A Hundred Year Story, Part 20

By Elton Camp

After the end of the War the threat of the draft passed, but jobs were scarce with
so many returning soldiers competing for available positions. My father located a job in
Florence, Alabama that required him to sell insurance and collect insurance premiums.
From the front of the Goodwin house, he caught the bus to Florence where he rented a
room and began his new job. Mother sent a batch of home made divinity with him. As
the last hired, he was given the most undesirable part of town, Weeden, which was hilly
and mainly inhabited by Negroes. Although I didn’t know it, he was a racist and detested
the contact he was forced to have with blacks. Needless to say, he didn’t stay at the
insurance job but for a few months.

When my father returned from Florence, he obtained employment as

teacher/principal at Tims School in rural Marshall County. Mother located a position
teaching fourth grade at the City School in Guntersville. While not the first choice of
either, those were the best teaching jobs they could get.

They arranged to buy a house and eight acres at the edge of Sand Mountain in a
community known as Mountain View. The place they bought was located on what was
known locally as “Homebrew Hill.” A notable bootlegger had lived on that spot at some
point in its history. This was our family home from 1945 until they moved to
Russellville in 1985.

“I’m only moving here because of you,” my father claimed. “It’ll be a good place
for you to grow up.”

That wasn’t the only or even main reason. The place was inexpensive, it was
convenient to his work, and it allowed him to have an increasingly huge garden. What I
needed or wanted was, at best, a remote consideration. I disliked living there, all the
more so as I got older, since it cut me off from meaningful association with the kids I
knew in school. It was too far out in the country. Our isolation extended so far as lack of
a telephone until I entered the sixth grade. By then the chance to build social relationships
had largely passed. Yet, the location did have its advantages.

Toward the back of the acreage was a large patch of blackberries. When they
ripened, we enjoyed picking them for jam or cobblers. We used metal syrup buckets with
wire handles to hold the berries. I often succumbed to the temptation to eat so many
berries that my bucket filled slowly. The tangle of vines was more than head high, so we
used hoes to cut trails into the patch.

Because the thorns tore into us so painfully, my father eventually ordered what
were advertised as thornless berries, not blackberries, but boysen berries. By the second
year, they were well established and produced large, tasty berries. The stems bore huge,
sharp, hooked thorns that were far worse than on the wild blackberries. Picking them
was a painful process that usually resulted in injury no matter how careful we tried to be.
But we had to agree that, exactly as advertised, the berries were indeed thornless. Since
the seller made no such claim as to the vines that bore them, the representation was
accurate but highly misleading. We got a good laugh out of it plus learning a lesson in
giving attention to detail when buying.

Initially, our frame house was minuscule, with four cramped rooms and a kitchen.
It had no bathroom or indoor plumbing. The surroundings showed lack of care and
neglect, understandable since it’d been built to be an inexpensive rental house.

My father had attempted to borrow the $4000 purchase price from his own father
who was prosperous by the standards of the day. Milas told him that he’d think it over,
but ultimately refused to make the loan. My father believed it was due to Belle’s
influence since he’d never tried to hide his dislike of her. Who could blame her?

This led him to approach A.K. Bragg who readily granted the loan. Not long
afterward, his father contacted him. “I’ve decided t’ let y’u have th’ money after all,” he
announced magnanimously. “That’s all right. I don’t need it at all,” he responded with
barely-concealed delight.

My parents repaid the loan over about ten years on an annual basis. When he
made a payment, we went by to tell the then-widowed Mrs. Bragg so she’d know the
money was available for her use.

We’d have moved to Mountain View sooner than we did, but a family of renters
named Marsh squatted in the house. They stalled with the claim that they couldn’t find
anywhere to move. The truth was that they were living rent-free and so had no
motivation to get out. They should’ve paid rent to the new owners, but he didn’t demand
it. With increasing pressure, he finally got them to vacate the premises. He was at the
point of getting an eviction order, but was glad not to have to go that far.

My parents immediately began to improve the house and grounds. A full front
porch replaced the small “doghouse” that had sheltered the door. The yard was rough and
sandy, but he had it graded and enriched so it would grow grass. The crawlspace had
been open, but my father had attractive sandstone blocks placed to enclose it. With
landscaping, it became a neat little cottage. The remodeling was the best they could do
with available income and was as good or better than most people had at the time. The
addition of shrubbery enhanced “curb appeal.”

Water came from a bored well in the back yard and was drawn with a windlass. A
small, open back porch had a shelf where they kept buckets of water. We washed
ourselves as best we could on the porch except in the coldest of weather. Both the
Smutty House and the Goodwin House had indoor plumbing, so we took a huge step
backward at the move.
 In the beginning, the main source of heat was a Warm Morning heater in the
living room. It burned either coal or coke, or a mixture of the two fuels. It actually
heated the small house quite well and retained considerable heat overnight. The next
morning, a roaring fire developed quickly when more fuel was added.

