Thoughts From the Front Porch

In the spring of 1945, after my first year in school, step-father accepted the pastorate of three Cumberland Presbyterian Churches in Colbert County: Allsboro, Mt. Hester, and Maude. We were to move all the way across the state of Alabama, from the Georgia line to the Mississippi line.

The Stone House in Allsboro

All of our household goods were loaded on a truck, and we loaded ourselves into step-father’s Model-A Ford and left the little Brown House. We stopped at Granny and Pa’s to say good-bye, and we made a stop at Uncle John Winkler’s store on the bluff and said good-bye to him and Aunt Thelma. Then we headed down Sand Mountain to Scottsboro and on across the state.

It would seem that I would remember a great deal about such a long trip as that, but I don’t. We stopped in some town for the night. There were no rooms available in the hotel where we stopped, but the proprietor told step-father that we could sleep in the lobby. I curled up in a big over-stuffed chair and slept well. The next day we arrived at our new home in Allsboro, Alabama.

I loved the house we moved in to. It was built of sandstone and had a wide, cool front porch. And we had a crank telephone?something I’d never heard of before. I was admonished never to lift the receiver unless our combination of rings sounded. This was a party line, and it was wrong to listen in on someone else’s conversation. However, I did listen in?and enjoyed eavesdropping until the day I heard an hysterical woman telling someone how her drunken husband had beaten her. It frightened me so that I don’t think I ever eavesdropped again.

I must go back for a moment to Bryant and the war. On those evenings of talk on the porch, there was talk of airplanes and bombs, and I came to realize that people died from these things. But I don’t remember a plane until we moved to Allsboro. The war was still on, and we were not so isolated at Allsboro; so, there was more war news and talk about it.

It was here that I knew the war had come to me. Someone who probably lived in the Tri-Cities area (Florence, Sheffield, and Tuscumbia) had a small plane?or it could have been a crop duster, I guess. Anyway this Instrument of Death flew several times over our area, and I expected bombs to come bulls-eying in on me every time I heard that plane.

So, I took it to the Lord in prayer, and I beseeched the Almighty for protection. Specifically I requested that the bomb would blow everybody up but us. And I dreamed God complied. In my dream the whole world had been reduced to rubble?with one exception. High on a pinnacle that rose miles above the destruction stood our stone house, safe and protected.

I was in the second grade that fall in the Allsboro school. I’ve forgotten my teacher’s name; however, I can still see her clearly in my mind. She was a tall, old woman who wore her grey hair in a bun. She wore glasses perched upon her nose. She always knew what I was doing, even when her back was to the class. Her speech made an impression on me, probably because it was so different from the mountain speech I was accustomed to. I can still hear the soft r’s and soft vowels of her speech. She would not let us drink “wauta” (water) while eating an apple. After the apple was eaten, then we could have a drink of “wauta.” I was rather afraid of her and don’t think I liked her?nor do I think she liked me. She didn’t go to our church, so maybe I was not the right denomination!

Third grade was a different story. My teacher was a wonderful lady, Mrs. L. O. Bishop. Even today after having taught more than a third of a century, I think of Mrs. Bishop as an example of what a teacher should be: firm but loving; careful of a little person’s feelings. She probably perceived that it was not an ideal home situation for me, and I’ll bet she knew I’d grow up enjoying books and writing, music and museums. She encouraged my own artistic efforts. Mrs. L. O. Bishop was one of the really good things of my elementary school years.

It was during the fall of my second grade that World War II ended. Mother woke me up crying and laughing and hugging and kissing me. I asked her what had happened and she said, “The war is over! The war is over!” I knew that was something she had hoped and prayed for, so I asked why she was crying. “Because I’m so happy! she said. That was the first I knew that happiness could bring tears.

But the war was over, and her brothers and two brothers-in-law were coming home. The world was at peace again?for a few minutes.

Mama and Papa Reed's House in Allsboro

Our stay in Allsboro was less than two years, but I experienced a lot.

Mr. and Mrs. Reed? known to everybody as Mama and Papa Reed?had a large farm or plantation across the road from  our house and the church. In those days the Reeds owned 1,000 acres, and I think 900 acres are still in the family today. Most of the Reed’s farm workers were black, and I realized for the first time that some people were treated differently. I heard a white woman, in referring to the noonday feeding of the black field hands, say, “Just pitch it out to them like the dogs!” Mother was upset by this woman’s comment, and she and step-father talked about it in low tones in the quiet of the evening.

Father preached at the churches at Maude, Mt. Hester and Allsboro. The Allsboro church having more members probably had preaching 2 Sundays a month while the other two had preaching once a month. These were farming communities. One haying season, when a farmer’s barn was full of bales of hay, his barn caught fire. When we learned of the fire, we went to the farm in the trusty A-Model. We saw only the smoldering ruins of the barn, but I heard men telling Mother and Father that some of the horses ran back into the flaming barn and perished. That fire is a vivid memory and clear snapshot in my brain.

