July 30, 2008

Part two

I doubt if there are many people alive today who were adults in Vicksburg during the Great Depression. I was only a child and am now 83 years of age. My childhood recollections are colored by the fact that we were rural poor, not a part of the merchant and professional class who survived the Great Depression with difficulty, but without being reduced to accepting “relief” supplies from the government.

When we came back to Vicksburg from Paducah, Ky., we moved into Grandma Anna Burns Penley’s home on Jackson Road. It stood across a dirt road from Delozier’s store, and boasted a barn of weathered cypress siding. Its 8 acres were just enough to graze a couple of Jersey milk cows. Their manure helped nourish a large, fenced, food garden. My dad had lost his job, as had three uncles who also moved in to “Grammaw’s” place with their young families. Grammaw was an enterprising widow lady who staged dances in the large front room of her house. Her husband had died in 1917, most probably during the Spanish Flu epidemic. My brothers and I would rub Super Suds soap powder into the pine flooring to make ‘It took nearly two years of earnings from odd jobs for the menfolk to save enough money to build Grammaw a new home.’it smooth enough for dancing but not so slick as to invite falls.

Sheriff Lauderdale would come out for most dance nights. Most of the dancers were married couples and the “highs” were limited to high spirits. The spirits came from a jug of moonshine that was kept behind the chicken house. I don’t remember much about the music except that it was loud and was produced by four to five instruments. All of us children were shunted off to bedrooms to sleep at the foot of the bed. The rest of the beds were covered with coats, as the dances were staged during the winter.

One of our few sources of entertainment was to see if we could race to the scene of house fires that were so common in those days. At least one of the menfolk could be depended on to have an automobile in good working order, if long in tooth. We could see the glow of house fires reflected against night skies, and knowing the country roads intimately, we could occasionally reach the fire before it burned itself out. We would do what we could to help. There were no fireplugs, of course, and cistern water had to be drawn up bucket by bucket. I don’t recall ever seeing a house fire controlled.

When it seemed that things could not possibly get worse, Grammaw’s house caught fire in the middle of a summer night. I was about 6 years old and remember adults literally throwing furniture and wads of clothing through the windows. All the little ones were quickly herded out of the house, and no one was hurt trying to be heroic. We had a bucket brigade going between the house and a small pond about a stone’s throw away, but the yellow pine used in construction of the house burned too fast for us to make any headway.

That very night the adults spread hay on the hayloft floor and moved the families into the barn to sleep. It seemed like great fun for a while, but the insects had themselves a picnic. I still marvel at how quickly the menfolk found sheets of metal roofing and set up a stove for cooking. The hayloft was a firetrap, of course, but you did what you had to do.

I feel compelled to mention the part played in our recovery by Virginia Naylor, a black lady who lived just down the road from us. She was about my mother’s age and had helped my grandmother and her offspring at times. She became a second mother to us small kids, even though she had a couple of her own at home. So, if any of Virginia’s descendents are out there, know that we loved her.

It took nearly two years of earnings from odd jobs for the menfolk to save enough money to build Grammaw a new home. Uncle Charlie Penley was a master carpenter: His skills helped in the design and construction. He moved shortly thereafter, to take a job in Fort Peck, Mont., helping build a huge dam. Uncle Eddie Hitesman, a skilled mechanic, was the next to get a job and move into town, followed by J.C. Puckett, a welder. My dad, a boilermaker, was the last to move to town.

Jim Wilson, an honorary Master Gardener in eight states, was a presenter for 10 years on PBS’s “Victory Garden” and is the author of 10 gardening books. He now lives in Missouri and in this series remembers his youth in Vicksburg. Mail reaches him at 4200 E. Richland Road, Columbia, MO. 65201 and e-mail reaches him at gardengeezer@centurytel.net