With lightning and rain.
I remember taking a long stroll one Sunday afternoon
With a brother or two, and Eli’s boys
And while we were up the creek
We stopped and went swimming.
The next day I heard Papa telling Mother to watch out for Eli’s boys
For they had the “itch.”
I worried something awful
Not wondering if I would get it
But when.
I didn’t get it.
LUTHER:
But some of us did have to scratch at times. After I left Churchland High for State College, Arthur moved over to Jamestown High School near Greensboro. I went to visit him. Well, beds were scarce there, and so, when I spent the night with Arthur and his roommate, Malcolm Shepard, I slept between them. We were all resstless, and we couldn’t sleep very well. I got back to State, and two days later had a letter from Arthur saying, “I’m very sorry to tell you, but the doctor has just said Shepard and I both have the “seven-year itch.”
You know the rest. I went to the infirmary and told them I’d been exposed; they covered me with sulfur; I went to my classes, class after class, and announced that I had been exposed to the seven-year itch. I was avoided.
JOHN:
Arthur seems to have done a bit of wandering about that time, for he came home and paid the honor of giving it to me.
HOWARD:
There was never enough water in our house for everyone to wash in a fresh tub. I bathed after John, and got the sulfur treatment too.
BLANCHE:
Yes, well maybe that was one consequence of you boys having to go away from home to get your high school education, since we had no high school in our community at the time . . .
I’d like to say something here about Momma’s view compared to Papa’s:
With all the work Momma and I did together, we had time for long talks. I think I knew her in a way that you boys did not know her. Let me read some more I have about that.
There was time for talking, and, most likely altogether unwittingly, Momma opened up her frustrations to an attentive daughter. Papa was not as good a farmer as her father had been nor as her brothers were. She had tried hard to tell Papa how to farm better, but he would not listen to her nor learn from her brothers.
Sometimes I agreed that Papa should listen to her advice. Then very quickly she reminded me that Papa was more handsome than any of his brothers, a better talker, and much more interesting to live with; but she still could not see why he could not be a better farmer.
And there were many other confidences: she confessed that she dreaded visiting her brothers and sisters because all of them had better homes, better furniture, and their children could have more expensive clothes. Once, she told me how much it had hurt her when Papa gave five dollars to Salem College when his own children needed sweaters.
When the older boys began going away to boarding school, she was bitter. Her people had never gone away to school, and they had done well. She felt the money spent on education would never be worth anything to her children.
In the meantime, she had to do without comparative comfort and be embarrassed by the kind of clothes her children wore. Once, however, after Christmas holidays, she observed that perhaps, after all, she should stop worrying. Her boys were happy and not ashamed of their shabby clothes—why should she be?
The long talks we had together also revealed other bitternesses: she felt that Papa put his idea of family values above the needs of her and their children. Over and over, she recounted mistakes and shortcomings of the Rapers. In my case, reproofs often took the slant that I was independent and tomboyish like the Rapers, and I should be ladylike and embroider and make pretty things like the nieces on her side of the family did.
When dating time came, I was a great disappointment to my mother. Dating more than one boy instead of settling down with one was being just like the Raper aunts who had failed to marry. Nevertheless, she considered me pretty, was proud of how I looked in clothes, and took great pride in making me clothes that elicited remarks of admiration from many people.
Through the years, people who knew my mother have unanimously referred to her as one of the sweetest women they ever knew. Perhaps she felt she could unburden herself to me and depend on me not to tell. I was always rather shut-mouthed.
HOWARD:
You’ve changed right much, would’nt ya say, Blanche?
BLANCHE:
I’ll pay that remark the attention it deserves—none.
RALPH:
Let me get on with some more rememberings here.
I remember the orchard in back of the granary
With a split-rail fence on the two back sides
And the alternating rows of apple and peach trees.
Their fruits never seemed as large or as good
As fruits on the trees at Uncle Dave’s,
Grandpa Crouse’s, Uncle Will’s,
Or a lot of other places.
I remember the small field up the hill from the lower end of Cecil Branch meadow
Where Papa planted his roastin’ ear patch.
And try as hard as he could
He never could have corn to sell quite as soon as Julian Zimmerman
Or get quite as good a price for it as if he had had it a few days earlier.
HOWARD:
Well, maybe it’s what Blanche said. Papa was concentrating more on bringing education into the community than getting the best price for his corn.
CHAPTER 9
Never Give Up
RALPH:
I remember walking each day to and from,
First a one-room
Then a two-room
And later a three-room school at Enterprise
During the four roughest winter months, rain or shine
Until we bought a car,
And I rode to school.
ARTHUR:
When I started school—oh, along about 1908—we had a one-teacher, four-month school through the seventh grade, though the teacher herself never went beyond that grade. By the time I’d finished, a second teacher was added and paid for by tuition from the families of each pupil, excusing the four poorest of the lot. Shortly after this, a second room was built by the people themselves and a few years later, a third, by dividing the first, then a fourth, the last being financed largely by means of chicken pie suppers and ice cream socials.
