T L Wells & Bro.

Another of the recollections of my hometown of Chipley, Florida.

    In the latter part of 1940 we moved from the house on Fifth Street up to a small house in the edge of the cemetery, a little ways northwest of the town.  My stepfather Holley had obtained the job of city caretaker, and the house went with the job.  As caretaker, he would be responsible for the maintenance of all lawns and landscaped areas on city-owned property, which included all streets, the cemetery, and the city park.  We were living there when World War II began.

    While we lived there, during 1941 and early 1942, Holly would often go downtown to the Wells Brothers' store on Saturday night, and would usually take me with him.  The official name of this store was "T. L. WELLS & BRO.".  It was owned by the brothers Lee and Les Wells.  Lee was slightly larger than Les.  He served several terms as the mayor of Chipley, the office being temporarily held by another only when Lee declined that particular term.

    In the front part of the store were sold "dry goods", as clothing merchandise was called in those days.  The Wells Brothers didn't care anything about fashion; they sold clothes for working people at prices working people could afford.  They did, however, carry a good line of suits for the older, well-to-do gentlemen.

   When a customer turned in at the door of their store the Wells Brothers didn't wait for him to come on in.  They met him at the door and escorted him in.  They knew everyone in town, including all the colored folk, and their children, and who had married whom and whether they were expecting yet.

    Lee was the more outgoing, and generally handled the escorting.  Les usually stayed in the background to begin with, making conversation with some customer while keeping a general eye out.
 Lee would commence polite conversation with the customer as he escorted him back through the store, but would shortly say something like,
           
    "Jason, what can we fix you up with today?"

    Jason would mumble something to the effect that he was thinking about a new suit, on account of the one he had was about worn out, and Lee would say "Well, let's see, Jason, you take about a 40 Regular, if I remember," and proceed to remove the pants from a suit that he knew would not fit.

    Shaking them so that the legs would drop, he would hold them up to the light, then drop them down for comparison against the pants Jason was wearing, presently observing, "Huh uh, no, these are a little short. I think we better try these."  Then he would select another suit and go through the same routine.  "Yep, I think this is about what we're looking for -  step in there and slip these on, Jason, and let's see how they look."  When Jason returned, Lee would stand back and inspect, pull the pants up a little, and tighten the waste with his thumbs and forefinger - "Stand up straight, Jason, we want to be sure these fit right - Les, come over here and see what you think; we want Jason to look good."

    Les would come over, make a critical inspection from the front, then step around to the side - "Uh huh" -  yank them up a little, then reach down and jerk the legs down a little, and step back, nodding approvingly.  "Lee, I think these are going to be just fine -  Jason lends himself to  a good suit, you know.  Yessir, looks mighty good."

    Then Lee, "All right, we'll put these down," and he would write something on the little order pad.  Then they would repeat the act with the coat, and Lee would write that down.

    "Jason, you'll be needing a shirt or two with that - you always wear white shirts, don't you, with the button-down collar?"

    "Yes sir.  Mr. Wells, I don't know how you remember all that."

    "We always remember our preferred customers, Jason.  Now, let's see -- ", bending down now to look at Jason's shoes, "Eight and a half double E, I think - you wear black don't you Jason?

    "And about three pair of dress socks - I'm going to throw them in free - you being one of our preferred customers - now, let's see .... that comes to about twenty-five dollars and-- well, let's knock off the cents.

    "How did you want to handle that, Jason?  You don't have to take care of it all at one time you know.  No sir, you've been doing business with us a long time.  Your credit is always good here.

    "Want to put down five dollars?  O.K. - you sure you can spare that right now?  All right, fine.  Les, how about wrapping all this up for Jason - use that good wrapping paper we got in last week.

   "Jason, it's good to see you again.  You know we always appreciate your business."

    "Otis (that would be Otis Hinson, clerk and Man Friday), let that go for a minute, and take Jason around to his house.  It's  close on to dinnertime - no need for him to have to walk home."


Which is why Jason's business always went to "T. L. WELLS & BRO."

    

A Gunsmoke Episode

June 3, 2011

The announcement today of the death of James Arness (Gunsmoke’s Marshall Dillon) reminded me of an incident that occurred one Saturday night in March of 1956, during one of my visits home from the Air Force.

