precious little chicks before I can even hatch them.”
The rapid forceful pecks from that sharp beak hurt my little farm boy
hand several mornings. Thank God those assaults from hens did not deform the
hand, and later it became the hand of a skilled jet pilot. One morning as I
climbed up the makeshift ladder to the shelf of hens’ nests, I was relieved to
see that no hens were on the nests at this time, making for easy egg gathering. But as I reached the top and peered into
the nearest nest, I saw the reason for all mother hens being
absent. A mottled black chicken snake lay coiled in one nest, having
swallowed the eggs that were there. The sight of it filled me with sheer fear
causing me to fly faster than any jet, into the house to Mother. She came and
killed the snake.
Mother had quilting frames and when she often sewed quilts for our bedding; she hung the frames from the living room ceiling in
cold or inclement weather, and hung them from the
front porch ceiling in good weather. We bought flour in 50-pound cloth sacks
for baking our breakfast biscuits (and most rarely to bake a cake or teacake
cookies). Those cloth flour sacks (and the cloth sacks containing 100 pounds of
farm fertilizer that we bought yearly) usually had simple color designs on them
with the intent of poor folks using the cloth material for sewing clothes. From
those cloth sacks, Mother would sew dresses and skirts for her and Janiece, and
shirts for us boys. We wore many homemade clothes.
Mother would save some of her egg and butter money till she could
afford to buy something to better our life. I think she bought Daddy his
first electric barber clippers (as a present to him, Christmas or birthday or
Fathers Day) to replace the manual clippers that operated by hand much like a
pair of scissors. I think those clippers were the 1st appliance
we gained that had an electric motor. Till we gained the clippers, only
the few light bulbs and our one radio used electricity. (Also, Daddy had one
old flashlight that used 2 “standard” size batteries.)
In 1950, our family’s 15-year-old 1935 Dodge car was our only
possession that had a gasoline engine. (If you care to, likely you can
easily “search” a photo of a 1935 Dodge car.) A few farm families did not own a
motor vehicle (car, truck, or tractor). Such families went to town by horse and
wagon. If the man went to town alone and did not plan to bring much of a load
home with him, he usually walked. When walking on a rural road, it was highly
likely a Good Samaritan passing in a motor vehicle would stop to give the
walker a ride.
A tractor was the 1st motor vehicle that some farmers bought, because it’s
power in the fields would enhance family income. Some (tractor-only) families
went to town and church in a small trailer pulled by their tractor.
I heard our next-door farmer neighbor, Mr. Jack Parson (born in the
1890s), tell this true store that likely occurred in the 1940s or possibly the
1930s (Depression Days). One time there was no flour in their house for
making biscuits, and no money either. Jack and wife had 8 children (though
likely several of his youngest kids had not yet been born at the time of
this incident). Penniless Papa Jack walked the 3 and half miles
to Vernon, praying desperately for God to miraculously provide a 50-pound
sack of flour for his hungry family.
Arriving in Vernon, he soon went to the north side (not the entrance
side) of the Yellow Front Store on the courthouse square, stood on the
sidewalk, leaned back against the brick store wall, praying hard that some
passing soul would give him a little money. A cold wind was blowing from the
west. Darkness fell, causing an even more hopeless feeling to fall
upon Mr. Jack. He cried out desperately to God, “Lord, how can I go home to my hungry
family with no flour for making bread!?”
As the cutting, cold wind was blowing leaves, trash papers and such
past him, he spied a $5 bill flying his way on the wind. His
heart leaped within him!
“When that money reached me, I just put my big foot on it to hold it
down! It’s a wonder I didn’t start shouting and jumping for joy,
and thereby let that money fly on away! But I held my foot on it,
praying about what to do. That was a lot of money that someone had lost. But I
felt sure that God had answered my desperate pleas by sending it to me. I
quietly reached down, picked up the $5 bill, took it into a nearby store,
bought a 50-pound sack of flour, put it on my shoulder, and it seemed light
as a feather as I walked home with it (3.5 miles), praising God, and
so thankful for this miracle of giving me food to
take home to feed my family!”