Warm Morning Heater

Over the years they progressively improved the house, especially with inside
plumbing and a bathroom being created by taking part of the formal dining room and a
closet of my room. That greatly improved living conditions. At the same time, they
walled off an alcove to make a new closet for my bedroom. I had measles while the
construction was taking place and had to stay in bed. My grandparents came to help with
the work. I wanted to do at least something, so they let me get up and pry loose a board
with a crowbar.

My father decided it would be possible to dig a basement into the crawl space.
His intention was to add additional rooms. There wasn’t room to get digging equipment
underneath the house, so he undertook the job with a shovel. The easiest place to work
was directly beneath the kitchen. He dug a small room deep enough to stand upright
before he struck water. The hard-won space quickly filled about waist deep. That ended
his dreams of a basement and added the necessity to install a drain line to eliminate
standing water that would’ve damaged the house. He erected cement block walls around
the space and used it initially for a root cellar. Later, he had a water softening system
placed there.

The water softener was needed because the well water was a type of iron water
locally termed “copperess.” As such, it developed curds of orange aggregate on standing.
The minerals permanently stained bathroom fixtures and would’ve ruined any clothes
washed in it. It had a rank taste and smell. The complicated device didn’t completely
solve the situation. Public water became available about 1960, about fifteen years after
we moved there.

In the early fifties, they did a general renovation, including addition of a bedroom
to the side and a bay window to the front. The tiny bedroom it replaced was included
into the living room by removal of a wall. At that time, the door from the living room
into the formal dining room was torn out along with most of the wall so that the living
room and dining room were continuous but in an “L” shape. Addition of a picture
window on the side effectively tied the addition to the existing architecture. The
residence went from a cottage appearance to the form of a small house.
 The building project wasn’t entirely successful. The bay window leaked terribly
despite all attempts to fix it. In a blowing rain, it appeared as if water came directly
through the window. Water quickly accumulated on the window ledge and ran into the
floor. It was a puzzle to us all and I still can’t understand how it possibly could have
leaked like it did. The ultimate solution was to add a metal awning. It stopped the
horrendous leak although it was unattractive and blocked the view. To give a consistent
appearance, they added similar awnings to other windows in the new bedroom. The
awnings seemed to generate mold and had to be scrubbed regularly. As of 2009, those
awnings continue to mar the house’s appearance. If the present owner ever removes the
one on the bay window, he’ll get a nasty surprise. No doubt it will still leak.

The new bedroom also leaked badly from the ceiling. Various workers made
unsuccessful attempts to solve the problem. After my mother got completely disgusted,
she climbed a ladder and entered the attic from the roof by removing a ventilator, and
stopped the leak herself. “I wasn’t going to put up with it any longer,” she recalled. “I
figured I could fix it and I did.”

During the first few years, heated water came from a coal stove in the kitchen that
had coiled pipes of water within it. That stove also had a tin oven on the stovepipe that
was used to bake bread. We had no hot water unless the stove was in use. The
arrangement was more satisfactory than it sounds. Since virtually all meals were cooked
at home, we timed our use of hot water to follow eating. We had no overwhelming need
for hot water during the night hours.

Stove Pipe Oven of Type in Our Kitchen

The stovepipe oven did an excellent job of baking bread, especially biscuits. My
father refused to eat any biscuit unless it came piping hot directly from the oven. We
normally ate in the formal dining room. When he wanted a biscuit, or if the one he was
eating got cold, he demanded that my mother go to the kitchen and bring one from the
oven. He ate a lot and very fast which called for delivery of a series of biscuits. The
frequent orders made it difficult for her to eat her own breakfast. If she didn’t act quickly
enough for him, he might throw the cold biscuit at her. She always hated the idea of
throwing food and became indignant. He had gone too far.

“I work just as hard as you do. If you want one, get it yourself,” she retorted. It
was unusual for her to stand up to him on anything. It angered him, but also shocked him
into action.
 It wasn’t long before he came up with a small folding table that he placed in the
center of the small kitchen. With the oven that close, she again gave in to his demands
for a hot biscuit as soon as he wolfed down the one on his plate.

Eating in the kitchen had an advantage at breakfast in cold weather. The kitchen
was the only truly warm room in the house early in the day. We judged the little table an
excellent idea.

Two minor outbuildings were on the grounds. A crude toilet, far into the woods
behind the barn, was in use only for a short time until water and a bathroom were
installed. Closer behind the house was a small smoke house that served for storage
although it had only a dirt floor.

