Chapter 9

Places Where We Lived

As said before, I was born in the mountains, on Pretty Branch—queen of all the branches in the world to me.

This is all in Talladega National Forest now, right under Cheaha State Park.  A paved road leads from the heart of the valley up Horseblock Mountain and to the top of Cheaha where there is a watchtower, a hotel, motels, tourist court, a store and all the wonderful facilities of a state park—this mountain that had for son long been all but insurmountable from the east only by people on foot.  The nearest thing to a road being an old mail trail that could be traveled by horseback.

Now one of Alabama’s most popular backpacking trails is Odum Scout Trail, ten miles long, running along the mountain ridge, starting near Concord Baptist Church, somewhere south of Union, and running to Cheaha Park.  Two waterfalls are passed before reaching the ridge, the only water on the way.

The first memory I have we lived in Oxanna, between Oxford and Anniston, then in Choccolocco Valley with Mr. Kee and family.  There were two grown girls and a boy, Mary, Sallie and Sam.  Sam had two spotted dogs that tore up my rag doll, Susanna, and left her on a stump in the yard.  We contracted malaria while living there and moved back to Shinbone Valley.  Lived near the mill and Papa was the miller for a time.  Then we lived at the Buddy Hill place, in which is now the house on the left going north, at the foot of the hill where the road turns off going to Mt. Cheaha.

I had scarlet fever while living there and almost died.  My throat had to be lanced twice.  Once, Dr. Stephens had Mama go into the garden, which was back of the house, and get a toad frog and cut it open, and when he lanced my throat he put it on it while the frog was still warm and bound it on.  My throat got well then.  While I was sick, Papa and Mama had a hard time caring for me and became very worn out.  People with children were afraid to come and help for fear of taking the disease home to their children.  But a number of men took time about coming and sitting on a big stump in the yard every night until I was better—and all that came left some money for me.

Papa bought me a book of nursery rhymes, my first book, and he and Mama read it to me as I recuperated.  I memorized a number of verses like, “Ba, Ba, Black Sheep”, “Little Betty Blue, Lost Her Holiday Shoe”, and “Three Blind Mice”.  How I loved that book!

I had earaches a lot after having scarlet fever and probably was badly spoiled, for they said when I got well I cried nearly all the time.  I don’t recall that, but I do remember two different times thinking, “Maybe if I cry a little louder I can get what I want”.  It didn’t work either time.  Papa always called me “Little Bitty”.  Once day he told me I was too little to whip, but they couldn’t have a little girl that cried all the time.  He said he was going to carry me off and throw me away.  He got a sack and put me in it and tied it up.  Then he carried me off to the woods, kicking and screaming.  I yelled so loudly he came back and talked to me.  He said if I would hush and not cry, he would take me home.  I promised I would and I did, so he took me out of the sack and carried me home.  I guess I cried a lot after that, for he put me in a sack another time, but I hushed before he carried me off.

There was a spring a little northeast of the house.  One day Mama left me to watch Elsie for a short time.  I saw some wild turkeys scratching in the leaves near the spring and ran out there to watch them.  Some sweet Williams were blooming near the spring, so I forgot about Elsie and started picking flowers.  When I saw Mama calling frantically, I ran home.  She was carrying Elsie and both were crying.  Elise had crawled up to the fireplace and pulled a pot of boiling beans over and scalded her hand. 

There was another spring around the hill southwest of the house where Mama washed clothes.  Our hog, Sam, lived in a pen near this spring.  When Sam broke his leg, Chester and I would go every day to scratch his stomach and pet him.  I loved Sam and was heartbroken when he was butchered.  We also owned sheep while living there.

During our time there, Mama grew some corn beads in the yard and made a necklace.  Willow Hill made a hot dish mat with them and gave it to Mama.  She kept it until we came to Texas.  Braskey Hill made a wooden bicycle.  How he made it, I didn’t know, but he did and rode it to our house from his house on the hill.

A branch ran north of the house and down across the road.  ‘Possum haws grew along the branch.  We climbed the bushes and ate the haws.  They weren’t good and I really don’t know why we ate them.  Hickory trees grew there and when they started making leaves in spring they looked like hands with the fingers opening.  I loved to play with them.

The largest log I ever saw at the foot of the hill, by the Hill Branch.  There was a sawmill there for a time.  It was a pine log. Papa stood by it and it was thicker than he was tall.  He was 5 ft. 9 ½ in. tall.

We next lived “in the mountains” in Grandpa Strickland’s new house on the hill above where I was born.  Big oak trees grew in the front and all around the north side of the yard.  Tall pines on the south and dogwoods bloomed around the yard.

Our neighbors were the Lee Carters, Henry Thompsons, and Linnie (Mrs. John) Cline.

While we lived in the mountains, hawks were killing our baby chickens.  One day one was flying low, calling, “Chickie”.  Mama ran to get the gun and killed it.  The Thompsons ate hawks, so we carried it to them.  Mrs. Thompson asked us to wait so she could give us a wing.  They had a big, pretty hawk fan by the fireplace to kindle the fire.  Mrs. Thompson gave us a wing and told us to spread it out to dry for a fan.  Chester explained it to Mama and she made a fan for us.