I think Mr. Parson said that 50 pounds of flour cost 50 cents. If so,
that sounds like Great Depression prices (1929-1933), when rural men rejoiced
to find someone to hire them to work hard labor about 10 hours a day for 50
cents pay. Also, think on him toting that 50-pound sack 3 and half miles
to his house, switching it from one shoulder to another along the way. In those
days, people walked, often carrying heavy loads.
One
day in the early 1950s, 3 farm men together came walking by our house on the road, and stopped to talk with Daddy a while. Likely elderly
Mr. Hankins wanted that short chat time for a break because he quickly dropped
the slender wooden log from his shoulder that he was carrying. I estimate that
log weighed about 50 pounds, or slightly less.
At
such times farmer men would squat, look around for a twig or any small
piece of wood, take out their pocketknives and slowly whittle the wood into
shavings as they leisurely talked and rested. It was a relaxing thing to
do. When they left, neat small piles of wood shavings remained on that spot.
(A
pocket knife was a necessary tool to many men, especially
farmers and any man who did manual labor. Many men kept a large one handy in
their pockets, because the need to cut something came often. When 2 or more men
congregated, they often took out their knives to compare them,
and sometimes swapped knives.)
After these 3 men chatted with Dad
briefly, Mr. Hankins heaved a burdensome sigh as he lifted that heavy log onto
his shoulder again and continued walking toward his house a mile further up the
road toward town. Likely someone had just given him that log free. He wanted to
make use of it. So, he toted it 2 miles or so home. Those tough times
made for tough, strong men.
The 1950s more or less brought an end to an era of rural people walking
much; “God-ordained” walking being the only available means
of locomotion for many of them. The many walkers included tramp-like strangers
who would stop by farmhouses to ask for a bite to eat when they got hungry. By
1950, such tramps were becoming most rare and soon
faded from the scene.
But late one summer afternoon when my family came back into the
house after being outdoors, someone had come into the house and eaten heartily
of the food on our kitchen table. It was our custom upon eating lunch to cover
the dishes of food on the table with a tablecloth to keep flies and other insects
off the food. Then the whole family went to a field or nearby the house, for
the little children to watch all others work till suppertime. This day, upon returning to the house to eat supper, some
stranger had helped us with that task. He didn’t have the heart of a
thief. He simply had the stomach of a hungry person. No, we didn’t
lock the doors when we were outdoors on our farm.
On returning from the field on a different day, Daddy saw that one of
the 2 milk cows had about 1/4th of her tail
cut off. Daddy “doctored” the bleeding “stump”. We all spread out and walked
thru the pasture looking for the cutoff portion. One of us spotted the end of
the tail in the wooded area of the pasture, lying in a small, low fork of a
sapling tree. It was not wedged tightly into the fork, so the cow had not
pulled against it to pull it apart. It looked like someone had cut it off and
laid it there; a mystery we never solved.
I had just gotten old enough to play outside somewhat
with Sidney, when he started school at the beginning of September 1950. From
then till I started school 2 years later, I often
played outside alone. One day when I saw an old “kitchen (table) knife”
lying in the back yard, I picked it up and went “hunting” in the nearby woods
behind the woodshed. I picked out a tree, pretended it was a bear and fiercely
repeatedly stabbed it till I was sure that bear was dead. Then I eyed a
different tree close by and likewise attacked that “tiger” with my knife,
killing it in similar manner. I soon went into the house to excitedly
report my “hunting” success to Mother.
Some man we knew was in the house talking with Mother, having dropped
in as he walked by. I walked right up close to Mother’s chair excited with my
big news. ‘I killed a bear and a tiger!’ Mother reacted favorably to my
big game hunting feat. But that man poked fun at me.
“So, you killed a bear and a tiger, did you?” He laughed loudly in
ridicule and jest at me as he spoke. That greatly perturbed me. Some
people just can’t appreciate a great hunter.
On a different day I was out back of the house
playing alone. Some neighbor kid or church kid had given me 3 or so bills of play
money. Even tho it wasn’t real money, the sight of it greatly
fascinated me. ‘This is the greatest!’ So, I immediately pondered ‘Is there
play money in Heaven?’ I wanted to know immediately, so I went into the house
to ask Mother.