The added teachers, including one at the high school level, got paid partly by public funds and partly by tuition. By now we had a school district, designated as such by the State Legislature, and were empowered to vote a school tax to improve our educational system.
Luther:
Arthur, you talk like that much was accomplished right peacefully. Well, there weren’t any shoot-outs as I recall— the controversy didn’t reach to that extreme—but the whole idea of improving the school, not even to make mention of getting ourselves a high school, packed a heap of bitterness among folks. Why don’t you explain that part of it?
ARTHUR:
I’m getting to that. If you’ll just listen a moment, I will.
HOWARD:
Hold on. How ‘bout giving Luther a chance here, Arthur? He’s older than what you are. He ought to be remembering as much or more.
ARTHUR:
Good idea. Go ahead, Luther.
LUTHER:
Well, I don’t know as I can recall it in as much accurate detail as you, Arthur, or as well, perhaps, as the younger brothers can, for I don’t believe either one of us was there when the most heated arguments over the school, the consolidated high school I mean, took place. We’d both since gone on through high school over at Churchland and into college by then.
But I believe the alignments had been made earlier, back with the road building or maybe even earlier in the promotion of Liberty Bond sales during the World War I. There was a lot of competition then to see which town or community or group of people could get
the best record in bond sales to help with the war effort. It was an expression, I believe, of people looking outside themselves, beyond their own personal problems. Some could and some couldn’t. Those who could were largely the same kind of folks.
But Papa always said, “There are more ways of killing a cat than choking him with hot butter.” Then he’d try another way. It’s funny, he’d use that expression a lot around the farm too. When he couldn’t get something to working, he wouldn’t give up; he’d keep trying. He’d go on ahead.
He had another saying: “Let’s get our ducks in a row.” And that signaled everyone to get ready to do whatever it was he saw needed doing.
Well, there were five or six other families, including Aubrey’s folks, who went along in the forefront with Papa. Others followed, but over and against considerable opposition. In fact our community was split right down the middle in these matters for many years.
AUBREY:
I remember right much about those fights over the consolidated high school. There’d be more meetings than you could shake a cat at. They carried on about that school for three years anyway. The first vote was declared illegal due to some technicality or other. And to tell you the truth, the second try didn’t meet with any much more success.
The folks for would call a meeting, hoping to talk the folks against into being for, but they failed most every time—the opposition refused to attend. A lot of ’em wouldn’t even come to church, so you couldn’t reach ’em there either.
I heard tell about one meeting they tried to hold over at the schoolhouse. When folks went to go to it, they couldn’t get in; the door was locked tighter ‘n a tick with a belly full. They contacted the chairman of the school committee, and he, being a loyal member of the opposition, declined to hand over the key, so the proponents of the meeting went ahead and gained entrance through a window. They opened the door from the inside and proceeded with the meeting only to find all the opposing folks, as usual, stayed at home.
As things went along, neither side gained much.
ARTHUR:
Correct, and when the attending proponents voted for establishing the school at that meeting, the vote was declared by the courts as illegal.
AUBREY:
Then on the third time around, the proponents of the central school smartened up a bit: they got themselves some expert legal advice, so they’d know the rules and wouldn’t get caught on that count, as did happen in the first two votes.
The good people on both sides held a heap of prayer meetings. There were prayers to the Almighty and admonitions from the preacher, the Moravian preacher. Now he was for the school. He said, “It’s time we all get out of the ‘piney-rooters’ stage. As it comes to mind I guess there were more prayers from the pros than from the cons, ‘cause not so many of the cons went to church at all.
But anyway, big Bertha Bachman, she sat plumb against it. Though she didn’t pray in church she swore, “I’ll swallow whatever they build over there!” She like to about could have, too; she was that much of an eater! Miz Bertha was quite a gal altogether—stubborn as hell. She shunned doctors all her life and lived to be seventy-six. She said she took an aspirin once and it made her sick on her stomach so she didn’t put much stock in drugs thereon after.
Boy, I’m tellin’ you what’s the truth: she loved the flowers and the birds—planted at least an acre of sunflowers for birdfeed every year; got about fifty-eight bushel of seed out of that acre. And she loved horses, cows, even the fish. She’d talk to ’em, claimed they knew what she was saying. She’d plant herself there by the pond in her big baggy overalls, wide-brimmed hat and all, then throw some bread crumbs in and say, “Come boys, your mama’s got bread.” And they’d come, they really would, thousands of “sweet fellers” and “babies,” she called them.
But she was dead set against the school. Guess she didn’t particularly cotton to the kind of learning that went on in a schoolroom. Maybe she figured you could learn more from nature.
Well, anyway, to get back to the election—and you can see the kind of cussed stubbornness the proponents were up against—the folks on both sides worked like the dickens to get everyone who they thought agreed with them registered, and I mean every last one including the old, the sick, a feeble-minded woman even.
