Part Two - Old Gillums Revisited

Now that I have told you about Martha Jane, let’s look at my dad. I think everyone in my branch of my family will agree, nobody shaped our branch of the Gillum clan like my dad, in my lifetime. My information about Dad’s WWI experiences is incomplete. All he ever told me was that while riding the troop ship over, they had to sleep sitting up. It was too crowded to lie down. He also stated that he was close enough to the front to hear the guns when the armistice was declared at eleven o’clock AM on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918.

     From later research, I learned that the main American force had just gotten fully into the war, and the Germans had been pushed back near the Germany-France border. They were well fortified there, and the generals in the field estimated it would cost 25,000 allied lives to defeat them. There were talks in progress about ending the hostilities, and the main question seemed to be, an armistice or unconditional surrender. General Pershing, the American commander, ordered that battle to commence. The field general, however, stalled, thinking of his men, and knowing the war could be over at any time. The battle was delayed, and in a few days, the fighting did cease. Had that attack order been quickly obeyed, would my dad have been one of those 25,000 casualties? Had Pershing’s order to attack been obeyed immediately, with many, many more lives lost on both sides, would it have resulted in unconditional surrender eventually? Would that have, as Pershing seemed to think, have prevented another world war in a few years, or at least delayed it? I really don’t know. All I really know is, if that battle had been fought, and if Dad died that day, I would never have existed. But maybe General Pershing had been right. WW II was not long in coming.

I learned recently that Dad was involved in the trenches in France, but he was in supply rather than actually shooting a gun. Often, he was so tired when he was finally allowed to sleep, that he could not pull his boots out of the mud, having to pull his feet out of his boots, and roll up in his blanket. I still have that blanket. Dad served during the occupation of Germany.

The Gillum’s were pretty well off, for the times, when grandpa Gillum died in 1922. Grandma Martha Jane called Dad back from the oilfields of Oklahoma to run the farm. Things went well, for a number of years. Dad bought a car, and spent more of his time overseeing the share croppers than actually running the farm. But 1930 brought not only the Depression, but also the onset of a number of very hot, dry years, when most all crops failed. June 1930 had only 1/100th of an inch of rain. The cattle had to be ranged out into the mountains for many miles to find forage, and Dad had to ride his horse many miles to find them. The sharecroppers could not get enough money to put in the crops, unless Dad signed the notes. He did, the crops failed, and the sharecroppers had to walk. It took many years to pay those notes off, extending the Depression for my family many years. Dad had to sell off much timberland to the government, at fifty cents to two dollars an acre just to be able to put in his own crop. Nimrod Dam was built, and the government took much of the prime farm land in that project. In addition to these problems, much of the topsoil in the valley was thin, and began to play out. Cotton and other row crops began to disappear, and cattle became the main crop, more and more.

As the depression deepened and dry years persisted, it became difficult to feed a family. I remember Dad, many years later, showing me how to build rabbit gums, quail traps, etc. He also taught me little tricks for catching fish when the need was great. Dad once said, “If we saw a rabbit crossing the road, chased by less than two people, we knew things were getting better.” After I arrived, I never knew of a Gillum eating a wild rabbit. Problems with rabbit fever during the depression changed all that.

Once the unusually dry weather was past, Dad was able to grow plenty of food, with a lot of hard work and foresight. Just spend no money unless it was necessary, buy only staples like flour, sugar, a little coffee. Dad’s solution to the problem was to just work harder and harder, longer and longer. But after the depression, Dad was never able to bring the farm back to the level it was at pre-depression. Only I, the youngest and his helper in his older years, saw how hard he pushed himself.

Dad once planned a fairly long trip to find and buy the finest herd bull available.  A neighbor got wind of it, and asked him to buy one for him, too. Dad did. When Dad got back, the neighbor told him he had changed his mind. Dad was now stuck with two expensive bulls. Dad never had any use for that man again. From this kind of experience, and others along the way, Dad began to get a general mistrust for a lot of people.

I think factors I mentioned above combined with the strong “do right mechanism” Dad had always had shaped him into the man I met when I came along in 1944.  Work hard and long, every day except Sunday. Be careful about trusting people; don’t buy food you can grow. Save up enough food for years, the dry years can return at any time; cut over every inch of cleared land, every year, or the woods will reclaim it. In the early 1950’s, I was doing the pasture mowing. Those were very dry years, and grass and weeds didn’t grow much. Dad insisted that I mow  every square inch, even though it looked exactly the same afterwards. Don’t think highly of lazy or wasteful people, lest you become like them ; be honest, pay the bills first, before spending otherwise. If you feed a hobo, he will just come back the next day, and the next. Keep your daughters away from men, as long as they live in your house; Keep your sons away from honkey tonks, no good can come from all that.

I know all this sounds extreme. However, if you look at the big picture, all six of his children, as adults, worked hard, were honest, fair, the do right mechanism strongly in place. Dad was hard, but it worked. Can one ask more from a parent than that?

     I still have a lot of questions rolling around in my head. Most can never be answered in this world. My Dad and I spent much time together in his older years, with very little conversation passing between us. How could I have been so wasteful? There are so many of these questions he could have answered, had I only asked. If I had but one more afternoon with Dad, now, I could get an answer for them all.