Monday, April 1, 2013

SPREADING WING - Chapter One

SPREADING WING - See previous post for THE BEST FAMILY STORY CONTEST details.
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
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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