Thoughts From the Front Porch

Kathleen Holding Her Nephew

Our town in 1951, like most American small towns in the middle of the twentieth century, was a place where very little out of the ordinary ever seemed to happen. The storefronts were occupied with thriving little businesses, and the sidewalks were busy with foot traffic then. Men in ties and fedoras or flannel and overalls went about their various occupations. And women in stockings and full-skirted dresses towed pre-schoolers along on housewifely errands. Our concerns would have seemed humdrum to some, being mostly about family, home, church, and community. But they were earnest concerns and important to us, however conventional.There was comfort in the mundane routine of our quotidian existence. Because we knew the disquiet of something happening, when that something was murder unresolved.

The double killing of 1948 had not yet slipped into the background of bygone days. People still whispered about the lingering mystery, running over old ground behind closed doors and reminding each other that danger might lurk anywhere. But the newspaper had nothing to say on the subject. It was not a case of no news being good news either. Because, quite frankly, with no one arrested and the murderer still roaming around free, there was nothing new to be said.

Most weeks, our newspaper editor had to work like Grant taking Richmond to fill his front page up with local news. It was a broader and deeper format then, in the strictly physical sense. Newspaper pages were bigger in the fifties than they are today, and the print was finer too, with lines of text more closely set. It took a lot of local stories to fill up a small town newspaper’s front page in 1951.

Most of the time, the editor would have to resort to articles from the press services to pad out his front page. So he’d scatter, amongst the sparse local stories about our town and county, news of strange, new-fangled ideas, such as color television or some outrageous thing, a national credit card system, for instance. Or he might choose oddities from exotic locales, quadruplets born in Funk, Nebraska, perhaps, where the mood was not very much improved by the jump in population.

Familiar troubles in faraway places meant that stories of the war in Korea, for example, folks would read with great interest. Because many of “our” boys, the boys the town knew and remembered from childhood, wiggling on a church pew or winning a public speaking medal, were over there. And the letters were few from their miserable, muddy trenches. Credit cards we knew little about and cared less. What in the world would anybody want one of them for? People saved up for what they wanted or, often to their ultimate discredit, opened up a charge account at the store and made payments. The town gossips would have something to talk about, if the payments weren’t made.

So life had settled down to a low busy hum, and the people of our town got involved in living and tried to forget the unrecompensed dead. And aside from the peaceful sameness of one week fading into the next and the worries that went with war, there was a good deal of well-founded hope for the future. And not much else to write about in the paper.

Until the first week of November in 1951. The front page on Thursday of that week needed no padding with outside stories. It gave us reason to smile and weep, to hope and dispair. The Masons had broken ground on their new lodge building and the foundation was laid. Kathleen’s father, our Big Daddy, was a member of the building committee. Brick and mortar had been purchased to complete the building. They’d paid cash. My maternal grandmother’s women’s group had a big event planned. They were in the social news every week with meetings, Red Cross blood drives, weight loss competitions alternating with sweet buttery recipe swaps. But the Mutual Improvement Club rarely made the front page. Sometimes they even took themselves and their husbands on trips to Chicago, or the Smokies or Mexico. This particular week, the MI Club, made up entirely of the Avondale Mills wives and working women, were organizing and sponsoring a variety show. Their master of ceremonies would be the “famous Joe Rumore,”  with his equally “famous team of Rebe and Rabe.”

The high school was holding its homecoming football game, and they were on a winning streak. The captain played tough at center, in spite of having a leg weakened by “infantile paralysis,” as they called it in those days. He must have been quite a hero in town, because he represented victory over a disease that still threatened to afflict any child at anytime. And it had struck a local third-grader the week before. His photo is right there on the front page next to the football team’s. That little boy, who so many hoped and prayed would one day be as well and strong as the football captain, has such a sweet smile in his picture. I know my grandmothers prayed for him. They had a little grandson who’d survived polio too. And small town that we were, the polio victim in that week’s story had some first cousins who were also our first cousins. Hearts ached for that little boy. Polio struck fear in the hearts of all parents in 1951.

