Dean (Part II)

Talking abut her other grandfather Luther and The Home Place:

He (Luther) was a very quiet man. He must have been sick. He had to eat certain foods because he had stomach problems but he loved to eat possum.
 He lived with his son Odell and Aunt Annie who pampered and they took care of him.

He would sit on a rocker with a goat fur seat and smoke a corncob pipe. He would fall asleep and the pipe would fall to the floor, but Annie kept an eye on him. He had a small, red and white dog named Snow, a feist that treed squirrels and sat in his lap.

Pa had been a blacksmith, sharpening plows and building wagons. He lived in The Home Place and had a special love for it.

Here so describes the ancestral home:

It was made of big logs that were well sealed and covered by siding. It had three rooms, two bedrooms and a kitchen. A long porch ran the length and faced east.

The floor was smooth from years of walking. To the south there was/is a spring that bubbled up fresh, cool water. (It is about 20 feet from the home. Unlike most families who had to get water from the creek, the Parkers had an all weather source) In the back of the house, facing west, was the smokehouse and chicken coop. Past them a cornfield once stood.

The cemetery at Panther Creek Church down at Parker Landing was his biggest concern. They had to move the bodies to Mt. Olive Church and to the Home Place when it flooded.

Luther died months prior to the completion of Pickwick Dam. Most of the known bodies were moved. It is likely that the Panther Creek Church was dismantled and removed. Nevertheless, that area is underwater now.

Ma- Althea Condrey:

She was the only grandmother we ever knew. (Luther's first wife Ora died of T.B. in 1910) Ma was a very busy woman: she had the house, a garden, and the chickens and was always working. She didn't have modern conveniences but you couldn't tell. She grew all kinds of berries and had an orchard: yellow plums, apples, and peaches. She made jelly.

She never chopped or picked cotton. Ma was always canning and preparing for winter, and she tried to teach us how to cook.

I was closest to Pa (Ed) Condrey. He was my favorite; he was my best friend. He was very strict, very quiet and “I - Gad” was his cuss word (I have no idea what I-gad means)

He was a smart man who lived before his time. Pa ruled his house and never stopped bossing his four sons around. But his girls were good.

Pa was a deputy sheriff. Those hills were full of whisky stills, so because Ed didn't drink, he was deputized for his area. He tried to find them; he went out at night searching for the stills that were behind every rock. He kept his eyes open to see who was drinking.

He told me lots of stories: he told me Indians used to live down there and he showed me the signs they left on rocks and things. He searched for ginseng and other herbs to make medicine and then he would mail them to people.


As I sat at Pa's feet while he wove baskets, he told me the world would change and business would change, too. We do things different ways every 20 years. He said life will be easier, but not better. And they will build a dam.


About Jim Condrey:

He was Pa's half brother. We liked him, he was a slim, good looking guy. He hung around a lot. Pa kept saying that Jim was going to die with his boots on because he may have been going with a married woman. Ed gave him trouble for being bad. Jim would visit often, driving a very nice car, much too nice and big for a young man with no discernible income.

His sister Emma called one morning, (They were some of the first to get a phone line) she told Pa that Jim was dead. ( November 27, 1927) Somebody killed him. Pa arranged to have his body brought to Pappy's little graveyard near the home place. It was the first hearse I had ever seen.

He had a nice casket with carnations and everyone was very upset, especially Jim's brother Frank. They never knew exactly what happened.


According to his death certificate and newspaper reports: while walking along the road, Jim was struck by a passing vehicle driven by a local farmer and his wife. His sister Emma was there and she witnessed it, but obviously the family felt there was more to it than an accident. One might assume that Jim had been involved in some schemes.

The fifth child is born: Macie Condrey July 23, 1928

Hygiene:


We made our own soap with lye and fat from a hog. It was hard to stay clean, but we did. We bathed and washed clothes in a tub with heated water from the stove. We had to bath two or three children in the same water. My sister Daisy was hard to deal with.

Bathroom:


We went behind the house, B.M.’s too. The chickens ate it just as quick as you could shit.

The older people went to the woods. There was no toilet paper, we used the Sears & Roebuck catalog, cobs, or a stick- really anything.


