Spruce Pine is the town where my mother met my father, and it is where my mother and her mother were born. It holds many memories both good and bad. It is on top of Spruce Pine Mountain nine miles from Russellville. You can look down and see my birthplace. My daddy's family was born there, too. It is a beautiful large hill with many spruce pine trees. There are pretty rocks on each side of the highway. You can look up on either side and see water dripping down the rocks. It is a beautiful sight to behold.

There are caves, tunnels and many beautiful natural sights. You can see the Dixie cotton fields, the many old barns and houses with the rusty old roofs. The old times there are not forgotten. The singing sounds from the only three churches as I walked along the dirt roads will be a beautiful sound in my memory forever. My ears still seem to hear "How Sweet to Trust in Jesus," "How Great Thou Art" and "Just As I Am." It is easy to think of the hard times as good times. As a child I had no other memories planted in me and I did not know the hard times were bad times at all.

The little country Methodist Church where my mother and her mother were members since they were infants had an old fashioned revival going on. My mother sat there on a hard bench when my dad, seventeen years old, walked in with a gun under his shirt and a bottle of booze in his back pocket. He was from Russellville, the big little country town. His eyes met hers and it was Bingo. From that day on my grandparents, the preacher, or any one else could not stop the young kids; one from the bottom of the mountain and one from the top of the mountain. A short time later they were married, and my mother moved that long nine miles from home. But she would not be there very long.

I was born in Russellville, Alabama shortly before the Great Depression. I never knew there was a depression since I was a baby and you don't miss what you never had. We kids did not know we did not have anything. There were eleven of us kids. One was born every two years.

We moved to Spruce Pine, Alabama when I was a baby. We would live there several years. Spruce Pine is a very tiny unincorporated town. It is a beautiful town. It is a town of very few stores. In those days there was Smith's store, Scharnagel's store, the Moses store, Uncle Bob Humphries gas station, Uncle George Glover's pottery and the sand and gravel pit. There were three churches--Methodist, Baptist and Church of Christ--and a number of homes. There was also a tiny post office.

When I was a baby, there was a watering station for the trains. It was a northern Alabama railroad town. The train would come through going from Florence to Birmingham. We loved to hear the choo choo sound coming up the mountain. We loved to stand by the depot and watch the train. It usually stopped, at least to get water. Sometimes it would pick up someone or let someone off. But that was not very often.

My mother's cousin was the depot agent. His name was Shelby Little. In those days the trains all burned coal. We loved to stand in front of the depot and smell the smoke.

The town of Spruce Pine in northern Alabama was one of the prettiest little villages you would want to see when I was a child.

Many, many years before I was born, even before my mother was born, my mother's grandfather owned the entire top of the mountain. He sold land to the people who came there. Spruce Pine was founded by the Rauschenbergs and the Scharnagels. But at one time all of the land belonged to my mother's grandfather, who was a school teacher.

Spruce Pine was surrounded by beautiful spruce pine trees. That is where it got its name. It is located in Franklin county, Alabama. Russellville is the county seat.

History shows that many times some people would talk of changing the name of the little town from Spruce Pine to some other name. But they never could agree on it. It would keep the name Spruce Pine.

The railroad was constructed in 1887, and the trains started to run through Spruce Pine. That same year the Scharnagels and the Rauschenbergs opened the first store in Spruce Pine.

At this time my mother's grandfather was a very, very profitable business man. He was in the tanning business. He had a tanning yard and did very well. He was one of the most prosperous people in Franklin county. Of course, the Scharnagels and Rauschenbergs were the wealthiest people in the community.

You could go most anywhere in the area and find natural springs dripping beautiful clear water. People would leave dippers and cups by the springs so they could drink the fresh cool water.

In 1923 the school where my mother's grandfather taught, and where my mother and my aunt and uncle went to school, burned. It was a beautiful wood structure school in Spruce Pine.

The sand pit started operations in 1921. It was a large place and furnished work for a lot of people in the community. The pottery opened in 1926. There were not many potteries in the state of Alabama. It was perhaps the only pottery that made artware.

Spruce Pine itself furnished the raw material for all of the pottery work. My uncle would make stone jars and flower pots and beautiful artware of all kinds. When I was a child other schools from other towns would have school visits or field trips and bring the children to the pottery in Spruce Pine. In years to come my uncle would have pottery pieces in museums in Alabama.

My grandparents lived there and my aunt and my uncle lived there. My mother had one sister and one brother. My mother's sister was named Minnie and her brother was Ernest. Her parents were Roxie and Owen Thompson. My grandparents on my daddy's side were Rebecca and Jim Hawkins. My maiden name was Hawkins.

I can remember some things when I was a baby. I can remember living in this old house on top of a hill between Spruce Pine and Phil Campbell. It had a porch around it. I can remember things while living at that house. There was a well that was boxed in and it had a platform around the bottom. I can remember playing on that well. It had a rope and a bucket you let down to draw your water. I had a little red rocking chair, which I still have to this day. My aunt Minnie kept the chair, and I eventually got it back and took it to Texarkana where I lived after I was partly grown. I had my doll sitting on that red rocker. I was there alone by the well when it came a storm. I remember the lightning and the thunder and the rain. I can remember trying to get on that porch. I guess with my little baby feet I ran as best I could. I remember standing on that porch in that rain storm and crying because my doll was getting so wet. I don't remember anything before that or after that.

Later, that would be the spot where my brother Hershell was hit by a car as we were walking down the road and holding hands. The car hit him and threw him in the ditch. I stood there with my heart breaking. I was saying "no, no". I was hearing people say he was dead. He was about eight years old.