But there was another story on the front page that week that had set the town to buzzing. Everyone knew about it of course, well before they read it in the newspaper, because the paper came out only once a week. It was old news by Thursday. But it was reported on the front page nonetheless. And townspeople studied the article, looking for clues that weren’t there. It planted another kind of fear and grief in the hearts of our town, along with an oddly half-baked sense of satisfaction. Headline: St. Clair County Man Dead Following Knife Injuries.

A local man is in jail charged with first degree murder, and another lies dead, after a fight and stabbing that occurred over the weekend. Erk Bailey, age 46, of Pisgah was pronounced dead, early Monday morning at the local hospital, of injuries received in the fight. Byrd Richardson, Jr. is in the county jail charged with murder.

The county sheriff’s department and state law enforcement personnel are conducting a joint investigation. Authorities say Bailey was found by two local men near Richardson’s Store in Cropwell after the fight occurred. The men were able to stop a game warden, who called an ambulance to the scene. Bailey was rushed to the hospital, but there was little hope by the staff on duty that he could survive his injuries.

Sheriff Cash Strickland arrested Richardson and jailed him. He was initially charged with attempted murder, pending the result of the Bailey’s injuries. No bond for the accused was allowed. The sheriff indicated that Richardson had said he would plead self-defense.

According to the sheriff, Richardson made the statement “He [Bailey] would not let me take my car home.” Richardson further stated that Bailey physically pulled him out of his car and that he [Richardson] cut Bailey accidentally in the ensuing struggle.

Ernest Forney has been retained as attorney to represent and defend Mr. Richardson in this case. Forney has requested a preliminary hearing at the earliest possible date. Judge John Williams has said he would set the date for a hearing in a short time.

Funeral services for Bailey were held at Mount Pisgah Baptist Church on Tuesday afternoon, with burial in the adjoining cemetery. He is survived by the widow, four sons and four daughters. The children range in age from 19 down to 2 years old.

All right. The town sighed in unison. What relief! What delivery from evil. Richardson was in the jail. He’d been allowed to kill again, and leave a large family with no husband or father. But at least they’d put him away this time. And this time he should stay put. That’s what a lot of people expected and prayed for. It is what my grandmother and grandfather profoundly hoped.

I’m not sure Byrd’s own Uncle Pete didn’t share my family’s hope that his nephew would go away to prison permanently. He knew it would cause immense pain to his brother and sister-in-law. But damn it all, they’d raised him. It would cause enormous embarrassment to the family. But the embarrassment could hardly be more than it had been already. Probably, Mr. Pete held out little hope.

Most folks believed Mr. Pete was pure-dee scared to death of Byrd. And who could blame him? Mr. Pete knew a lot more than he wanted to know about his nephew’s transgressions. He’d been forced to step in before and open the bank in the middle of the night to take money out. That money had been used to pay people off.  Mr. Pete was an honest and gentle man by nature, and his conscience bothered him. He prayed for deliverance from evil too. Knowing what he knew, Mr. Pete understood that Byrd, Jr. might kill anybody he felt like killing, whenever he took a notion. And knowing what he knew, Mr. Pete felt that at any time he, himself, could be a victim of Byrd’s irrational anger or fear of exposure.

Most folks in town would have been glad to see the last of Byrd Richardson, if only the authorities could lock him up and throw away the key. They were grateful to Sheriff Strickland for putting him there for the time being.

This was not the same sheriff who’d been serving in 1948, when Kathleen and Doc McIntosh had been stabbed to death and their house burned down with them inside. Sheriff Wiley Dodge had been persuaded, by politically sensitive and well-connected friends, not to seek re-election to the post of county sheriff in 1950, for reasons known best to himself and his friends. Wiley Dodge had instead been persuaded to run for the state house, and aided by those politically connected friends and the voters they controlled, in and out of local cemeteries, he was elected to represent  the people of his district in the state legislature. I’m sure he fit in well there. Those politically connected friends had counted on Byrd to behave himself from that time forward. They’d been disappointed.

The new sheriff actually tried to enforce the law. He been a thorn in Byrd’s side since he taken over. He’d busted up a number of Byrd’s stills in the area. He’d refused all attempts at bribery and would take no payoff money. Sheriff Strickland held Richardson in jail for almost two weeks, from the day of the murder to the day of the hearing. And all during that time, he was taking calls from a party in Washington, D.C. everyday, beseeching him to grant the prisoner a release on bond. He refused.