A couple of friends and I had decided to go over to the skating rink between Bonifay and Caryville, some twelve or fifteen miles to the west of Chipley, on US Highway 90. It was cold that night, and had started drizzling before we left Chipley. By the time we cleared Bonifay and headed for the skating rink it was raining pretty heavily.

About half way between Bonifay and the skating rink we passed a young fellow who appeared to be about ten or twelve years old walking along the side of the road with his head bent forward against the rain, and really stepping it off in the direction that we were going. Thinking that he was going to the skating rink, we stopped and told him to hop in..

After he had got settled down we asked him why he had started out walking on a night like that. He replied that he was going to his uncle's house, for his uncle had a television set and he was trying to get there in time to watch GUNSMOKE. We asked where his uncle lived, and he said in Caryville. I think we all decided at the same time that the skating rink could wait a little while, that the important thing just then was to get that boy to his uncle's house, which we did.

Early Recollections of My Hometown (Chipley, Florida)

Chipley is located in northwest Florida at the intersection of US Highway 90 and Florida Route 77 which runs northward from Panama City toward Dothan, Alabama. US Highway 90 is the Old Spanish Trail. As the years go by I often return, in memories, to the town as it was when I first knew it, in the early Forties.

It was a beautiful little town. Large old trees lined most of the streets, and modest middle class homes reflected the quaint architectural styles of the period. Here and there, screened by a stand of stately old oaks, stood an old rambling, two-story home of mansion proportions, complete with Georgian columns in front and one or two out-buildings in the rear. In many of those old homes the kitchen was separated from the main house, and connected to it by an airway which in some cases served as the breakfast dining area.

These homes represented old money; most had been built before or near the turn of the century by the pioneer families of the town. There were the Wells, Daniels, MacRae, Coleman, Richardson, Alford and Benson homes that I recognized, and several others that I never did identify. By the early Fifties, many of the old homes had passed to descendents of the original families, but most were still beautifully maintained.

The town was about evenly divided by the L & N (Louisville & Nashville) Railroad which ran east and west through the town, and by Sixth Street (State Road 77) which ran north and south. Generally speaking, Sixth Street, and all the streets to the west of it, comprised the "white" section of town. All of the streets to the east of Sixth Street comprised what was known as the "quarters" or colored section of town.

The "quarters" population included two or three moderately well-to-do black families who, through personal enterprise, had achieved a financial status equal to that of the white middle class. They had become leaders in the black community, and were well respected by the white community. The most notable of these was Lester Rhynes who for many years operated a grocery store and wood yard.

The city park was located then, as it is now, near the south end of Fifth Street. It occupied a one-block by two-block area, and included tennis courts, a covered bandstand, and large grassed areas dotted with huge oaks and tall pine trees. Colored people were not allowed in this park. I do not recall whether they had a park of their own.

The city cemetery was located on a hill to the northwest of town, some distance from the outer residential areas. It was a large cemetery, containing many beautiful tombstones and monuments, and heavily populated with cedar trees. The lower west slope contained the "potter's field", where were buried the poor and those persons not claimed by relatives. As far as I know, only white people were buried in this cemetery. The cemetery, park and streets were kept immaculately groomed by the city caretaker, hired apart from other city employees expressly for that purpose.

The Woman's Club of Chipley was housed in a lovely little building located on a spacious lot on the east side of North Fifth Street. That was the same street that went by our house, but just north of the Woman’s Club it jogged as it crossed the street that ran westward out of town toward the cemetery.

The post office occupied a corner of a large building on the northwest corner of the intersection of Sixth Street and the east-west street on the north side of the railroad. The post office part of the building had been remodeled in front, with a Georgian corner column and marble facing added, resulting in an appearance appropriate to an ediface sponsored by the federal government.

The fashionable churches were the First Baptist, located on the northeast corner of Fifth Street and US Highway 90, the Methodist, located a short distance to the west, atop the large hill and on the south side of US Highway 90, and the Presbyterian, located on Fifth Street three or four blocks north of the railroad. These churches dated from the early 1900's, with membership comprised mostly of the founding families of Chipley.

The depot, as the railroad station was called, was a single-story wooden structure with a wide roof overhang to shelter passengers and freight from the sun and rain. It was designed to an architectural style prevalent in the South at that time for such facilities, its double-faced corners and stout roof support columns reflecting a most substantial appearance.