One day Papa and Mama were in the field and we were at the house.  Mountain laurel was in full bloom along Pretty Branch.  We gathered our arms full of the blossoms.  When we got to the house a hawk was flying overhead.  Chester, only six years old, said he was going to shoot that hawk.  Elsie and I sat down in the floor in the hall and started making bouquets.  Chester climbed up and got the gun over the door.  He sat down in a chair at the end of the hall and loaded it.  After he got the shell in, something happened and it went off.  Fortunately, the barrel was pointing toward the floor.  Papa and Mama heard the shot and came to the house as fast as they could run.  They were happy to find us all alive.  My uncle, Columbus Dingler, told me that they lived in this house when he was a young boy.  They always wondered why there was a hole in the floor.

Another time while living there, we were going to visit Grandpa Elder.  We saw a rattlesnake crawling toward the yard.  Mama got us back into the house and got the shotgun.  She got on her knees, took aim and shot the snake’s head off.  The gun kicked Mama over and she was pretty shaken up, but we went on to Grandpa’s.  When we returned, the ducks were eating the snake.  Mama thought it was poison and would kill the ducks, so she hung it up in a tree to show Papa when he came home.  This was the only rattlesnake I ever saw in Alabama.  Mama shot another rattlesnake and another hawk in Texas, killing them both.  These were the only times I ever saw her shoot a gun, unless in target practice with a rifle just for fun.

Sometimes in summer, Papa had to keep the wagon wheels soaked in the branch to keep the tires from running off.  Sometimes they would anyway and he would have to stop and wedge them to keep them on.  One Sunday morning we stopped in the branch on the way to church to let them soak a little.  While they were soaking, Papa said, “I know where there are some ripe apples”, and he got out of the wagon, climbed over the rail fence and went off across the field.  He soon returned with a hat full of apples—a kind of old gold color with rusty mottles on them, but, oh, how juicy and good!  Papa said they were Shockley apples.  We went along to church, eating apples.

Often, we stopped at the High Falls Branch below Grandpa Elder’s to let the horses drink.  Alders grew along this branch, their yellow powdery curls lining the banks with gold dust and sprinkling it on the water.  We were always thirsty, and Papa would take off his hat, rake the gold dust aside and dip up water on the brim for us to drink.  How he ever had a nice looking hat I don’t know, but he would do anything for us.

After living in the mountains, we lived in the house that Grandpa Elder built for us on the hill just south of Pretty Branch on the big road.  That winter we had twelve inches of snow.  When Papa got up that morning, he woke us calling, “Wake up, wake up and look out.  Mother Nature has been picking her geese.”  Chester and I had just recovered from the measles, and Elise was breaking out with them, so we couldn’t go out in the snow.  Papa went rabbit hunting.  He came back covered with snow and said he had fallen into a well.  He was walking across the field east of the road near the branch when suddenly he went down.  Fortunately, it was a shallow well with no water, and a lot of things fell in with him so he could climb out.  He thought it was funny.  He said he was glad no one had seen him.  But Uncle Wych came out that afternoon and asked, “Albert, what happened to you this morning?  You were walking across the field and suddenly you went out of sight.”  They had a big laugh.  Uncle Wych knew the well was there.  Someone had covered it with canes from the bank of the branch and the snow had covered the canes so it looked like the ground.

Papa soon took the measles (Mama had both measles and mumps when she was a child).  Papa wouldn’t break out and was so terribly sick.  People said give him a lot of hot drinks.  Mama made hot tea of everything she could think of for him.  Bill Cline brought some sheep pills to make tea and said it was “good medicine”.  He was the only one in the country who had sheep then.  I don’t know if Mama made tea with them or not, but Papa still wouldn’t break out and his temperature went higher and higher and he was so thirsty.  Mama set the cedar bucket of water by his bed.  Water froze in the bucket, so he drank ice water all night and the next morning he was broken out.

Although Mr. Mitchell, a rather, low, heavy-built man, lived in a nice home, had a sweet and gracious wife, and raised a nice family, he never put on shoes in summer.  Went everywhere he went barefoot.  One day we saw him pass on the front wheels of his wagon, driving an ox that was wearing a bell that rang every step he took, which was not often, for he was going so slow we almost had to take sight by something to tell he was moving.  Late that afternoon we heard a furious rattling sound coming up the road.  Soon there came Mr. Mitchell’s ox running, pitching and bucking, the wagon wheels hitting the ground first on one side of the road, then on the other, and the bell ringing furiously.  He went toward home “rattly bang, rattly bang!”  We wondered where Mr. Mitchell was.  Soon there he came walking up the road through the dust barefoot.  Said old Ball ran away with him down Gray Hill, threw him off and ran off and left him.  He was not hurt, but plenty mad at old Ball as he walked home.

When Grandpa Elder built a new house near the spring and moved into it, Uncle Hartwell Elder moved into Grandpa’s old house, and we moved to Uncle Hartwell’s place near Macedonia.  Uncle Hartwell’s boys came back to gather the corn, which was in new ground over the hillside.  It seems that new grounds were mostly on hillsides so steep that it was difficult to walk on them unless you had a short leg and a long leg—and it was extremely difficult to drive a wagon on them.  But these boys drove the wagon on this hillside.  Soon it turned over and slid down the hill.  They had to come to the house and get something to lift it up.  All the corn poured out and they had to pick it up and put it back into the wagon.  Soon Wyatt and Floyd got into a fight.  As they fought, they would roll downhill, then get up and start fighting all over.  Hilliard couldn’t do anything with tem so he got on one of the mules and came by going to get Uncle Hartwell to straighten them out.  It took them several days pulling corn and fighting, but they finally got all the corn out.

