Spreading Wing is available from Amazon, US and Europe, book form or Kindle. See earlier posts for locations around Arkansas where it can also be bought. For a personalized, signed edition, contact me at foreverahillbilly.blogspot.com, $20 with shipping.
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To introduce you to Spreading Wing, I'm posting chapter one. This chapter is an overview for part one of the book, and explains why things were so very different for the Gillum's of Wing.
`SPREADING
WING
CHAPTER ONE – THE TWO HEADED MONSTER
CHAPTER ONE – THE TWO HEADED MONSTER
Things were different on
our farm in Wing, Arkansas in the 1940's and 50's. But before I tell
you how things were different, let me relate to you the historical
and natural events that, combined with human nature, produced the
mindset that brought about WHY.
I was born in 1944. I
was a child of The Great Depression. Now, I know it's generally
accepted that the depression ended before my time. Maybe with the
great buildup toward World War II. But those who say that didn't live
on our farm, and they didn't see what was in my daddy's heart. It
wasn't the Wall Street crash, Black Friday and the like, that hit
those country folk so hard. No, the money was not the main thing.
Country folks were already accustomed to living off what their land
could grow, and what could be reaped from the forests and the river.
The real problem was, when the money left, the rains just chased
along behind. And the hot sun brought its rays to bear and never let
up. Dad often told me, the temperature topped one hundred degrees F.
on one hundred days in 1930, though I can't verify those exact
temperatures. And, Dad had no thermometer or radio. That could have
been an estimate. And, 1930 had the driest July ever, one hundredth
of an inch. Seeds lay dormant in the dust. What few seeds found
enough moisture to sprout, and begin to grow, just wilted and
shriveled under that unforgiving sun. The two headed monster. The
depression, and the blistering drought. Six consecutive, very hot,
dry years, with a record high temperature of one hundred twenty
degrees F. in 1936, just allowed no time for country folks to
recover, and they occurred at the peak of the depression.
When that two headed
monster finally pulled out of Wing, a piece of it just curled itself
around my Daddy's heart, and lived there forever.
My Grandfather, John
Wesley Gillum, and his wife, Martha Jane Tucker Gillum, arrived in
Wing in 1898. They had a wagon load of young'uns' in tow, and more to
come. They did well at Wing, which was then in its heyday. The
Gillums added more land, more livestock, and sharecroppers. Grandpa's
new business venture, producing larger and stronger work mules, did
well. John Turner, The Postmaster and store owner at Wing, and Bob
Compton, a stock trader and Grandpa's friend, were involved in this
venture. Two prize Black Mammoth Jacks, (male donkeys) who were
purchased for three thousand dollars, were the heart of this
business. King Leo was purchased out of Texas, for one thousand
dollars. He won first place at the Arkansas State Fair, no small
accomplishment in those times. All of my few sources seem to remember
all about King Leo. Although records (Not many families have a
donkey in the family records) show Pizo, also a Black Mammoth Jack,
was purchased from Spain for $2000, I can find little mention of him.
Pizo, oh Pizo, where did you go? A recent report indicated an early
death for Pizo. A mule is a hybrid, produced by the crossing of a
male donkey and a female horse.(mare.) Since there is considerable
size difference, even for a Black Mammoth, I wondered how this was
accomplished. So I asked. Turns out, it's just as simple as can be.
Dig a trench for the mare, and the jack will pretty well take it from
there, with a little steering of his valuable-as-gold member by hand.
A huge barn was built for this enterprise, costing one thousand
dollars. Now, that may not seem like so much, but at the turn of the
century, it was considerable. By comparison, The three bedroom house
I was raised in cost five hundred dollars.
At the peak of his
success, John Wesley died, in his early sixties, in 1922. Grandma
Martha Jane called Dad back from the oilfields of Oklahoma to run the
farm. Grandma and Grandpa both had said Dad was a better horse
trader than Grandpa, and that's quite a statement because Grandpa was
a pro. I'm sure Dad considered this an honor, getting that call.
Martha Jane had other strong and capable sons, and some were older.
Dad was now twenty nine, a veteran of World War I, and a strong,
hardworking man in his own right. Dad once told me he took a job in
the boiler room in the oilfields, one that nobody had been able to
hang with. It was just too hot there. Dad took the job, drank only
lukewarm water from the boiler, and made it fine. Many years later, I
had a little experience in the hayfield that convinced me Dad was
onto something there. I was placing the hay and tromping and shaping
the hay stack, Dad was hauling the hay to me. It was very hot. The
cold, cold springs in the creek were nearby, and I started running
and jumping in that cold water between loads. By the end of the day,
I thought I was going to die. My hardest day ever in the hay fields,
and I had many.
Things continued to go
well, under Dad's watch, for a time. Dad bought a car, and spent most
of his time supervising the sharecroppers, rather than actually
working the land himself. He went in with Uncle Homer, and bought a
new herd of cattle. But it was not to last. The two headed monster
reared it's ugly head, and things started going bad. Dad soon did not
even have the money to put in a crop of his own. Cattle prices went
to nothing, and the cattle had to be ranged out into the mountains,
so they could find forage, or sold outright. The sharecroppers could
not borrow money to put in their own crops, unless Dad signed their
notes. He did, and the sharecropper's seed just lay there in the
dust. They had to walk, and Dad held the notes. Dad sold off
timberland to the government, at fifty cents to two dollars per acre.
He had to sell at least eighty acres. He had no money to hire a
lawyer to negotiate a better price, so he just had to take what the
government would give him. Grandma still had some money, and when she
found out about the sale, she insisted Dad buy it back. But it was
too late. The deed was done. That land would become a part of the
Ouachita National Forest. Those sharecropper's notes took many years
to pay off, but Dad finally did it. A Gillum always pays his debts.
Those notes extended the tenure of the depression for us many years.
Dad had to put his car up on blocks out at the barn. He could not buy
gas. That car sat there, a rusting hulk, until well after I was born.
A monument to better times, long gone. Someone once commented on that
car, and asked Dad what happened to it. "The depression hit it,"
Dad replied. My older brother Harold, a small boy at that time,
seeing a rusty spot showing up on the door, asked, "Is that
where it hit it?" Dad never had another automobile until 1947.
Continued next post
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