The station master served also as the telegraph operator. Most of the time he sat on a bench outside, on the station platform but back against the window of the telegraph office so that he could decipher the endless stream of messages running through the telegraph instrument. If my memory serves me correctly, each of the operators along the line heard all of the messages, and picked out those that were intended for him.

                An interesting fact about telegraph operators is that each had a
                unique "signature" touch - the characteristic pattern in which he
                tapped the code. Thus, a practiced listener could tell, without
                benefit of further identification, who was sending the message.

At the east end of the depot was a large raised platform, constructed of 4 x 6 timbers, on which were stored various items of heavy freight, but mainly huge barrels of pine resin, waiting to be shipped as soon as scheduled boxcars and flatbeds arrived.

In those days Chipley was served with two passenger trains daily, one going east and another west. Along with parcels and packages, the passenger trains also carried the mail, under contract with what then was the United States Post Office Department. The trains would stop in Chipley if there were passengers or parcels to be picked up or discharged; otherwise, they would merely slow to a speed such that a mail car attendant could toss the incoming mail pouch onto a baggage wagon while the conductor, using a pole and hook designed for the purpose, retrieved the outgoing mail pouch from a hangar attached to a post beside the track.

The evening passenger train came through at six o'clock. I can still recall the sound, on a late Saturday evening, of the two short blasts of the whistle announcing the imminent departure of a train that had stopped. For some reason the Saturday evening whistle projected a romanticism that did not come through on other days.

Several freight trains came through every day. Most of these, and some of the passenger trains as well, stopped to take on water, for we were still in the era of the steam locomotive.

Across the tracks from the station was a huge elevated water tank, made of wood, and mounted on sturdy wooden piles. Its position along the track was chosen so that water could be taken on while the passengers boarded or disembarked, and parcels and freight were loaded or unloaded

Whenever a train was to take on water it would slow to almost a crawl, and the fireman would hop up on top of the engine and give hand signals to the engineer so that he could stop the engine at exactly the right spot. He would then throw back the lid of the water compartment inlet, reach up and grab a large halter line attached to the huge spout of the water tank, and pull the spout down and place its curved nozzle in the water compartment inlet. Then, standing on top of the spout, he would reach up and pull on a rope attached to the tank, and thus open a valve which let the water run into the engine's water compartment. My recollection is that it sometimes required twenty or thirty minutes to take on the necessary water.

Hotel accommodations were provided by the Shivers Hotel, located on U.S. 90 atop the big hill just west of Fifth Street. It was owned by Olin Shivers who was for many years the State senator for the district in which Chipley is located. This hotel was somewhat of a landmark among travelers, and flourished on through the Fifties.

The bus station was located at the restaurant adjacent to the west side of the hotel. A partitioned section of the restaurant served as the white waiting room, and whites purchased their tickets at one end of the restaurant counter. The colored waiting area was a small lean-to shelter outside the restaurant. They purchased their tickets through a window in the restaurant wall. Bus service was provided by the Greyhound and Trailways bus lines. Greyhound served the passengers going east and west. Trailways served those going north and south.

We were still in that era in which the ultimate in home entertainment was the floor console model radio, with programs and music punctuated on the hour by the three-note tone signal that was the radio signature of the National Broadcasting Company.

World news was reported nightly by Lowell Thomas.

Arturo Toscanni conducted the NBC symphony orchestra in its weekly radio concert, having been engaged especially for that purpose by the president of the Radio Corporation of America, General David Sarnoff.

The evening paper was delivered by a clean-cut youngster on a bicycle who threw the paper upon the front porch with such skill that it landed always in the same spot and skidded to a stop directly in front of the door.

Empty milk bottles were set outside the front door at night, to be replaced before dawn the next morning with fresh bottles of milk capped with two inches of cream on the top.

The top advertisement for an automobile was that it had radio and heater.

At the grocery store the housewife handed her order to the owner who personally collected and bagged or boxed the items. She did not take the order with her; it was brought to her home later by a delivery boy on a bicycle with a small front wheel over which was mounted a large sturdy basket made for the purpose. If she had neglected to mention at the store some item that she customarily ordered, it was sent along with the delivery. Should she not be at home when the delivery boy came, he would simply enter by the kitchen door, set the order on the counter, place in the refrigirator those items that went there, and close the door on his way out.