The barn was much larger, although compared to most in the area it was only of
medium size. It had a hallway open at both ends, two side stalls to the right, a corn crib
to the left, two side rooms with a shed roof on the left (one open and one we used for a
chicken coop), and upstairs was the barn loft. Like many barns, it was poorly constructed
and set on an inadequate foundation. It had no paint to forestall rotting of its lumber.
The roof was poor quality tin.

Access to the barn loft required climbing boards on the right side of the barn hall.
The spaces between them barely admitted toes. To get all the way into the loft was risky,
but I never fell. The barn loft contained worthless junk, but over time Charlie Lawson
and I created sort of a hideout on one side with cast off items of furniture and a few
decorations. We didn’t actually use it very much. To set it up was more fun than to
spend time in it. The loft was hot and had a rank odor. We preferred more active,
outside fun.

The floorboards in the corncrib weren’t nailed down so I eventually put a pair of
hinges on one of them to make a trapdoor that led into the space underneath the barn. It
was better in theory than in practice and I didn’t use it much. Underneath, the barn was
dusty and dirty and had jars, broken glass, and rusty cans scattered around. I had to crawl
to get outside the barn after exiting the crib through the trapdoor. To emerge filthy was
too high a cost for the fun involved.

We used the corncrib only once in connection with farming. That was when
Havana Gibson rented the land and stored picked cotton inside. He put on a hasp and
kept a padlock on the door. It did little good. I knew how to get into the crib from above.
After that, it became a catchall for junk. Since I often played in the crib, I knew more
about what it contained than did my parents.

I overheard my mother discussing a problem with my father. “I can’t find my

Social Security card anywhere. Guess I’ll have to try to get another one, but I don’t
know how to go about it.” I instantly recalled seeing it in a box in the corncrib. “I know
where it is,” I volunteered. In his usual demeaning way, my father scoffed and insisted
that I didn’t have any idea. I went immediately to the barn and brought back the missing
document. He exclaimed in surprise, “Well, he did know.”

Tims School, where my father was principal, was only about a mile from the
house. It was a white, frame building that stood on concrete supports high above the
ground, especially at the rear where it rose far more than head high. It had four
classrooms plus a cafeteria with a staff of two cooks. Lack of plumbing required large
outhouses at the rear toward the creek. They could’ve been found in complete darkness
merely by following the rank odor.

The rural institution catered to a community of people, many of whom were

ignorant and backward. That wasn’t simply because they didn’t have much education.
Some very intelligent people aren’t formally educated. To use a common country
expression, most of those folks were “behind the door when the brains were passed out.”
All described them as “clannish,” and it was widely reported that more than a few had
married first cousins. I don’t know if that was correct, but it might have been since
Alabama is one of a few States that allow such unions between couples of childbearing
age.

Two events at that school stand out in my mind. As a result of his purchase of a
ticket for a drawing, my father won a small cedar chest filled with candy. The candy
wasn’t very good, but its smell, combined with the cedar aroma, was intoxicating. I liked
to raise the lid and enjoy the pleasing scent.

“It ain’t rite fer Mr. Camp t’ accept th’ prize,” several people complained. “Thar
oughter b’ ’nother drawin’.” Some grumbled about that for months. The prize was
worth only a few dollars.

“I purchased a ticket and won it fair and square,” he returned. “There’s no reason
to hold a second drawing.” He recognized their real objection: they hadn’t won.

On another occasion a student presented him with some gifts, including a quality
fountain pen. It turned out that she’d stolen money and bought the items with part of the
loot. Her father came to our house agitated. “You’ve got t’ pay fer those things Ivy
bought ye. I got t’ pay back thet money er she goes t’ jail,” he demanded.

I thought he should’ve given the gifts to the man and let him deal with it, but he
sat right down and wrote out a check for the full amount the man claimed he owed.
Ironically, he wrote out the check with the gift fountain pen. Sometimes he let people
push him around outrageously. At other times he didn’t give in when he should.

At that time, local trustees were in charge of schools. He soon ran afoul of them
because of their ignorant religious views. Burdo Buchman, chairman of the trustees,
accused him of wrong conduct. “Ye’ve been seed wurkin’ in yer garden on Sunday.
Thet’s breakin’ th’ Sabbath. Thet’s got t’ stop,” the man asserted.
 “That’s not any particle of your business, Burdo,” my father correctly, but
unwisely, retorted. Sabbath observation had been a feature of the Law of Moses given
only to the nation of Israel. It had no force beyond the Jewish people. Even a superficial
glance at a calendar shows that Sunday’s the first day of the week, not the seventh. The
true Sabbath is sundown Friday until sundown Saturday. The trustees had no
understanding of such basic Biblical teachings.

The conflict with the fundamentalist belief resulted in him being forced out of his
job at the end of the year. “What’s wrong that you can’t get along with Burdo?” the
superintendent of schools joked. He knew full well how backward community was and
so arranged for my father to have a teaching job in a better school for the following year.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)