Thoughts From the Front Porch

In all of our giving
on Christmas Day morning
remember God’s Gift
the manger adorning.

Read from the Gospels
the wonderful story
how Jesus came down
from the splendors of glory

to live here a while—
Christ among men,
the Light of the world—
the Atonement for sin.

Let Christ be exalted
in our jubilation—
He came to earth
to bring us salvation.

In the joy and excitement
on Christmas Day morning,
give thanks for God’s gift
the manger adorning.

by Joe Whitten 2009

Joe’s Meanderings is a series by Joe Whitten.

Joe's Meanderings

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

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

Howard Bunch

As I said previously, I do not remember my mother from those days at Pa’s house. My bonding was with Granny, and all my life I was always much closer to her than I was to Mother.

One day in April 1942 (the spring before I turned 4-years-old in July), Marie, Inez and I were playing under the crib - or Little House - and I would guess we were again rescuing doodle bugs. The crib stood on stone pillars high off the ground and the sandy soil under it made a fine place to play. On this day, someone came to fetch me - told me Granny wanted me. And I, still holding a corn shuck I’d been smoothing the dirt with, went to my doom.

I stood at Granny’s knee, and saw also in the room my mother and Mr. Armstrong - but whether I knew his name was Mr. Armstrong or even whether I’d ever seen him before, I cannot say. As I stood there, Mother told me that she and Mr. Armstrong had gotten married and that I would go to live with them.

This is my first memory of my mother.

I held on to Granny’s apron with one hand and my corn shuck with the other. I suppose I was going to use the shuck to stave off disaster. Isn’t it interesting what minutia the brain will hold on to! But that corn shuck and Granny’s apron are as clear and real today as they were those long years ago.

Somehow, I won a week’s reprieve. I’d guess that Granny and Pa counseled that “next week might be better.”

A week later I ended up with my mother and new step-father. I have absolutely no memory of that dreadful day. Psychologists say that we block out those things too painful to remember; and, quite frankly, I’m glad I do not remember the event.

It was a move of only 2 miles or so, but to a little boy not quite four years old, it might as well have been a thousand miles.

Step-father was the principal of Bryant School and lived in a little brown house adjacent to the school. It was called the teacherage, a house provided by the school for the principal.

It was an empty house. At Granny and Pa’s, there had been eleven people. In the little brown house there were three, and I slept in a room by myself. Where at Granny and Pa’s, at night, I had been in the room with other breathing bodies who loved me, now in the night there were only the terrors of darkness and nightmares.

There was an outside door to my room, and the door had a window in it. Deep in the night, beasts of all sorts would clamor to get in and devour me. The bear and the wolf would scratch and claw at the door. In my terror I would go to Mother for comfort, but it was never the comfort of Granny’s loving bosom and safe arms.

Added to the nighttime distresses  were the daytime chores! I was assigned, by step-father, the task of pulling weeds from the front yard - a sand bucket full per day. Personally, I had never heard of anything more absurd in my life! My heart rebelled and resisted, but there was no escape. I had to do it. The seed heads of those weeds were somewhat like tiny cattails, and I never see them without also seeing my little bucket full of them.

Because of my rebellious heart, I experienced guilt. I’m sure mother talked to me about obedience to her and to God, and that obeying her would please God.

It was because of this conflict of good and bad that I saw the devil late one summer evening.

Now, I’m sure that by this time I had heard many sermons on how bad the devil was and that Hell was down and was on fire. On this particular day, I had once more lost the battle of weeds and had been required to pull the wretched bucket full.

It was twilight, and mother and step-father were on the front porch while I wandered aimlessly and dejectedly in the backyard. I sat down on the back steps, pondering over the incomprehensible mysteries of life. I glanced over to the tree next to the steps, and my soul was filled with stupefying horror. A gaping hole had opened at the base of the tree and the flames of hell shimmered and flickered within. I could not move; I could not scream. I knew life was over and damnation had overtaken me. But when I saw the devil himself rising out of the pit, I did scream, and as I screamed I ran to the front of the house yelling, “I saw the devil! I saw the devil!”

I knew the devil must be in hot pursuit and that only Mother could save me. And she did. Somehow, she calmed me down and took me back to show me that the devil was not there. And there, where I had seen Hell and the devil, was a lightning bug crawling up the coils of an old set of bed springs leaning against the tree.

After that, even though the devil had been only a firefly, somehow I pulled the weeds a little more cheerfully for a little while.

Mother made her clothes and mine. To make me feel better in my new home, she had made me two pairs of overalls - at least I remember them as overalls. On the bib on one she had appliqued a dog and on the other a cat. They were the finest clothes I had ever seen, and I loved them. It was these overalls that forced me to make the first great decision of my life.

I had decided that I really had to get back to Granny and Pa’s. At one point with the weed pulling madness burning my soul, I had unwisely informed Mother, “You’re not my boss; Grandma’s my boss!” The switching that followed let me know that Mother was indeed my boss. It was a miserable day.

So, I’m sure I kept up an unending plea to go back to Grandma’s. Finally one day Mother said, “All right, you can go live with Grandma.” My heart sang, for I thought I’d won. But then Mother said, “But you’ll have to leave your new overalls here. You can’t take them with you” What a terrible thing I faced. There I was, the only kid on Sand Mountain with two pairs of new overalls - glorified with a cat and a dog. How long I pondered and to what depths my spirit zig-zagged, I don’t know, but the overall won and Granny lost. I stayed with the new overalls - and, quite secondarily, stayed with Mother.

…………
*Photo Details
My mother is second from left in back row; Granny is holding Inez; Marie is the little girl in the second row. Four boys are my uncles who dragged me around with them until I was snatched away. The boy holding the hat is a cousin that Granny and Pa raised. Uncle Eskell is holding me, but the camera just about cut me out of the picture.

Joe’s Meanderings is a series by Joe Whitten

Joe's Meanderings