For the boys and girls in town the social feature of the week was the Friday night or Sunday night movie. Saturday was reserved for westerns out of deference to the country folk. Movie tickets cost ten cents. Inside the theater the white people occupied the ground floor seats, while the colored folk sat in the balcony seats in front of and on each side of the projection room.

Every year, sometime during the week of Christmas, all the under-priviledged children in town, white and colored alike, were invited to the school gymnasium inside of which was the largest Christmas tree in town, with the most and the brightest decorations, and hundreds of presents under it, each with the name of a particular child on it. At the end of a little party which lasted an hour or so, Santa would take his seat near the tree and some of the ladies would begin to pass the presents forward. Upon receiving each present he would call out the name of the child for whom it was intended, and, holding it up for all to see, would offer some conjecture as to what it might be while the youngster came forth to receive it.

I recall being taken to one of those parties, and receiving a present, though I can't remember whether it was in 1940 or 1941.


In those days great emphasis was placed on teaching children to show proper respect to older persons, be they white or colored, and any youngster, including teenagers, out and about town was automatically deemed to be in the custody of such older person as happened to be near, and such person was expected to watch out for the youngster, and to discipline him or her if need be, in the same manner that the parents would.

The one or two doctors and lawyers in town performed many services for which no payment was ever received or expected.

School teachers were their pupils' second parents, and a youngster who happened to be so unlucky would mope around for days in total remorse of having committed some act at which the teacher might be unable to conceal her disappointment.

There was only one town policeman, the Chief. Should he catch some youngster in an act of mischief, he would first ask what the youngster's mother and father would think if they knew what he was up to, adding that the Lord certainly would have misgivings, and that he himself would never have thought it of the youngster. But be that as it may, no one need ever know about it if it would never ever happen again.

A colored man or boy, upon meeting or passing a white person, always removed his hat. White men were addressed as Cap'n. White women were addressed as Miss So-and-so, for example, Miss Mary, or Miss Lillian, or whatever their first name happened to be, whether they were married or not.

It was perfectly safe for anyone to walk alone, anywhere, day or night. Doors to most homes were never locked, except possibly during an extended visit out of town. During the summer a family going out of town for the day would leave the windows open, serenely confident that should it begin to rain a neighbor would dash over and close them.

We could not then know it, but we were living out the last days of that era of blissful innocence. World War II was fast approaching, and when it was over a genteel way of life that generations had taken for granted would be, as in an earlier time, gone with the wind.


Copyright April, 2011 James Vernon Lewis

Some Happenings in 1940

    In 1939, while we were staying with Grandmother and Granddaddy Jones at the old Lockley place, Mama had married Calvin Holly Matthews. So we moved, Mama, my sister Betty and I, to Holly's home on the north side of Chipley.
    That was a sturdy little frame house which Holly rented. It was situated on the northeast corner of Fifth Street and Old Bonifay Road, behind the home of the Misses Lou and Lizzie Richardson (or maybe Richards), two elderly sisters who operated a ladies hat and accessories shop, and was shaded by several large old pecan trees. The house fronted on Fifth Street, which ran north and south and was at that time unpaved.
    Holly had a brother named Pleman. The first time that I recall seeing Pleman was in February or March of 1940 when he and his wife and daughter came to visit. His daughter was named Helen. As soon as Helen and I met we went outside to play. During that adventure we decided to get married. I was already nearly six years old.
    Pleman and I became friends immediately, and ever afterwards he was Uncle Pleman to me.
    When it came time for them to leave, Uncle Pleman said that they were going to take the "high road". That was his expression for "highway", and I never heard him refer to a highway except as the "high road".
    I don't know why he said that they were taking the "high road", unless they intended to hitch-hike, for my recollection is that they did not have an automobile.

