Forever A Hillbilly: Old Gillums Revisited

Forever A Hillbilly: Old Gillums Revisited: Since I first started researching and reading up on the old Gillums a few years ago, I have done a lot of thinking.  I’m very good at thi...

Old Gillums Revisited

Since I first started researching and reading up on the old Gillums a few years ago, I have done a lot of thinking.  I’m very good at thinking.  One of the major frustrations in my wife’s life is that often, when she starts talking to me, I do not respond appropriately. A single grunt is not good enough. This often causes her to look more closely into my eyes, then realizing; nobody is home. I am off somewhere, just thinking.  Not necessarily thinking with great insight, not necessarily productively thinking. Just thinking.

With enough thinking, anyone, even one such as I, can begin to get some good insight. Even a blind hog can find an acorn occasionally, if it roots around long enough.

I have decided that nobody influenced her generation of Gillums as much as grandma Martha Jane Tucker Gillum, commonly called, early on, Tennessee, and later, Matty. She was not born a Gillum at all, but let’s take a look at her.

She was born in 1859. Her early life was emersed in our Civil War and the Reconstruction.  One of our country’s most horrible times. And I’m sure there was no more horrible place to be than in the South. A baby in her family was eaten by a wild hog. A young boy was killed by a runaway horse. At sixteen, a man broke into her house one night, and attacked her and her sister in their bedroom. He was caught by her father and brother, a crowd gathered, and the man was lynched within the hour by her brother and Harry Poynter, her sister’s husband. For some reason, nobody in the family knows why, she soon started living in Harry Poynter’s house. She stayed there until she married John Wesley Gillum. Soon after she and John Wesley began seeing each other, John Wesley started trying very hard to get her out of Harry Poynter’s house. Nobody seems to know why that came about, either.

The Pope County Militia war started getting hot and heavy in 1872, and Harry was a leading figure in that conflict, getting into a gunfight with the County Sheriff, clerk, and deputy, right in the middle of Dover. Harry killed the clerk, and chased the other two out of town to Russellville, followed by much flying lead. Harry was cleared by an over-the-body inquest in Dover, but officials in Russellville disagreed. A thirty man posse rode to Dover to arrest Harry, and they had no trouble finding him, leaning against a tree in downtown Dover, two pistols strapped on and a double barrel shotgun in his hands. Everyone, even the women, had armed themselves, and swore Harry would not be taken. The deputy asked for his guns – Harry replied, “I will give up my guns with my life, and will make the man who takes it pay a heavy price.” Nobody in the posse stepped forward to be that man, and the posse went back home to Russellville. During that war, Harry had carried Grandma, her sister Dozie, and babies to a cave 20 miles away, and they apparently lived there for the duration. Grandma remained very close to Harry Poynter for the remainder of his life, and she seemed to be the major influence in seeing to it that my oldest brother was named Harry in honor of Harry Poynter.

Years later, after the war settled down, Harry became a leading citizen of Dover, became wealthy, founded the Bank of Dover. But when Grandma’s four milk cows were stolen, Harry promptly came over to Wing, chased down the thief, and recovered the cows, no questions asked, no answers given. But since a man was missing, the Law in Yell County wished to question Grandma about that event, but, I am told, he was afraid to. Was she  too close to Harry Poynter?

Grandma’s life was full of enough trauma to make her a very serious woman. Hard, I suspect, and stern. I think she was a product of her hard early life, and the sons and daughters she produced were largely a product of her.  Her and Grandpa seemed to be very good in business, and their farm at Wing prospered, adding sharecroppers , more land; their business of breeding super mules did well. King Leo, a huge Black Mammoth  jack purchased out of Texas for $1000, was the heart if this business.

 A photo of the family taken on their front porch in the original Gillum home in 1910 seems to show telephone wires running in. They were one of the first to have electricity in the 1930's. The children were all well-educated, producing a doctor, a school administrator, a Peabody College educated teacher, and the others went to the Normal School at Danville, getting enough education to qualify them to be a teacher, though they never were.  After Grandpa died, in his early sixties in 1922, she lived on until l941, often visited by Harry Poynter until his death in 1932. At the final birthday party given for Grandma in 1941, shortly before her death, only one Poynter woman was present. It seems the Gillum family’s connection to the Poynters, Pryors, and others from Dover died that year with Grandma. Every single member of the Gillum clan was there that day. Except me. I was born three years later.

     Those thirty some-odd family members in that photo were the people who loved me, and surrounded me, as I grew up. As I look at that photo today, I note that only four survive. Love your family. Life is short.

Grandma worked very hard as a widow. She continued with her cattle, and raised Rhode Island Red chickens and eggs, and saved enough money from that buy Lula Belle a car. Though my brothers, who lived there with her as small boys, remember her as being extremely harsh at times, chances are they deserved it. It seems they were a little rowdy. My sister Jonnie, as an infant and small girl, was often sick, and she remembers Grandma holding and rocking her all day long.  When she got too big to be held, she sat beside grandma in her chair and rocked with her. Grandma  made many quilts still in use today.

When I was told how hard she made my mother’s life, as they lived with her, I reacted the way one would expect me to. I thought very badly of a grandma I never knew. My mother, I knew, was about the sweetest woman on earth. I also know grandma had earlier picked out another woman for Dad, and he had already built a house for her in the meadow.  After they were engaged, she died. Sarah Turner said, “The first woman, who died, is put upon a pedestal. No wrong can she ever do.” I think that was going on here, through no fault of my sweet mother.

I have three photos of my mom that I placed side by side. In the 1920’s photo before they moved in with Grandma, Mom was young, beautiful, and smiling. In the 1941 photo taken at Grandma’s last birthday party she was mature, still beautiful, but there was deep sadness in her eyes. The smile and the fun were gone from her life.  In a 1950’s photo, after Grandma died, the joy, the smiling was back. I think that says it all.

However, as I learned more and more about Grandma Mattie, I think she was a strong, hard-working, moral woman who came along in the history of the Gillum clan at a very good time, adding rock-solid stability and integrity to the clan still in evidence today. She loved her family deeply, I think, but never spoke of it openly. Nowadays, thank goodness, the Gillums  seem to have moved away from that. I have seen to it that my branch of the family did. I fear that most all of the many times I told my mother I loved her occurred after she entered her final coma. I made a vow the night Mom died that there would never be a shortage of open expressions of love in my family again. And I have kept that vow.

Forever A Hillbilly: By the Sweat of Our Brow

Forever A Hillbilly: By the Sweat of Our Brow:      My Dad was always big on avoiding extra expenses, if a one time expense, combined with the sweat of our brow, would work as well. We h...

By the Sweat of Our Brow

     My Dad was always big on avoiding extra expenses, if a one time expense, combined with the sweat of our brow, would work as well. We had land, 250 acres or so, but a lot of ready cash was just not available. Our income came from raising registered bulls, and the sale of bull calves for quality herd bulls each year amounted to about $2000. That was normally about it. So, we had a small grist mill, sorghum mill, sawmill, corn sheller, and pea thresher.

