GOOBERS FOR SALE

Long before I started to school, I would sit under hedge bushes in front of the little two room house by the gravel road, the main highway, and watch other kids walking along the road going to and from school. I would hide under the hedges and I would think how nice it would be when I could go to school. Then when that time arrived I lost my sister and got another brother to replace her. Because of this, my first year of school was so sad.

I remember my dad working on the W.P.A.--Works Progress Administration. The W.P.A. provided jobs, at slightly below prevailing rates, to as many unemployed workers as funds permitted. W.P.A. workers were largely unskilled. Today we often see W.P.A. buildings (schools, dormitories and hospitals) and facilities (roads, airports, docks and parks.) He seemed to be ashamed of the fact that he was doing this. He seemed to think that this was only for the starving. We perhaps were the next thing to it. We would carry biscuits to school wrapped in paper and tied with a string for our lunch. I would see kids with sliced bread in their lunch, and this to me was really amazing. We never had sliced bread. If we did not have biscuits, because we did not have flour, my mother would make little round cornbread to look like biscuits so we would not be embarrassed. Now, of course, we order cornbread in a restaurant. But at that time it was embarrassing to carry it in my lunch. We had hard times.

My grandfather, James Owen Thompson, raised vegetables. He had grape vines and fruit trees and milked cows and butchered hogs. He would bring it all into the house. My grandmother would take it and sell it. He did all of the outside work except for the yard. She kept the yard clean and grew flowers. I used to go with her on these selling runs. I would go to people's doors for her. She had a regular route, but sometimes she would send me to the door to see if others wanted to buy. It was embarrassing for me because she would yell "Goobers (peanuts) for sale".

Russellville is a very hilly town. One day I went with her and she went to a house and left me sitting in the car. The car was on a hill. I started to mess with the car. I managed to get the car out of gear and it started to roll. She began to yell "Rachel, jump out". I did jump, but the car continued to roll on across a railroad track. The car was a mess and everything she had for sale was ruined. The trunk of the car was full of milk and broken glass. I will always remember that worried expression on her face. It was pitiful.

Although we did not have much, everything was clean. My mother had a house with bare floors, but they were scrubbed regularly. We did not have toys and the things that kids have today, but we had love.

There was a lot for kids to do. We would go to the cotton gin or the syrup mill. Sometimes we would go to the pottery or pump the gas pump at the gas station. We would swing on tree limbs. We rode on the wagons full of cotton. One uncle, George Glover, had a pottery in Spruce Pine. We would watch the churns and pots being made. These were the things that we enjoyed. Uncle George still has pottery pieces in the museums in Alabama today.

It was fascinating to ride to the gin and watch the cotton being sucked out of the wagon and into the gin. We would go to the syrup mill and eat some of the skim from the syrup pots. This was our candy. At that time the gas pumps were all pumped by hand. In order to get a cold drink we would go to the gas station and pump the gas. A bottle of pop was our reward.

On the way to school many times we would walk the rails on the railroad tracks. There were always things to do, but we had to make our own fun. Probably today this does not sound like much of a life, but then we enjoyed it.

The area was full of sweet gum trees. The sap from these trees is sweet. We would pick this from the trees, and this was our chewing gum.

I stayed a lot with my grandparents when I was little. The bed was huge and had many mattresses on it. The top one was a feather mattress. It had to be smoothed every day. No one there would dare sit on a bed. My grandfather would get up about 4 a.m. He had a radio, and it would be on station WSM every morning when he got up. He would turn on the radio, and in the winter he would build a big fire in the fireplace and in the cook stove. When my grandmother got up the house was nice and warm. He had his special way of building a fire. He would sit in the nice clean living room with his snuff and he would spit the tobacco juice in the fire and not a drop on the floor. Every night he would take his pocket knife and make shavings for the fire the next morning.

On the side of the big cook stove in the kitchen was a water tank. The water was heated from the fire in the stove and this was where we got hot water. On top of the stove was a warming closet. This was a place to store biscuits and other food. It would keep the food warm. To me, this was beautiful.

Oftentimes the living room was transformed into a quilting room. In the bedroom where I slept there was a wardrobe that seemed to touch the ceiling. It was always packed with quilts. The beds were always layered with quilts.

The women would meet at each others houses and make quilts. They would take the cotton bats and lay them on a quilt frame and before long they would have a quilt. I would stand and watch how they did everything.

My grandmother's house had a concrete banister around the front porch, except where the steps were. On one end was a porch swing and a rocking chair. My grandfather would sit there and speak to the people walking by. Many times people driving on the highway would stop and buy cuttings from the flowers. I suppose you could not do that now, but in that time everybody was friendly.

Times were hard and many people did not have a home. Entire families at times would travel the country on foot, stopping at houses and asking for food. A man and a woman and a small girl came by one time and stayed with us several days. Although we did not have much, we shared it with them. I wanted the girl to stay, and she wanted to stay. However, when they left they took her with them. I have often wondered what happened to all of them.