Uncle Rich Carter’s boys were great fighters, too.  One time we were at Uncle Rich’s when Harrison and Whit had a fight.  They fought all over the kitchen and finally Whit ran and grabbed a flaming stick of wood from the fireplace and started at Harrison with it.  Their uncle, Dock Carter, who was sitting by the fire, jumped up and grabbed it and threw it out the door into the garden.  That stopped the fight.

Another time, we were there when Brooks and Whit had a fight.  Brooks was grown, Whit was younger, with Harrison between them.  Brooks was sitting at the parlor table writing a letter to his girlfriend, May McKenzie.  Whit kept slipping up behind him and reading it.  Brooks chased him out several times, but he kept coming back.  Finally, Brooks got onto him and Whit got angry and started fighting.  Brooks didn’t want to hurt him and would hold him to keep from getting hurt.  Uncle Rich and Aunt Sara were not at home and we were sitting on the ground in the yard watching Harrison draw pictures in the dust with a stick.  Harrison was a good entertainer and we were having a good time.  When the fight started, I forgot the pictures and enjoyed the fight.  They fought all over the big house and fell out the door, dragging a chair after them.  Brooks was defending himself.  Whit was so mad he was crying and fighting like a wildcat.  His nose was bleeding, his hair down over his face and his shirttail out, suspenders broken and pants barely hanging on.  Dora and Ola, who were older, were crying and begging them to stop.  They fought all over the front yard, through the space between the big house and kitchen, which cornered, then, fought all over the back yard.  I don’t remember how it ended, I just recall watching it.

I never knew “Aunt Sidney Newsome” until we moved to Macedonia.  She was not my aunt.  She had married Uncle Gene Newsome after Aunt Lizzie, Mama’s sister, died.  Uncle Gene and Aunt Lizzie had two girls, Cora and Exa.  He and Aunt Sidney had five girls: Ola, Dona, Mary, Rosa and Lula.  They were our neighbors and we loved them.  Uncle Gene had died, and Cora and Exa were married.

Here, at Macedonia, a peddler in his hack came around every so often.  Mama would buy things from him, usually paying for them with eggs.  One time, a foot peddler came with a pack on his back and spent the night with us.  He said he was a Russian Jew and hadn’t been in America long.  His English was so broken we could barely understand him but he was interesting.  So different from anyone we had known.  Mama bought a red checked tablecloth from him and he gave her a pair of beautiful linen towels for his night’s lodging.

Mama took orders from people and got a thirty-eight piece set of beautiful dishes, and the company sent her a set of knives, forks and spoons, and the loveliest thin china teapot, cream pitcher and sugar bowl for promptness.  They were packed in a barrel of sawdust.  Papa brought the barrel home and put it on the porch and we all gathered around as he unpacked each object so very carefully.  They were all so pretty and we were so proud of them.  I still have the teapot, pretty as new, sitting on the mantel in the dining room.

I suppose I got my love for the woods from Mama, for it was her delight to ramble in the woods.  In the spring she would come home with armfuls of flowers for bouquets.  If our fireplaces were smooth enough she whitewashed them inside and set pitchers of dogwood, ivy or pink honeysuckle in them.  If a fireplace was too rough, she made a screen for it by making a frame and tacking white cloth over it.  She got ferns and leaves of all shapes and laid them on it.  With a pine top for a sprinkler, she sprinkled them either with bluing water or water with ink in it, or water with soot from the chimney mixed with it.  When she took the leaves off, there was the print of all those leaves on a blue or black dappled background.

She embroidered pillow shams with beautiful red roses for the beds and crocheted lace for pillowcases and scarves.  She loved pretty things and made us pretty clothes.  A few of the little girls wore their dresses half way between their knees and ankles, but Mama made ours just below the knees, usually with a tuck or two in them, so if they shrank or we grew too tall, she could let them down.

There was a tragic occurrence in Shinbone Valley that I shall never forget.  Early one crisp fall morning, while we were living at Macedonia, Papa went to the barn to feed the stock before breakfast.  He had finished and stepped out into the road when he saw Bill Cline and his son, Jake, coming up the road.  Mr. Cline was carrying a shotgun.

The sun was barely up above the hills to the east and Papa wondered what had brought them out so early, as they were about four to five miles from their home already.  As they neared, Papa said, “Good morning, Mr. Cline”.  Mr. Cline spoke and Papa saw that something was wrong, for his face was ashen and his voice sounded unnatural.  Soon he asked, “Have you seen my girl, Dink?”  Papa said he hadn’t, and Mr. Cline said, “She’s run off with James Phillips and I’m going to find them and kill them both.”

Papa talked with him and told him he had better go back home or he would get himself in trouble and would be sorry, but they kept on walking up the road.  Papa came to the house and told Mama about it, saying how glad he was that he could say he hadn’t seen them.  If they had come to him, and he had married them, there is no telling what Mr. Cline would have done!