There was another article in the local paper the next week about this unfortunate incident, to put a southern euphemism to it. Down by the movie theater listings, on Thursday, November 15, 1951, there are three short paragraphs. Headline: Charges of Murder to be Aired Friday at Hearing. The text below the headline reveals nothing new, except that hearing date, Friday, November 16, 1951. It briefly reports again who is accused and who is dead. The dead being unable to object, once again the defendant accuses the dead man of dragging him from beneath his own steering wheel and states that the killing was accidental. And, anyway it was self-defense.

There is no mention in the newspaper of a fact which all those who read it probably already knew. The defendant outweighed the murdered man by at least 100 pounds, and he was quite a bit taller too. The idea that Mr. Bailey could have pulled Mr. Richardson from his car would have been laughable, had it not been surrounded by such tragic circumstances.

On Thursday, November 22, 1951, Thanksgiving Day, the newspaper appeared on doorsteps all over town again. But if anyone looked in it for a report on the court hearing of the week before, they were disappointed. It seems the news staff was too busy discovering the identity of the minister who would deliver the community Thanksgiving service to attend and report on the court hearing. If anyone hoped that the short holiday week had prevented the paper’s staff from publishing a report, and it would come later, in the next week’s edition, they found in a week’s time nothing to be thankful for on that front.

There was never any report in the town’s newspaper on what happened at that hearing. In fact, as far as we know, nothing is mentioned in the local newspaper about the murder of Mr. Bailey for the rest of the natural life of the newspaper. And it hung on, under one banner or another, for an additional fifty-seven years. That is an odd thing indeed, given the editor’s usual scraping around for a story, and the general lack of news there ever was to report.

Fortunately, some court records for this case still exist. On November 16, 1951 the accused waived his right to a preliminary hearing and by a mutual agreement between the defendant and the State, he was granted release from the jail. Bond was set at $15,000. His bond note is signed by, other than himself of course, his father and mother and his attorney, Mr. Forney, all of them certifying that they are able to pay the full amount of the bond set. He was charged by the Grand Jury with Murder in the First Degree. And the trial was set for the 1952 spring session of county court.

The Right Southern Corner is a series by Sara Rast
Copyright: 2009 Sara Love Rast. All rights reserved

The Right Southern Corner

It’s a term we’ve heard a lot lately, usually applied to our valiant ancestors who survived the Great Depression, went into battle and kicked the Axis’ tail during World War II, then came home victorious to help pave the way for the most prosperous decades of American history. But how can we really define greatness;  what made them different from their own forebears, or the generations that followed?

If we assume it takes large portions of courage, bravery, intelligence, strength and perseverance, then these folks definitely qualify. But those qualities still exist today, however well-masked by these pitiful times. To truly appreciate the source of their greatness, we need to look at how people lived in those days.

It’s said that the finest steel comes from the hottest forge. I doubt any generation ever rose up through tougher times. The War of 1914-1918, aka The Great War, War To End All Wars , or World War I,  produced a fine stock of battle-hardened forebears.  They returned home with a great victory and quietly began raising families, only to find themselves in the grip of the Great Depression just as those families were reaching young adulthood.

This new generation faced an economic plague of unimaginable deprivation. Many did not survive, but those who did emerged with a new strength & resolve that can only come from battling the worst and living to tell about it. Today’s so-called major problems would have been little more than mere nuisances to people of that caliber.  They would have quickly and efficiently dealt with them all.  Enduring hardship and conquering the unacceptable was in their nature.

Thence cometh World War II. America’s enemies were once again clearly defined; their intentions unmistakable. Our parents and grandfolks once again rose to the occasion, and once again they excelled and came home as heroes, rightly so. Each had enough war stories to keep the rest of us enthralled and justifiably envious of their valor.

National pride was at an all-time high, for these Yanks had licked half the world in the name of everything they cherished, many of them for the second time.

