What The South Is

Early in the spring of 1946, sometime before Easter, our family moved to an old house five or six miles south of Chipley, about a mile west of the road from Chipley to Panama City, and east across the swamp from the little community of Duncan where lived Uncle John and Aunt Nellie at the time, and where was located the Duncan elementary school to which I transferred, again in the fourth grade. Mama had separated from my stepfather the previous year, so the family now consisted of Mama and we kids.

The house into which we moved was an old wooden clapboard house, typical of the sort provided to tenant farmers. Mama rented the house for five dollars per month.

Soon after we moved there Mama acquired a milk cow. The cow was generally black in color, but with splotches of white. She gave a considerable amount of milk daily, and continued to do so for as long as we had her. There must be a knack to milking a cow. Mama could extract a pail of milk rather quickly, but I could never get anything to come out. I was hindered, perhaps, by not being on friendly terms with the cow's heels.

Rather than confining her to a fenced area, we generally let the cow roam the woods freely so that she might feed on the good grass available in the swamps and meadows. Mama tied a bell around her neck so that we could locate her. In the evening at milking time we could hear the bell tinkling and would usually find the cow not too far away from the house. One evening, however, we could not find her, though we searched and called until far into the night.

The next morning Mama roused me very early and sent me off to search for our missing cow. I was to go back down the lane and over to the Panama City highway, and look along the highway going south until I came to the first dirt road. If I hadn't found her by then I was to go down that road searching for her.

I started out that way but didn't find the old cow anywhere along the Panama City highway, so I turned down the first dirt road, which ran eastward from the highway and on around by the Peel place. I remember that because Mr. Peel had a pretty daughter.

After about a half mile, though, another dirt road butted into the one I was on. Mama hadn't said anything about that road, so I had to decide which way to go. The new road that I had run into ran to the south, and was borderd on both sides with a thick growth of tall pine trees, such that the limbs almost met each other over the road.

There is something about such a road in the South. It looked so inviting that I figured the cow probably went that way if she had got over this far, so I turned down it, not knowing where it led to but figuring that I could always come back if I didn't find her after a while. It was still early in the morning, for not more than an hour or two had passed since I started out. So I was in no particular hurry, but just ambled along, taking in everything as I went, because this was new territory to me. I had gone perhaps a mile down this road when I noticed an old shanty set back a little off the road. I made a mental note to check it out if I came back that way.

I continued on down the road, and after another mile or so came to a clearing on the east side. I stopped and looked out across it, and could see, at quite some distance, what appeared to be an expansive wooded area of different character than the pine woods along the road. So I went that way. When I reached the wooded area I could see that it was actually a very large meadow with an abundance of grass. The odds were pretty good that our cow was somewhere in that meadow.

Woods and meadows are a great place for contemplation, and daydreaming as well, for one is entirely alone and the mind can wander freely in all directions. So I roamed about here and there, fancying this or that circumstance according to how the mood hit me, and continued to be in no particular hurry. I passed a good many hours in this fashion.

After a while I began to get hungry, and could tell by the shadows made by the tree trunks that it was noon or later. That brought me back to reality and I decided that it might be best to look for the cow with a little more purpose. So I began to swing back and forth in a wide zigzag pattern, moving ever more deeply into the woods. I never had any doubt that the cow was somewhere in that meadow.

From time to time I would stop for a moment to listen for her bell. By and by I heard a faint tinkle. I went on, stopping more often now to listen. After a while the tinkling got loud enough that I could discern the direction from which it came. There was no doubt that it was the bell on our cow. Almost every cow bell has its own distinctive sound, and if you listen to one with a little application you come to recognize it when you hear it.

After about ten minutes or so of homing in on the bell I spotted the cow in a low grassy bottom. I had brought a halter with me, and after petting her for a few minutes I put it on her and began to pull her along. I wanted to get back home, now, and get something to eat.