     The grist mill ground corn into corn meal. Mom usually cooked enough cornbread for us and a little extra for the dogs. The shelled corn was put into a hopper at the top. It was powered by a belt to the tractor. If the belt started running off, Dad always kept and old can of sorghum molasses to pour onto it. The corn was shaken down into the mill, and the first batch of meal that came out was always discarded, along with the body parts of the mice that did not get out in time. I suspect that was a problem with all the old time grist mills. The inner reaches of the machine would seem like heaven for a mouse–until all hell broke loose!

     Our “sawmill” was also powered by a belt from the tractor. We regularly got stave bolt trimmings from Plainview, ten miles away, and cut them up into firewood length. Once, the belt to the tractor broke, and the tractor started rolling down the hill. I chased after it until I finally caught it, and tried to push the brake. Finally, the tractor and I both wound up hung up in vines at the bottom. Dad also regularly cut a medium sized sweet gum and I cut it up into “back sticks” for the fire place, to focus the heat out front.

     I only saw the pea thresher running once, when I was very small.

     Our sorghum mill was powered by old Murt, our last super mule. Before the Depression, the Gillum's were into breeding super mules. The Comptons and Turners were into that with us. They bought a Mammoth Black Jack down in Texas, named King Leo, for one thousand dollars. He won first place at the State Fair.

People came from far and near to breed their mare to King Leo. They bought another Mammoth Black from Europe, but seems he died early. I can't seem to find out much about him. Anyway, old Murt was the only one left when I came along in 1944, Seems tractors in common use killed the super mule business.

     Anyway, a long timber reached out from the mill, attached to the mule, and she walked round and round. The sorghum stalks were fed in, and the juice was pressed out. It was put in very long copper pans with a fire built around them. The juice was evaporated, with impurities constantly being skimmed off the top, until molasses remained. I'm sure there was more to it than that, but I am walking along the edge of my memory here, so I will leave it at that.

     All of this machinery I've mention was pretty old in my memory. I think they were from pre-depression times, when the Gillums were doing a little better.

     One of the most common sayings Dad had, when things were not going well on the farm was, “I'm afraid we may be headed for the poor house.” Over and over he said that. I never knew what a “poor house” was. Then, recently, Barb and I visited one, on a trip to Ireland. It was set up when untold thousands of people were starving, during the Great Potato Famine of the early and mid-1800s. They wanted to limit it only to people who were on the edge of starvation, so it was set up so that only those people would want to go. Families were not allowed to communicate with each other; they worked very long hard hours, all on a bowl of thin soup a day. It looked like a prison. We stayed at a bed and breakfast in Ireland, where the lady who ran it told us about her grandpa. He broke his leg, badly. But he was afraid that if he went to a doctor, he would be put in the poor house. He lived out his life with his leg broken instead. I did not know at the time, but have since learned they were commonly used in this country, before the welfare system. I am not sure how they compared with the Irish variety, but I do know that fear of the poor house was deeply ingrained in the old Gillums. I guess that fear finally died out, because I have never heard it used by my generation.

                                                 *

The Whippoorwills are going crazy about now. I stayed in my cabin lately in Wing, Arkansas. I kept the windows open all night so I could hear them, 3 or 4 at a time. I heard their relatives on that hill in the 1950's, seems like every spring night.

                                                *

More recently  -  I added one thing to my bucket list last week. I sweet talked my way into prison. When I got to Pine Bluff Prison for my prison ministry, (after a two hour drive)  I discovered too late that I did not have my driver’s license (an absolute necessity to get in) I gave a really good sob story to the nice lady at the entrance, told her she was a sweetheart, gave her a bag of cookies. She said, “just  go on.”  Nobody was more surprised than me. I almost got my wife kicked out of prison once, but that’s another story.

Forever A Hillbilly: Wandering Sweden

Forever A Hillbilly: Wandering Sweden: I’ve been reading a Trilogy of three Swedish books, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It was an international best seller, though some cha...

Wandering Sweden

_{I’ve been reading a Trilogy of three Swedish books, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It} was an international best seller, though some characters are sorta scummy, but it just draws one in to it so that one begins to feel scummy like those characters. So If I sound sorta scummy today, please overlook it. I’m about to finish the third book of the trilogy. It got me to thinking about our experiences there some time back.

     We ran out of anything to do early one day, and showed up at our B&B a little early. The lady had sung in the Stockholm opera for many years. She was lonely, and happy to have somebody to talk to. She said she married an opera singer, and when her reviews started getting better that her husband's, he divorced her. She insisted that we come down for a glass of wine before bed. We don't really care for it, but went, just to be sociable. She had very fancy glasses, and a decorative decanter, along with all sorts of other goodies she had fixed. She just kept refilling our glasses.

      She suggested breakfast at nine, but we had a big day tomorrow, and Barbara just has a coffee fit well before nine. No addiction, though. Barbara begged her down to 8:30. But I think she realized the problem, though, because she brought up a thermos of coffee later. The next morning, we watched all her birds outside just flock to the oleo sprinkled with oats she pampered them with while eating a great breakfast ourselves.

     We said goodbye, and headed for the tourist office in Saffle. They lined us out good on the really big festival spread out over a dozen locations on a very large peninsula. Selling farm good, crafts, whatever they had. The area was called the Varmlands. We worked our way down the peninsula, then back up, hitting most of them. The parking and traffic was a problem. At one site, young men were getting to shoot an actual shotgun at targets. They acted like they had never actually seen a real gun before. That seems to be the case with most all countries we have been in. Most people in the world seem to have the impression that all Americans carry guns, like the wild west days. I have overheard many conversations to that effect, all over the world.

      Barbara was in her element, with these great crowds of people. Once, we were waiting in a very long line for the toilet. They all stood in absolute silence, not a word spoken. Barbara, of course, spoke. “You Swedish people sure are a quiet bunch!” An old man, way up the line, added, “Yes, we have always been a very stoic people.” That broke the ice, and the words came flooding out, along with much laughter. By the time our toilet turn had arrived, every one of them personally knew us, and all about our travels. A common question: “Do you have kin here? All other Americans go to Southern Europe.” Did we look blonde to them? Well, I could have been. A long time ago.

     By the time we got back off our tour, we were thinking about finding a place to lay our heads. The people at the Tourist office had been so helpful, we went back. They booked a Hostel on down the road. The directions sounded easy, but then nothing ever is. It was another hostel, Barbara wasn't very happy about it, but our budget was. We thought we again had it to ourselves, but we walked right into a couple of guys when we walked down to the TV room. Barbara screamed. I did not. I'm more stoic. Barbara just does not like it, when someone we didn't invite personally walks into our hostel.

      We saw the attraction that place offered before we left. It had a rushing river, and a series of locks and dams lifted and lowered boats from one large lake to another. At one point, there was an “Only one in the world” thing. Starting with the river on the bottom, a boat canal directly above, a foot bridge directly above that, then an automobile bridge directly above that. Four modes of travel occupying the same geographical space. Five, if a plane flew over. And what if a satellite flew directly over that?  Pretty cool.