“No,” she answered bluntly and uninterested. I was greatly
disappointed. I went back outside thinking that I didn’t really care to go to
Heaven, if I would not have any play money there. Thank God I outgrew
that foolishness. But tragically I see many souls choosing many “worldly
play things” instead of choosing to go to Heaven. Don’t
you dare to be foolish enough to do that, and thus journey to
eternal damnation in Hell.
Almighty God was most Gracious to give me Christian
parents. That instilled within me rich foundational
knowledge of my Creator God from the very start of my eternal existence,
resulting in me never questioning the Truth of the Existence
of God, or The Truth of God’s Holy Bible being totally True, never
to be doubted nor questioned nor lightly esteemed by me in any
way. Each time my family sat down to eat a meal; one of us prayed a prayer of
thanksgiving for the food and for all of God’s blessings to us. Early on, we
children memorized a short mealtime prayer for kids, and came to take our turns
praying over the meal set before us.
“God is great. God is good. Let us thank Him for this food. By His
Hands we must be fed. Give us, Lord, our daily bread. Amen.”
Until I left home to go to a university at age 18, each time I was
called on to give thanks at our family meal table; I quoted that simple
memorized prayer, not really praying from the heart. Still, that was far
better than being reared by atheist parents.
After supper, both Daddy and Mother usually had plenty of chores to do
(inside or about the house). When Daddy finished his chores, he usually sat
down with his Bible in his hands gazing on it a while. As bedtime drew near, he
would announce, “Luke Chapter 14” (or whatever chapter he was to read that
night). He was a man of few words. He didn’t call on us to now sit down quietly
for Bible reading. But when the Scripture was announced, we knew
to stop playing, sit still, and listen quietly as he read one chapter, and then
prayed. Then we kids were put to bed. A stern Dad and Mom taught us the Fear of
the Lord.
At that time, there were no “Christian” radio stations in that area.
But the secular radio stations were more Christian than many modern
day “Christian” radio stations. We listened to much preaching and Gospel
singing on that old radio in our house. Housewives sang to God daily as they
went about their household work. Men sang to God as they worked in the fields.
Such godly influence was most beneficial to me
spiritually.
Until I started grammar school at age 6, going to church was generally
my most enjoyable weekly event. My family attended faithfully, Sunday mornings
and evenings and Wednesday evenings at 7 PM. I especially enjoyed the Sunday
School class at 10 AM, and the League (Training Union) class at 6 PM on
Sundays, mainly because I was in a group of children my age and was taught on
my level.
My parents were members of the
Vernon Free Will Baptist Church located in town. Elderly Brother Warren was our
pastor, with a shiny baldpate except for a narrow rim of hair around his head
at ear level. “Cut my hair like Brother Warren’s!” That’s the order my little
brother Joe gave to Daddy once as Daddy sat Joe upon the nail keg for Daddy to
cut his hair. The next time we went to church, Daddy just had to share Joe’s
desired haircut with Pastor Warren. Pastor seemed pleased, honored, and certainly
amused by Joe’s request.
One summer Sunday morning, as Pastor Warren was standing behind the
pulpit praying (likely every eye in the church was closed except mine), I saw a
large red wasp fly up to Pastor and alight on the side of his bald head, just
above his ear. I knew from experience just how painful that wasp’s sting was.
Now my eyes grew wide open as I wondered how Pastor would handle this
potentially stinging situation. Without opening his eyes or ceasing to
pray, he calmly placed the “side” of his open hand against his head behind
the wasp and swept his hand forward against the wasp, which
caused it to fly away without stinging him. Likely I was the only soul
in church that day unspiritual enough to have my eyes open during prayer
to observe that marvel.
Every summer, our church had a weeklong revival. In the early days of
my life, during revival week, they held a daytime service in addition to the
night service at 7 PM. I think the daytime service was usually at 11 AM. On
such days, Daddy would make sure we did as much farm work as possible from
early morn till about 10 AM. Then we would rush to wash up a little, change
into church clothes, and get to church for the 11 AM revival service. When that
1-hour service ended, we went right home, ate lunch, went right back to farm
toiling till 5 PM or so, then washed up, ate supper and back to church at 7.
