An American Harvest

by Raper, Cardy;

Here is a letter to me from Mother. As you know, she wrote with an even hand and with few errors in spelling, but she never did learn to punctuate the way you’re supposed to—this letter is typical, I believe:

  Julia, the youngest of seven sisters, had formal schooling only through the fourth grade level.

  Welcome N. C.

  Nov 22-1927

  Dear Arthur,

  I’ll, try and take time to write once again it seems like there is something doing most of the time. The Olivet Auxiliary entertained the Friedberg and Enterprise Ladies Aid Society Sat. afternoon we had a real good time everybody seemed to enjoy it nobody was in a hurry to go home.

  Last night we pounded Mr. Goforth (Pounding here means welcoming a new minister with a pound each of cooking essentials such as butter, flour, sugar, and so forth) and tomorrow I must fix for the Thanksgiving sale we will have at the school house. I’m to bake chicken pies and make some coleslaw They are going to serve barbecue too. Yes, I promised to make some pumpkin pies to send to the county home Miss Margaret Perryman takes dinner down there each year under the auspices of the Epworth L. I thought about sending you a box but I did not know where you might be at this time.

  Mr. Bivens carried a crowd of boys, John included, to Durham last Saturday to see Duke vs. Carolina game John spent the night and Sunday at the Hill I think he enjoyed it fine

  Blanche will come home tomorrow and stay until Sunday. Ralph Howard and Kenneth will come Thursday night

  There have been quite a few deaths around but none right in our neighborhood Mr. Charlie Snyder, Mr Cisero Doty and Mr. Sam Snyder were all buried week before last. Cousin Low Watkins is dead and will be buried tomorrow . . .

  Had a right nice crop of sweet potatoes got Mr. Roger Berrier to make bins and finish up the basement. Shredded the corn 2 weeks ago, did not have quite a hundred bu. in all. Have not dug the harvest potatoes yet.

  Have not heard from W. C. (Cletus) since you were home last summer. Papa is not very well has a bad cough and is short of breath.

  With love

  Mother J.C.R.

  Before getting on some more, let me read by way of contrast a letter I have here from our father. As you’ll see, even though he’d gone through seventh grade—three more years than our mother—he had even less understanding of grammar and lacked her mastery of spelling. This letter was written to me some two years after the one from Mother. Martha and I had just gotten married and were honeymooning in a tent, a cloth house, as Father puts it, in the mountains.

  Welcome N. C.

  July 24, 1929

  Dear Son,

  We received your letter last week was glad to here frome you for we were gitting uneasy about you and Martha I hope you are Still injoying your cloth house I guess you remember what you said about the cloth house at Arcadia You said it would Fall down Will your house fall down

  John went with the Enterprise Band to Raleigh Tuesday and came back last night Stayed with Luther Tuesday night Grady Zimmerman had his trile yesterday he gat 5 yer in the State Prisen.

  (I remember Grady as a big bully when we were kids. Dad’s referring here to his conviction for embezzlement from a small bank where he worked after he was grown. Then he goes on about the boy he had as a hired hand at that time.)

  About the boy $25 per month would be in line . . . if he is all right the first part if he will stay until John comes back which will be about 1 month . . . When you go to school and you must be on time and go regular or fail, that is the way it apear to me.

  The Tobac is looking fairly well but cannot tell yet we will begin priming next week Eli and Fred Tesh has primed last week The cantalopes will be ripe in about 10 days they are looking fairly well my watermelon vines is looking good

  R. H (Ralph), has not got a school yet.

  The timber acrose the branch sawed out 43,000(board feet) and the pines at the School house sawed out about the same, We are trying to make hay and it rained first after Dinner, Son see it in bad luck, We are looking for you and Martha to be by in a few weeks and stay some time for we know when you git back to Atlanta you will stay for a long time. We are all well as common. Hope you are both well

  Your Father

  BLANCHE:

  When Papa said he was “well as common” that was not very well. Momma, in the earlier letter you read, expressed the state of his health more accurately I think.

  CHAPTER 12

  Strive to Do Right

  BLANCHE:

  I want to take us back now to Welcome, if you all don’t mind or even if you do mind. I have here the rest of what I’ve written and I aim to finish reading it:

  Then came the days when more and more often Papa had the painful heart attacks and got “spells of blues” when he talked hardly at all. True to her nature, Momma panicked and lay awake at night listening to his pounding heart, afraid to go to sleep for fear he would need her. At last the time came when Papa’s heart could take no more. With amazing calmness in the final hours, he talked to all of us and said among other things, “I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I have always been true to my convictions.”

  His passing was strangely reassuring and took away whatever fear or dread of death I had.

  LUTHER:

  In Papa’s last week of life, he named his pallbearers and had us write them down. As his attacks got more severe, he said to us, “I put Sol Hiller as a pallbearer. Sol’s got the same trouble I’ve got; he can’t help carry me.” Then he substituted a man for Sol Hiller.