I had more or less lost track of how I had got to where I was, but remembering which way the shadows fell when I was coming in, and making allowance for the sun being where it now was, I was able to backtrack generally in the proper direction. Within an hour or so I came back out to the road not too far from where I had left it. I could tell from the sun which way to turn down the road toward home. The idea come to me later on that if the sun had not been shining that day my odyssey might have been a bit more extended.

So we went on back toward home, but not making any great time. I didn't want to walk the cow too fast, so I let her set the pace and stop whenever she wanted to.

It was nearing sundown when we approached the shanty that I had passed in the morning. White wisps of smoke floated up from its chimney, which meant that the preparation of supper was in progress. As we got a little closer I could hear an old blues tune being played on what sounded like a steel guitar. We came up even with the shanty, and I could see an old colored man sitting on the floor of the porch, with his feet resting on the ground and a small flat top guitar laying on his lap.

I never could pass on by any performance on a guitar, so I swung off the road toward the porch and said "Howdy, Uncle." In those days one called an old colored man "Uncle", and he answered to it as though it were a title that he had spent his whole life working up to. He let off on his playing and said, "Yassuh, Cap'n."

I said to him that he sure was making good music, just like blue steel, and asked if I could listen to him play a little. He said "Yassuh, it sho' be pleas'n to me when white folks like my kind o' playin, and yo' sho' is welkum," and he started back playing again.

By that time I was in a position to examine his guitar more closely. The frets had been removed from the neck, and the strings raised by the placement of pennies under the bridge. The old darkey was using the broken off neck of a soda pop bottle, slipped over the middle finger of his left hand, to slide up and down the strings.

That was what gave the instrument the tonal characteristic that we around Chipley referred to in those days as a 'steel guitar' sound. Actually, it was the sound of a dobro guitar. The steel guitar is a similar but more sophisticated instrument, and produces a more elegant sound.

The old 'Uncle' was singing now, in a loose, rambling style, and was getting into some downright mean blues stuff. Every now and then he would twist the bottle neck slightly one way or the other, producing a somewhat minor chord sound, and press it downward a little now and then to warp the ends of the notes up higher. At the end of every verse or so he would slide the bottle neck slightly back and forth over its home position, producing a wavy, mournful sound. Taken all together, he was pulling a lot of real music out of that old guitar.

He played a good many different tunes, all of them being what we called 'blues'. Every once in a while he would look off into the woods across the road, and it was as though his mind was not with us then but had gone back to some Saturday night shindig a hundred years ago. At those times my mind sort of went along with him.

After a while he closed the session on a long, fade out note, and said "Lawd, Cap'n, dis ol' man done played out, but I'se sho enjoyed yo' comp'ny." That was his way of telling me that I had best be getting on home. I had no idea as to what the time might be, but I could tell by the feel of the night that it was getting very late.

I knew that I had dilly-dallied around too much, and Mama would be worrying about where I was. So I wrapped the cow's halter rope around my wrist and set off down the road, considerably more in earnest now. The cow seemed to be in a more objective mood as well, because she wasn't too interested in munching along the way any more. I kept us moving steadily forward, but not too fast for the cow.

It was quite some distance back to the dirt road from which I had turned off to the present one, and from there I still had to get over to the Panama highway and back up it to the road that cut over to the lane that went in to the house. It was almost pitch black, and no cars passed us except one or two after we had turned up on the Panama highway.

Finally, after what seemed like about forty miles of hoofing it, we turned up the lane to the house. When we got to the top of the rise I could hear Mama calling, "Co o o o ah Cow". I knew that she was putting out a sounder for me, and doing it that way because the sound carried farther. So I answered her back in the same manner. She stopped then, because she knew that I was on my way in.

She came outside when I got to the house, and we put the cow in her stall. Mama said that she had better milk her, because she had gone a day and night without it and it wasn't good to let a cow that was giving milk go like that. I stayed with her until she finished the milking, and then we went in and she warmed up some supper for me. That was about the best supper I ever ate.