Churches abounded thickly in that rural Bible Belt area. Most of
them held summer revivals or “meetings”, and they were not all held the same
week of the year, of course. Daddy liked to visit other churches’ revival
services, often just 1 night per church. We enjoyed getting to be with people
briefly in churches other than our own church, people with whom we rarely had a
chance to visit.
In the early 1950s, I think we ate together at church only
once a year (dinner on the
ground), on the designated Sunday in the summer. We prayed it would not rain
that day. Some church men would bring sawhorses and long wide wooden boards to
church in their trucks that Sunday morning. After the preaching service ended,
they set to work setting up several tables outside on the church ground by
placing boards across the tops of 2 saw horses to make
one table. The women set to work spreading the table clothes they brought from
home onto the crude tables, and then the baskets, pots and dishes of food they
had brought. All souls stood quietly while 1 man offered a prayer of thanks,
and then the church folks partook and ate together. Delicious foods (never seen
in our poor house) abounded on those tables. I joyfully ate all my small
belly could hold, and deeply regretted its limited
capacity.
Perchance it was raining at that time; we took the food into the church
sanctuary and ate in there. Our church had no fellowship hall or
kitchen facilities. It was a 2-story building, the 2nd floor being
the sanctuary. Out front, outdoor concrete and brick stairs led straight up to
its entrance that included a small covered porch. The
1st floor was Sunday School rooms with the separate entrance to its
hallway under that outside stairway. Two tiny restrooms were
located downstairs.
There were no indoor stairs. All souls met in the
sanctuary at 10 AM Sunday for SS introduction. After a song, prayer, short
speech and such, we children and young people were dismissed to our classrooms
downstairs while the adult class met in the sanctuary (only 1 adult class, I
think). Daddy was our SS superintendent. When SS time ended, he pushed the
button upstairs that sounded the buzzer in the hallway downstairs, and we young’uns
and our teachers then trooped upstairs at that signal. When it was pouring rain
at the time of those 2 movements, we young’uns trooped up and down in the
rain.
Rarely, my siblings and I went to Sunday morning church with friends or
neighbors in their small (out of town) country
churches, which lacked either rest rooms or Sunday School rooms (or both),
simply a small one-room (sanctuary) church. I watched them divide up into four
SS classes, 1 class in each corner of the small room, each teacher speaking in
a low voice so as not to hinder the other 3 classes.
Early on, my
parents trained us 4 kids to go relieve ourselves before getting into the car
to go to church, and then to hold it till we got home. Though there were simple
restrooms in our church, we were to use them only if absolutely
necessary. If and when we did so during
a service, after leaving church the user might be severely interrogated by
parents as to just how necessary that trip was.
Church time was a most reverent time of worshiping A Reverend
and Holy Almighty God in Heaven. Little else went on at
church. In those ancient days, adults the age of my parents (and older) were
God-fearing to a great degree that modern-day Christians cannot
comprehend. God’s Holy House was not a place for kids to nonchalantly sinfully
lie about repeatedly needing a drink of water or needing to use the rest room in order to mischievously hang out with equally sinful
church kids at those 2 locations in the church building. And old-fashion
Christian parents were quick to use the rod or belt against such sin in God’s
house.
Kids in the rural churches with no restrooms were more strictly taught to tend to nature’s call before leaving home, and
to hold it during church. If one absolutely had to go while at
church, they typically walked deeply enough into nearby woods or bush to gain
the necessary privacy.
(I observed old-fashioned church steadily
evolving into a place to eat, drink, play, make merry, have fun and
become the modern-day Laodicean church that Almighty God is soon
to spue out of His Mouth. I challenge you to be an Overcomer!)
As I steadily grew, around the age of 5 or 6, I would ask Mother to let
me go to Daddy working in the field. She would allow me to walk alone from the
house down to the field where Daddy was farming with our team of horses. If he
were plowing with a horse-drawn plow, I enjoyed walking along behind him. His
footsteps were well imprinted into the freshly plowed dirt, and I liked to
stretch my stride trying to place my footprints into his (and that was a
straining stretch for little me). What a wonderful thing for a little lad to
just naturally, literally follow in his farmer
father’s footsteps! Thus, it is of dire necessity for Papas
to walk upright.
‘Would you like for me to sing you a song?’ I asked Dad one warm day as
I followed him in such manner, so desirous to sing to him. (I was either 5
years old, or had just turned 6.)
