Thoughts From the Front Porch

In January 1938, my mother was 16 years old,  a widow, and pregnant with me. Some time after January and before time for planting crops, Pa moved his family to Bryant on Sand Mountain, a community where they had previously lived.

Mother had my father’s funeral to pay for; so, grandpa set aside an acre of land on which mother raised a potato crop to sell to pay for the funeral. When she was plowing the field, she plowed up a silver dollar which helped a great deal on the debt. We often found coins on that place. A tornado had come through in the mid 1930s and blown away a house that was on the property. The owner had a box of coins that was also blown away. I assure you, those serendipitous coins were precious in those hard scrabble days.

Although mother was pregnant, she did as much work as any of the others. No body slacked off in Pa’s house.

I was born July 19, 1938, in the house that was to burn the day after Thanksgiving that same year. A few years ago the midwife died who had delivered me, and my Aunt Ruth sent me the obituary clipping.

The school at Bryant was first grade through junior high school. After that, students had to go to Flat Rock to high school—I think it was Flat Rock. Most of the students in the isolated area of Bryant simply dropped out of school. J. B. Armstrong was principal of Bryant school, and he took matters in hand—he tutored students who wanted high school courses. I don’t know whether he cleared that with the Jackson County Board of Education or not, but he is remembered as a man who help several mountain students get a high school education.

Mr. Armstrong was a widower.

After I was born, my mother went back to school during the winter months and studied with him. The widower was smitten by the young widow.

Mother and I never discussed her marriage to Mr. Armstrong. However, my half-sister (who was born when my step-father was 72 years old) and I have wondered about the unusualness of the marriage. And my step-brother (who was 4 years older than my mother) once commented, “It must have been big change for your young mother to be married to Dad as sober minded as he was.” It probably was a bigger change than she dreamed of! My guess is that she saw marriage to him as a way to make a better life for me and for herself. And I have lived long enough to appreciate what she did.

Mother was 19 when she married Rev. J. B. (John Bunyan) Armstrong. He was 59. I’m sure the poor man didn’t know what in the world to do with a three-year-old in the house. Bless his heart!—and I do mean that! I turned 4 years old the summer after they married in the spring of 1942.

Once in an attempt to play with me, he lightly bit my nose and held it in his teeth. I wanted to play, too, so I blew my nose in his mouth. I was mistaken; he didn’t want me to play. Such spitting and spewing you’ve never heard! It really had a much more spectacular result than I had anticipated. I don’t think he ever initiated play time again.

One of my play things was sand bucket—the sand bucket that held so many of those wretched little weeds I had to pull. I played with it and its companion shovel—alone; and I’m sure it was lonely playtime, for I was accustomed to having two playmates, Inez and Marie. So, it must have been rather dull to shovel dirt in solitude and to rescue doodle bugs singlehandedly.

One day I incautiously left the bucket on the back steps—I had been excavating nearby. Step-father came out the back door, stumbled over the bucket and went careening out into the back yard. When he finally regained his balance, he raged back to the bucket and proceeded to stomp the bucket flat as a flitter! He was tall and thin, and as he jumped up and down on the bucket, his long arms flailed the air. I don’t remember whether I grieved over the dead sand bucket, but my soul has smiled  about that sight many times over the years. I recently saw a sand bucket like mine in an antique store. It was priced at $35.00.

I remember a trip to Chattanooga. It was there I saw a person with black skin. I was astonished, dumbfound, and befuddled. I stood stock still and gawked until mother took my hand and diverted my attention by speaking to me. I don’t remember what she said.

One of the worst things to happen to me occurred in Earlinger Hospital in Chattanooga. I was five years old, and I was taken there to have my tonsils removed. I don’t remember the trip to the hospital, so I must not have been afraid of going. But I do remember lying on the gurney and Mother standing by me. I knew strangers were going to take me away from my Mother, and that terrified me. I began to cry?great gulping wails. The gurney began to move, I screamed and tried to get down, but a nurse pinned me securely. The green and white doors of the operating room opened, and the gurney continued to roll and I to scream. Mother started to come comfort me, but a doctor said, “Let him cry; he’ll go to sleep faster,” and he placed a mask over my nose and mouth. My terror then knew no bounds, but that’s the last I remember.

Mother was by my side when I awakened. I don’t know how long I stayed in the hospital, but I remember going home. My throat was sore, and we stopped somewhere and step-father bought me ice cream. It was in a cup and I had a wooden spoon. (It was my first ice cream from the store, and I don’t remember bought ice cream again until I was about 9 years old.) It was good, but even swallowing ice cream hurt.