     We drove to Goteborg. A major city. Actually, there are two little dashes above the “o” in the name to show how it is pronounced, a characteristic of most of their long words. But my computer, to my knowledge, can't do that. We figured since it was Sunday, the traffic would be light. It was true of most cities in the world we have seen, but not here, and in Los Angeles. We wandered aimlessly among the hoards of humanity awhile, before an avenue of escape presented itself, and we took it. The highlight of the day occurred when Barbara spotted a bull moose, in all its glory, just outside the city by the interstate. We had been seeing Moose signs along the road, and watched for one so long, we had given up. Actually, the tell-tale signs of wildlife, usually road kill, was very light the whole time.

      When we found a hotel, a ways down the line, it was too expensive. But, they said they had an older version across town, but we had to fix our own bedding. We took it. No breakfast, but $100. Isn't that just the way things are now? We were beginning to look at that price as “A cheap bargain.”

      We got a Kebab tonight, along with a Pizza. Their way of doing things was very different, and Barbara, in trying to figure out how to handle the ordering, got every single person in the cafe involved, helping her. Remembering Hillary Clinton's book, I told them, “It takes a village to keep her straightened out.” Many knew what I was referring to, and laughed. Most countries, all over the world, know about and love everything American. And, they loved us. It’s just America in general they have a problem with. Kebabs were beginning to not be so good. Getting a bit old, because they're the cheapest. So just quite naturally, we have seen a lot of them. But the pizza was good.

      The next day we just sort of took it easy. It drizzled all day. We went to a Bibliotek (Library) and Barbara got a free hour on a computer. She found we were still pretty close to budget, better than we had feared. That pepped us up. So Barb just had to go to a mall, spend some money. A worker at one store was looking at us, pointing and laughing, while we were still a long way off. Were my pants unzipped or something? But no. He was one of the crowd last night, helping Barbara order pizza. “Was the pizza good?"

     I did a little creative parking. And we did a little walking about, seeing Sweden. When returning to our car, a pair of police officers were sticking a note on our windshield, then they were walking away. I ran to catch them, putting on my most pitiful foreigner expression, and said, “Oh sir! Oh Ma’am! Did I do something wrong?” in my best hillbilly twang. They looked at me, smiled. “Enjoy your visit” as they took my ticket off my windshield. Only one ticket from the whole trip followed us all the way to America, and we paid that one.

     Our last stay was in a garage apartment next to a house. The lady told us we could use her laundry. We took all our stuff, several loads, over, and started the first one. Barbara happened to mention her bad back. When we came back, hours later, she had washed, dried, and folded all our clothes. And, she brought up a special pad for out bed to help Barbara’s back. Swedish people are not only quiet, they are very, very nice.

Forever A Hillbilly: The Summer of 1956

Forever A Hillbilly: The Summer of 1956:         By Pat Gillum  The summer of '56 brought a new friend and companion to the farm. Mike Ford, my city boy cousin, arrived fro...

The Summer of 1956

        By Pat Gillum

 The summer of '56 brought a new friend and companion to the farm. Mike Ford, my city boy cousin, arrived from California one morning in June. We were twelve years old. Mike had never been out of the Los Angeles area before, and even the routine occurrences on our hill farm became new adventures to him.

>     Soon after Mike's arrival, the raccoons attacked our corn patch, which was in the roasting ear stage, in force. Every coon in the bottoms seemed to show up at dark. My dog Tooter, Mike, and I were assigned the task of protecting our patch. The stage was set for one of our greatest adventures.

> Early one warm summer night we headed for the patch. No sooner had we reached it than Tooter was on a hot trail. Mike and I ran down a corn middle.

We could hear Tooter running toward us, knocking down corn stalks as he ran.  A silent, furry shadow flashed in front of me, barely visible in the dim

moonlight. Close behind came Tooter. Reason and common sense left me, and I joined the chase, momentarily not noticing that I was doing as much damage to the corn as the coons were, tearing and scattering stalks as I ran. Suddenly, the game changed.  The big coon turned to fight. Tooter, having better control of his senses than anyone else at the moment,jumped aside. I don't think I

really made a decision to do what I did next, for I like to think my decision making process is a little better than this display, and I knew about coons. A coon like this can be a bundle of screaming and biting fury. They often whip a

dog, and can kill them if they get on them in the water. I dived at the coon. I like to think I reconsidered in mid air, but I don't really think I did. I sat on the coon, on my knees. I held the ringed tail tightly in both hands, while

the masked face peered out from behind me. The coon was strangely quiet, giving me a moment to consider my situation. I asked myself, “How do I get off?” when no reasonable solution came to mind, I called, “Do something, Mike!” I don't remember exactly what he did, so I asked him when I visited him this past

summer. He said he hit the coon on the head with a knife, and it just got mean. So I acted. I jumped up, planning to hold the tail by the right hand, slide my hunting knife out of its scabbard, and hit it over the head. But by the time I had began my draw, my fingers had just touched the handle when the coon went crazy. It was wrapped tightly around my right arm, biting and squalling, and my

arm was turning into sausage. I shook it loose,only to have it latch onto my right leg, slightly above the knee. I was struck with a momentary flash of good sense, and I shook him loose. Tooter joined the chase then, for, still being a young dog, he liked it better when the coon was running from him. Myself, I was in the heat of battle now, and I stayed close behind. Again the coon turned to

fight, raking Tooter with his claws. When I entered the fray this time, the knife was in my hand, and it was quickly over.

> We proudly carried the big coon back to the house, and I basked in the attention and glory as everyone examined my wounds. We did not think much about things such as rabies in those days. Mike later confided, “I would sure like to have some scars like that to take back to California.”  A few days later, Mike went down to run the traps we sat out at the corn patch, got too close to a squirrel or coon or some such animal, and got his own battle wounds. For days, he pulled the scabs from the wounds, and he proudly wore his scars back to

California.

> As the corn matured the crows moved in. Life on our farm was a constant battle with assorted animals for our crops. Hundreds of crows. Our

focus turned to them. One who has never experienced the crow as an enemy cannot possibly appreciate the cunning and intellect of a wild crow. Without a gun, we could get close, like the tame golf course variety of today. But with a gun in our hand, they knew what that meant, and we could get almost in range before they abandoned the ear of corn and flew, laughing and calling to the others, or

maybe at us, as they flew.

> Mike and I built a blind in the patch. As we entered, one guard crow watched from the tree line. Even if we sat for hours in the blind, not a crow

showed. When we finally gave up in disgust, heading for the house, the crows would always flog in and cover the patch when we got out of range.

> One day we finally discovered a chink in their armor. A crow does not count well. We both entered the blind, one of us would leave, and the crows

would flog in on top of the remaining shooter, discovering their error in math too late.

> These crows also provided a source of spending money. The county had a fifty cent bounty on crow heads, simply show them to the county clerk and

collect the reward. However, the first time we proudly sat a fruit jar full of aging crow heads on his desk, he suddenly decided he could trust us, as he fled the desk, holding his nose. From now on, we would only have to come in and tell him how many we had.