  Immediately after that he said, “One more request.” He indicated the spot in the cemetery where he wanted to be buried because of the land and the type of soil. And then he did something that supported a whole life of sacrifice for a family of children:

  The Methodist church had a minister who preached at the youth, ran them down, and made a lot of statements a minister shouldn’t be making and wouldn’t be making if he felt sympathetic toward youth and youths’ problems. That minister lived on the land Papa had given the church for building a parsonage. It had been some of our best crop acreage.

  Papa said, “Brother (so and so) is alright, but I don’t want him to have anything to do with my funeral. I’ve spent a life raising you children, and I don’t think you are bad, but he talks against youth all the time. I don’t want him to have anything to do with my funeral.”

  He told us he did want a former pastor, Mr. Goforth, to preside. He said, “Call Reverend Goforth and ask him to do it.” Well, he meant every word he said, and we faced a kind of dilemma carrying out his wishes, but we tried, because he had confidence that we would.

  Excuse the emotion, but it has always affected me that way.

  Luther, choked up, has tears in his eyes.

  ARTHUR:

  We couldn’t get Reverend Goforth—I don’t recall why—but Reverend Sam Tesh was available, and we figured he’d do as well. I’ve brought a lot of papers with me, as is apparent by now, and amongst all is a copy of the Memoir Reverend Tesh prepared and read at our Father’s funeral. Shall we take time to read it? It’s a summary of some of the things we’ve been mentioning about Papa and is a good example of a statement in memoriam of a man well-known to the minister who made it.

  MEMOIR OF WILLIAM FRANKLIN RAPER

  William Franklin Raper, son of the late William and Mary Motsinger Raper, was born in Davidson County, N.C., December 13, 1863. When about eighteen years of age he accepted the Lord Jesus as his Savior and united with the Mt. Olivet M.E. Church. On December 12, 1888, he was united in marriage with Miss Lillian Evans. This union was of short duration when the hand of death removed the wife and mother and their first born daughter October 22, 1889.

  April 18, 1894 Brother Raper was united in marriage with Miss Julia Selina Crouse and to this union were born eight children, all of whom survive the home-going of the father.

  Brother Raper gave his attention to the work of the farm as the major activity of his life, but he was by no means limited to this field of endeavor. His sy
mpathies and interests were too broad to be confined to one tract of acreage because the horizons of his life had been expanded. He was as a man looking and living in the next generation. In very truth he was a community builder both in material and spiritual affairs.

  In his religious life Brother Raper was not the kind who would have sounded a trumpet when he performed a deed of service or gave an alms. He avoided publicity in spiritual things and while he liked to be inconspicuous, yet he was always ready and anxious to let the world know just where he stood on every question of civic rights or moral virtues. In the Church his steadfast loyalty and capacity of leadership were early recognized when he was designated to lead the Mt. Olivet Sunday School as its Superintendent. Other offices of responsibility and trust were tendered him as experience ripened. For a considerable period he was connected with Friedberg Congregation and was honored with membership on the official board.

  He was a leader, a philosopher, a statesman, and a prophet, but not without honor among his own brethren. He was esteemed by many who valued his foresight and wisdom, and few men have contributed so largely to the all-round development of this community. He had the privilege of hearing many words of eulogy for his service to us and ours, but I can see him as he listens and then, in embarrassed silence, he would drop his gaze to the ground, as if in a prayer. In the succeeding years his worth as a neighbor and community asset will be enhanced.

  Though in declining health for more than twenty-five years, his activity bore little evidence of this condition. For the past seven years his affliction had been more in evidence, forcing him into complete confinement at times. For the past several weeks his condition had been critical, and in the evening hours of Friday, June 17th he called his wife and children about him and bade them an adieu, and quietly entered into his rest in the early morning, 9:10 am of Saturday, June 18, 1932, aged 68 years, 6 months, and 5 days . . .

  Frank Raper’s burial place.

  KENNETH:

  It was a moving service; as Blanche says, the whole thing was somehow comforting. There was the feeling that our father lived a lot longer than anyone had any right to expect him to. The doctor had told him he hadn’t more than six months to live at the age of about forty-five, the time of his first attack, and he accomplished a great deal after that in spite of his illness.

  Then the thing about his funeral that has stayed with me most throughout the years was the playing of the second movement of Dvorak’s “New World Symphony,” you know, “Going home, going home, I am going home.” It was played with exquisite beauty, on the viola, by John’s musical mentor, Thor Johnson.

  BLANCHE:

  A few months after Papa died, Aubrey and I were married, and we lived on the farm with Momma. Then three years later, the three of us moved to Winston-Salem where Aubrey worked with the Duke Power Company. For the first time I began to question the rightness of some of my earlier relations with Momma. She was hurt and felt I had judged her a failure as a mother. As always she remained witty and congenial and made friends easily in her new surroundings. And as always she seemed to know just what to do to be most helpful to a young wife and mother. She and Aubrey seemed to understand one another. Both were practical and a little bewildered by their dreamy wife and daughter who had a compulsion for writing “poetry.”

