Sunday, February 27, 2011

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.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

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.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

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.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

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."

Thursday, February 10, 2011

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.