> Ticks and chiggers were also new to Mike. Me, I had gotten used to them over the years, just scratch it off when you got one. They also served as a good source of entertainment each night before I went to sleep, scratching all my bites good. For Mike, it was different. The first time he saw hundreds of seed ticks crawling up his leg, I thought he was going to throw a runaway.

> The summer was drawing to a close. Mike was ready to ride the train three days back to Los Angeles. When he arrived, he got a dog, named him Tooter. He

bought traps, and sat out a trap line in the concrete jungle of Los Angeles. 

All he could catch were cats and ground squirrels, though. He told me this year that the summer in Arkansas influenced the course of his life. He later made many trips into the wilds of the west.

> I did not see Mike again until he returned from Viet Nam as a demolitions expert, sporting a Teflon orbit around one eye. We visited Wing a couple of days and talked about the old times. When he got back to California, he had a rude awakening. People there did not appreciate him and the other returning veterans. By the time he had completed college, he had had enough. He went to Australia, taught school a couple of years. Then he played Basketball on a touring team of displaced American veterans awhile. When he returned to California, pushing thirty, he applied for a teaching job. Remembering his earlier treatment, he did not mention to the Superintendent interviewing him about his war experience. But when the man asked him why, at near thirty, he was just now applying for a job, he came clean. The man, a veteran himself it turns out, stood up, shook his hand, and hired him on the spot. It turned out to be a 30 year job.

Forever A Hillbilly: A Family of Supermen

Forever A Hillbilly: A Family of Supermen:      My wonderful granddaughter Caylie got married recently. She and Tim have been hanging around together for a long time. They are both s...

A Family of Supermen

     My wonderful granddaughter Caylie got married recently. She and Tim have been hanging around together for a long time. They are both still in college, and that can be a problem financially, but they are both very hard workers and they are having a grand time.

     Tim is a swimmer. Six years ago, he was a big time swimmer. He swam every day, five hours per day, with an elite swim team full of olympic hopefuls. He had the second fastest time in the country in the mile, somewhere around fifteen minutes. (A fifteen minute mile is a pretty fast walking pace, in case you haven’t tried that.) Also on Tim’s elite swim team were two little girls, ages eight and nine. They were already, at their tender ages, showing great promise for the future, and have continued that grueling training pace to the present. I feel certain that six years ago, Tim was their hero.

     The Olympic trials were looming. But as bad luck would have it, Tim had a serious allergic reaction to chlorine in swimming pool water, and had to drop out. Tim manages to stay in good shape, and swims when he can in lake competitions, but the world class level at which he had been swimming had to go by the wayside.

     Last summer, Tim and Caylie borrowed my fourteen foot aluminum boat. They floated from Lake DeGray to the Ouachita River Bridge near Arkadelphia, Arkansas. That’s a pretty solid half day float.  I drove down to pick them up, and when I was crossing the bridge, I could see they had missed the take-out ramp. They floated by on the far side of the river, and when they saw it, they were already well past.

     The lakes were releasing a lot of water due to heavy spring rains, and the river was flowing swiftly. They were both paddling as hard as they could, but were steadily losing ground. I hollered for them to paddle to the bank, where Tim could walk along in shallower water and pull the boat up. They did, but immediately saw a large water moccasin on a limb, grinning at them, daring them to get just a little bit closer. They quickly headed back to deep water. Paddling was not the way to go, so Tim jumped into the river, put the rope around his shoulder, and started swimming. Now, for a normal person, considering Caylie was still in the boat, that would have been impossible. But Tim is not a normal man. He started gaining ground. It still took him a long time, but he got it done.

     This past Saturday was a big day for me. For the first time, I was about to see Tim in action, swimming against strong competition. Hundreds of great swimmers from all over were competing at Degray Lake. Tim was entered in the one mile swim. Swimming in the women’s division of that race were two teen age girls. Initially, this really didn’t mean anything to me, I did not know them. But Tim did. They were the same two little girls from his old swim team of six years ago. He knew they had been swimming five or six hours daily all these years since Tim had to quit. He also knew they would be in top condition, and his chances against them would be slim. Not being in the know, I was concerned with the whole herd of musclemen Tim would be swimming against, and I paid little attention to the girls.

     Halfway or so into the race, his shoulders began to give him great pain, but they soon went numb. Other than having to throw up a couple of times, everything was going smoothly. But Tim had been right. The two little girls, no longer little, fourteen and fifteen, were first out of the water. Tim was next out, winning the men’s division, at around twenty four minutes. The musclemen I had been worried about were still specks far out in the lake.

                                                        **

     Tim’s father Joe is 55 years old. He owns a landscaping business, and he normally gets up very early, riding his bike totally unreasonably long distances.  A one hundred mile ride is standard fare for Joe. He then works all day in his landscaping business. Then he goes out after work for a little exercise. Joe is a regular in Iron Man competitions.

     Joe was once present at a one hundred mile run event in the mountains. He was not participating in this, so he had not been training for it. A friend who was entered knew Joe always stays in great shape, so he asked Joe to pace him during the last part of the race.  Joe agreed. He paced him the last forty miles. That put both of them in the medical tent.

     Joe hires several young men, twenty some-odd years old, in his business. Occasionally, they all gang up on Joe and attempt to pin him in wrestling, but have never yet been successful. Joe said recently, “I gotta stop doing that. I hurt one last time.”

     In the one mile swim – twenty five mile bike ride event at Lake Degray, Joe placed second. The one man who beat him in his age group also won first overall, and he is number four in the country in that event. Swimming was Joe’s weakest area, but he made up for that once on the bike.

Joe’s father David, Tim’s grandfather, started his physical training early. At two, he was so active he was having trouble walking. The doctor determined he was too musclebound to walk properly. Later, his father Ray hitched David up to the plow to work the garden, instead of using a mule. He went on to become captain of the football team at The Citadel. The University of South Caroline was a major football power at that time, but David’s team managed to beat them, the only time that has ever happened.

     David was in the Korean War. He was a forward observer, maybe the most dangerous job in the army. Their job was to move into enemy territory, locate enemy forces, and call in artillery fire.

     This was during a time of change and experimentation in the US army. Up to that point, the early 1950’s, black soldiers were normally not highly trained in fighting, being usually assigned more domestic duties. That was changing. David was given a team of thirty men, mostly blacks, and he trained them up to a very high fighting level.

     Also along about that time, the Chinese were flooding into North Korea to fight for North Korea against the South Koreans and Americans. They came in very large numbers. They fought with guns, pitchforks, hoes, etc. The large hoards of men more than made up for any shortage in equipment or training.

     David’s team, as forward observers, were spotted by one of these very large groups. The machine guns David’s team was equipped with had two barrels. While one was firing, the other would be cooling off. Facing this vast hoard of Chinese, cooling the barrel was a luxury they could not afford. They had to keep both barrels firing constantly. Over time, both barrels melted.

     Both groups were running out of ammunition.