“OK.”
‘Silver and gold. Silver and gold. Everybody’s searching for silver and
gold. If you’re alone when you grow old, everybody’ll be searching for silver
and gold.’ (No, I didn’t learn that vain song at
church. Guess I heard it on the radio.)
Upon finishing that short song, I waited for his verbal response, my
little, tender heart hoping for words from my own Daddy that would make me feel
good about singing to him (from my heart, my heart’s desire, and just
for him, my own Dad!).
But I got only silence from Dad, much to my great disappointment. Still, for several months or longer, I continued such
verbal assaults upon him, because they just naturally sprang from my
little boy’s heart.
Parent! Parent-to-be! Listen carefully
now! The natural changes that came over my tender little soul (due to
Dad being a person who spoke ever so very little to me beyond basic
instructions needful to carry on our daily life’s activities), was nothing
less than a phenomenal marvel!
Firstly, my little mind readily perceived that he was
not a person who would freely interact with me verbally.
Secondly, to a large degree my little heart and soul
just naturally
ceased (shut down, shut off) trying to verbally communicate with Dad. And it
did so in an amazingly short period of time.
And thirdly, I just naturally sought
out and turned to other human souls around me who would
carry on 2-way conversations with me. This naturally resulted in Daddy being
relegated to a back seat in my life. I did not have to sit down and study long
and seriously about making those changes at all. I did not make them in
revenge, malice, or spite. Those changes just naturally came to
me with no effort on my part at all!
The most regrettable, overall
result was that I never really felt very close to my Dad during all of his life.
That was simply my Dad’s
nature, to be overly silent toward
his children. This most godly upright Christian man was just being true to
his nature by doing so. He did not purposely go about to “short change” his children. Therefore, before The Judge of
all the earth, I have no grounds on which to fault him or judge
him for doing as his nature dictated. However…
Parent (and parent-to-be), such just might be your
nature also. If so, please listen to God’s Holy Spirit. He might be trying
to tell you that He desires to give you the Divine Help necessary to overcome
that “fallen” nature, and to enable you to talk to your offspring appropriately
and sufficiently enough to form the exact bond of closeness
that our Creator God ordained be formed between parents and their children.
Thru out my formative years, I was most blessed in
that I spent much time with my Dad (able to do so
because he didn’t work a job away from home, but
rather farmed at home where I could literally follow in his footsteps,
from the time I was able to stretch my narrow step enough to do so).
But Christian Reader, during all the formative
time as I grew (a period of time most valuable
in forming my character, aspirations, goals in life, and such vitally
eternally important matters in which a Christian parent has daily
opportunities to encourage me much with their positive input), not
one time did my fine Christian Dad ever say anything to me along the
following lines.
“What was your Sunday School lesson about?”
“What was your League lesson about? Did your teacher
give you a part to read aloud before the class in League last night?”
“What songs do you all sing in your SS class?...Sing
one of them to me.”
“Which of the congregation songs do you like
best?...Can you sing a few verses of it to me now from memory?”
“Have you memorized any Bible verses in Sunday
School?...Can you quote one of them to me now?”
Had he spoken such to me, my little heart would have most
joyfully responded to the fullest. And then it would be natural
for a Christian father to tell me that it pleased him much to hear such
profitable words and songs coming from my mouth. But it simply
was not my Dad’s nature to do such with his
children. If it is not your nature, Christian parent, possibly God desires
to re-create your nature that “fell” in that aspect. You
only get one shot at rearing each of your offspring. It gravely
behooves you to make that a good shot, for all eternity!
Spring of 1952 (shortly before I started school in
September that year), I was following Dad’s footsteps as he guided our 2 farm
horses pulling the wooden drag that smoothed the field he had previously broken
with the breaking plow and then disked with the disk. All that work was done by
the horses and Dad to prepare the soil for planting, the final touch before
planting being this “dragging the field” to smooth it.
The handmade drag (made by Dad) was 5 or 6 wide thick
heavy wooden boards (each about 7 feet long) nailed together. That 7-foot length
of the boards formed the width of the drag. The 2 end
links of a short chain were nailed or bolted into the front board a few feet
apart, a “double tree” was hooked onto the middle of that chain, to which a “single
tree” from each of the 2 horses’ trace chains was hooked, for the horses to
pull the drag. (You might be able to “search” a picture of those “trees”.)