That evening, between sundown and dark, a number of men or horses rode up to our yard.  I recall that I knew only one of them, Morgan Dover, the son of my Great-Uncle Sherman and Aunt Josie.  He did the talking, saying, “Albert, saddle your horse and get your gun and come with us.  Bill Cline has killed a man.”  Papa asked, “Who?” and Morgan said, “John Ed Phillips.”

As Papa got ready they told him how it happened; Mr. Cline and Jake had gone over the Horseblock Mountain and as they went down the other side, they met Mr. Phillips and son, John, who was around fourteen years old.  They were the father and brother of James Phillips.  Mr. Cline had stopped them and asked where James and Dink were.  (If I remember correctly, Dink’s real name was Cindy).  Mr. Phillips told him that they were married and he had taken them to the train.  Mr. Cline then leveled his shotgun at Mr. Phillip’s head and shot him off his wagon, scattering his brains in the road.  John turned the wagon around and ran the mules back to Oxford for help.

We were horrified.  Mama begged Papa not to go, he might be killed.  They all tried to assure her that Mr. Cline wouldn’t kill anyone else, and they all rode off with Papa.  Aunt Sidney and her girls had come to spend the night with us and how glad we were.  We barricaded the doors and soon put out the lights and huddled together.  No one would go into another room to sleep, so all eleven of us piled on two beds and the cradle, but not to sleep.

We heard Sport, Aunt Sidney’s dog, barking at home, and just knew Mr. Cline was passing by there for he surely wouldn’t take the road back home—he would go through the woods.  We were afraid he would kill Sport.  I lay there shaking with fright, listening to every sound, imagining he was coming to kill us, and just knowing he would kill Papa and all those other men.

About midnight, we heard cries coming from the south—heartrending cries, coming closer and closer.  Soon we heard the “clop clop” of many horses hooves and the rattle of a buggy.  The cries grew louder and louder as they passed and went up the road.  If you have never heard a big strong man crying at the top of his voice in the middle of the night, and when you were already scared to death, you can’t know how we felt.

Papa put his horse in the lot and came in and told us about it.  There was very little sleep in our house that night.  The posse had gone gathering more men as they went.  The sheriff came in a buggy and joined them.  After coming in hearing distance of Mr. Cline’s house, they heard his dogs barking as if welcoming someone.  They supposed it was Mr. Cline and Jake getting home.  They tied their horses some distance from the house and walked, surrounding it.  Everything was dark and quiet.  The dogs didn’t even bark.

Uncle Tol Strickland, who was Justice of the Peace, and a good friend of Mr. Cline’s, went to the edge of the yard, in front of the house, and called, “Bill, get up and come with us.  We’ve come after you.”  For a little while there was no sound, then a knocking around in the house and some low talk.  The men held their breath, some expecting to see a blaze of fire from a door or window.  After what seemed an eternity, Mr. Cline said, “Come in, gentlemen, I’m neither going to run nor fight.”  Uncle Tol told him to make a light. He lit a lamp, and split some pine splinters and started a fire in the fireplace.  All the men marched in.

When he saw them coming in, a whole room full of them, he looked frightened, like a trapped animal.  They assured him they weren’t going to hurt him, but would protect him if anyone tried to.  His mother tired to give him something wrapped in paper, saying it was potatoes.  She didn’t want her boy to go hungry, but he wouldn’t take it.  Some of the men wondered if maybe it wasn’t a pistol.  Mr. Cline got in the buggy with the sheriff and the men on horseback rode along with them, each one dropping out as he reached home.

Papa said Mr. Cline talked some as they rode along, very much as if nothing had happened, until they neared Uncle Tol’s house, then he became quiet.  When Uncle Tol stopped at home, he said a few words to him, shook hands, telling him goodbye, and then Mr. Cline started crying, and cried all the way up the road and before reaching our house his cries grew louder.  Papa said it was because he considered the two of them his best friends and from our house on he would be with strangers.

He was tried and sentenced to prison.  His folks left Shinbone Valley, moving somewhere nearer the prison so they could visit him.  Someone from our community who visited him once said that he had wasted away from a large, strong man to a mere shadow of his former self.  He didn’t live many years, and died in prison.  We attended Mr. Phillip’s funeral and it was so sad, not only for his folks but to think of Mr. Cline and his family and what trouble they were in.

Papa bought a farm ‘way down the Big Kichemedogee, not far north of the lower bridge and we moved from Macedonia.  When moving time came, Papa and Mama took a load of things down there, among them, the chickens.  They unloaded the coops, then Papa took the chickens out, handing them to Mama, and she put them in the chicken house counting them as she did.  It was about dusk when they got them all in, and as she put the last chicken in, saying, “Sixty-seven chickens” a big owl sitting in a nearby tree burst out with a loud “wha wha wha, who who who-ah!”  Papa and Mama came home laughing about how happy that owl was to hear about all those chickens.  But they had fastened the door tight before leaving to be sure he didn’t get any of them.