     Now, it was man to man, hand to hand. David realized they were about to be overrun, so he called in artillery fire right on top of the entire battlefield. That way, the enemy would be taken out also.

     Officers, such as David, carried a pistol. They were trained to shoot themselves rather than be captured. David pulled his pistol, ready to do his duty. But he just could not bring himself to pull the trigger. The only other option was to fight to the end. David dimly remembers he and men around him beating each other with fists, and heads being slammed against the ground. After what seemed like forever, all was quiet on the field. There was no one left to fight. Only David and two of his men survived on the entire battlefield.

                                                           **

     David’s father Ray, Tim’s great-grandfather, became a professional heavyweight boxer at an early age. He married at fourteen. He and his wife had eight children. His wife finally persuaded Ray to retire from boxing. He always regretted that decision.

     Ray went on to become the ski jumping champion of West Virginia. At 55, he was the national skeet shooting champion. Even his bird dogs were national champions.

     Ray became a state senator in West Virginia. When the presidential elections rolled around, he played a major role in helping John F. Kennedy get the presidential nomination. West Virginia became a key state in the election, and Ray campaigned tirelessly. Who woulda’ guessed?

     When West Virginia compiled a list of the one hundred greatest athletes in the last hundred years, both Ray and David were on that list.

Hopefully, Tim and Caylie will produce the next generation of supermen for the Barnett family. Who knows? Maybe a little of that super manhood will spill over into the Gillum clan.

     Look at me. As you can clearly see, we need a little dab of that.       

Forever A Hillbilly: Decoration Day Gold

Forever A Hillbilly: Decoration Day Gold:      This is a true story, at least my part of it. I can't vouch for Jake.       Many years ago, I took my family to the Gillum...

Decoration Day Gold

     This is a true story, at least my part of it. I can't vouch for Jake.

      Many years ago, I took my family to the Gillum Decoration Day/Reunion at a pavillion in Rover, Arkansas. It was not uncommon for old Gillum relatives I did not know to show up. I'm the youngest of my generation of Gillums. Many of my cousins were grown and scattered to the four winds before I was ever old enough to know them.

      An old, old man I had never seen before got my attention and called me over, introducing himself as "Jake."

      "You look like a strong young man. I need your help."

     I inquired what he needed my help in doing. "I need you to go to Texas with me, and find and haul back 17 mule loads of gold," he said. I told him to tell me the whole story, so he popped open another can of soda pop, and motioned for me to pull up a chair.

      It seems that during the last years of the Civil War, some of the leaders of the Confederacy realized the end was near, so they decided to take much of the remaining gold of the Confederacy to Mexico, and hide it. After the war was over, and things had settled down, the gold would then be retrieved and used to rebuild the new Confederacy.

      The war ended, and years passed. The Reconstruction ended, and most of the Carpetbaggers and other Yankees that were going home had left. The time had come.

      Jake's Dad, a young man, was chosen to lead a team to Mexico, and bring back the gold. A map was given to him as they left. They took along a good herd of pack mules to carry back the mounds of gold. The time frame was in the late 1880's.

      Things went well. They found the gold, just where it should be. They quickly loaded up the mules, and headed out of Mexico as quickly as possible. The second day on the trail, they began to suspect banditos might be on their trail. They could see dust in the distance at times. They picked a hill where they felt they could defend themselves, if necessary, and made camp. They saw no more sign of riders.

      When bed time came, the team decided, just in case, to prepare for trouble. The Gold was hidden, as best they could, and the horses and mules were staked out to graze. The men took their bedrolls and climbed to the top of the hill, well out of the campfire light, and waited in the rocks.

      Hours passed, with no sign of trouble. Just before daybreak, shots were fired from the rocks surrounding the camp. The ten men returned fire. The battle raged until well up into the day. By noon, only three men were left alive on top of the hill, and the banditos were in a similar situation. Most were dead. Finally, the few banditos remaining were seen fleeing the battle, headed for Mexico.

      The remainder of the team assessed their situation. Seven men dead, all the mules were dead, only four horses remaining. One of the horses was shot in the leg. They decided they must bury their friends, then bury all the gold, make a good, detailed map on the way home, and get out of there before the banditos came back.

      They pulled out the next morning at daylight, and things went well for a time. Crossing into Arkansas, they were attacked by a rough, mean looking group of men, who obviously intended to rob them. Jake's dad's friends were killed, and three of the attackers were killed before the rest ran off. After burying his friends, Jake's dad continued on toward his home in south Arkansas. He had a lot of time to think on the trail. The Confederate cause was lost, he knew, and it would be a simple matter to report that the Banditos stole all the gold, and only he survived. This gold could make his family rich. He must wait a long time before returning for the gold.

      Many years went by. The map was stored in a hidden place in his house for many years. He was now an old man. Fear and caution had not allowed him to return for the gold. Finally, he realized. It's now or never. Soon, he would be too old for the hard trip. Jake's dad pulled him aside one day, and showed him the map. "Jake, I want you to look this map over good.  Next week, we're going for the gold. We'll take two wagons, and haul all of it we can."

      Jake's mother begged them not to go, fearing they would be killed. But Jake's dad knew it was now or never. The night before they were to leave, Jake's mother located the map, and in an attempt to save her family, burned it. Jake's dad was livid. After a day or two, he began to settle down a little bit. The map, and the gold, were gone. And, actually, he had always feared that trip, all his life, back to that place where he had seen so many of his friends die. He was secretly relieved.

      Jake had a secret that he never told his dad. Jake had a photographic memory. Every little detail of that map was locked away in his mind. But, as a boy, he was not anxious to make that dangerous trip, either, so he kept the secret. For many, many years.

Jake was continuing his story. "After my children were grown, and my wife died, I stewed about that gold every day. I know I can find it, I just don't see how I can ever get it out of Texas. I knew a lot of Gillum’s would be here today, and I need help from family folks." I knew Jake was some crackpot Gillum, and his story was crazy. Just to humor him, I said, "It's time to eat. I'll talk to you some more after lunch." Jake nodded his head OK.

      I moved down and filled my plate, eating with my family. I was thinking. I know he has to be a crackpot, but what harm would it do to humor this old man, drive him to Texas? He said the gold was hidden just east of San Antonio, and I loved the Alamo. Might be a good adventure. And, I might get a really good story out of it.

I threw my paper plate in the trash can, and headed back toward Jake. But his chair was empty. I searched all around that pavillion, but nobody seemed to know a Jake Gillum, or a Jake anybody, for that matter. The old man was just gone. Along with any thoughts that, in spite of my better judgement, were beginning to seep into the back of my mind about Confederate gold. 

     I never saw Jake again.  

Forever A Hillbilly: Crittenden House and the Time Capsule

Forever A Hillbilly: Crittenden House and the Time Capsule:      When I first saw Crittenden House, she was a mess. Not just a regular type messy house; she was a living, breathless royal nightmare...