Though I was tired, and very glad to be back home with my feet under the table, something from that little adventure has remained with me over the years:



If anyone wants to know what is the South, just take them down a dirt road through tall pine trees one evening about sundown, with the pine scent floating lightly upon soft breezes, to where an old colored Uncle sits playing the blues on a five-dollar guitar.

That is the South.

　

　

　

A Barn Raising

Yesterday (the 14th of April, 2012) was a beautiful Spring day.  I set in place the last stringer (joist) on my daughter's pool deck.  This construction work in the outdoors, and at this particular time of year, reminded me of a similar situation some sixty-eight years ago

At the time my family lived about twenty-five miles southwest of Chipley, Florida, on Mr. Dempsey Brock's sharecropper place.  It was located three or four miles south of Hinson's Cross Roads, on the road to Millers Ferry over Holmes Creek.  Our house was at the north end of a large, elliptical-shaped lake known, appropriately, as Brock Pond, and was accessed by a lane up from the main road

Over across the main road, and about a quarter of a mile eastward from where the lane from our house met the road, lived the Ben Body family.  Ben and his wife were about the same age as Mama, and had four children,  three girls and a boy, the boy being the youngest.  The oldest girl was a few years older than me, while the next oldest was about my age, and the three of us chummed around a lot, particularly down around the big pond where we had our own private hiding places.

Ben's daddy was dead.  His mother was a very old woman, but preferred to live by herself in the old family house across the road from Ben.  I remember it because it really was an old farm house, and there were lots of old things in it.

Ben had built with his own hands the house in which he and his family lived, and in the spring of the year that we moved to the Brock place he set about to build a barn.  He had already had all the lumber cut from some of his own timber.

So one Saturday morning in early April my stepfather Holly took Mama and we children, and went over to help Ben put up the framing for his barn.

As we approached his place the aroma of freshly brewed coffee floated out toward the road to meet us.  Beyond their house, and over to the right, we could see Ben and his family seated at a long table near the site where the barn was to be erected, so we went on over and joined them, taking seats at the table while Ben's wife set out large tin mugs of the hot, black coffee which had been brewed from freshly roasted beans.

The sun was just then rising above the trees, and cast long shafts of light through the lingering morning haze.  The air tingled with the brisk freshnesss of spring, and the trees rustled softly under the caress of a light breeze faintly scented with the fragrant bouquet of a dozen different aromas.  In this atmosphere an hour or so was spent in casual conversation between the grownups, while the children concocted certain adventures to be pursued during the day.

At length, after the social amenities had been sufficiently observed, Holly and Ben set to work, the first objective being to lay out the corners so that the building would be square.  We kids all watched with keen interest but could not fathom the intricacies of the method, and were greatly relieved when Holly and Ben announced the completion of the task to their mutual satisfaction.

Next, they commenced to set the blocks upon which would rest the heavy sills that would support the floor joists.  These blocks were about two feet in diameter, and had been cut from large oak trees.  One was placed at each corner, with three or four being placed between each corner block along the sill lines, and another three or four along a line down the middle for the sill upon which the floor joists would be joined.

Then they began placing the heavy sills upon the blocks, which was time consuming because each one had to be notched at each end so that all could be securely joined together.  And so they continued, taking a short break now and then, until the sills were placed and all the floor joists had been joined.

By this time Mama and Ben's wife had prepared a sumptuous dinner, so work was put aside for an hour or two while we feasted, and Holly and Ben enjoyed an extended rest while they discussed the finer points of getting a successful crop to harvest.  In due time the subject was exhausted and they returned to the task at hand.

We kids, our interest in the project having waned somewhat, turned to our little adventures, taking time now and then to run down to the road to see whether an automobile might come by.  And so we passed a pleasant and carefree afternoon while Holly and Ben labored diligently on the barn.
By sundown all the framing and bracing had been joined, and the little structure was declared sufficiently secure in its standing to await the continuance of the work on the morrow.

So ended a beautiful day, and after a final serving of hot, black coffee, the children having the option of lighter refreshments, we said good night to Ben and his family, and in the dusky twilight ambled leisurely down the road and back up the lane to our house.

