GRAHAM BARTON HISTORY

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Privet Hedges

I hate privet hedges. In the mid 1900s privet hedges were used in southern landscapes as cheap fences. A row of bushes 3 feet apart would soon grow into a dense barrier. If untamed they might grow 15 feet high and serve as a windbreak or feeding station for birds unlucky to be stuck in Alabama during the winter.

Mama Annice found them as an effective source of deterrent to negative behavior. The hedge that separated our front yard form the back was a row 30 feet long and maintained at a height of 32 inches with shears operated by youngsters who were aware of the punishment that could be dealt out by too long branches that could be used as switches. They did switch off rebellious attitudes, sibling fights, and various mischievous endeavors. Even when Mama was in her 80s great grandchildren knew that the skinny 30 in branch care stripped of leaves lying above the door frame was an enforcer of house rules. There would be no picking at younger kids or fighting, no tracking mud on a clean freshly mopped floor, and no backtalk in that house.

The bush nearest the house was allowed to grow longer to make switches available instantly. The worst time was when you were sent to get the instrument for punishment for your own misdeeds. The crafty kid who chose a switch under 20 inches would be sent back for a more persuasive size. This served to heighten the drama for the unpenitent, as well as provide a warning for those who had their own plans for mutiny.

No one ever said wait until your father gets home. Swift and certain were deemed to be the most effective way of maintaining discipline and keeping order. Back then no one ever thought of saying, "You're not my mother!" If you were at her house and guilty you shared the verdict. Parents loved to send their kids down to our place for a week. They would be well fed, get plenty of sunshine and fresh air, a lot of genuine affection, and new, more positive ways of behaving.

So they had a purpose. The birds ate the berries. Boundaries for front and back were established and weekly chores with clippers gave us a little chance for shorter, softer switches.

Now privet, Wisteria vines, and Bradford pears are taking over my yard and garden and are blocking my view of the highway. Anyone need a cheap growing fence? With behavior modification potential?

Dorothy Gast
ddgast1@aol.com

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Romulus School

http://www.alabamapioneers.com/test/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=34&Itemid=80

ROMULUS SCHOOL by Dorothy Graham Gast

Written by Dorothy Graham Gast

Friday, 21 June 2013 18:00

ROMULUS SCHOOL

Dorothy Graham Gast

One of the best things about living in the same place for many years is the many layers of memories. Grandpa and Grandma Graham lived in the big house on the top of the hill looking southeast to Romulus School. When I was growing up my brothers and sisters walked past their barn, through their back yard, then the apple orchard onto the school grounds.

In warm weather our socks were wet from the dew covered grass in the path; in winter we crunched the spewed up icicles from the frozen ground. We caught the scent of apple blossoms over our heads in March and popped maypops on the vines along the shallow terraces in hot September afternoons.

Grandpa loved the school's sports. He would bring a cane bottomed chair to the home base area to watch the recess softball games and cheer for both teams. Everyone knew that Mr. John was deaf but could read lips and carry on a conversation.

Double hung windows were nearer the ceilings than the oiled wooden floor and were high enough to let sunlight in and keep out distractions for the students. In winter they shivered in their potbellied coal heated classrooms. Later in 1966 the wood frame five room building was deserted and the school was be consolidated with Ralph and Fosters schools to form the new Myrtlewood School. It was located at Fosters on Gainesville Road near US highway 11.

The Romulus building was used by the community for a meeting place. Bushes grew in the path we had walked and weeds filled the baseball field and the red clay basketball court where county champions had learned to compete with only 10 players in the junior high grades. There were five A team and 5 B team players. If anyone fouled out, team played with 4 players.

Eventually the spirit of the school that had been the center of the community for decades and the building with its fading white paint was gone, the structure bid out for $365 to be torn down and moved. Pine saplings grew around the abandoned outhouses and rabbits chased across the entrance yard.

Trees grew and the signs of its importance existed only in the memories of the students and men who remembered setting out pine trees along the country road than formed the western boundary. Giant oak trees that provided shade along the road on the south leading to Fosters making the second boundary were cut down as both roads were widened and paved.

In 1997 the newly formed Romulus Fire Department asked and gained permission to build a station at that intersection and used proceeds from the pine grove in financing the metal building. Parking asphalt replaced pine straw.

Change multiplied in the rural cluster of neighborhoods called Romulus. A fire department increased the potential for new housing developments. The census count of 643 in 1990 quadrupled as clustered housing developments filled hills and hollows and changed the courses of creeks.

Our children, then grandchildren, and great-grandchilden caught school buses to go the larger brick building six miles east near the Warrior River and I 20/59. Two-car families sent both father and mother rushing toward Tuscaloosa to work.

Years passed. The new state-of -the-art Sipsey Valley High School and Middle School opened 3 miles from the empty playground behind Romulus Fire Department building. Now Google or Mapquest directions tell distances from the fire station or the new pair of schools. Only the oldest residents remember the old wooden school by the apple orchard and the honor of a having our own local school.