Daddy had a smokehouse. He smoked hogs using Hickory wood. 
He had a lot of cows, too. Black ones: those are beef cows. We had a Jersey cow: Golden, and she gave milk. One time, Me and Daisy stole some milk to make mud pies. Mrs. Cossitt told on me.


Punishments: Momma talked to us. Daddy didn't raise his voice. We might get a whipping with a switch but it was uncommon.


Beef cows:


Daddy would kill a cow and cut it into pieces and would send the meat out to sell to other families. They canned the meat by cooking it, putting it in a hot jar, and pouring the grease into the jar. Put the lid on and turn the jar upside down so the grease would turn to lard and preserve it. 


Jim Cooper supplied the commissary with food. Daddy had a store to supply his workers, as well as others with convenient means of supply.
 We bought sugar, salt, flour, and coffee. We had our canned foods, preserves, green beans, potatoes, onions, and half gallon jars of bacon fat. We ate chicken, coons, and possum. Possum tastes nastier than chicken. Most of our meals included cornbread or biscuits, and we made our own sorghum molasses. We made candy out of it and mixed peanuts in. And we made taffy- took molasses and boiled it down, put soda in it so it would turn white and we pulled it into Taffy.

We ate good.

Travels:

My first time to leaving home we went to Waterloo. Daddy (Tommie) had been cutting timber making lots of railroad ties, but there weren't any trains in the area. I knew that even though I was young. I didn't know the world was different outside our place. We just had mail service and saw the fancy clothes from Sears in Chicago. I wanted to know how things were on the outside. We rode a log wagon ten miles to Waterloo on the Tennessee River with the two mules. Daddy unloaded the cross ties into the Tennessee River to be floated down to Savannah, Tennessee.

I wasn't old enough to understand what was happening but I loved to ride the wagon. We made many more trips to Waterloo, sometimes in a Model T truck. Daddy purchased his first Ford in the mid 1920s. We bought ice cream at the drug store; Oh! What a treat. Jim Cooper would lend Daddy money and sold him stuff on credit.

The Sawmill:

Daddy owned 168 acres - most of it was hilly and rocky. He didn't grow cotton; he used the trees that grew there to supply his sawmill. He had about 15 “hands”: There was Bob White and his son Clarence, and Bill, Hardy, Dewey Parker, and Emmett Burns. They had their families and we played with their kids.

Two men would take a logging wagon (a wagon without a bed, just a frame) and cut down trees with it. They used a crosscut saw with a handle on each end. They used axes, wedges, and a sledgehammer to drive the gap. Trees were cut into eight foot lengths; some trees were big enough to make two or three ties. The wagons had “boomers” fastened to them that picked the log up.


The sawmill was steam-powered by a boiler, and too much steam was bad. It would “pop-off".

Well, one day it popped off.

Daisy screamed, “What's that?”

“It's the engine running away,” Momma answered.

Daisy hid under the bed because she was afraid the engine would run her over.


The sawmill ran Monday through Friday. On Saturday it operated as a Grist Mill. People brought shelled corn to run through it. It came out as chops but if you ran it again you would get it finer cornmeal. We were paid a quarter or tenth of the produce percentage; Daddy’s business was going well.


One day Daddy bought three model A trucks. I didn't like it…

“Things are going to change, they change every twenty years,” Pa had warned.

I was scared the trucks would run over Aunt Mary's guinea hens; they passed her house every day.

We built a new house on Oscar Duke’s land. (It was a planned house drawn by Tommie and Lummie) They used special lumber and it was built on a rock foundation. It was on a dry ridge so a well was dug out. At one-hundred and one feet they hit water, and boy, was it GOOD water.

The house had three bedrooms, living room, kitchen, and an enclosed patio; all one story. It was located off the County road that runs on Pea Ridge, near Joe Eaves Store. The yard had big Oak trees around it on level ground. We even landscaped it: Flowers and Cannas were planted, an orchard, too. We worked many days on the yard but never moved in.

Wilson was a smart ass! Even then, you couldn't believe a word he said.

He told me that Oscar Duke was going to get our new house. I asked Daddy.

“I’m afraid he's right,” he said, but he never gave the details.