Shortly after the operation, we went to Scottsboro. Step-father was pastor of Goose Pond Cumberland Presbyterian Church just below Scottsboro. So this was probably the Sunday after my de-tonsiling, for I was fractious. It was afternoon and we were at a fishing place or park by the Tennessee river. Sometime during the afternoon my distemper erupted into a full fledged temper tantrum. A good dose of “hickory tea” cured that, and I believe that was my first and last childhood fit.

My memories of Goose Pond Church are all pleasant. It was a place of love and fellowship. We would always go home for dinner with some family after morning preaching. Often the family would have children, and the long summer afternoon would be spent in play. Nothing vigorous on Sunday, mind you. The winter afternoons we spent listening to the grownup talk. Those were war years, and many of the church members had sons and husbands “across the water.”

During World War II, the ladies of Goose Pond made a friendship quilt for Mother and step-father. Each square is a pieced sailboat and below each boat is embroidered a name. Several of the names also have IN SERVICE stitched below the name, honoring the boys and men at war. I really should give it to the Jackson County Historical Society, but I love the quilt’s old colors and can’t as yet give it up.

Also during World War II, there was shortage of teachers, and although mother had not finished high school, she obtained an emergency certificate to teach first grade. Inez and I started school together, and Mother was our teacher. I called her “Mother,” but Inez had to call her “Mrs. Armstrong” even though she was her sister. Inez had always called her “Lorene,” of course, and a six-year-old has a hard time understanding why she must call her sister “Mrs.” anything!

Not too much has stayed with me about that first year of school?my only year at Bryant. Inez can rattle off names and events, but she continued in school with them through junior high school. I do remember that someone got a large splinter in his foot?everyone went barefooted to school then from warm weather until cold weather. Another time someone was asleep at the end of school, and everybody went home except him. Then, Inez was afraid to tell “Mrs. Armstrong” that she needed to go to the bathroom?outhouse?one day, so she did what she had to right there in her seat. I think a little offering rolled or trickled down the aisle.

It was somewhere around this time that I learned my father was dead. One day at playtime, an older boy said to me, “Mr. Armstrong ain’t your daddy. Your daddy’s in Ebenezer Cemetery.” Well, that was news to me. Naturally, I checked out this information with Mother, and she confirmed it. I believe the boy also told me my name wasn’t Armstrong, the name I went by. Mr. Armstrong never adopted me, so when I enrolled in college, I had all documents changed to Whitten.

I’m not sure how soon the nightmares started. It may have been right after I was taken to live with Mother and step-father in the little Brown House. There were three dreams that I had over and over.

In one I was tied on the wall of a large, high-ceiling room. Someone shot arrows at me. Although no arrows ever struck me, it was indeed a bad dream.

In another, I would be coming into the Brown House, and behind the door which I was opening was someone with an ax raised and ready to hack me up. No blow ever touched me.

The third dream was set at the school building. In my dreams there was a long flight of wide steps leading to the porch of the school. I would be going up the steps and be about halfway to the top when a car would arrive and be driven up the steps. I would run as fast as I could but never get any closer to the top and safety. The car never overtook me.

All three dreams were probably based on my fear of step-father. Poor guy. He was probably just as afraid of me, and for all I know he may have had his own set of nightmares wherein a three-year-old chased him all over the top of Sand Mountain shooting arrows at him.

Some of my fears were, no doubt, based on conversations I had overheard. On those twilight evenings on the porch at Granny and Pa’s, they talked. Some of that talk was about a child being kidnaped and killed. Years later when the Greenberg child was kidnaped, I remembered this earlier talk and realized they had been discussing the Lindbergh child. Then, too, Granny had sung the song about Mary Fagin and her dreadful end. So, a new father and an unfamiliar “empty” house probably exacerbated my fears and made them to be Giants in the land.

President Roosevelt’s funeral is my first political memory. Somehow we were in Trenton, Georgia, on the day of the funeral, and there were clusters of men and women standing around, the women weeping quietly. I remember somber voices coming from a radio?it was either the funeral itself or a news report about the service. It is rather an eerie memory with the quiet streets of Trenton and the people standing around. I was puzzled by it all, and Mother explained that they were sad because the President was dead.

This was in April 1945. I didn’t know it then, but my world was changing—moving day was in the works—and it would be a long way from Granny and Pa’s house.

Joe’s Meanderings is a series by Joe Whitten.

Joe's Meanderings