John Leland Barton

John Leland Barton

Mr. Leland was 5’7”, weighed 140 pounds in his 70s, and looked in silhouette like a 14 year old boy not finshed growing, but I heard tales about him that were greatly different from the Grandpa I thought I knew. I never knew him to drive a car nor a tractor. He farmed land that had belonged to his father that was almost a mile from a paved road.

But politicians from Montgomery made their way to his out of the way farm to request his support in their election campaigns. He wasn’t rich, was not a society person, yet influential  people  came to seek his help. He served as Beat Committeeman for the Democratic Party for 65 years; he was a constable even longer . He was re-elected every four years.

Rumors said when a fight happened at a dance, someone would go after John Leland Barton to settle things down. It was said he’d walk in and say, O.K. boys, that’s enough “and the fighters would back away from each other. I asked him what kind of gun he carried as constable.

He replied “If you always say what you mean and mean what you say, you don’t have to carry a gun.” It didn’t make sense when he said it to me   and doesn’t really make sense to me now, but it worked. Maybe it was because folks knew when you had a family member dying, he would come sit with the family, then help get things ready for the funeral. If a house burned , he would help fight the fire and bring his tools to help you rebuild. He’d bring his wife, Miss Mamie, over in his wagon to help bring a baby into the world, or help doctor your only horse that was injured. None of his children were seen giving him back talk, yet he didn’t holler or make a lot of threats. He just looked straight at people and they listened.

In 1985, Tuscaloosa News Staff Writer, Bob Kyle, wrote a news story entitled “Little Bit of Rough Weather Can’t Stop This Democrat” about “J. L. Barton, 88, of Ralph, Alabama. Five inches of snow would not prevent him from showing up.. Barton said he had a duty to do, so he got his son, A.B. Barton to drive   him to the scheduled meeting of the Tuscaloosa County Democratic Executive Committee. He was one of the oldest members of the group and the only one that showed up at the court house that Saturday morning.

The picture that accompanied the article showed him heavier since he had stopped doing his own plowing. His lined face was as determined as ever.

The article quoted, “Yes, sir, I started out as a Democrat and I’m going to end up as one. I have a lot of friends who claim they are Republicans, but I don’t hold anything against them. I’ll like them as long as they don’t try to convince me.’

Barton went on to tell of his nine children, eight still living, 28 grandchildren and 36 great grandchildren, and many of the next generations. People come from all over the Southeasst seeking his extensive memory of family relationships to complete their family trees.

 At the age of 95, he was recovering from a broken hip at a local nursing home when family members were called.in because his heart was failing. I drove my mother to the home.  When we entered his room two other daughters were there. He looked at me and winked and said, “This must be the day I’m to kick the bucket to get so many folks over today.” He joked about his own death until his breath got too short for him to talk.   He told a grandson that when my grandmother got dementia he knelt by her bed and asked God to let him live long enough to care for her. He said, “If I’d known I’d live this long I wouldn’t have prayed so hard.”

He was buried with his 50 year Masonic pin in front of the church where he had been Sunday School Superintendent and where he had been married 73 years before.

 

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The Home Place by Annice Graham

The Home Place by Annice Graham | Early Alabama Stories

While doing research for my own writing I found my mother's description of washing clothes in stories she had written for me to type.

Enjoy.....your washing machine.

Dorothy Gast

THE HOME PLACE

by

Annice Graham

I don't know if any of you remember how we happened to have this place. Grandpa was a sawmill owner. The sawmill was a whole village that moved from community to community as he cut. After much of the timber was cut he sold his mill but kept a store or commissary as it was called in those days across the road from his house. Aunt Lora, Grandma's younger sister, worked in the store and was the local telephone operator.

Then came the Depression. Grandpa owed a lot of money and had borrowed on his land to pay his workers and his other debts. The farm was lost.

Although Grandpa farmed and later had odd jobs to help make a living, he was not in good health and being deaf made it hard to get jobs. Grandma boarded the schoolteachers and they went to the curb market for years, but never had enough income to hold onto their home. Some of their children weren't financially able to take on the mortgage; others' plans did not include taking on this obligation. Daddy Buster borrowed money from Mr. Cleveland Partrich and paid off all Grandpa's obligations, and secured their home for the rest of their lives.

We bought an antebellum home at Lock 8 that the government was disposing of, tore it down and had the lumber moved to the place where we built the house where our children grew up. Grandpa Barton was in charge of building the house and it turned out to be a more modest style than the original.

Grandpa and Grandma continued to curb market and Grandma went to work as school lunch supervisor at Romulus school next door. Later she went to work at Jemison School in Tuscaloosa,

For several years we had sharecroppers. When John was old enough to plow, Daddy bought an older tractor and we farmed until I went to work as lunchroom manager at Romulus. When the elementary school in this area were consolidated to Fosters, I became the lunchroom supervisor at Myrtlewood.