Next thing I knew- things got tight.

There were no new clothes, the housekeeper Mrs. Cossitt left, school closed up.

And Momma went with Daddy to Florence to sign papers often.

One night they had all the kids get together in front of the fireplace.


“Tomorrow we are going to have company,” Daddy announced.

“Who?” I asked.

“Oscar Duke” he answered.

“Is Macie coming?” I asked. Oscar Duke had two children, Warren and Macie. I liked Warren.

“Nah. This is complete different business. We didn't make enough to pay last year’s bill or pay this year's. They are going to sell everything we got.”

(Tommie had leased the sawmill from Oscar Duke and that area became known as Duke Town)

That was a big blow; it was 1930.

The red milk cow- Golden, died giving birth, but she had a little Jersey calf. The beef cows wouldn't let him nurse so I took a corn cob, hollowed it out, wrapped a towel around it, and attached a bottle of milk to feed him. I was about that calf.

It was two or three months old when they came to buy him but I had hid that calf in my room. Daisy, Louise, Houston, and Macie all knew about it.
 Daddy found out about the calf after selling all the beef cows and he gave me a bad tongue lashing. I felt terrible. We owed all these debts and Daddy said I was stealing.

But he let me keep him. When we moved he gave it to Aunt Ninnie. He died two years later when he broke his neck falling off a bluff. He was probably pretty fat by then.

We had to move to the Higgins house.


It was a four room affair with a breezeway; a shotgun house. It was big enough… Momma wasn't doing well. We had lost the mill, the trucks, and most of our beef cows.
 We only made one crop.

My father asks the heavy question: Did Tommie move to Tyronza, Arkansas? Had he started another family there?

Dean is quiet for a long time.

Daddy made arrangements to move to a plantation called the East Farm, a cotton farm. We left in October, 1931. He sold all of our furniture, Pa and Ma were heartbroken. So was Pappy (Luther). Momma, Macie, and Houston rode in the cab. Me, Daisy, Louise, and Daddy rode in the bed of the truck where we laid out quilts to be comfortable.

At Savannah most everyone still had wagons and mules. We crossed the Tennessee River on a ferry. We got on a black top road which is Highway 64.

We saw Memphis for the first time and we were amazed.

We went across the bridge in Memphis in a Model A truck. Everything we owned was in that truck. It took all day to get to Tyronza. We arrived at a shotgun house on the lower end of the East Plantation. All that flat land was cleared and the gumbo mud stuck to our feet. The cotton was huge, as tall as Louise. She could almost climb them.

We (Tommie, Dean, Daisy, & Louise) started pulling cotton the next day using nine foot cotton sacks. Houston wasn't pulling, yet. Momma did not pull cotton; she tried to chop it but it hurt her.

Dean was thirteen. Daisy - ten, Louise - eight, Houston - five, and Macie - three.
 I pulled the top of the cotton plants and Louise pulled the bottom.

In October, pulling cotton meant pulling the burr and the gin removed the seed. We wore lots of clothes and wraps because it was cold. We pulled that whole fall; we stayed and picked but did not plant there. The next year we moved into the Strong house to make a crop and we sharecropped.

That year:

We went to a slough where blackberries grew. It was a little dangerous because of snakes, but Daddy, Hardy Parker, and us kids picked thirty or forty gallons of berries.

We took them to Tyronza and sold them, and daddy used the money to finish paying for a truck.

It was a Model A, a lumber truck he used to make extra money by helping people from Alabama move to Arkansas.


Jim Hooten may have been the one that financed his lumber truck, and he helped Daddy get back on his feet. Anyway, they spent a lot of time together. They were real close.
 Jim Hooten was Tommie's uncle and brother of Althea. He had been in Arkansas for twenty years and owned a store.

He’d also been the sheriff of Lepanto, Arkansas some years previous. 
Ma told me about Jim, how he did. He was wealthy because he made moonshine.

Pa didn't like it and he was trying to stop him. Outside Lepanto, he had this big, brick house, and in this house were secret walls. I saw it one time: there were shelves lined with jugs of whiskey.

Jim didn't drink.


When did Tommie Condrey leave the family?

To be continued, ya'll. Buckle up