Over the years I have often recalled the occasion just described, for it was an experience reminiscent of pioneer days, and for me it was the very last opportunity for such.

 The event described above took place in April, 1944, about three months before my tenth birthday, and about two months before the Allied landing on Normandy (D-Day).

            Some Happenings In 1941


The Watermelon

During the Summer of 1941 there came to the cemetery a man whose occupation was the cleaning of tombstones.  He was very conscientious about his work, and would not leave a tombstone until it looked "just right".  Sometimes this required a considerable period of scrubbing with a steel brush and a special cleaning compound that he prepared himself.

One day, right after lunch (we called it dinner), he announced that we should have a watermelon, and inquired of my stepfather, Holly, as to where we could get one.  Holly said that they usually kept some on ice downtown at the ice plant.  The gentleman said that he would buy one if someone would go and get it.

Holly asked if I thought I could fetch the melon.  I said that I could, so the man gave me some money and off I went to the ice plant.  Today, that would be about a two‑minute trip by auto, but at the time I was seven years old, and on foot it was a long way to the ice plant - about a mile and a half.

The man had said to get a big watermelon, which I did, and I had an awful time getting it up the hill to the cemetery.  The effort was worth it, though, for the man gave me a DIME for fetching the melon.  My recollection is that the melon cost a quarter.

Cotton  Bales

Sometime during the Summer of 1941 Holly took Mama and we children one Sunday over to Cottondale for what must have been a visit to some of his kinfolk.  I don't recall who they were, don't recall ever having seen any of them before the visit, and never saw any of them afterwards.

Cottondale is a small town located about nine miles east of Chipley, at the intersection of US 90 and US 231.  In those days that part of US 90 between Chipley and Cottondale was paved with concrete.  It was probably one of the oldest stretches of concrete road in the country when it was finally topped over with asphalt around 1991.

The L & N Railroad ran east and west through Cottondale, being located on the north side of US 90.  From the north another railroad ran through the town and continued southward toward Panama City.  As it went through Cottondale, that railroad was on the west side of US 231.  Going from Chipley, US 90 dips under the north‑south railroad overpass just as it enters Cottondale.

The reason that I remember the trip to Cottondale is that I spent all afternoon playing on top of the hundreds of bales of cotton which were stacked next to the railroads and awaited shipment.  They were stacked on the east side of the north‑south railroad, on the south side of US 90, and were stacked about three bales high, so closely together that one could walk around all over the top of them.  They completely covered a site about five acres in size.

 

A Special Christmas

During the several weeks leading up to Christmas of 1941 I had, whenever we were downtown, spent much time gazing at a drugstore window display of a large toy Army truck.  It was the convoy type, with a canvass‑covered body.

Those toy Army trucks were very popular at the time.  The preparations for war saw several Army convoys move through town each week, and thousands of such trucks came through on railroad flat cars.

On Christmas morning we opened our presents.  Mine was a large Army convoy truck.  Our family had very little money, but Mama had somehow made arrangements to get it for me.

                                                          The Jukebox

One Saturday morning early in 1942 Mama, my stepfather Holly, my sister Betty and myself all walked downtown to catch the bus to Lynn Haven, a little community about forty miles to the south, near Panama City.  My sister Louise was still a baby, and had to be carried.  I recall that it was a beautiful, brisk morning, and the freshness of spring was in the air.

We were going to visit Holly's older brother, Henry, whom we children had never seen.

On arriving in Lynn Haven we got off the bus and went inside a juke joint, a restaurant that served beer and had a Wurlitzer juke box, where we children and Mama waited while Holly went to find where his brother lived.

By that time it around twelve or one o'clock in the afternoon, and a slow, drizzling rain had set in.

We waited there for most of the afternoon, during which time two new country songs were played, first one and then the other, over and over, on the juke box.  They were by the new country music star Ernest Tubb.

 

One side of the record was  Walking The Floor Over You.  The flip side was  Be Honest With Me.

In those days it cost a nickel to play a tune on the jukebox, or three for a dime.

