Chat
|
Daily Search
|
My GenForum
|
Community Standards
|
Terms of Service
|
|
|
Where did you go to school?
"About five miles from here (Smithville) at old Adlia Church-House and School-House. My principal was Bill Brooks when I first started. Bo Brooks was his brother. At that time, people didn't have to go to college to teach school. Jim Cox was principal later on. Mr Frank Bowling was my last principal. Eldrie Hadaway was one of my friends at school. She married a cousin of min, an Ausborn. They are both still living somewhere in Tennessee. I went to school at Adlia for as long as I attended school. I started in October when I was six years old. And I walked a mile from home to school. I had arthritis in my legs before I was even old enough to go to school. The reason that we didn't go to school until October, was that we had to get the cotton in first.
Everybody had to pick cotton. This was before fertilizer, you know. My father had fifteen acres of cotton, and it didn't open up as fast as it does now. By October, most of the cotton would be picked, and school could start. There would only be a little bit of scattering cotton left, and we could pick that in the afternoons, after school was let out."
Tell about the brush brooms.
"Some people had yards with grass in it that they mowered. We kept the grass cut out of our yard. My sister and I did that. If a little bunch of grass came up. we got our hoe and cut it out. we would go to the woods and cut brush to make a brush broom to sweep the hard packed dirt in our yard.
My brothers played marbles and "two eyed cat" in our yard. All of us would play "drop the handkerchief" every Sunday in the yard.
What is "two-eyed cat"?
One person would get way up there, and another down here. They would have a bat apiece. Somebody was the pitcher, and somebody was the catcher behind. Sometimes, we played this at school too. We also played basketball at school. I played basketball for two years. Mr Russell Pearce had come over from Pearce's Chapel, and he got us a basketball at Adlia. Adlia only went through the tenth grade, but I got to play for two years after Mr Pearce was there. Then we consolidated, all of the little country schools, and school was at Smithville.
I also went to church at Adlia. We had services every second Sunday. It was a Missionary Baptist Church. I joined the church there. We had visiting preachers some times. Every once in a while the preacher from Pearce's Chapel would come over. But they were Free Will Baptist, and not Missionary Baptist. After we got a little older, we would all walk over to Pearce's Chapel at night for preaching. There would just be a road full of us. Lillian and Lucille and Johnnie Sue Sullivan (These were Mrs Prudy Gregory's girls.) were some of my girl friends. Lillian and Lucille are both dead. Johnnie Sue lives over back of Mt Zion.
Miss Prudy's oldest girl used to teach school over at Bethlehem, if you know where that is. That is about seven and one-half miles east of Smithville, and up above Splunge. She had a play up at Bethlehem one year, just before Christmas. My brother, Melvin hooked up the mules and wagon. We didn't have cars back then you know, and carried a bunch of us up there to see the play.
When cars first came in, Bud Faulkner's daddy had a car. He lived a neighbor to us. Then maybe one or two more got cars. But mostly, we either walked or went in the wagon.
We always walked to school. It was about a mile. The school only went to the tenth grade. We didn;t have a twelfth grade school. We had the same books and used those for three or four years. This was before free school books came in, that were paid for by the state. The parents thought that they could save money by using the same books."
You just kept being taught out of the same books?
My papa said that he didn't get to go to school like we did. He only had two books one was a little blue backed speller, and the other was an arithmetic book. Those were the two books that he would carry to school. He could write his name and he could count his money and he could take care of his work business; but he couldn't just pick up a newspaper and read it. He always had me to read the newspaper to him, when I got home from school. The paper that we took was from Aberdeen. It was called "The Aberdeen Weekly".
How did you get the paper" Was it delivered or did it come in the mail?
We got it in the mail. Dick Morgan, right here in Smithville, was his daddy's substitute. When Dick was an eighteen year old boy, his daddy died. He was such a good mail rider that we wanted him, but we couldn't get him because he was too young. Mr Thomas Carroll and Mr R B Maxey took the test and one of them got the mail route and the other got the post office. I think they later on swapped with each other. Mr Morgan had a car that he delivered the mail in. His son sure was a good carrier. He never did make mistakes, about where he put out the mail. Mr Dick Morgan was ninety years old this summer."
Followups:
|
| http://genforum.genealogy.com/ms/monroe/messages/80.html | ||
 |
Agreement of Use Link to GenForum Add Forum |
|