The next house I remember living in was the house where Hershell was born. He is number three. It was a little shack that my grandfather and my daddy prepared for us to live in out of a little barn of my granddaddy's. I don't remember much before or after that. Of course, I was just a baby at that time. I do remember a neighbor named Susie Richards and her daughter, Irene Sibley. "Hershell was born in a big mess, Susie said." I can remember my daddy in the little house. It was one room with a side room on it. I guess at one time it was a crib and a stable.

My daddy would make home brew, and I remember it was made from some kind of seeds that he told me were beer seeds. He would make it and put it in churn jars. They would use the churns to make butter. They would put the milk in it and in the winter they would set it by the fire and turn it until the milk clabbered. Then they would make butter from it. I remember especially at my grandmother's house she would tell me to churn. I hated that job so much because I just had to sit there and work that handle up and down. This is what my daddy used to make home brew in. He would tie a white cloth around the top of it, just like the milk. Home brew is strong stuff. It is made from malt and things my daddy called beer seeds. I was about three or four years old. My brother James was playing around the churn of home brew and he took the cloth off of it. They kept a cup hanging on the churn, so he started to drink it. He was a drunk little baby. He almost died. After that, my daddy threw out the churn of home brew and broke it and swore he would never make it again. He kept that promise. I do not remember ever seeing it in the house again.

Later my dad and granddaddy built a little two room house in front of the barn on the gravel highway. We would be next door to my grandparents, my mothers parents. At the end after going and living in many states, my parents were living in the same little house. This would be their last house.

We then lived between Susie and Irene and my grandparents. My sister, Faye, was born while we lived at that house. She was number four. At this point my parents had four babies. I loved Faye so much. She was my pride and joy. She was my playmate. She was my friend. She was my sister. Even though I had two brothers, she was my sister. I had a sister and I was on cloud nine. When she got older we would play together and we would make play houses under the trees. We would make mud pies and we would make frog houses by putting our feet in mud and patting that mud over our foot and very carefully slip our feet out of the mud. We called these little houses frog houses. Sometimes we would make little towns like Spruce Pine. That was the only town we knew. It was a little town. We never went anywhere else. Everybody there knew each other. Everybody in town was either related, or had married someone who was. We would use jar lids and let the sun bake our mud pies and then stack them like a real cake. We would make a little stove and a little table and chairs and a little bed. Everything that a house has in it, we would make.

The four of us played many hours under the tree along with Irene, the next door neighbor. She was much older than any of us. She was like one of the family.

I adored Faye. She was so precious with big brown eyes and blond hair. We were very happy then, although most every day we had either cornbread or biscuits, or sometimes both, and gravy made from flour. If we did not have flour my mother would make gravy from meal. This was called sawmill gravy. We did not know any other way or that anybody had any more than we did. We were happy and very content because that is all we knew. We didn't know we were poor because we had never seen anything else.

We had a beautiful dog that we loved. We would hug its neck and it was just one of us. In those days I had never heard of a veterinarian. They only had those in cities, I guess. In those days if a dog bit someone they would kill the dog and send the head to Montgomery for examination. Then they would get the rabies report. So if a dog bit any one, even in play, it was in big trouble. One day our dog ran through the house and bit one of the kids. My daddy had to kill the dog and send in the head. It came back that the dog was all right. In those days things like that were so sad. I still want to cry just thinking about it.

We had been told never to touch the ax. It was always left sticking in a log and we were not to touch it. It was used to chop wood. One day we were playing and Irene said we would make some truck wagons. We will make a bed and some wheels and we will make a wagon. The ax came down on my foot. Since Irene was much older, she took me and hid me behind the house. We were all afraid that if I told what happened we would all get a whipping. She hid me behind the house and I was bleeding to death. As she walked back around the house and saw all the blood she passed out. They called Dr. Underwood. He was everybody's family doctor and like most doctors then, he would treat patients at home. While he was treating her, her mother thought she was dying. I could hear what was going on because I was right around the corner. When Irene came to they started to question her about what happened. She pointed to the blood and they followed it to me. I had almost bled to death. The doctor took me in the house and treated my foot and I was crippled for a while. I still have a scar until this day. It was sad about the dog, and then I almost died from the ax.

My grandparents had an orchard behind the house. They had apple trees and peach trees and plum trees, and grape vines on the fence. Faye and I were eating green plums. The plums made us sick. They said we had colitis. Faye got so sick that Dr. Underwood had to come to our house several times a day. I was sad and afraid because Faye was sick. She was my life. In those days when a person was sick the neighbors would come and stay by the bed all the time. Even at night. After about a week I was standing by the foot of her bed when she died. That is so sad to this day. The Lord has seen me through it all. I don't know why the children were around, but I watched my sister die. It seemed like that was more than I could stand. Thank goodness things are not that way now.

In those days there were no wakes at funeral homes. The body was kept at home. I wondered why they put pennies on her eyes. Some of the men in town took lumber and nails and made her a casket. I remember the funeral. It is so sad when it all comes back to my memory. She was buried in the cemetery by the Church of Christ. We still go there once a year for Decoration Day.

Funerals were always at the Church of Christ. I don't know why, but that is the way it was. The cemetery is by the Church of Christ. We lived on what was the Birmingham highway. There was a cut through the cemetery if you walked. Everybody walked everywhere. You either walked or rode in a wagon with a board across it for a seat. Faye used to run to the cemetery because there was a stone there with a little lamb on it. She loved the lamb and she would run ahead and hug the little lamb on the marker.

She never had a marker until the kids all bought her one with a lamb on it in 1968. After all those years we remembered how she loved the little lamb, and we got her a stone with a lamb on it. Now kids have all kinds of stuffed toys, but we did not have any. She loved to walk through the cemetery and hug and pet that little lamb. She was adorable with her blond hair and brown eyes. Now, when I go to the cemetery I think how she would run through the same cemetery to pet a lamb on a stone, and now there she is with hers.