War is scary stuff.  Even the most patriotic volunteers would still have been fearful, making me wonder why so many went “over there” anyway. Tens of thousands went because they were drafted.   But, unlike later generations, we’ve heard few stories of deserters and draft evaders in that era.  Many others went because making war for good cause was in their nature, like the Minutemen of Lexington and Concord. If the truth be fully known, the armed services probably offered a better deal for many than they were getting at home.

We were still largely a rural populace in those days.  Farm labor is hard and boring; factory work & mining were no real bargains either. The military at least gave them a break from backbreaking, tedious routine.   Then there’s always a certain percentage of folks who simply do not thrive in everyday life situations. The war offered them an opportunity for real accomplishment and recognition.

Whatever the reasons, Americans rose to the occasion, with the full support of their countrymen and Allies. They were a seasoned, hardened bunch of survivors whose latest assignment was just another ordeal in a long line of stressful situations that we cannot imagine without having lived them ourselves.  These people simply took it all in stride and did what they felt was right.

Those who remained behind also found a new resolve: do everything humanly possible to support their troops overseas and keep our flag flying proudly back home. They openly hated and berated the enemy because he was trying to kill their loved ones and take over a free country, and because our finest were over there instead of home.

These loyal civilians worked overtime to produce what was needed to defeat the enemy’s purpose.  They sacrificed luxuries, grew their own gardens for food, walked instead of drove so there would be fuel for military use, organized home guards in case the enemy made it as far as their homeland, became civilian plane spotters, and performed countless other duties of a concerned populace under fire.

I recently attended a concert featuring a forever-young lady, 80+ years of age, who had traveled all over the States and Europe with a USO troupe.  She and her companions brought a little bit of home to those fighting forces, encouraging them, and reinforcing their resolve.  As I listened to her piano music and watched her perform, it occurred to me that she was also a hero; another integral part of something so immense and wonderful that we must also include her as one of the Great Ones.

You could literally see the inner strength in her face and feel her magnetism as she belted out dozens of tunes that were popular in that era.  Indeed, those songs themselves were also part of the greatness; songs that refreshed and inspired those going in harm’s way with promises of unequivocal support back home and a glorious new world at peace when it was all over.

More than sixty years later this remarkable lady’s music worked its wondrous effect on this new audience, regardless of our age or hers.  One can only guess  what memories were stirred that night.  Many openly wept, and sang along as best they could.

What a pity  those who’ve protected our interests in later conflicts have not been afforded the same glory and acceptance by their own peers.  It reflects badly upon all of us.

Only the great can recognize greatness.  It’s mostly gone now; not from our soldiers, but from those for whom they die.

Views From Benny Hill is a series by Jerry Smith

Views From Benny Hill

Something urged me to rise out of bed at 0500, rather than the usual 0630-0800 I’ve enjoyed since retiring more than ten years ago.  It’s like I was going to miss out on something special if I waited a minute longer.   My usual leisurely routine was put on hold as I stepped out on the back porch to check out the day’s weather.

The chilly, pre-dawn air was rich with musky dewiness.  Whitish-orange light reflected upon the sky from somewhere barely over the horizon, causing a pale, ground-hugging fog to slightly glow as it lay in smoky layers in the hollers and valleys behind my home.  Turning to my hummingbird feeders, I saw that one had been completely drained despite bring filled late the previous afternoon.  It was my largest feeder, with one-litre capacity and six stations.

I went back inside and got a gallon jug of fresh nectar from the refrigerator. They’re currently consuming about three gallons a week.  As I removed the feeder’s jar and started to fill it,  the air around me began to thicken with hummingbirds, at least fifteen or twenty of them.  But this morning instead of re-hanging the feeder, I simply stood there holding it in my outstretched hand, as I occasionally do.

Almost immediately I was swarmed with hungry, grateful hummers, one at each feed station with others lined up awaiting their turn.  As they became more accustomed to my presence and their obvious hunger emboldened them even more than usual, I gradually drew the feeder closer until it was mere inches from my face.    What a wondrous sight it was!

About a dozen of these little emerald-colored marvels of evolution were all around me, the wind from their wings sweeping across my face, hair, and bare arms as they jostled each other for a turn at the nozzles.  At least as  many more were in a holding pattern only a few feet away, while others darted in & out among the trees. It reminded me of the five oclock rush hour at Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport.

