On the Coat Tales of a Gambler
Sailor continues with his stories, with background information about his dad’s two older brothers and the family’s life as sharecroppers.
I guess I told you about my dad’s two older brothers. They were sharecroppers until the early 50’s. Life as a sharecropper had not changed much over time for whites or for blacks. They had no running water, no plumbing, no electricity, just a root cellar to keep things cool. You would have to drive down an old muddy, un-graded road to get to their homes. They lived near a creek, which was their main source of water for the crops, if it didn’t rain. One uncle had a well, where he got his drinking water, and my other uncle got his water from a spring. They had lots of animals, and they ate mostly goat meat. It was tasty. (Sailor recalled enjoying meals with his uncles.) They also were trappers and hunters. Of course, they did a lot of fishing too… just about anything that would put food on the table, my uncles would do.
Uncle John was the oldest. He was born in 1900. He led the way for the other boys. He used to make white lightening in his kitchen. He’d put it up in fruit jars and sold it to make extra money for the farm. The sheriff was one of his best customers. That was the way in the South. Some folks could do stuff outside the law and no big deal. Others trying the same thing would land themselves in jail. It was just a matter of whom you knew, what they did and how they knew you. It was close knit in the South during those times.
Uncle Howard was born in 1904. He never had any kids and he never got married. Not that he didn’t cotton to women; Uncle Howard was a loner and liked it that way. Howard lived to be ninety years old. Every morning, at about ten o’clock, he used to take a spoonful of homemade whiskey. He walked “most everywhere” he needed to go for most of his life. Now, his older brother John, died drunk in bed at the age of fifty-four.
Both of my uncles are buried at the family grave plot at Rosemont Cemetery, in Robstown, Alabama. My grandpa is buried there along with his dad and someday, Sailor will be buried there too.
My Great Grandma, Ginny, purchased the family grave plot for fifteen dollars. Our family plot is directly behind the tomb of a baseball legend. I can’t recall the name, but you can’t miss it! If you ever find yourself between Robstown and Greer, take a twelve-mile detour over to the family plot to see them… maybe me too someday.
In all, there were nine children in my dad’s family. That’s the way it was in those days. You had to grow your own farm help, girls and boys alike were destined for farm work, if born into a sharecropper’s life. My dad was drafted during World War II. He never returned to the farm. Yeah, my dad was the first to escape the farm life. It is hard to imagine those days looking around now in 2007. Nothing stays the same.
My gramps was considered a prosperous man. He had a bunkhouse with four hired hands, plus the kids had to quit school about the 6th or 7th grade. At that age, they would be working on the farm full time. Granny died before I was born. She was only thirty-seven at the time of her death. I am not sure of what she died of, but in those days, in those conditions, when you got sick, you either got over it, or you died. It was simply the way of a sharecropper’s life. It was a hard life, and maybe having all those kids had something to do with it. Back then, they understood that life was precious, and no one took it for granted. Death was no stranger for the poor folk working all their life on a farm.
Gramps was a resourceful man. He owned a mobile sawmill. He would travel around with his Ford tractor with giant saw and hire out to cut up other’s fallen trees into lumber. The Ford had a power take-off and Gramps would place a huge belt over the take-off drum and over the drum of the saw mechanism. Then, he would engage the transmission and slowly move the tractor until the belt would tighten up enough to transfer power to the saw blade’s axle. He could spend a day or two running logs through the mobile mill with the help of the farmer and a hired man. Sometime Gramps would have to take some of the lumber in pay for the job. Of course, bootleg whiskey was always a traded commodity in the South. Gramps would come home with money, lumber, and whiskey. If he didn’t need lumber or whiskey, he’d either sell it or trade it for something else that he did need. In hindsight, those days of commerce worked out very well.
Gramps remarried, a much younger woman. They continued on with the farm and had a good life. When Gramps passed away, his wife sold the farm and all the good land, much of it was bottomland, the best for farming. So, it goes… Back in those days, you didn’t get much for farms and she let it go for almost nothing. She had enough of life on the farm and wanted to move to Atlanta. So, motivated for a quick sale, the o’l homestead was let go for a song. Sad really, but at the time no one in the family was willing or able to step up and take on the farm.
As a result, none of Gramps’ kids got anything from the sale of the farm. Nothing! By then, they were all adults, and most were older than their stepmother. They were on to other things with their own life. My dad had long been removed from the life of farming. The ruins of the old stone farmhouse are still lying there, holding on to the memories of what once was a way of life. After the sale of the farm, the new owner only worked on the farm for a few more years.
Sharecropping pretty much came to an end by the early to mid-60’s. You know, it all started after the Civil War. Plantation owners, devastated by the destruction of the Union Army, and with the abolition of slavery, had no means to carry on. Only by giving workers some land of their own to live on and work, were the plantations owners able to continue farming. This came to be known as sharecropping, as the plantation owners shared their land with workers in exchange for their help on the plantations. Former slaves alongside poor white folks were left with nothing but a life of farm work for nearly one hundred years. Kind of historically interesting when you think about it. Tracing back through the family history of sharecropping, you can follow lives after the Civil War, well into the 60’s.
On the Coat Tales of a Gambler continues in
Episode 20 – Home for the Holidays