We never had any trouble with owls getting our chickens, but one morning Papa came in from feeding the horses and said, “There are sixteen chickens lying in the house dead.”  Something had dug a hole under the wall and got into the house.  Papa said it was a mink because they were killed just the way a mink kills them.  He took Rattler, our hound puppy, and tracked it down across the field into the pasture, across one branch and to another where the trail ended.  The bank of the branch was slick where animals had been going in and out and mink tracks were all around.  Papa came to the house and got the mattock and shovel.  We went with him and on the way he told us that minks den in creek banks.  They would go under the water and dig a hole upward until they are above the water and there make their dens.  He and Mama dug half the morning, tearing that branch bank to pieces, but couldn’t find a den, so we went home.

This home was a good place to live.  The house was made of logs, consisting of a big house and kitchen, each with a fireplace.  The two houses sat corner to corner, the northwest corner of the big house to the corner of the kitchen with a space the width of a door between, as many houses were built.  A veranda ran the length of the big house and joined the kitchen, making a little breezeway between them.

There was a barn and stables with lofts for fodder, and an apple and peach orchard that was loaded with fruit that first year.  An ice storm came when the peaches were almost as large as marbles, covering them with ice, but it didn’t hurt them.  Mr. Ivan Stansell said that if the wind was from the south or east on February 14th, there would be fruit that year—and if it was from the north, there wouldn’t.  Papa said that after Mr. Stansell told him that he watched it every year and never saw it fail.  It failed once, about four years ago.  The wind was from the north part of the day, yet there was an abundance of fruit that year.  But, they say all signs fail in Texas.  Papa put out young peach trees that bore peaches that year.

In the front yard were two cherry trees that made the most delicious cherries that were almost black when ripe.  Branches grew almost to the ground on these trees, making them easy to climb and when those cherries began to ripen, we would go up those trees after them.  The branches were small and easy to break, so Papa laid the law down to us, “Don’t climb those cherry trees, wait for the cherries to fall, then get them.”  That was hard to do, but we obeyed.

One day, Myrtle Carter saw the ripe cherries in the top of threes and up a tree she went.  We yelled at her, “Papa said don’t climb the trees”, but on she went.  We told Mama and she got her down.  When Papa came home and saw the broken limbs he pulled a little one off and came in saying, “Alright, who climbed the cherry tree?”  Mama came to our rescue and explained it to him, so we were safe from a spanking.

The yard was almost blood-red clay until Papa hauled in sand from Sandy Bottoms and covered it, and made us a sand pile to play in.  It was here that we lived when Papa worked the Sandy Bottoms, where we played with Indian relics.  Strawberries grew in the woods and round the fields at this place and how good they were from our tall preserve dish with cream and sugar.  A big red haw bush grew in the chimney corner and bore red haws that looked like little red apples and were good to eat.  The, there was the wild cherry tree by the pasture fence where the birds ate cherries and got drunk.  Not far from the road on the south side of Kichemedogee, after crossing the lower bridge, were two or three large blackhaw trees that bore the largest blackhaws I have ever seen, much larger than those that grow wild in Texas.  Those were the only blackhaws I saw in Alabama.

One Sunday morning on the way to church, we crossed the bridge and were going around the ill near those blackhaw trees where a trumpet vine grew up a tree and hung out over the road.  It was in full bloom and so pretty; but shortly before reaching it, Papa stopped the horses and said, “There’s a snake in those vines.”  Then he drove a little nearer and we could see it.  A big, long snake, coiled up among the vines.  Papa said it was a coach whip and that coach whips don’t bite, but wrap themselves around their victims and whip them to death.  We got scared and began to beg to get away from there.  Papa drove out of the road and around and we went on our way.  As we rounded the next curve and turned up the creek, a flying squirrel sailed out of a tall pine tree, floating to the ground. Then, it ran across the road ahead of us and up another tree.  This was the last flying squirrel I ever saw.

Uncle Campbell and Aunt Lulie lived near us, so it was a good place to live, only we had to carry water from a spring at the foot of the hill for everything.  This was the first place we had lived that didn’t have a well.  It was about two and a half miles to church and school, and that was a long way for little kids to walk in cold weather.  So, Papa sold the place and we moved back nearer the center of the community to a house at the turn of the road above the mill toward Mt. Zion.

This house was made like the other one, only the big house was of planks and the porch ran the length of the kitchen, joining the big house making a breezeway.  There was a room over the kitchen with a stairway leading to it, making five rooms in all.  The well was on the veranda with a curb, a windlass and “teekle” and oaken bucket.  There was a big barn and shed all across the lot and a cellar at the edge of the yard.

Apples and peaches galore grew there, and currants.  A big hickory tree was in the front yard and bore the largest hickory nuts.  A hackberry tree was also in the yard—the only one I recall seeing in Alabama.  Mama raised dahlias and verbenas and we had guineas and turkeys.

Down in the pasture was a good fishing hole in Little Kichemedogee.  When school was out in the afternoons, we would grab our fishing lines and some worms, run down there and break down some elderberry stalks for poles, and start pulling out the mudcats.  They were not good to eat, so we threw them back, but it was fun catching them.  Once Papa and Mama went with us fishing in Big Kichemedogee, below the ford and dam, under a big pine tree, and I caught my first real fish, a good-size trout.  Was I happy!

