Cousins Daughters of Preasha, Lora, and Thelma

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

SHELL HOMES by Dorothy Graham Gast         During the years after World War II  many rural families in the South were still living in substandard housing. Some homes were no more than two room shacks with leanto areas that had served as tenant houses without running water or electricity. Many people had no hope of better conditions at the existing cost of building.         In the 1950's brochures began arriving in country mailboxes showing one, two, and three bedroom homes completely finished on the outside, partially finished on the inside giving the buyer a choice of completing the work themselves. The best known of these was Jim Walter Homes. The company would sell most of the inside building material, including sheetrock, insulation, doors and carpet. Anyone who had a deed to an acre of land could sign a contract, make payments for twenty years and be debt free.         A starter house with two bedrooms sold for $2400 and could be financed, finished, and added on to, and still be paid in full before the first child finished high school.          A lumber truck would drive up to the site, unload framing, doors, and windows, sheetrock, nails flooring, paint, and linoleum. Workers covered supplies with tarps and left. The next day or so a framing crew laid concrete blocks for foundations, built subflooring, and framed walls, while the new owners watched in amazement as the structure they had chosen developed before their eyes. The frame of an 800 square house could be ready for ceiling joists by the end of the first day. The oak floors were the last things finished by the company. A drilling truck could drill a well and place a water pump into place and connect it to the house plumbing as the plumbing crew joined the pipes and as electricians wired the lights, base plugs, and laundry connections to the fuse box .Sometimes three different crews worked on varying tasks. Our three bedroom house was built by a Walter competitor. It was 34 by 22 feet with a living room-kitchen at one end and tiny bedrooms around the even smaller bath. The girls' bedroom was papered with state maps obtained free from service stations. They could lie in their bunk beds and trace trips on their travel wish lists. The shell home division of Jim Walter Homes was closed in 2009. All over the South these homes still shelter families though most have been improved and changed enough to be unrecognizable. For some families it was the first inkling that they could own their own home and aspire to a more comfortable life. Propane hot water heaters, stove and heating released the owner from the time consuming wood cutting and fireplaces. Sixty years ago an acre of land, a Jim Walter home and an affordable mortgage allowed even manual laborers the security of their own home with electricity and running water.

CHRISTMAS APRONS 1955

By Dorothy Graham Gast

As the holiday season approached in 1955 my less than a year old daughter and I lived with my parents and siblings in their two bedroom frame house on the family farm where I was raised. My husband and his girlfriend had left the state and us without any support.My pregnancy and baby prevented my getting a job to help with our support. Mama got a job working in the nearby school lunchroom and I took over the laundry, care of the house and cooking for the seven of us. My family was concerned that my grief over a failed marriage and deep emotional distress might harm the child I was carrying.

Other family members tried to help out. An aunt gave me a ride to my obstetrician's office as she went to do errands and I had a couple of hours free to walk around town looking at holiday displays. Another aunt who was working in a department store said, "I've been saving for a Christmas offering at church and I feel that the LORD wants me to give it to you instead." She handed me a $10 bill and gave me an encouraging hug. This was the first cash I'd had in my hands in three months.

Maybe I could take this money and buy fabric to make some new clothes for my fast growing baby. I went to the basement area where cloth was sold looking for something special.

 As I was feeling fabric and checking out baby dress patterns, the store manager came in and said, "I need these tables cleared for the new merchandise that came in this morning. Put a sign $2 for every brown paper bag the customer can fill with cloth. And those tail ends of tweeds and other wools sell for 10 cents each."

I hurried across the room and asked for some bags. I packed summer fabrics, ginghams and eyelets, calicoes and solids, tight as possible in the squared off brown grocery like bags she handed me. Three bags held the remnants that were from half a yard to five yards and cleared the tables for new displays. A nearby table had short lengths of winter materials, nubby tweeds, radiant plaids, and luxuriant solids. The saleslady, caught up in my enthusiasm, helped me squeeze the folded pieces into a bag. Another customer held the bad open while we packed. I had spent the full $10 and suddenly realized I Had no money for the sales tax. I began pulling out fabric and discovered that since the deal was by the bag I would have to give up a bag of my precious bounty. The sympathetic customer rummaged in the bottom of her purse for the necessary coins to pay tax. We were both crying with relief. She gave me a big hug and helped me carry the five overstuffed bags to the street corner where my aunt would pick me up.

That night my mother, sisters and I spread the contents of the bags on two beds. Out of the bags the piles grew much larger than I remembered from the store. A younger sister wrapped a 12 inch length around her neck. Its 54 inch width made a Christmasy scarf dressy enough for anyone. The inventory became festive as we sorted and matched to see what could be done with our treasure. We matched small pieces of calico and plain cloth for an apron. Past experience with feed sack sewing had taught ways to be resourceful in using every scrap.