* * *

    One night in the first part of the summer of 1940 Uncle Pleman was visiting us again, and he, Mama and Holly took me with them, and we went by and got a neighbor and her husband, and went on over about a half a mile or so to visit another family. After the usual social chatter they all decided to sing some songs.
    Uncle Pleman was a good bass singer. Holly could sing well, also, and was an accomplished violinist as well, having a repertoire that included the classics. Mama had a good voice at that time, and always sang alto.
    In those days when country people sang together they usually gravitated toward gospel songs, because everyone knew those songs and they offered the best opportunity for harmony as well as for individual expression. When a group of singers "clicked" together, and really got into the spirit of it, the result was music that warmed the soul.
    On this occasion Uncle Pleman wanted to sing ON THE JERICHO ROAD, so they all took it up, each experimenting at first with different voices or "parts" to see who could carry which part the best. After a change or two between person and voice, the right match was signaled by the nodding of heads and they began to get serious with it.
    The folks there had a guitar, and were well acomplished in rythym. Holly would bring in the violin just loud enough to balance out the ensemble. And so they went through all the verses, repeating the chorus after each verse.
    After they finished with that, Uncle Pleman wanted to sing LIFE'S EVENING SUN, so they gave it the same treatment.
    They sang many other songs that night, but those were two that I liked. I can still hear in my mind the rich sustained chords of the music just as it sounded on that summer night seventy years ago.
　
At about that time the air battle known as the "Battle of Britain" was being fought
over London.

 

* * *

    During that summer of 1940 there came to our kitchen door one morning a "hobo", the genuine article. He asked Mama "did she have anything he could do for something to eat?"
    Mama told him that she did not have anything he could do, but to sit down outside. Within a few minutes she took out to him a hot breakfast which he ate while sitting on the steps, the porch serving as a table. When he had finished he knocked on the door, expressed his thanks, and went on his way.
    During this time no thought was ever given to locking the kitchen door, though it had been pushed to as a matter of affording the hobo a measure of privacy.

The Onion Patch

    In the summer of 1939 I, my mother, and my sister Betty were living with Grandmother and Grandaddy Jones on the old Lockley place, a mile or so southwest of Chipley. We had moved to there from the Watts place. The Lockley place was about a quarter of a mile west of the present site of the hospital. This area is now quite developed, but at that time it was out in the country.
    The house sat on a site of about ten acres, with woods all around, except for a big field on the south side. The fence rows were covered all over by honeysuckle which filled the air with a tantalizing fragrance.
    While we were living there Grandmother had a garden in which she always grew several rows of onions. My Uncle Joe was still living at home, and he and I loved "onion gravy", made by cooking the diced tops of the onions in flour gravy.
    Uncle Joe could make good onion gravy, so one afternoon I pulled up several onion plants, took them inside, and asked him to make some. But he was furious that I had pulled the onions before they had "grown out", and sent me back out to replant them.
    Peeved at this turn of events, I replanted them with the tops in the ground. Uncle Joe, though, took care to see if I had done as he had instructed, and upon discovering my variance from directions he picked up a small switch and corrected the matter forthwith.

The Zepplin'

     One Saturday afternoon while we were living at the Watts place someone hollered, "Yonder comes a Zeplin'!", and pointed upward toward the southwest. Moving very slowly eastward, at an altitude slightly above the trees, was a huge airship.
      It was called a Zeppelin after its German inventor, and it was much larger and longer than present day blimps.
     The Zeppelin was following the L&N railroad, probably using it as a navigational aid, and moving toward Jacksonville. It was the first and only Zeppelin that I ever saw, and I still recall the feeling that I experienced while watching it. There was something darkly mysterious about an object with such shape moving so slowly through the air.
     Of course, none of us understood the method by which it was propelled. It seemed to move simply because it was a Zeplin'.
     To understand why we stared in wonder at such a sight, it is only necessary to realize that at the time even airplanes were seen only rarely by people living in small towns or rural areas. Whenever one was sighted, the viewer would follow its flight until it vanished as a tiny speck in the sky.

The aircraft was probably a Navy airship on a training flight. We did not know about Navy airships, but had heard just enough about the Zeppelin to be intrigued by it.

Pest Control

    In late 1938 or early 1939 I, my mother, and my sister Betty were still living with Grandmother and Granddaddy Jones, and we had moved to one of the little wooden frame houses on the old George Watts place, about one and a half miles west of Chipley. This house was about a quarter of mile south of the Old Bonifay Road, on the west side of a dirt road running from the Old Bonifay Road to US Highway 90, or the Old Spanish Trail.

    The land across the road from the house was pasture land, with a good many cows grazing about. At night we would all sit out on the front porch, while the grown folks talked about nothing in particular and the children did whatever they could get away with.

    At the beginning of these nightly sessions either Granddaddy or Uncle Walter would go across to the pasture and gather a bucketfull of dried cow chips. Back on the porch the chips would be placed on a homemade grate atop another bucket, and set afire. After a few minutes the fire would go out but the chips would continue to smolder, generating a smoke the odor of which was distinctive but not offensive.