Their usual territorialism had been put on hold, probably because my own presence overshadowed any threat they may have felt from each other.  Unlike hummers’ usual pattern of fighting over rights to every feeder in sight, these birds were in a total feeding frenzy.  Several  alpha males hovered a few inches away at eye level, staring at me with fearless, tiny black eyes and flashing iridescent red and orange throats while twittering defiantly as if I were merely a larger version of themselves, the biggest alpha bird in the neighborhood.

It was truly an enjoyable experience that probably would never have occurred had I lingered in bed until full daylight.   Hummingbirds are some of the most remarkable, exquisite creatures on Earth, in any kind of light.  Their colors and the way they flash them changes with every new hour of the day, every week, and with every instinctive posture.  To see buzzing, humming, twittering clouds of them boldly swarming around one’s head against a pre-dawn backdrop of morning fog is about as good as it gets in this life.  No picture can do it justice; you just have to be there, and be the one holding the feeder.

But this spectacle also brought a touch of regret.  The fact they are no longer battling over feeders means they have no more nests to build in St Clair this year, and are all preparing to head south as soon as they fatten up a bit.  And, I have to wonder how many of these little jewels will survive their six hundred mile, non-stop journey over the Gulf of Mexico from Dauphin Island to Yucatan.  Because of the rigors of their lifestyles, few hummers live for more than two or three years.

Everyone’s heard of swan songs; it saddens me to realize that a few of them are probably singing the hummingbird version this morning.

Views From Benny Hill is a series by Jerry Smith

Views From Benny Hill

Nathaniel Hicks was born in eastern Virginia in the year 1803. He was the youngest of only two Hicks sons; they were a strong, intelligent, and God-fearing family. At his mother’s knee he was taught how to thread a needle and use it, to read history, poetry, and the Bible. Ethics, astronomy, mathematics, carpentry, horse-shoeing, hunting, fishing, animal husbandry, and all the other practical skills of survival, he learned by trailing around behind his father from the time he was able to walk. By these methods he acquired an admirable education. By the time he turned nineteen, Nate had left his family and made his way to a well protected bend of an Alabama river. He came alone and on foot, leading a sturdy pack mule named Jenny. It was a journey of four months duration.

From Surrey in Virginia, he came, bearing due west and vowing to make twenty miles a day. He found soon that in mountain and river territory, his goal would need to be adjusted. He encountered little trouble in this first leg of the journey, except that the River Staunton ran wider, deeper and faster than he had expected, spring snows in the mountains having poured their melt into the feeder streams. But he’d been told of a ford near Rockymounte, where he was able to cross. He approached the Blue Mountains where the altitudes were not so great, and crossed over them near Mountgomery.

And then Nate made for the pass through the Allegany Mountains at Aspinville and left Virginia for the first time in his young life. At Abington, Kentucky he took the western most road headed south, because it was south and west he was headed. Soon enough he discovered he’d taken the long way ’round. He trudged through the town of Furnace, just inside the northern edge of Tennessee. Aptly named, Nate thought Furnace, as it wasn’t much better than Hell.

Escaping Furnace, Nate went overland back east to Jonesboro, Tennessee, and from there followed what he believed was DeSoto’s final route south into the Cherokee country of Alabama, through Crowtown and across the river Tennessee at Creeks Crossing. All of it was an exciting spectacle to Nate, but Jenny balked at the unfamiliar and, of course, everything was. Nate encouraged or pulled the mule along, saying there was “nought to be a-skeered of.” And he believed it too, for Nate had too little experience to be afraid. Jenny was more difficult to convince.

After crossing the Tennessee River, Nate found he had to make a choice from among three roads, an uncommon luxury and dilemma. Determined to be more careful this time, he consulted his well-worn map, a gift it had been from his mother, when he’d turned ten. He’d dreamed many times since of this journey. His map showed only one road. And Nate figured it made little difference, so took out down the road headed, again, most southwesterly, and pulled Jenny through Turkey Town and Old Coosa village. Luckily, it was a good choice. He found his way to a path on the western side of the Coosa River, and headed south beside it.