My grandmother would sell vegetables, milk and butter. She had a car and drove it on the route. The old two lane road going down the mountain was a beautiful sight. There were rocks and dripping water. There was even a spot where you could stop and catch water in a bucket and put the water in the car radiator. It was not at all uncommon to have to add water to the radiator on a trip of any distance. As I grew older and saw other parts of the country, I realized how lovely this was.

My parents would go to the fields and take the kids. They would take a quilt and spread it at the end of the row and all of the children would have to sit on the quilt while they worked in the fields. Before Faye died we had a dog that we loved so much. The dog would lie on the quilt with us and Faye would put her head on the dog and sleep and the dog would not move until she woke. When she died, the dog would howl and howl because it missed her so much.

Right across the gravel road from us was a honky tonk. Today it would be called a night club. My father got in a lot of trouble because of it. My mother was making cornbread and she called out "Sidney, Sidney, the law is here". They took my daddy and my uncle to jail. My granddad had to go and get them out. At the honky tonk there was a well where they got drinking water. Someone had said that they had poisoned the well and caused a lot of people to be sick. Of course, this proved not to be true and they were not charged with anything. We were crying because we thought they were gone from us forever. That was a scary time, but we soon were out catching lightning bugs and doing that kind of things again. We would catch the bugs and put them in a jar with holes in the lid and they would light up. Soon we would let them go. I could never stand to see anything die. My mother had often complained about the honky tonk and the bad things that went on there.

I had watched my parents and grandparents kill chickens and hogs. There was always hog killing time. When the weather was cool enough, the people would get together and kill hogs and render out the lard and make cracklings. They made them by boiling that fat meat in a big black wash pot until it was crisp and the strips would curl. Then they would dip them out on a clean white flour sack to drip. When that was done they would bag the cracklings in flour sacks and strain the lard into jars or buckets. The meat from the hog was put in big wooden boxes with salt. There would be a layer of salt and a layer of meat over and over until the box was full. A big treat was when they made cornbread with cracklings in it. We called it crackling bread.

It rarely snows in Alabama, but when it did my grandfather loved it. He would wrap his feet in burlap; he called it toe sacks, and he would say "Hippity Dippity Da. Hot dog. I will get to go rabbit hunting today." When I asked "why?" he would say "Jack and I can see the tracks." Jack was a big dog that I had known since I could remember. He was a big collie dog. They would go and come back with rabbits and have rabbit and gravy.

I only remember one big snow in Alabama. When it came my mother went out to find clean snow to make snow cream. We thought it was great, because we did not get ice cream. We made snow cream with milk, sugar, vanilla and eggs. We would mix it and add it to the snow.

About milking time every evening Jack would go down the lane and bring the cows in for milking. When Jack died it was like losing a member of the family. I was grown before Jack died.

When Verlon was a baby we moved to the east Texas oil fields. My uncle had gone there and he would always come back for Christmas in a nice car and bring us something. He talked my daddy in to moving to east Texas. We sold everything we had and moved to Henderson, Texas. This was really a big thing in Spruce Pine. I will never forget.

It was time to leave Spruce Pine and head for east Texas. This was a big day for us and for the town. Everybody was cooking and giving us a big send off. Aunt Minnie fried shoe boxes full of chicken and made tea cakes for us to take on the trip. Everybody was related. Even the depot agent. Everyone was at the depot to see us off on our journey to Texas. At that time that was a big trip. The people had handkerchiefs and were crying as if they would never see us again.

The train with the big coal burning steam engine finally arrived, and we boarded with all of our belongings with us. The train was so nice with the conductor walking the aisles and calling out the towns. I cried all the way to Florence, Alabama. This is where we would change trains and get one to Memphis.

I will never forget the big city of Memphis. We walked out on the train platform and my dad was showing us the street cars and the sights of Memphis. This was the first time we had been to a big city. Our eyes must have been bugged really big. Daddy put his hand in his pocket and told us he had to watch his money because there were pickpockets in a big city like this. I doubt if he had much to worry about. I never forgot.

We went to Little Rock and Texarkana and on to east Texas. I never dreamed I would later live many years in the town of Texarkana.

We went on to Atlanta, Texas and on to Henderson, Texas. As we entered Henderson, my daddy was waving because he saw my Aunt Mamie standing on the porch of her house. She was waving because she knew we would be on that train. The conductor saw us and asked "Is this where you are going?" My dad said "yes", so the conductor had the train stopped and we got off with all of our stuff and crossed the tracks and the highway to her house.

We stayed with my aunt and uncle for awhile, and then moved into a place in a tourist camp. This was a place where there were a lot of cabins that could be rented by the day or the week or by the month. The landlady there had a parrot. The parrot could talk really good. The landlady's name was Mrs. Kerr. My mother went to her door and called "Mrs. Kerr, Mrs. Kerr". The parrot called back "Mrs. Kerr". Not knowing it was a parrot, my mother came back to our cabin really mad. She thought someone was mocking her. Of course, she later learned it was the parrot. I was around that parrot a lot and I thought then, when I am a woman I will own a parrot.