“Do you think you could do this (the dragging) by
yourself? I’ll show you how. I want to go set that field afire (the adjacent
field), to burn off the dry sage before I break it with the breaking plow.” My little
ol’ 6-year-old heart leaped with joy at the prospect of stepping into the adult
role of working a pair of horses in the field. So, I eagerly and proudly
assured Daddy that I measured up to the task. He went another “round” to
give me a few pointers, then turned the horses and the drag around at the edge
of the field next to the Old Road, stopped the horses, and handed me the 2 plow
lines. (The Change of Command to a farmhand far more
junior in rank.)
Standing beside the drag with a plow line in each
little hand, I gave the horses the verbal “giddy up” signal,
and headed them straight toward the far edge of the field, walking
beside the drag and feeling ever so proud to have so suddenly
become a grown-up (but ever so soon to experience Almighty God in Heaven painfully
humbling my proud soul).
A fence ran along the other end of this field.
Approaching it, I went to the right side of the drag and pulled on the right
line for the horses to turn around 180 degrees to the right. Thank God I
completed that turn well (and the following turn next to the road that was easier,
because I could give the horses more leeway letting them go out
onto the dirt road as they turned).
But when I reached the fence the 2nd time,
my amateur mind failed to start turning the horses in time before they
got to the fence. Seeing them confused as to what they were supposed to do when
they reached the fence (having not received any guidance from me), I pulled firmly
on the right line for them to turn tightly, as was now necessary.
They obeyed well, but their tight turn caused the right edge of the drag to “dig”
into the soft earth, causing the heavy drag to lift straight up sideways
(tall) on its right edge, and then fall over inverted to the right.
Guess which side of the drag this little farmer was
standing on. You guessed “right”!
And that heavy drag crashed right down
on my small being. My Loving Protecting Lord saw to it that the drag hit me at an angle from the side, knocked me down
sideways prone onto the ground pushing me into the soft, plowed soil, and
landed on top of my humbled being, giving me just a few scrapes and bruises but
no major injuries. Had I been standing 2 steps further away to the right,
likely the inverted left edge of the drag would have struck the top of my head,
breaking my skull, and thus saving you the drudgery of
reading this long boring story of my life. Truly, God protected me from serious
head injury or broken limbs (possibly from death), and I am most thankful for
that (and for the humbling).
Upon the drag turning over, both horses (full of horse
sense) immediately obeyed their Creator’s command to them to halt and
stand still. Had I fallen off a moving tractor into or under its cultivating
equipment, that heavy machine would have just kept moving, much to my
detriment, or possibly to my demise. “Show us the old paths.”
Tho it
wasn’t Daddy’s nature to speedily locomote himself physically, my frantic yells
and screams brought him to me at a speed akin to that of an Olympic
sprinter (though in farmer stride fashion). He quickly lifted the drag off of me; made sure I wasn’t badly hurt, and then led me
another round with the drag, showing me how to start turning the horses just
before they reached the fence. I made sure I did so, as I continued dragging
the field (with a few painful spots on my body and a humbler spirit).
As this farm boy grew, he graduated from plowing on
the farm with 1 or 2 horses, to plowing the fields with a tractor, to “plowing”
along roads and highways driving cars, trucks, motorcycles and buses, to “plowing”
through the high skies solo in swift military jet warplanes (all in a period of
18 years of plowing). By God’s grace, I learned all those “plowing” lessons
well. I learned that Safety comes first. Most importantly, I learned that “Safety is of the Lord”. (Have you learned that??) And I thank God that by
His Abundant Grace, He has thus far kept me safe thru all such worldwide
and sky-high “plowing”.
Our horses were named, of course. As a little tyke the
first pair I remember were mares, Bess and Ruby. This
day, I was “dragging” the field with Bess and Ruby. When I was about 5 years
old, I was thrilled to start riding horses (at first, with an adult or teenager
riding on the same horse). Farm labor went on 6 days a week. On Sunday
afternoons we children played, and that play was more fun when visitors came at
that time.