I always loved Aunt Hixie Strickland, and thought her the prettiest girl in the world.  She seesawed, tramped the woods and played with us.  She dressed so pretty, and came into church holding up her long skirts so daintily, and looking just so.  I hoped that some day I would be just like her.  But when I grew up girls didn’t wear long sweeping skirts, and I didn’t want to look just so.  I wanted to be just me.  But in one way I was like her.  I tramped the woods and fields with my nephews and nieces, played and swam with them, and enjoyed it as much as they did.

Aunt Hixie and Donnie Smith were pals, and married cousins, John and Othal Hudson, of Erin, in a double wedding at our house.  They and Mama gathered flowers and decorated the fireplace and mantel and Papa married them in front of the fireplace, with a houseful of people there.

One Sunday Whit Newberry asked Papa to go with him and Lovie Dempsey to Georgia to get married.  They went that afternoon in Whit’s buggy, from a singing in Mt. Zion.  If I remember correctly, they went to Bowden, Georgia and called by telephone to the County Clerk at Carrolton, county seat.  He went to the courthouse and issued a marriage license, got the County Judge, who read the ceremony over the telephone to Papa.  He relayed it to them, and relayed their part back to the judge, and so they were married.

It was here that we got our organ—the most beautiful organ in the whole world.  Papa traded a little horse for it.  It was as wide as a piano with the same number of octaves and when the organ was played it seemed I could hear the angels blowing their trumpets.  We were all so proud of it and wanted to play it.

Mary Newsome came to live with us and she and I started taking music lessons.  When I came in from school in the afternoon, I had to sit down and practice for thirty minutes.  Finger exercises or picking out tunes with one finger without any lessons.  I wanted to go outside and play, or go fishing, but I had to get in my practice.  I’m glad now that Mama made me do it, for after I learned to play, making music was one of the most enjoyable things I ever did.

Yes, it was here that Mary came to live with us.  After her older sisters married, Mary became a rebellious “teenager”, causing Aunt Sidney a lot of worry.  She came to Papa and Mama and asked if Mary could live with us.  She like a big sister to us, and Papa and Mama treated her like a daughter, though they were young themselves.  She had beautiful red hair and was very attractive.  Harrison Carter was her boyfriend.

The millpond was nearby.  It was beautiful with willow and poplar trees, and cattails growing around the edge, mirrored in its water.  Tall, long-legged birds waded around and stood on one leg and dreamed in the sun.  Ducks and other waterfowl swam around, fish leaped, little frogs chirped, and bull frogs “Budger-rummed” loudly. 

Papa sometimes hauled goods for Mr. Fuller’s store, taking railroad crossties to Lineville or Pyriton, and bringing back merchandise.  Sometimes he would bring home a case of soda pop, which we really enjoyed.  There was also a powder, much like Kool-Aid, in little bottles that he got in orange, lemon and strawberry flavors. 

The pop bottle caps had cork in them.  We would take it out and when Mama baked cakes, she would give us a little dough and we would bake tiny ruffled muffins in them for our playhouse.  Papa would also bring home big black powder buckets from the mines at Pyriton to use around the house and barn—they were very useful.

Our last year in Alabama and this little valley, living at Grandpa Elder’s place, is filled with so many beautiful memories.  It was such a wonderful place to live, with so many interesting things around.  It seems that grandfather’s homes were always wonderful places—but when it was our home with Grandpa and Grandma living just down the road, it was even better.

The house was not large compared to houses today—though larger than we had lived in.  The banisters had been removed from the north end of the front porch, but were still all around the back porch, and down by the kitchen, which was both kitchen and dining room.  The garden joined the yard on the east surrounded by a picket fence.  The smoke house, which sat in the garden, opened into the yard.  On the north side of it was a big pear tree.  South of it was the well under shelter, the ash hopper, then a Yates apple tree at the corner of the garden.  These apples ripened just right for Christmas.  The peach orchard and quince tree were at the back of the garden, and other young apple trees were by the cotton house.  Inside the garden were the Concord grape vines on frames and below the garden was a scuppernong vine on an arbor as big as a room.  And, oh, those scuppernongs!! We could never get enough of them.  They were a large grape that grew single on the vine, not in clusters.  And, when ripe, were an old gold color—and yum, yum, that flavor!  On down the tail through the little cotton patch was the plum thicket by the pasture, with red and yellow plums and still further on, by the pasture fence, was a Shockley apple tree.

Back of the cow lot was a big black walnut tree that bore bushels of big delicious walnuts, and by the horse lot were bushes loaded with figs.  In the middle of the field toward Little Kichemedogee was a large apple tree that grew from a seed.  It was different from any apple tree in the country.  The best pie and jelly-making apple to be found.  It furnished apples for the community, then bushels went to waste.

Blackberries grew along the road in front of the house and all around the fields.  The berries were ours for the picking, to eat, can, and make jam—and oh those pies!  Wild strawberries grew along the roads and were better than the tame ones—huckleberries grew in the hills, and gooseberries.  We didn’t eat gooseberries, but the huckleberries and huckleberry pies were out of this world.  There were huckleberries and huckleberries—hog huckleberries and bush huckleberries grew thick, but those growing on little low bushes were the best and less plentiful.  Mama knew where they grew and went after them.  One time, Chester and I went on Gray Hill with Barney and Vistula Strickland.  Barney and Chester went over the hill to Union Spring and came back with buckets full of berries—Vistula and I didn’t get many.  We spent too much time sitting down counting to see who had the most.  Of course, we ate all we wanted.