Crittenden House and the Time Capsule

     When I first saw Crittenden House, she was a mess. Not just a regular type messy house; she was a living, breathless royal nightmare of a mess. I say breathless because one could not really stand to breathe inside that house. Those first associations with this house affected me in such a way that, until this day, I could never eat anything inside that house. But today, as Crittenden house is in the throes of its last days, I ate. Two peanut butter sandwiches, kept tightly sealed until they entered my mouth. So, today, I made things right between Crittenden House and myself, and gave her the respect she has deserved, during the twenty some odd year association we have had. Crittenden house has a date with a bulldozer, right after the first of the year. I sold her, awhile back. On a handshake. Keeps down the paper work. Jimmy Bolt, our best city manager, to my way of thinking, during our thirty year tenure in Arkadelphia, was my partner in this deal. Now, don’t get the idea that I normally buy and sell a house on a handshake. But Jimmy Bolt and I have a long history. We were both country hicks together out in the woods west of town in the 1980’s. We were so close, my dog once raided his henhouse, and caught a bullet in the foot for his efforts. Not by Jimmy, but from one of the several neighborhood kids, and we had several. None ever openly admitted it, to the best of my memory.  But it worked; to my knowledge, my dog, Booker Brand New, never went near his henhouse again.

     You see, Crittenden house sits right across the road from Jimmy Bolt’s office window, and Crittenden house had long ago lived out her best years when I bought her. She’s just plain ugly. Sorry, Crittenden House, but it’s time for me to admit what the rest of Arkadelphia has talked about as long as I’ve known her. According to my recent research, she went on the tax records in 1910. I knew fifteen years ago the city of Arkadelphia would one day own her, and remove her. The big surprise was, It took so long.  I passed up an offer twice what I sold it for, finally, around twelve years ago, waiting for Arkadelphia to bring a fine point pen to the negotiating table, and maybe buy the property by the square foot, which also means through the nose. But alas! I finally had to threaten to sell, OWNER FINANCING written plainly on my little For Sale sign, which could have given Crittenden house a new lease on life for thirty more years of being the blight of downtown Arkadelphia. Should have tried that years ago.  Gives you some sort of idea the kind of businessman I am. But that’s another story.

     But I digress. Being overcome by sentimentality, I have wandered off. Let’s get back to my first introduction to Crittenden House.  The relator, I forgot which one, could find nobody in Arkadelphia willing to enter the house to clean, no matter what they offered. But that brought the house down to $14,000. It IS a duplex, and all I could see was, if I can just get through the initial cleanup, spend a few weeks bringing her up a few notches, It would bring me in $560 a month, the renters will pay it off in a few years, and the rest will just be gravy. (ugh! Did I just mention food?)

     I put on a mask and rubber gloves. Sometime into the second day, I started cleaning off the counter and the stove. Skuttlebutt had it, the last renter, who made that mess, was being chased by the law, and had to leave in a big hurry. When I finally reached the bottom of the mess on the stove, I discovered part of the problem with the smell.  Pork chops were cooking on the stove, it seems, at some point just prior to the last tenant’s sudden departure. They were brown, as though partially cooked, or possibly time turned them brown. But that does not explain the additional two feet of debris piled on top of all that. Weeks had passed before I bought the house.

      I have a lot of on-the-job training with messes. My agreement with Barbara has been, she does more house cleaning of the normal variety than I do, but when the really bad messes occur, I clean them up. Fortunately, both our kids were past the diaper stage before I would go along with that. You remember washing out all those old, cloth type diapers? Nuf’ said. I’ve never understood how a family member can get a bad stomach bug, be kneeling right over the commode when the time comes, yet throw it all over the bathroom; nary a drop hitting the commode.

    I finally chased out the smell. Then, by applying a lot of elbow grease, (ugh! Greasy food!) putting a hanging picture or shelf over various holes in the walls, and putting on a couple of more layers of paint, the job was done. Crittenden house was smiling again. And she started paying off her mortgage note. Things were looking up, for this old gal, even if she was reaching 83.

     The Tornado of 97’, bad as it was, actually gave Crittenden House an image boost in the neighborhood. In seconds, she went from being the worst house in the area, to being one of the best. Nobody was in it at the time. Houses across the street were flattened to the ground. One apartment in Crittenden house was rented; his stuff was still there. Yet after the tornado, he was gone. We never found him, and he never showed back up. I wondered if he had become a victim, but further inquiries told me he also left in a big rush, also being chased by the law, a day or two before the tornado.

     Insurance adjusters descended upon the town in droves a couple of days later. Before I knew they had even looked at Crittenden house, my agent was presenting me with a check for the total loss of the house. I protested. “The contractor says it can be repaired.”

      “ But for the amount of the policy?”

     “Well, I don’t know. I haven’t gotten an estimate yet.” Then, realizing I was talking against myself, which goes back to the kind of businessman I am, I shut up and gratefully accepted the check.

      My banker laughed when I told him that. “If he had seen that picture I have down at the bank, showing what it looked like before the tornado, you would have never gotten a dime!”

      I decided to repair it myself. I put on six squares of shingles. One day while I sat on that roof, getting a bird’s eye view of the destruction, I just sat there a long time. FEMA was doing a great job, but the town still had a pink cast to it from all the insulation strewn around. That wonderful little lady was pulling her little red wagon up the street with cold water for all the workers. She had been doing that for days. I never knew her. I wish I did. I’d just like to thank her. I sat there and bawled like a baby for my town.

     The volunteers  got the trees off the house, I  bought window glass by the box, attached the electrical service back on, and three weeks later, it was rented again, to one of those crooked guys who drove up from Florida to make a killing off our tornado, getting work. He told me, “I’m a little short on cash right now, long on equipment, could I put this chain saw up for a security deposit? I’m going to be making a lot of money in the coming weeks.”

      I went for it. I don’t think he did much work, though.  A couple of days later, he called me, asked me to bring his truck to Hot Springs so he could use it to bail himself out of jail. I went for that too, and after a few weeks, he went home. Seems that new rule put in right after the tornado requiring that repairmen flocking in must have a permit to prove they are honest and upright, and his drinking habit did him in. He called me a few weeks later, asked me if he would send me his rent due, would I send him his chain saw. Told him I would if he would also send shipping money for his chain saw. Never heard from him again. I still have that chain saw. It has not run in years.

     Have you noticed that “the Law” appears quite a lot in telling about Crittenden House? Well, I’m not near done yet. In 1998, Barbara and I were traveling a year in an RV. The last thing I did before leaving town and handing the rentals over to Bud Reeder was rent Crittenden House out to a Mexican framing crew for a few months. A month into our trip, I got an early morning call on our emergency phone. Son-in-law Mickey, then a paramedic, had been the first responder to Crittenden house after a fight over a woman broke out at the front end of the house. It traveled through the house to the back door, spilled out into the yard, and one man picked up a handy concrete block and busted the other man’s head in. I was far away, never got the official version, but scuttlebutt has it he was shipped back to Mexico, not being a legal citizen. When we got back to town, many months later, there was a concrete block lying in the back yard. Surely, that could not be the murder weapon. I feel certain that one was on file, up in the evidence room. But it sure had some curious stains on it.