Eventually Holly returned, and we took a taxi to Uncle Henry's house.

Happenings At The Park

As the year 1941 began we were still living in the little house on the edge of the cemetery, about a mile and a half northwest of downtown Chipley

I was in the first grade, and sometime after school started back for the second semester Mama told me that if I made good grades she would get me a present. I do not recall what my grades were, or whether I tried very hard to make any good ones.

School had been out for a week or two when one day she took me with her to rake leaves in the city park while my stepfather Holly stayed to work in the cemetery.

The park was located then, as it is now, near the south end of Fifth Street. It was a beautiful little park, occupying 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.

We normally skirted the edge of town to get over to the park, but on this day we went through town, by T. L. Wells Bros. store. As we approached the store Mama told me to wait outside, that she had a matter to discuss with Mr. Wells. After some time she came out with a bag in her hand, and we went on over to the park.

Before she started work, though, she opened the bag and took out a cap. It was of the style that English school boys sported in those days, with the front part of the top snapped down on top of the visor. She handed it to me and said, "Here's that present I promised you."

At about that time Germany was preparing to invade Russia during WWII.


Some nine years later the bandstand would serve a very special purpose.




The Bandstand, in a picture taken when I visited the park in October, 2010. It looked the same then as it did in 1941. Note the stairs up to the top floor. The door mentioned below is on the right side of this view, on the east side of the bandstand.



During the summer of 1950 my friend Wallace Berry and I had started mowing yards around town to earn money for attending Boy Scout camp at Camp Big Heart, over near Pensacola. Along with our brooms, rakes, and other lawn tools, we were using the power lawn mower loaned to us by Wallace's father.  My recollection is that it was the first power lawn mower in Chipley.

We both lived a little ways from town, and on unpaved streets. From the park, however, the yards of all our customers could be accessed by paved streets and sidewalks.  In the basement of the bandstand were two or three small rooms, and in one of those rooms Wallace and I kept all our lawn tools, including the mower. We accessed the basement through the door shown in the picture, on the east side of the bandstand. The park caretaker kept his tools in an adjacent room. During my visit to the park in 2010 I noticed that the basement access door was locked. Back when Wallace and I stored our tools there none of the doors were ever locked.

We kept our tools there through the summers of 1950 and 1951. Each time we returned for them they were just as we had left them the last time. We often noticed that the park caretaker had retrieved some of his tools, or had brought in new supplies, but in all that time we never ran into him.

We had decided in the beginning to keep our earnings in some sort of savings account until time to go to Scout camp. Then we would withdraw it and divide it evenly. At that time the most practical means of saving small sums was through Savings Stamps at the Post Office. A depositor was issued a savings stamp in the amount of the deposit, and the stamp was pasted into a little savings book. We established one of these accounts, and deposited each week as much as we could. The Postmaster, Mr. Ed Dunn, kept our books in a drawer under the teller counter.

US Postal Savings Certificate. Our denominations were larger, from $5 upward, with stamps used for amounts less than a dollar.



Toward the end of summer, 1951, it was time to make ready for departure to Camp Big Heart so Wallace and I went to the post office and cashed in our savings certificates and stamps. I don’t recall how much we had saved, but it was enough to pay all camp expenses, with a fair amount left over for spending money.


At this time the Korean War was being fought, President Truman had removed General MacArthur from command, and it would be two years before an armistice was declared.

Remembering The Great Steam Locomotives

Those who never had the opportunity for a romantic affair with the great steam locomotives have missed an emotional experience that is forever lost, for it cannot be produced by anything else, natural or manmade.  The great trains were an integral part of the lives of all country people, especially those who lived near a railroad, and the folklore associated with the trains filtered down even to the most remote hamlet.

During 1943 my family lived on Effie Barfield's sharecropper place, about three miles west of Chipley.  Our house was situated by the L & N railroad track that ran from Jacksonville westward toward New Orleans, and the front porch faced the railroad.  To give an idea of how close we were to the tracks, the fence of our front yard was also the railroad right-of-way fence. This was still in the time of the great steam locomotives, and when one roared by the whole house would shake.