One fateful Sunday afternoon, 5 of us young’uns (together
at one time) had mounted Bess, and were riding her bareback (no saddle) in
the pasture. The largest youth sat in front as the “driver”, and we 4 smaller
kids were lined up behind him in a row front to back astraddle Bess (each of us
with both arms locked around the torso of the child in front of us in an effort to hold on). The driver up front held the
bridle reins in one hand, and grasped “hold” of Bess’s
mane with the other hand.
We started down the hill to the lower pasture. Going
downhill, Bess naturally “braked” by almost stopping each time
she put down each front hoof. When Bess’s right front hoof
firmly jolted down and almost stopped, the inertia caused the line of 5
souls astride her to lean right. Next, when the left front hoof did
likewise, it brought the line of 5 kids leaning left. With each change
of direction, the angle at which we leaned increased.
It became inevitable to all 5 souls that we would all soon topple,
and that nothing under the sun could be done to prevent it. So, we just waited
a few seconds till the inevitable tragedy happened.
On our right side was the fence between the
pasture and hog pen. All five little souls so desired that the inevitable
topple be to the left. Guess which direction we all toppled. You guessed “right”
again. All 5 kids toppled “right” onto the fence, each child
striking the top of the wire fence at a slightly different location on his or
her body. It is a miracle that there were no serious injuries. It is a miracle
that I lived to write an autobiography. Thank Thee, Lord Jesus.
Come cotton-picking time each September, Mother picked
cotton along with Daddy. She and Daddy would take their small children to the
field with them, set the infants down and watch them as the 2 of them picked
cotton. When each child reached about 4 years of age, then the child started
helping, walking along with 1 parent, picking cotton and putting it into the
parent’s sack.
I liked the “labour” of picking that soft,
white, fluffy stuff, and playing on top of a wagonload of it. After Daddy
weighed each full sack and wrote down the weight, he or Mother would throw the
sack onto the wagon and shake out the cotton. We kids had fun tromping it down
with our feet (to pack it). When we got a complete bale on the wagon, Daddy would
drive the horses to town pulling that wagon to the cotton gin at the foot of
Water Tank Hill to have the cotton ginned, while the rest of the family busily
picked cotton. That is, until we completely finished
picking all our cotton crop. Then Daddy allowed the kids who wanted to ride the
horse-drawn wagon to the gin, the treat of riding there upon our last bale of cotton.
I always looked forward to that annual trip,
fascinated by the sight of a man at the gin vacuuming the cotton off the wagon
thru a large metal tube that sucked the cotton up and shot it into the gin that
separated the seed that later got dumped back onto the wagon for us to take
home and feed to the cows. I watched wide-eyed as large machinery compressed
the bale of cotton ever so tightly, a man banded the bale, and
slowly released the large vice that compressed the bale, allowing it to swell
against the strong metal bands as it “groaned”. Soon the bale tumbled out of
the vice, and he used hooks to snag the bale and “walk” that heavy bale of 400
to 500 pounds by hand to set it nearby.
When Daddy took quite a load to town or hauled a load
back home from town, he usually made the trip by horse and wagon. Each
time that he let me go with him, it thrilled my soul. I was most privileged
to experience old fashioned farming by man-power and
animal-power (“genuine” horse power) in the
early 1950s, our old 1935 Dodge car being the only gasoline motor machine our
family had. Our simple, natural farm life (naturally paced),
in poverty (firmly rooted and settled on this one
farm location during all the days of my upbringing), put my life on a most
stable foundation at the start of my earthly journey. I am most thankful to
have started my eternal existence in that fashion.
But standing with little brother Joe on the wooden
front porch, regularly watching the big yellow school bus come and go each day
(with a load of kids on it going to school in town), made me long
for the coming day when I too would be allowed to get on that bus with them to
go live my life in man-made society (the devil’s world), instead of
living with family on God’s created soil-farm. Even to this small boy’s
mind of most limited understanding and experience, the devil’s
world seemed much more exciting, fun, intriguing, and
alluring than God’s serene beautiful nature with a
variety of fascinating animals.
“All the far-out adventures in this chapter actually
happened to you before you even started elementary school?”
‘Rest assured that the half was not told.’
The End of
Chapter 3