In the weeks that followed, we made dozens of aprons, style and type determined by the amount of material available. Some woolen lengths had nearly a yard and made three scarves, neatly finished and fringed. Some were made into slippers or foldover purses. During the evenings after supper dishes, were washed up the women of the house matched, designed, and sewed. We made more than 200 gifts for our household, extended family, and friends.

Although we probably were the poorest family in both clans we had gifts for everyone. When we were looking for gifts for the men who wouldn't wear scarves, Daddy happened on a University student who was selling boxes of coconut oil shampoo for enough money to go home for Christmas. The elegantly shaped bottles completed our list.

My baby girl had her beautiful dresses for the holidays, we had gifts to share, and my parents rejoiced that my depression had disappeared. Forty years later when an aunt died, I found one of those aprons, faded from use, hanging on a hook by her kitchen door.  And I remembered.

The Wall

The  early morning sunlight burned through my swollen eyelids as I struggled to hold on to the last remnants of sleep.The funeral had been Saturday, and family members were home and back to their normal pursuits.  O. J. was gone. The long months  fighting all the different complications of his illness had ended and it would never be us again. Tears began to form. Then in my mind I could hear what O. J. would say, "Quit your bawling and get out and do some of the things you've wanted to do before you became my nurse. Get busy with your own life."

 

A shower and a cup of coffee later, I thought of all the jobs long put off. That dark paneled  hallway was so depressing. There was some pale yellow paint left over from a touch up. Just take down all the pictures, put out the nails and paint. By 7:00 am, paint, rollers, a short ladder, and a tube of toothpaste were sitting on the strewn newspapers that covered the hall carpet. I'd read that you could stop up the nail holes with toothpaste if you had no spackling.

 

If I had company for supper I wouldn't have time to start crying. I called my mother, a widower, and two couples  that often came for dinner  in other years and invited them over for a home cooked meal at 7:00 pm.

 

What could I cook that didn't require watching? There was that frozen turkey bought to cook for Christmas, before we spent December and January in the hospital. There were canned green beans, a uncut pound cake someone  had bought, plenty of salad makings from a raw veggie tray left from the wake. I thawed the turkey in the microwave, rubbed it down with seasonings and oil, placed it in the oven at 275. I mixed a Jello salad and placed it in the frig. Supper was on it's way.

 

A no longer valid credit card smoothed the toothpaste into the nail holes and left an even finish for painting. The 12 foot hallway was covered in under an hour, but the light color showed dents and shadows of the patched nailholes. The water based paint was drying fast.

   Camouflage! That's what I could do. I could make flowers the way a late night decorating show illustrated. Random flowers. There was a can of blue paint just the color of delphiniums that had hardly been used in the shed. With a one inch paint brush  I painted  blossoms 12 inches apart at my eye level all the way down the hall. Not bad.   18 inches below that row I repeated with blossoms alternating halfway between those in the first row. The design was repeated down the hall on both sides.from floor to ceiling.

  As I ate leftovers for lunch I surveyed my project.  There were still rough spots under the yellow paint.  Green stems and leaves.  I could make green Y  shapes for stems and a leaf for each blossom. Just a dash of green  connected to each flower. Still needs a highlight. Butterflies!  Semiabstract. Two brush flips of orange  randomly placed. They harmonized nicely.

 The school bus roared down the road. It's 3:30, and I've got company at 7:00. Paint dripped newspapers were tucked away in the trash. Paint cans disposed off. Brushes washed for another project. Yellow, green, blue, and orange drops, spots, and smudges were on my hands, my face, my glasses, and my clothes. After I bundled the clothes in the trash, I ran a hot bubble bath and scraped  paint off me  until I was presentable.

The good dishes that had not been used for years went on the Damask tablecloth with matching cloth napkins and silver while I listened to the 5:00 o'clock news. Turkey smells filled the house. I stirred up a pan of cornbread dressing and poured it in around the turkey.

 A touch test proved all the paint dry except the butterflies. By the time guests arrived there would be no problem.  A flicker of guilt about writing thank you cards for funeral flowers was dismissed with "I'll think of that tomorrow". A spray of air freshener before a quick run with the vacuum cleaner lightened the mood of the house.

  Just 15 minutes with my feet propped up can get me going again. Why not a dressy dress for a party feel? A little makeup and hairspray and I was ready when the doorbell rang at 5 minutes until 7:00. Guests helped me take up the turkey, dressing, and green beans. One tossed the salad and brought out the Jello. Another put ice in glasses and poured the tea. As we bowed for the blessing I could almost hear O. J. say, "That's more like it. It's time for you to build a new life."