A few days later, on a crisp October afternoon in 1822, Nate looked across the river towards the east, at the thick evergreen forests of “Talladegee” and the Creek Indian territory, just as he imagined DeSoto had done hundreds of years before him. Hardwood groves made patches of yellow, red and orange in amongst the dark evergreens. A breeze flickered through, showing the nearer leaves’ pale undersides and then, as the wind died down, the upper, stronger colors flamed up again. It was so much the way the trees had behaved at home in Virginia. As a hearth fire does, the turning trees warmed him, and he knew he’d found the right place. Before he’d bedded down for the night, Nate prepared to be open for trade.

Like DeSoto, Nate too had come for gold, in a way. But, unlike his predecessor, Nate knew he’d have to earn it. He’d had a well-made plan before he set out. He’d had a good idea where he was going, to just such a place as he’d found, in the new State of Alabama. And he’d known exactly what he’d do when he arrived there. He’d had no intention of stumbling up and down the territory as DeSoto had done. And, Nate was stocked with a much more worthwhile set of values and virtues than DeSoto had ever had. Nate would not abuse his welcome.

Instead of wandering creation and browbeating Indians for the gold that might lie ’round about for the taking, Nate found a spot he liked and made it his home. The irony of the history lesson always made Nate smile to himself. DeSoto had come with a highly inflated idea of his own worth and importance in the New World, where no one had ever heard of him. The Creeks and Cherokees welcomed him civilly, with original southern hospitality, if you will. DeSoto responded by behaving savagely, taking a chief prisoner and attacking whole tribes. Nate wondered at the pride in men and the folly it causes them to undertake.

The exalted early explorer had not understood, apparently, the simplest rules of diplomacy or economics. The very fact that gold was DeSoto’s single-minded obsession made it instantly more valuable to the perceptive native folks to whom he’d inquired about it, whether they’d cared for it before or not. DeSoto had thought the Indians would bow and scrape and give him anything for which he asked. But if the Indians ever had the gold, they certainly wouldn’t have parted with it cheaply after seeing DeSoto’s desire for it. The explorer had given the Alabama Creeks entirely too little credit.

Nate chose his house plot carefully, near enough to the the rough river landing to serve flatboat pilgrims in need of provisions, but on high enough ground to escape occasional high water. And directly adjacent to the old road. There he staked out a homestead and survived a cold, wet winter with only a pine-branch lean-to for shelter at night. In the daytime he kept busy, exploring the area, fishing for his dinner, or setting traps for small game and coming back to take his kill, then cleaning and roasting it over his small fire. All the while he was choosing trees for uniform size, marking them for the ax, taking them down to stack, and getting the word out that he had goods for trade.

His trading post had been established from the start, stocked with the small supply of goods he’d brought in his mule pack from Virginia. But he’d paid in advance and arranged for more of the same to be sent, in small increments, before he’d left home. Fort Strother was near enough to walk to and back in one day, if he got an early start, put a good leg to it, and left Jenny tethered at the homestead site.  Nate had gone to back to the fort (where he’d spent the last night of the long journey) a day or two after settling, There he was able to post a letter to his mother and father. It was just a word to let them know he was well and where he could be contacted. They would see to it his shipments were made and sent to Fort Strother. Nate gained friends living in the confines of the fort. once they knew him well enough they gladly spread the word that Nate was a trustworthy trader.

Nat’s first offerings were simple: a small quantity of tobacco, molasses, smoked meat, colored beads, sewing needles and twine, and of course, lead and powder. His first customers were his Creek neighbors and the occasional Cherokee from a little ways up the river. They would sometimes wander in with a handful of herbs and a hankering to taste molasses. Nate found their herbal medicines surprisingly effective. Once in a while, a native trudged in packing a pack of cured deerskins. Just the sort of thing Nate had hoped to supply to the outland travelers passing by along the ancient road or river. Skins took time to clean and cure. And a skin coat kept the weather off. Leather had many uses. And fur made a warm bed. Many a man passing by and looking to settle in the western frontier east of the Mississippi River, would be glad of a chance to trade for skins. Nate bargained and traded wisely, but he was always honest. And his business thrived.