That woman was made to get registered by the opposition ‘cause they thought she’d vote against. But come the day before election Aunt Battie Zimmerman, who was for of course, had the foresight to drive up the rough trail to the poor cabin of that woman and bring her home to help out in some work or other—that meant she had to stay overnight.
Early next morning, Aunt Battie escorted her to the polls. She voted for after all. At the final reckoning, the proponents of the school had won by only six votes, but the rules were followed—except possibly not in the case of the feeble-minded woman—and that decision held up.
Now, the business of getting that school built went fast once they settled on just where to put it. There was some argument as to that. But once your father donated the land over by Mt. Olivet Church there, the folks agreed to accept, providing the school was named for the township instead of the parish.
HOWARD:
Yeah, Papa gave up five acres of his best land for the school. Fact is, all the people for it gave as much as they could, ‘cause the County and the State would match what the folks in the community could supply. I worked all that summer to build it, as did you, Aubrey, and Ralph too. John and Kenneth were too young and the others had left by then.
RALPH:
Our family contributed 200 man-days of labor and 75 pine trees for lumber. The work of a teenager was counted at $1.75 per day, a team of horses at $4.00 per day. Excepting the land, our donation came to about $500 cash value. Other families did likewise; there were about 40-50 folks in all, who volunteered 10 hours a day for the months of August through October. The only hired workers were the masons and the plasterers. When finished by mid-November, we had ourselves a $25,000 high school, eight rooms including auditorium, all in veneer brick. It’s still standing there, second oldest consolidated school in the State.
A renovated version of the consolidated Arcadia school the Rapers helped build.
HOWARD:
Then I thought it just about the prettiest looking building I’d ever seen. As I drive by now I see it’s kind of ugly. Of course, some attachments have been added over the years since: four more rooms, a gymnasium, butcher shop, auto and tractor repair shop, even a canning and freezer-packaging kitchen, where the womenfolk could fix their fruits and vegetables for storage.
ARTHUR:
Yes, and while the first of those additions, before 1930, were made with tax support, community fundraising events were needed to make up the difference. By 1935, communities all over the State had built up comparable school facilities much the way we did. As a consequence, the legislature, at the urging of the voters who now had lots of vested interest, levied a statewide tax to support the system.
Still, facilities for Negroes remained separate and unequal, and local contributions at the personal level became less important—for whites anyway. I regret to say this didn’t apply to the Negro population. Standardized school service throughout the state had been reached through the widespread interest and contributions of the citizens themselves in many, many communities.
The school opened the way to many other things, electricity, for instance. State monies funded a line from Lexington to our school, and farmers could opt to hook into it by purchasing poles and wire in the necessary amount. By the late thirties, after all of us had left, the Federal Government stepped in with its Rural Electrification Program and encouraged the organization of an electrical cooperative, which extended service to outlying areas.
This of course brought a heap of changes: from hand-pumped water outside the house to electrically pumped water in the house; from wood-burning stoves to electric stoves; from ice boxes to refrigerators; from flat irons heated on top of the range to
irons heated electrically; from scrub boards to washing machines; and so on down the line, not to even mention a revolution in the tools of farming. Earlier we had only hand tools: axes, saws, hoes, mattocks, scythes, wheel barrows, carts, and horse-drawn ploughs, harrows, wagons, hay rakes, mowing machines.
There was one exception: a single wood-burning steam tractor that went the rounds of the neighborhood at threshing time. A mighty thing it was: heavy, cumbersome, with great back wheels, hauling the threshing machine behind. What excitement when it came to our place, huffing, puffing, blowing a whistle you could hear for a mile! The sounds alone were worth the labor we had to put in when it came— the flapping of the drive belt from tractor to thresher, the whirr the thresher made itself.
And then the sights: wheat bundles thrown from mow to thresher-man, twirled and tossed heads-first to mouth; yellow wheat spewed out into sacks; straw mounds building towards back of the barn; water wagon clattering to and from the creek; barrels emptied of water to the boiler; wood fire sparking close by the barn; everyone ready to put out a fire; everyone getting hungry and tired.
You can see the importance of such a machine to that time and place even though it came but once a year. We’d do a day’s threshing in cooperation with at least one neighboring family; we’d pay for it by giving the thresher-man a percentage of the wheat.
Naturally enough, access to electric power changed the perspective. Hand tools were still in use, of course, but new things happened on individual farms. Here and there a feed- grinding mill, an incubator for hatching eggs, and a brooder to keep the little chicks warm came into operation. Heated and lighted laying rooms meant eggs all year round instead of just in spring and summer. Electric cream separators appeared, then milking machines, electrified fences, power saws, and so on. As each of the implements came into use by one family, it was picked up shortly by many another family until most members of the community had most of these things.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Truth is, the first consequence of electrification was electric lights to replace the old kerosene lanterns and lamps. This had an immediate impact upon activities, not only in the home, the barns, but in the whole community. In effect there got to be more nightlife.
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