     Along with a lot of good, clean renters, Crittenden House brought me quite a few occasions to practice up on my “dirty mess man” skills. One case comes to mind. When a renter moved out, I discovered the back bedroom had been used as a dog pen. For some time. That’s bad, but I’ve seen that a lot. Nothing noteworthy here, in itself. The problem was, his bagged garbage seems to have been placed in that room right down in there amongst’ em’ for a long time. That makes for a very bad combo. A big challenge for the dirty mess man. I have used Bud Reeder’s hired cleaners some, but I never sent them into that kind of mess, if I was in town. The dirtiest jobs were reserved for the Dirty Mess Man. But then, I’ll admit. I do travel a lot.

     Though I’ve relied on the bad side of Crittenden house to make an interesting story, there were a lot of good things along the way. One good renter I want to tell you about was the very last; though she only stayed a short time before the house sold, I think she was the best. When a house is for sale, renters are made aware of it before they move in, and assured of 30 day’s notice. But, most houses are bought as a rent house, and they usually stay on. This time, Crittenden house had served 104 years, and she was very tired. A house’s age seem to correspond to human age pretty closely. I wish I had known Crittenden house, when she was young and beautiful, clear fresh water running through her pipes and drains. But in that case, I would still have been making payments on her to the end. I told that last renter, the day it sold, she would have to move, and I dreaded that. But she took the whole thing well, with a sense of humor, like I knew she would.  She was in her early twenties, a sweet person. She was working two jobs, also helping her mom and younger sisters, and saving to go back to HSU.  I had been saving her another apartment, a higher priced one, and told her I would give her a month’s free rent, and reduce the rent to what she was used to. But she found another apartment that fit her needs better. I borrowed a trailer and helped her move. I also told her, no need to clean up at all, I’m about to start tearing things out.

     But I knew she would. And she did. It’s fitting, I think, for a once-beautiful house that has served so long, like Crittenden house, to begin the process of dying as clean as it’s ever been. I will always remember that hardworking, wonderful girl/woman. If I had the chance to choose a second daughter, in addition to the wonderful one I have, I would choose her.

      The front room in Crittenden house has a beautiful built in long bench, with bookshelves on each end. The whole thing stretches along the entire wall. The first thing she mentioned regarding what she will miss most about Crittenden House was that bench. I told her she could have it, if she could get it out. Her friend tried, but gave up. It would have to be torn up to get it out. I’ve studied that bench a lot, as I scavenged the building. I decided today I would have to sacrifice the shelves on one end to get the bench out. An antique buyer from near Conway, seeing pics of it, said he wanted to take it out, piece by piece, reassemble it out and sell it. But he never showed up.  I started tearing off the top right shelf. When it came off, I discovered a three inch deep, hidden and sealed pocket underneath. It was totally sealed with layers upon layers of paint, many of which I applied. The dust that rose up, and the air that I breathed, as I looked in, was just different. It had been in there for a very long time.  I saw a stack of papers in the bottom. Many of them turned to dust as I touched them.  I picked up an envelope that was more sturdy. It was a church collection envelope, stamped with the date, Dec. 16, 1917.  It’s stated purpose:

Weekly Offering

Arkadelphia Methodist Church, South

Arkadelphia, Ark

For: Pastor’s Salary – Current Expenses – Connectional Claims

     To my amazement, two items present were obviously not nearly as old. One was a baseball trading card for Mike Schmidt, who played for the Phillies in the 70’s, born in 1948. Also present was a payday advance receipt, made out to Mathis, with no year date. The business was located at 1730 Pine Street, Arkadelphia, Arkansas 71923  501-246-CASH. The amount was $33. My best guess for the late arrivals would be that the time capsule was not always sealed as tightly with paint as it is at present, and slipped in through the cracks. I have no other possible explanations. I applied many, many coats of white paint to it myself, over twenty years. Just today, in another hidden space in that shelf, I found business cards. If I ever decide to go into that business, I’ll be stocked up. The business advertised asbestos products. Along with those, there was a Malvern High School graduation announcement envelope, dated 1920.  Crittenden House, in your death you leave me with a puzzle I will be thinking about for a long time.

     Yesterday was a big day in the death process of Crittenden House. Lisa Green, the owner of the Blue Suede Shoes Antique Mall in Little Rock, showed up with a very large trailer and two hard workers, and we pulled out all the windows sashes, 50 or so, along with the doors, fire place mantles, door headers, shelves, and every other old thing she could load on that trailer. Soon, once beautiful parts of Crittenden houses will be adorning housed all over Little Rock. Makes me feel better, somehow. Parts of Crittenden House will remain alive, and totally beautiful again, for a long time to come. As Jimmy Bolt requested, I’ll soon present the keys to Crittenden house to him when I finish with the house. “But Jimmy,” I’ll say to him, “You see, she has no doors – or locks -”

     The beautiful, almost knot free planks trimming the doors, windows, and making up the baseboards, were a problem for me. Beautiful lumber, but I really had no market for them. Trying not to over think this too much, I pretty well pulled them all off, pulled the nails. Day after day. To date, I have not sold one of them. But they are far too beautiful to go to the dump. Every crack and crevice in all my storage buildings are now crammed full of beautiful lumber. For what, I don’t know. I’ll probably let my kids and grandkids deal it someday. When I left the house today, only two items remained for me to deal with. The beautiful clawfoot tubs. Monday, the last day, they will have to go, one way or another. And, they weigh about 300 pounds. Each. Everybody who sees them, or pics of them, just love them. They oooh and aaah, talk about how they would love to have them. But no one offers to buy or deal with their 300 pound bulk. The last day arrived. Nobody had claimed those two tubs, now priced down to $100 for both. If they take one, they must take both. No luck. The night before, I spent a lot of time searching for a way to save the tubs. I could haul them to my back yard. Keep trying to sell. Or, try to refinish them. Yes, that was the answer. I talked my friend Tyrone to help me load them. He loads heavy things for a living. He’s good at it. Actually, he did most all of it. Once on the trailer, I headed out. A block toward home, reality set in. I’m closing in on 70 years old. I’ve got a bad back. Moving them again, then maybe again, did not seem like such a good idea, now. I made a hard right turn, toward the metal recycling plant. At least, Crittenden house will never know where her two beautiful, but giant, babies went. And I’ll never tell.

The Time Capsule bench and  bookself unit was another last minute decision. I finally got it out, moved it in pieces to my driveway, and re-assembled it over a few days on my driveway. It’s done, but I had no place to put it. If it starts raining before I sell it, I’ll have to try to talk Barbara into moving her new car out of the garage for awhile. Might be easier said than done.

     Crittenden house and I have been through many hard times, in our old age. But there have been good times, also. She has always been my worst looking rental property, yet she always was easy to rent. She was cheap, $280 per month including free water, and provided cover and shelter for many who were only one step removed from the streets. Poor people need a place to call home, also. And, with the insurance company’s generosity in declaring Crittenden House a total loss after the tornado, she’s been my most profitable rent house. And remember, not just everyone can look out their window when they wake up, and see our beautiful city Hall, or see Jimmy Bolt, our best city manager ever, at his window, gazing out over his domain. Rest well, Crittenden House. I hope you love being spread around all over Little Rock, Though parts of you will not be so lucky, resting peacefully in a nice landfill. Just remember, in your passing, you will be making room for a nice new parking lot! Now, who can ask for more than that? The best I can hope for is a box, and a flower on Decoration Day for a few years. Or maybe not even that.