Any strangers he ever ran across, Nate always treated with the same circumspect civility, whether they be English, German, French or native.  Foreign cartographers, he learned in time, would frequent his establishment at the rate of one or two a year. He willingly shared his ration of salt-cured meat and cornmeal johnny-cake with guests. The friendly Creeks and Cherokees showed him how to choose wisely among the wild-growing native greens to supplement his diet. The French paid handsomely in small gold bits just for a dry place to sleep. The Germans always traded in lead and preferred to sleep in the open. There arose amongst them all a mutual trust. Each helped the other, during the course of business, in learning their respective languages.

As soon as weather allowed it, Nate planted a small kitchen garden. He’d brought just corn and bean seeds, carefully kept in a pocket, all the way from his mother’s garden. A Creek friend surprised Nate with sweet potato sets to plant. Nate surprised the Creek by recognizing the plant. And they laughed together because neither had suspected that the other had ever seen such a wondrous thing as a sweet potato.

It took Nate more than year to start his building, and he’d made do well enough in his lean-to. Trees were best downed in cool weather, so they wouldn’t dry out too fast and split. Long-dried logs lasted best when built, so his cabin logs needed time to dry. One year was hurrying the process, Nate knew. But a two-year delay for a cabin was more than the eager young settler wanted to wait. In the meantime he planned the cabin’s setting, squared it up north and south and marked where the corners should be. He gathered flat river rocks and hauled them up to the site and laid a stone foot for his log walls to come. The floor would be smooth packed earth. But a stone foundation, chinked with red clay, would make the logs a bed out of the wet.

Once he started in the late fall of 1824, building took him only three weeks. He split a flat plane on one side of the first logs laid with a broad ax. This flat side went down on the stones. The pieces chopped away, he saved to use where his finished walls would need large chinks. All the other logs were left round and long enough to extend past the corners on the outside. They were were saddle-notched where each crossed another at the corners and each notch fit snugly over the log below. When he had it completed, his rudimentary cabin’s interior was only about eight feet on an side. But it was tight and dry, with a small loft space for sleeping and storage overhead. It was home and a more respectable and permanent place of business for Nate.

A few families, those looking for a little land and a better life, found Nate’s area to their liking. They built snug cabins and settled in on homesteads of their own. Within a five years they had a little settlement. And Nate had improved his trade to the level of mercantile store. Women are the key, Nate often said, to civilization. They keep us in order. Keep us clean and close to God. Give us something to hope for in a new generation. And, they demand a wider stock of goods than bachelor farmers and simple silent trappers. Women wanted bolts of fabric and tins of tea.

After ten years of thrift and hard work, along with a good dose of business sense, Nate was supplying an up-and-coming community of yeoman farmers with a good deal of its needs and wants. He built a bigger house of squared up logs on stone pilings, with a planed floor and windows, one each facing east and west. By ‘33, the settlers fairly poured into Alabama. Cropwell was an established town by then, with an official United States Post Office. And it lay by the path of the same reliable road that had served the early explorers three or four hundred years before, and Indian travelers for maybe ten thousand years before that. In 1833, though, Nate wrote to his father that the traffic along that road was something to see. Exciting it was indeed for him catch a certain sound that had become familiar to him, to hear as many as three or four mule carts a week come rolling in from some distance, or driving and to and fro from Ashville to Wilsonville.

When he finally felt prosperous enough in his own mind, Nate went in search of a wife. He was twenty-nine years old. He was happy to find that he wouldn’t have to go far afield, women being known to be unreasonable and overwrought when taken far from their mothers. Nate found his woman downriver, at a Shelby County church service. She was a steady and sensible sixteen-year-old, who talked very little. She was strong enough to help him in his business and not bad to look at either. Not much courtin’ was necessary. Maggie Byrd came with a small bundle of clothing and a smaller dowry, but with an established family name in the area.  And a lot of local cousins. That would be good for business. Nate and his hardy bride went right to work and had ten children over the next twenty years. Nate often laughed at his early expressions of the spiritual virtues and dry goods needs of women. Eight of his children turned out to be girls.

The Right Southern Corner is a series by Sara Rast
Copyright: 2009 Sara Love Rast. All rights reserved

The Right Southern Corner