We stayed in east Texas a few years while my daddy worked as a pumper in the oil fields. He lived in a trailer in the oil fields and worked seven days a week. My mother would take us to the trailer, and he would come home when he could. We were doing rather well financially. He was making four dollars a day. For that time that was good money.

We were living in Wright City, Texas when the next brother was born. He was named Norman LaHue after a couple of boys that were our neighbors there. Their mother was a good friend and kept us when Norman was born. He was born in February. February in Texas is nice.

The roads there were oiled. One day it rained and the streets were slick. My daddy was coming down the hill one day and started to turn in our driveway, and the car turned completely around on the wet oil. We kids were so excited to be staring up the hill in the direction we had come from. That is a memory from there.

Later my uncle from Florence, Alabama came to Texas. He, with my daddy, decided to go to work at a sawmill. He had such a good job in the oil fields and we had some of the better things. But he decided to go to the sawmill.

We moved to Center Hill, Texas and they went to work at Grogan's sawmill near Atlanta, Texas. We had new neighbors. One of the girls got killed while we lived there. I still have pictures of them. Near the house was a plum thicket. The girls used to go there and clear out a place and make a play house. We would make rooms and have a nice play house. We had a dog and a horse and had good times there.

My dad's parents lived near there and Hershell and I would spend a lot of time with them. We used to eat biscuits with sugar on them. Hershell would always say "I want another biscuit with sugar behind it." We had never seen black people. When we visited the grandparents, they were real good friends with some black neighbors. They had two grandsons named Will Dee and the other one was called Happy Jack. When my grandparents would visit them we would all play together. They were so much fun.

While we lived in east Texas I stayed at my paternal grandparents house a lot, and my brother Hershell stayed more than I did. Granddaddy William James Hawkins was very crazy about Hershell. I was close to my grandmother, Rebecca Jane Hawkins. She taught me to tell fortunes with a coffee cup and saucer. She told me when the coffee was drank, and the grounds were left in the cup, I could tell fortunes. I loved doing this.

She told me to put my cup upside down in the saucer and turn it around (the cup only) three times. She said take it out and keep the cup upside down and hold it over my head and turn it three times. She showed me how to read the grounds.

She wore asfitity pinned inside her dress and cooked a lot of collard greens with pork fat back.

My grandmother and grandfather had a lot in common with Will Dee and Happy Jack's grandparents. Hershell and Will Dee and Happy Jack would jump every ditch around there and run through the woods. When they played in the yard, I played with them.

Will Dee was slim, tall, and the oldest. Happy Jack was short, with real cute fat cheeks. My Hawkins grandparents were very dark with the black hair and eyes. I looked like my daddy and his parents. Grandma caught me using all of her soda trying to get my teeth as white as my black playmates. I could get my teeth white, but not as white as theirs. My grandma needed her soda to put in cornbread and biscuits.

Hershell and I had dark curly hair, but I wanted hair like theirs. I asked many times for a Shirley Temple perm. I wanted my hair short and curly as theirs.

One day their grandmother walked in her kitchen and there we were setting up a shop. Everyone in the oil fields had cook stoves with open burners. We had the forks out to heat, the scissors to cut my hair, and we were going to make my hair look like theirs. We had part of my hair cut and the forks were red hot. Their grandmother just about had a heart attack. She said "My goodness, child. Lord have mercy." She said didn't we know if God wanted my hair as theirs, he would have made me that way. When my grandma saw me, she had a big laugh.

We asked if we could stay at grandma's house and go to our new friend's school. They told us, "Oh No, it's against the law." I often wondered what that meant.

We would go to their church however, with our grandparents. Will Dee, Happy Jack and their grandparents, Hershell, my grandparents and I would walk to their church. It was real fun. I thought they sang a lot better than the church folks in Spruce Pine. We always sat on the back hard bench near the front and only door. I was very excited and loved it. In Spruce Pine there were no black people. I had never been anywhere but Franklin county.

Our house was too far to walk, so Granddaddy Hawkins would take us back and forth one at a time on his horse. James always wanted to go places different than we did. He was my oldest brother and he always acted grown up. He always seemed to have a girl friend, from a tot. I was always a grandparent lover and wanted to visit them all the time.

While we lived there, Will Dee and Happy Jack's grandfather got sick and died. My grandparents would go to their house and sit with them day and night. They kept his body in the house. Oh! how we cried. Then, people did not go to the hospital. Neighbors came in and stayed with them and the doctors came to the house.

While we lived at Center Hill, Shirley Temple was a big movie star. I always wanted a Shirley Temple perm and a Shirley Temple doll. During this time it was decided we would move back to Spruce Pine. That is when I got my Shirley Temple perm, but I never did get the doll.

I don't recall the trip from Center Hill, but I do know we moved back to Spruce Pine, Alabama. I was about ten years old by now. I started back helping my grandmother and going to Russellville with her and the vegetables. Again I was embarrassed because of her yelling "Goobers for sale".

I started to school in Spruce Pine and I became best friends with Gigi. We would talk about what we planned to do, and we made such big plans for the future. We were going to work for the F.B.I.--Federal Bureau of Investigation. She went on to complete her education and went to work in Washington D.C.. However, my life would take a different turn.