Forever A Hillbilly: Hangups and Strange Quirks

Forever A Hillbilly: Hangups and Strange Quirks:      Somewhere around 1947 or so, an enterprising businessman from Plainview, ten miles from Wing, came up with a good idea. Build a chic...

Hangups and Strange Quirks

     Somewhere around 1947 or so, an enterprising businessman from Plainview, ten miles from Wing, came up with a good idea. Build a chicken hatchery at Plainview. He was a good salesman, and he sold a passel of farmers in Wing and the surrounding area on the idea of producing the eggs. Always searching for ways to bring in a little bit more money, Dad went into the egg business. This was along about the time cotton was on its way out in the valley as a money crop. That overworked land was playing out.

     Dad built a long chicken house. It was up on the hill, just to the right of our house. Down under the hill, a couple of hundred yards away, was the huge barn that was built to house the Gillum/Compton/Turner super mule breeding project of the nineteen teens or so. The barn, by the way, was so large, it cost twice as much to build as the house we lived in, $1000. That business did well before the depression, but that business played out also, when tractors came into common use, also along about the time I was born. Old Murt, the only super mule alive when my memories began, successfully sidestepped the glue factory until the late forties. I rode him bareback a lot, and an old, skinny mule without a saddle can be a hard ride. Ida' bout' as soon walk.

     My brother took a picture of our house, at the end of the lane by the barn in 1949 or so, after the chicken house was stocked and producing. I was just getting old enough to work the chickens. I was in that picture, close to the camera, with hundreds of chickens spread out between me and the house. Looking at that picture, one fails to see a trusting, relaxed, laid back, self-confident soul in that face. I'll come back to that later.

     That year, Dad needed a second generation of chickens coming on, to replace the six hundred some odd laying hens, along with a cranky, mean bunch of roosters. The hens in the house were playing out, and getting just too tired to produce an egg a day reliably. And the roosters, each with a very large flock of ladies to attend to, ensuring those eggs were fertile, were playing out too. So the next generation was housed in the barn. These young chickens were producing some eggs, but the eggs were too small for market value. Thus we ate a lot of eggs. During the day, they were turned loose to forage for themselves, cut down on the feed bill. I can count about two hundred in the picture, but there were six hundred or so out there somewhere.

     I would like to tell you it was my job, every afternoon before dark, herding each of those six hundred chicken back into the barn to lock them up and protect them from the coyotes, coons, mink, foxes, etc. at night. Or, it might be an even better story if I told you I just started playing my little flute made out of a piece of fishing cane, marched down the lane to the barn, and they all just lined up and followed me in, a little trick I learned from the pied piper story. I just love to impress people.

    Actually, though, I can't say either of those things, because this is a true story. And, it's awfully hard for a Gillum to just outright tell a bald face lie, because of the Gillum Do Right Mechanism we're all infected with. So the actual truth is, we kept them shut up in the barn awhile until it became home. They came back in on their own at night.  

      My main job in the chicken house was gathering those eggs in a big, wire basket. Now, those chickens had big plans for those eggs. They planned to lay up about all the eggs they could sit on and keep warm, and eventually hatch out their own batch of baby chicks. Once they began to get the mindset to become a “settin' hen,” they became protective of their eggs. I had to steal many of those eggs out from under that mad hen. She would flog, squawk, and peck me. Then I went on down the line to the next nest. Those cranky roosters didn't like me one bit, either. I was invading their territory, and messin' with their women folk. I never knew when one of those cranky old roosters would be on my back, scratching, biting, and floggin'. And, it was not unheard of for me to approach a nest, only to find it occupied by a really big black snake, containing several egg-sized lumps in his belly.

Carrying that heavy basket full of eggs to the house, I had to walk through the territory already staked out by Old Jersey, our mean-natured old milk cow. Every day, it seemed, she saw me going into the hen house with my empty basket, and when I came out, she was waiting. You ever tried to outrun a cranky ole’ milk cow while carrying a basket full of eggs? Every day, again and again? But still yet, she never caught me, though my load of eggs sometimes were the worse for wear.

     Is it any wonder I developed that angry but timid, distrustful look reflected in that face at a very early age? Do you understand why I much preferred wandering the bottoms and the mountains alone?

     The egg business played out in a few years. The scuttlebutt going around was, the main business was really selling a lot of chicken feed to the farmers. Lots and lots of chicken feed. The hatchery sorta took second fiddle. A plus was, all that chicken feed came in pretty cloth sacks, all decorated up to make shirts and dresses from. Mom and my sisters spent a lot of time on the old singer sewing machine. It was not uncommon for Mom to give Dad a few scrap pieces of feed sack material for him to try and match when he headed to Plainview for yet another load of chicken feed. And, during that time, we ate lots and lots of eggs and chickens, enabling us to ease up on the salt pork awhile.  Also, later in high school, I taught myself to pole vault with a well-seasoned pine pole I stole from the chicken roost. In addition, I learned to run fast at an early age. So, it would seem all's well that ends well.
     Dad dispensed with the chickens. It seemed some of that chicken feed had gone bad, and we sometimes had to haul a tractor and wagon load of dead chickens off into the woods to feed all the hungry coyotes around. And that, along with the fact that the money making aspect of that enterprise was not too great to begin with for the farmer, did the chicken business in for Dad.

     Uncle Franz, who was richer than us because he was a school teacher, once bought up a bunch of registered and double registered Polled Hereford cattle, and brought them up to us for Dad to raise and sell on the halves. That business enterprise did better, and Dad stuck with that business the rest of his life. He was growing up a pretty good herd of registered Polled Hereford cattle, concentrating on high quality young herd bulls for sale. And me, I began my stage in life as a cowboy without a horse. But I didn't fare a lot better than I did with the chickens. We had some mean cows there, too. And those big bulls just dared me to step into THEIR pasture. Once, one of those big bulls tried to get romantic with one of Aunt Lula’s cows, through the barbed wire fence, and lost all his value as a herd bull. Another time, two of those big bulls got together and were fighting all over the pasture. Dad had gone to town, so I ran down and shot our double barrel shotgun, both barrels at once, over their heads, to try to scare them apart. It didn’t impress them much, but it knocked me flat down. When Dad got home, one had a broken leg.

 Those young bulls coming on were just beginning to strut their stuff, and they badly needed someone small enough to intimidate. I was the natural choice. A really good counselor could have had a field day, helping me get past all my hang ups and strange quirks I developed before I got big enough to look out for myself. But then, Wing didn't have any of those kind of people. I don't doubt that maybe a few of those strange quirks are still hanging around in my psyche today. Or maybe you have already noticed.