It was at Allsboro that I was led down the Primrose Path and took a puff off a cigarette. The older boy and girl were Papa and Mama Reed’s grandchildren. They had taken their dad’s cigarettes and invited me, on a Sunday afternoon at their house, to go with them to an outbuilding near the barn. They explained that we’d never be caught, because after we had taken our smoke, we would chew fresh green pine needles. The aroma of the chewed pine would cover our sin. So, we took our ease in Zion, so to speak, and smoked and chewed.
Misery and woe! As we chewed our pine needles, the children’s father appeared and demanded to know who was smoking. Before I knew what was happening, the boy and girl pointed their fingers at me and all was lost. I was taken directly to mother and step-father and all the blame was laid on me?as I remember it. Be sure your sins will find you out, but as far as I know, the other two wretches got off Scott free. And for the record, chewing fresh pine needles will not cover up the smell of smoke.

Papa Reed was a cotton planter, and he may have given step-father the idea of having me plant a small cotton patch between our house and the church–the idea being that all play and no work is not good for a growing boy! Wherever the idea may have come from, I had a cotton patch the summer between the second and third grade. I’m sure mother helped me tend it. When harvest time came, we picked the cotton and Papa Reed bought it. I think he paid $10.00 for it–far more than it was worth, probably. I don’t remember what happened to the money.

The living room of the stone house had a fireplace, and I had heard that Santa Claus came to visit through the fireplace chimney. I don’t think I ever believed much in Santa, for I remember discussing the matter with mother. But one day as the Christmas season of 1945 drew near, I wandered into the living room. Suddenly my eyes were riveted to the back of the fireplace?there was a long scrape mark in the soot?confirmation that Santa had practiced coming down our chimney. That Christmas I got a fine red wagon with slatted sideboards, and sometimes when I was playing with it, I wondered how on earth Santa got it down the chimney!

It was at our house in Allsboro that I asked mother about salvation. Mother always read me Bible stories at night?I still have the Bible Story Book that we nearly wore out. One day, when I was seven years old?when it was warm weather, for we were outside in the yard?I asked Mother how I could be saved. She explained the plan of salvation to me, and there under the trees at the side of the stone house, I asked Jesus to come into my heart.

Summer revivals were always important events in community life in those days. Specific revivals and names of visiting evangelists have not stayed with me, but the singing and the preaching and the altar calls are still in my heart’s memory. Services were held morning and night for at least one week and sometimes two weeks. The morning services were not as well-attended as night services, for there was farm work that had to be done even though revivals were held when crops were laid by. However, the church was usually full at night, and the singing was full and joyful. Those old songs became part of my very soul and they comfort my heart to this day. When the preaching ended and the altar calls were given, people responded, for the Lord moved in the peoples’ hearts. Revival time was always looked forward to with great anticipation. Modern revivals ain’t what they used to be!

It was while we lived here that I tried my hand at fashion designing– millinery enhancement, to be exact. In the 1940s no woman went to town without wearing a hat. We usually went to Iuka or Corinth, Mississippi, to shop. On this particular day we set out for town, Mother and Mr. Armstrong in the front and I in the back. However, on the way from the house to the car, I had picked up a lovely gray and black Bardrock chicken feather. Sitting in the back seat and looking at mother’s hat, I thought the feather in my hand would enhance it. So, I reached up and put it in her hatband.

On the way out of Allsboro we stopped at the Post Office, and it seems like we made another stop or two. And as I watched mother walk to and from the car at these places, I was completely satisfied with the addition of the feather to the hat–it definitely added class. At some point mother took her compact out of her purse and spotted the feather. She didn’t like it. She was mortified, in fact. There was nothing to do but retrace our stops so mother could go in and explain that she had been unaware of the feather her wayward son had placed on her hat!

During one of the shopping trips to Corinth, a ruckus arose over the purchase of a new wood-burning cook stove. He wanted it; she didn’t. There were angry words and a tense, silent ride back to Allsboro. In the next week or so, a crated iron stove was delivered to our house, but it remained on the back porch uncrated. And as far as I know, it was still on the back porch when we moved. Mother had asserted herself.

Sometime between the spring of 1945 and spring of 1947, we visited Granny and Pa once. I don’t remember why we went, but we made the trip by train there and back. Somebody met the train in Bridgeport and brought us back there to return to Allsboro. The train had a steam engine, of course, and the coach windows were open and our hair was full of cinders when we arrived. I remember mother shaking out her hair and having me do the same.

About February or March of my third grade year, I was surprised again by learning we were moving to a new place. And how these moves came about, I don’t know. I do not remember Mr. Armstrong being absent from us long enough to preach trial sermons at these churches, and we didn’t go with him if he did. However, we moved from Allsboro to Glencoe, Alabama, in Etowah County in the spring of 1947 before school was out (keep that thought in mind). From Etowah County there was just DeKalb County separating us from Jackson County where Granny and Pa lived.

We were getting closer.

Joe’s Meanderings is a series by Joe Whitten.

Joe's Meanderings