Muscadine vines ran up the tall trees along the branches and bore large purple grapes that grew wild and single on the vine like the scuppernongs.  Summer grapes and winter grapes were in the woods.  Mama gathered summer grapes and put them down in syrup to eat in winter.  Maypops and pawpaws grew wild in the fields for anyone who liked them.

Hickory nuts grew in the woods, and chinquapins and chestnuts—though not many chestnuts since most people were not conservative with them.  Some people, when chestnuts began to ripen, would take their axes and go hunting.  When they found a tree they would cut it down and pick the nuts off.  The burs are very prickly and difficult to open but when fully ripe the nuts fall out and could have easily been picked off the ground.  But some couldn’t wait, afraid they wouldn’t get there first.  So the trees were scarce except in the mountains.  Uncle Rich’s boys often went to the mountains in winter and came back with pockets full of chestnuts—occasionally, Papa found some.  I remember seeing a big chestnut tree lying by the road near Good Hope church—the only time I recall ever going there.  It had been cut down and there were still a few chestnuts on it and we picked them off.  There were horse chestnuts in the woods, but they were not as good.

Mary was still with us, and we loved her so very much, but Mama saw that we made ourselves scarce when Harrison came.  When I would come home from school in the afternoon and see them in the front room, holding hands and looking so soulfully at each other, I would hurry through the house, grab something to eat and hie it to the pine grove and sassafras thicket to look for strawberries, or watch the birds build nests, or just listen to the pine trees swishing, just wishing Harrison was somewhere else.  He was taking Mary away from us!

Mary decided to go and live with a young couple, Harrison’s cousin, Washie and Minnie Carter.  We all begged her not to, but Minnie wanted her to come and came after her.  Mama helped her get her things together, all of us crying, including Mary.  She went.  Mama wrote Aunt Sidney, and she went and took her home.  She stayed there a short time and she and Harrison were married.

When Papa was preaching at Campbell’s Crossroads, Mr. Charlie Dowdey gave him an ice cream watermelon—a big, long, yellow meated melon—the best we had ever tasted.  Papa planted some of the seed and raised a big one just like it.

We could hardly wait for the melon to ripen.  We would go to the patch every day and thump it.  At first it would say “plink, plink”, and then it said, “plank”—and finally it said “plunk, plunk”.  We told Papa and the next day, about mid-morning, he came carrying it on his shoulder.  We ran to meet him, fairly drooling.  Mama and all gathered round while he cut it.  Then, what a feast.  It was as good as the first—good watermelons were really a treat in the summer, as they still are.

Uncle Rich and Uncle Campbell Carter were brothers—Uncle Rich married Mama’s sister, and Uncle Campbell married Papa’s.  We lived near them at different times and were with them a lot.  Uncle Rich and Uncle Campbell were both “head chucklers”, or claimed to be.  I loved them but was a little afraid of Uncle Rich.  He was always going to chuckle his kids’ heads.  I think his bark was louder than his bite, for I don’t recall ever seeing him chuckle a head.

At home we were allowed to talk and laugh and giggle as long as we wanted after going to bed at night, but at Uncle Rich’s, when we went to bed we were supposed to go to sleep.  If we started talking Uncle Rich would call out “Shut up in there and go to sleep”.  Sometimes we would cover our heads and whisper, but he had good ears and would say, “All right, I’ll come in there and chuckle your heads.”  That quieted us.

I can see Aunt Sarah, a short woman with golden earrings, which she always wore.  She was always busy, cooking, sewing or doing something.  She could make the best sausage of anyone—wrapping it in corn shucks and hanging it in the smokehouse to cure.  She called it “sassage”.  She also called onions “inguns”, and rich pine for starting fires (kindling) “lightard”.

There were always peanuts at Uncle Rich’s and we ate them any time we wanted.  Much of the time, the boys had a pet ground squirrel or two to eat with them, going into their pockets after the peanuts and sitting on their shoulders to eat them.

One day at Uncle Rich’s, we kids were out playing, when A.Z., who was around fourteen, asked if we would like to go snipe hunting.  He went to the barn and got a tow sack and started off across the field, telling us to follow.  We followed to a big gully.  He jumped down into it and we all jumped in after him.  It was deep and wide with steep banks, and we went up it until we came to a narrow place.  Here, A.Z. stopped and asked who wanted to hold the sack.  We all did, but he said since Dewitt was the youngest, he could.  He demonstrated to Dewitt just how to hold the sack in the narrow part of the ditch, saying he would go up the ditch and when we found snipes we would drive them down the ditch and into the sack, telling him not to let any of them get away.  We climbed out and left Dewitt holding that sack every so carefully.  We went up the ditch a short distance, then A.Z. started across the field toward home.  When we asked where he was going, he said, “Going home.  It’s just a joke.  That’s the game.  There are no snipes around here.”  So we went to the house and played until Aunt Sarah called us to dinner.  When we sat down Aunt Sarah asked where Dewitt was.  We told her he was down there holding a sack waiting to catch snipes.  She told A.Z. to “Get up from this table right now and go after him”, adding, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself treating your little brother like that.”  I don’t know how the others felt, but I felt mean. A.Z. got him, and when Dewitt came in looking embarrassed and so tired, I felt meaner.  That’s the only time I have ever gone snipe hunting.