   The smoke kept mosquitoes away as effectively as any modern-day product.

The Naming

　I had always wondered how my middle name came to be selected. On Christmas Day, 1990, I asked Mama about that.

    She stated that I was named by Daddy, and that he named me Vernon, after his best friend, and would have let it go at that.   But Dr. Beazely from Geneva, who attended my delivery, said that I should have two names. Daddy replied that he didn't know what the other one would be.   Dr. Beazely asked what was his name, and Daddy said, "James." "Well then," said Dr. Beazely, "his name shall be James Vernon Lewis."

The Automobile

    At the time Grandmother presented me with the little red rocking chair two of her sons still lived at home.  They had, out under the trees in the edge of our huge yard, an old car that they worked on during all their spare time.  I do not recall that they ever got it to run, but it was forever an ongoing project to which the greatest urgency attached.
    At that time America was still going through its original romance with the automobile.  Every young man who could earn a dollar had an old car of some sort, not so much as a means of transportation but because of the fascination with a mechanical contraption that moved under its own power.
    Every weekend saw a gathering of young men with their automobiles, usually at a spot where two roads crossed, or on some vacant tract next to a filling station.  In those days service stations were called filling stations.
    On those occasions the talk soon turned to some particular problem that one individual may have encountered, and how it was overcome, and what that led to, and so on, with time out now and then for demonstrations of smooth-running engines, fancy chrome work and "take-offs".   A take-off was a demonstration of how fast one's automobile could accelerate from a stopped position.
    Eventually the talk would shift to some individual not present, and what someone had seen him do with his automobile.  Invariably the account would end with, "Then he took off like Lindbergh." That would be in reference to Charles Lindbergh, the famous aviator.
    In recalling those days one of the things that always amuses me is the fact that Linbergh's name was a household word among country boys who had no radio and read no newspapers.
　
    During the Labor Day week-end of 1994, while at Mama's house for the Jones reunion, I had an opportunity to test my memory regarding my uncles' old car.   I had been chatting with the surviving uncle, and I asked him if he remembered their adventure with the old car.  He replied without hesitation that he did, and that it was a Model A Ford.
   That differed from my recollection, for I recalled the car as looking more like a Chevrolet. However, I decided not to mention that, so I was pleasantly surprised when my uncle paused for a moment, and said, "No, now that I think about it, it was a '31 Chevrolet".
   Fifty-six years had passed since the time of the experience that we were discussing. Of course, at that time I did not know one make of automobile from another, but I carried through the years a good recollection of the car’s features, such that I later concluded that it must have been a 1931 Chevrolet.

A Little Present

Late one summer afternoon I was standing in the front yard of the house where we were living with Grandmother and Granddaddy Jones, on a place near Chipley. I was standing off to one side of the house. The sun had started to sink behind the tall pine trees, and their long shadows fell across the yard.

A pedlar driving an old truck loaded with home-made chairs turned into the yard and honked his horn. Stepping down from the cab, he began to loosen the ropes that held the chairs in place. By that time Grandmother had come out of the house, and the man explained the purpose of his visit. Grandmother walked on over to the truck, and spent a few minutes inspecting the chairs and asking questions.

Eventually the pedlar set a small red rocking chair down upon the ground. Grandmother gave him some money, and he left. As he drove off down the road she brought the little rocking chair over to me and said, "Set in this and see how you like it."

That incident took place in the summer of 1938, when I was about four years old.

Where I Was Born

One morning in the summer of 1956 Granddaddy Jones and I were motoring westward along State Route 2, in Holmes County, Florida, some twenty-five or thirty miles west of the town of Graceville. In that region the road roughly parallels the Florida - Alabama line, and is some seven or eight miles to the south of it.

I knew that Granddaddy had once lived in the area through which we were then passing, and I asked him some question or other about it. After addressing my question he pointed northward, in a direction generally toward the little town of Geneva, Alabama, and said, "The house where you were born was a mile or two that way, over across those woods."

From where we were at the time I concluded that the place of my birth is located about five or six miles southeast of Geneva, which would place it in Holmes County and about two miles below the Alabama line.

     Granddaddy Jones was Mama’s daddy. He and I were great buddies.