When our children were going to school at Romulus the teachers would let then come home early to pick cotton, gather corn, or other crops on the farm like peas popcorn or peanuts.

Do you remember how I could help Grandma kill and dress 15 or 20 chickens to carry to curb market? We also helped gather and prepare vegetables and even flowers for market.

Water was always a problem on this farm. We had a 65-foot dug well, which proved to be unreliable. When Grandpa's well went dry we pumped water up the hill for them. The well could not provide enough water for two families, so Daddy Buster had a 95-foot well bored.

Before that we had gotten water from the school well. The children carried water for the school a quarter of a mile for me to wash clothes the next day. I times I had to carry clothes to the well in front of the sharecropper's house near the back field almost as far as the school house. It was about 20 feet deep with plenty of water.
With three small children I would hitch the mule to a ground slide, load the smallest children on the dirty clothes, and soaps to make the trip down the crooked trail to the well.

After getting the children to a safe area I would draw water out of the well to fill the tub and a big black wash pot while Dorothy was keeping the others safe away from the well. Small limbs and leaves were burned under the washpot to keep the water hot, hopefully boiling, in the washpot. Then I used a stick to pull the clothes out to the cold water in the tub to hand scrub, rinse and wring dry enough to hang on tree limbs, bushes and sometimes grass.

I carried a few biscuits with butter and syrup poured into a hole in the biscuit and we ate them for our lunch while the clothes dried. You could put pant stretchers in men's pants so they would need little ironing before wearing. When clothes were dried we had to fold them, put clean clothes back in the tub, set the babies on top, and head back to the house to cook supper and feed up before Daddy got home.

When Dorothy was about 5, John 3, amd Mary was a baby not old enough to walk, we hung the clothes on the pasture fence. John wanted to help so he went to the wash pot and stepped on live coals and blistered the bottoms of his feet. For weeks I had two babies that could not walk. He soon learned to crawl to get his toys or something to eat.

That is why I loved my first washing machine so much. When we moved to Pascagoula, Mississippi, we bought a washing machine and I took in washing from our boarders and all the women who worked in the Engel's shipyard. I would deliver the clean, ironed clothes in Johnny's little red wagon with the kids following behind. I made as much as Daddy.

That is why I always enjoyed having a washer and dryer in my later years. It was a joy to have an easier way to do a necessary job.

Annice Graham
in My Memories
c 1989

The Home Place by Annice Graham | Early Alabama Stories  Alabama Pioneers.com

New Year's Eve

Saturday, December 31, 2011

 

Spring in December 

Quince bushes have tentative red blooms on bare twigs, daffodils show buds reaching out of the warming earth, and periwinkle is putting out new greenery and topping  it with blue flowers. What’s going on? Days of soaking rain followed by 60 degree days have Mother Nature confused. The week after Christmas feels like spring  despite forecasts of freezing nights next week.

 

It has been said the Winter in Alabama lasts 3 weeks, Spring and Fall last 2 months, and summer is forever. It was a great day to work outside in the flower beds and plant sprigs to grow into English dogwood or redbuds. The sun made it warmer in the yard than the house and the dogs stretched and dozed in the warm sun.

 

The last Christmas decorations are down and packed for next year. The clichés about time speeding up as we age are reinforced by seasonal obligations and we go through the motions yearly. Many hours of addressing Christmas cards with personalized  messages are wasted as deadlines pass and we revert to e-greetings leaving cards in their original boxes. Some of us just ain’t organized enough to get them out in time.

At twilight my nephew hosted a cookout, bonfire, and later fireworks. Leaning back in the chair by the fire I looked at red sparks flying upward against the darkness. A bright sliver of moon and sprinkling of stars make me remember the time before farm nights were cluttered by a hundred kinds of man-made light.

 

New Year’s Eve.  The old 2011 is passing away in two hours.  Some say dire happenings are in store in 2012. I don’t remember any one forecasting Japan’s double calamity or the Arab Spring. No one said a flurry of tonados would cause death, damage, and permanent destruction over the southern states. God still reigns and knows where we are. Faith allows us to sleep knowing He is in control.

Happy 365 days of New Year. May there be   comfort for sorrow, brotherhood instead of divisions, hope to replace fear, and joy  to combat despair.  May you be granted the PEACE that has nothing broken, nothing missing, and provision for our needs, physical, spiritual, and emotional. Remind us that as bad as things may be, Our country is the most blessed land for its people, and it is up to us to keep it that way.

God Bless us all.               Dorothy Gast