The train whistles in those days sounded every bit as romantic as they are made out to be  in books and movies.  Many were the times late in the night that I heard the sound of one coming from way off, and would get up and go out and set on the porch until it came by.  Every engineer had his own peculiar way of blowing the whistle, and although you never knew the name of a particular engineer, you remembered him the next time he came through by the way that he worked the whistle, sort of like he was talking to his sweetheart.

You would first pick him up over around Caryville, about twenty miles west of Chipley, as he came on with a low, mournful whistle that would build up a little and then fade out gradually.  Then he would start again, and build it up a little more quickly and hold it for a moment, then give it a little boost and let it fade out quickly.  With two or three of these he had cleared Bonifay and was headed for Chipley, and by that time you could hear the engine itself, Cha cha cha cha, Cha cha cha cha, so fast that only the general rythym would register.  Withinn another three minutes he was roaring by the house, and the racing beat of the cars' wheels hitting the joints in the tracks told you that he was moving on.  That sound would last for about thirty seconds or so, until the caboose went by, then fade out rapidly.  In another minute or so you could tell by his whistle that he had cleared Chipley and was headed for Cottondale and Marianna.

I never missed a daytime train that went by while I was around the house, and always waved at the engineer.  Many did not seem to  notice, but one day an engineer tossed out a large can of sauerkraut as he whizzed by, and motioned for me to go and get it.  After that,  about once a month,  another  can of sauerkraut would  be tossed out.

Once, several years later, after we had been round and about and had finally moved back to Chipley, I was walking one day down the railroad track, on past the Effie Barfield place, to the Green Lantern which was about a quarter of a mile on down the track.  The Green Lantern was a juke joint, but they had a big swimming pool in the back.  You could swim in the pool all day for a quarter, so I would go there whenever I could get hold of a quarter.

On this particular day I had got to a point at about the middle of the trestle over a small branch when all of a sudden I heard a train whistle, and looked up to see the train coming around a curve from the direction of Bonifay.  It was barreling down the track at great speed, and I saw immediately that I could not make it to either end of the trestle before the train got there.  So I swung off over the side and hung by my hands from a cross tie while it roared by.

If the fireman had picked that moment to dump the coals from the fire box I would have been in big trouble.  As it was, I escaped with nothing damaged but my dignity, and was greatly relieved at not having to change my pants.

A Radio and A War Slogan

In the summer of 1941 I was seven years old. Our family still lived in the little house in the edge of the cemetery, a mile or so northwest of downtown Chipley. One Saturday morning my stepfather Holly went downtown and came back with a radio - a battery-powered table model. The battery was almost as big as the radio. We had to have the battery because our house had no electricity.

For good radio reception we needed a long wire antenna, mounted outside as high as possible, and with a lead-in to the radio. A few hundred feet behind our house was a good stand of pine "saplings". Holly selected two of the tallest, trimmed the limbs off, and pulled them up to the yard. He and Mama then spent the better part of the afternoon attaching the antenna and setting the poles in the ground.

That night we listened to the Grand Ole Opry, the first time that I ever heard it. I was fascinated with the radio, and kept trying to figure out how it came with the Grand Ole Opry station already on it.

A few months later, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. I recall President Roosevelt's radio address to the nation the next day, in which he referred to the "day of infamy" and asked Congress to declare that since the attack "a state of war has existed between the United States and the imperial government of Japan." At the end of the President's speech Holly stood up and said, very solemnly, "This is going to be a long war."

Later on, in the spring of 1943, we moved to a place two or three miles west of Chipley and across the railroad from US Highway 90. By then the country was well into World War II. Mama would occasionally send me over to a little store on the highway, about a half mile back toward town. Along the way I would usually find several little empty candy boxes that had been tossed out on the edge of the road. On the back of these little boxes was a picture of General MacArthur. Under his picture was the slogan, "REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR!"