Uncle Bill and Aunt Etta Pritchet lived above Macedonia so we didn’t see them very often.  We were at their house one day—the 5th of July.  IN the afternoon we were walking in the cotton fields and found a cotton bloom.  It was red, so we knew it had opened the day before and thought it was something to have a cotton bloom on July the 4th.  Daisy picked it and took it to show Uncle Bill and, of course, he reminded her that meant one less boll of cotton.

Dewey Pate was with us, and while walking, Robert Pritchet said Dewey was going to hell.  Chester, my brother, asked how he knew.  Robert said the preacher said he was for talking in church.  Chester said, “He wouldn’t go to hell for talking in church.”  Robert said, “He will!”  He was sitting on the front sat and was talking to another boy and the preacher stopped and told them they were going to hell.”  Chester said, “I don’t care.  I know more than that preacher and I know he won’t go there for that.”  Daisy took it up, saying, “You don’t know more than that preacher.”  Then I took up for Chester and we had quite an argument.  Dewey never said a word, just looked very unhappy as if he really thought he was going to hell.

On fall nights we watched the fire zigzagging across the mountains, flashing up here, dying down there.  It was fascinating.  There were no forest rangers, or any danger of bad forest fires.  The woods on the mountains and in the valley burned every year, but never did any damage, just burning the dead leaves and pine straw, dead limbs, dead trees and stumps.  The woods were like a beautiful park.  Big tall trees, with just enough underbrush to make it enchanting.  Dogwoods and pink honeysuckles bloomed in spring, and sourwood in summer.  Redbuds scattered here and there, sweet Williams in patches, and an occasional blue iris.  Ferns and berry bushes on the hillsides, violets and baby blue eyes in the lowlands, and tall ferns, white honeysuckle, mountain laurel and sweet bubbies (sweet shrub) on the branches.  The only reason I can think of for no real forest fires, is that the people kept most of the dead trees and limbs especially pine, hauled out for fire wood and kindling.

One Sunday afternoon shortly before we came to Texas, Elsie and I were walking home from Aunt Sidney’s, who lived then on the old McClintock place toward Good Hope.  The woods were thick for a long way.  The leaves had fallen and were dry, and a fire had started and was burning on both sides of the road, not high, just the leaves on the ground and a dead tree stump here and there.  One place there were leaves all across the road that were burning, and a lot of smoke, but the flames were low.  The only way to get by was to run through it or jump over.  We got a way back, made a running start and jumped it, then went on home smelling like smoke.

Seemed we had more adventures on the road to and from Aunt Sidney’s than anywhere.  One time when she lived on Big Kichemedogee, Mary, Elsie, and I went to her house to spend the night.  When we got to the lower bridge it was in a state of disrepair.  The floor had been removed and only the sills and banisters remained—and there was deep water under the bridge!  We didn’t know what to do.  Her house was close and ours was two miles away.  If we went another way it would be about four miles or more to walk ad it would be dark before we could get there—and, we would have to pass the Indian graves.  Mary said, “Let’s walk to sills.”  So we did and when we arrived at Aunt Sidney’s she really got after us for doing that and the next day when she told Mama, she nearly got us all.

One time, May and Myrtle Carter, Elsie and I went to spend the night with Aunt Sidney, Uncle Seph, and Aunt Cora who lived in the house with Aunt Sidney on Uncle Campbell’s place.  While playing in the barn, I steeped on a nail and stuck it in my foot.  It went to the bone.  We kids couldn’t pull it out, so Uncle Seph removed it and bandaged it up with turpentine.  The next day we had a big rain and it was muddy.  I had to walk with a stick, but we started home.  We made it fine all the way up the creek to Red Hill Branch, which was up and rolling.  Grandpa Strickland was sitting on the bank on the other side watching it and told us to wait awhile and it would run down.  We aited and watched.  Finally, he decided we could make it.  If we washed down he would get us.  He directed us, telling us to walk on the upper side of the road.  The water came up under my arms and I, hobbling along with my stick, almost slipped down a number of times.  Grandpa kept encouraging us.  When we got out, wet as dogs and dripping, J. D. Strickland, who was there on a mule, rode across on the lower side of the road just above where the branch runs into the Kichemedogee, and it swam the mule.  We went on home sopping wet.  Mama just knew my food would come off, but it was well in no time.

Once, Elsie and I were coming home from Aunt Sidney’s when we saw a black racer snake lying across the road in front of us.  It was so long it reached almost all the way across the road.  When we saw it we ran back, then stopped to look, and shivered and wondered what to do.  We were afraid to make any sound, afraid it might chase us—we had heard that black racers did that.  We couldn’t go around it because the weeds and briars grew so thickly along the roadside, so we got some rocks and began chunking it.  It didn’t move.  We held a consultation, whispering, “Maybe he was just waiting for us to get closer to chase us.”  We moved in close enough to hit it with rocks.  After waiting and watching for awhile decided maybe it was dead.  We decided to run and jump over it—we looked back after running quite some distance and still it hadn’t moved.  So we went home satisfied it was dead.