  Momma and I developed a real comradeship during the final years of her life. Little by little, I took over the reins of the household and resolved that I would give her the best I had and demand respect from those around her.

  Once again it was easy for us to talk together. Sometimes she talked of former times and former frustrations: “I’ll be honest, when your father was spending all that money for schooling, I thought it was wrong. I saw, though, everybody wanted to go to college and I did what I could to help. Papa never doubted it was right to help educate a child,” she said. “He had hoped one of the boys would stay on the farm with him but felt he had no right to ask one to stay. As the boys finished school, he was concerned because all of them were working for someone else instead of owning their own businesses.”

  Then she went on, “One thing hurts me: he isn’t here for me to tell him how I feel. I was right about the education costing money, but what you children have is more important than just making money. You can go anywhere among any kind of people and you can do things and you don’t have to feel ashamed. I wish he was here. I wish he was here, I want to tell him that I see now what he saw all the time.”

  When Momma learned about Kenneth’s penicillin discovery—it was in all the papers—she was happy and more convinced than ever that she had been a good soldier in supporting Papa and her children in their desires for education. She had been wiser than she knew. She was proud of all her children and felt that each of them was making a contribution somewhere that could not be measured by the money he was being paid.

  With pride characteristic of her family and its emphasis on industry and thrift she once remarked, “’There’s one thing I can say; I never raised a lazy child!”

  ARTHUR:

  And now I have here the memoir delivered by Reverend Needham at Mother’s funeral. There’s a deal more emphasis on religious doctrine in this service as compared to that given for our father some twelve years earlier. I’ll read just a small part of it to give a flavor.

  Memoir Julia Selina Crouse Raper

  1869-1944

  “The Lord shall preserve my going out and my coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.” Thus speaks the Word of our Father God to all who mourn the passing of this loved comrade of the Christian way. And this was the confident hope of our departed Sister Julia Crouse Raper, daughter of the late Harrison Crouse and Caroline Faw, born on Forsyth County, N. C., October 25, 1869 . . .

  On April 18, 1894 she was united in marriage with William Franklin Raper and became identified with the life of this Congregation and community. For 38 years they walked in happy comradeship; toiling for, instructing and rejoicing over the eight children born to their union. Then on June 18, 1932, the earthly tabernacle in which Brother Raper dwelt was dissolved and his mortal remains were laid to rest in yonder God’s Acre . . .

  Surely it can be said of our departed Sister that “she looked well to the ways of her household,” In this day when we are thinking in terms of crowning the “queen of the riveters” (for you younger folks, that’s a reference to the women exemplified by “Rosie the Riveter” who, in the absence of enough men on the home front, worked on airplane assembly lines during World War II) we cannot afford to forget that this dear one was the type of wife and mother that has made this community home-loving and God-fearing.

  ARTHUR:

  Father’s gone, Mother’s gone, the farm lay vacant . . . not a son remained to tend it.

  ARTHUR CONTINUES:

  When our father got that T Model Ford automobile, in 1918, he drove it some. I remember he went down to Lexington, and when he got home to the barnyard, the Ford didn’t stop when he said “Whoa”—whereupon it ran into a white oak tree. He got out, walked off, and said, “Now you boys run it!” He never got back behind the wheel after that.

  He ran the farm, I suppose, not much better than he ran that Ford, but he didn’t turn it over to us children when he’d finished, not really. He raised us to run things all right, but it wasn’t the farm we ended up running, and that was doubtless because he never liked working the farm himself, and didn’t expect us to either. He helped us seek elsewhere for broader, and what he thought might be better, opportunities.

  Eight grown-up professionals.

  Mother was out in the front yard one day when a passing motorist stopped and asked, “How far does the road go?” Mother answered, “All the way.” Her answer proved to be prophetic: each of us got on that road and traveled all the way. We have looked back now and then, but never gone back to stay.

  CHAPTER 13

  Knowledge is Power;

  Wisdom is Strength

  THESE RAPER SIBLINGS stemmed from th
e strict structure of a loving family taught to care not only for each other but for the community as a whole. With that beginning, they learned to reap the harvest of a visionary father and supportive mother who taught them morality, the ways of hard work, and the means to achieve rewarding goals through learning and discovery. Theirs was part of a general movement from rural to urban America at a time when advanced education offered new and varied opportunities beyond farming. The movement sprang from two basic roots: leadership within the local community, and encouragement from a federal government willing to match communal efforts. Both forces worked together to use developing technology for building something new and different. The Raper experience personalizes a movement that perhaps could have happened only in a relatively new, expandable country such as the United States of America in the early part of the twentieth century.

  On a personal level, who did all these Raper siblings grow up to be? How did each contribute to the world at large?

  Starting with the youngest—the nugget of my desire to organize and present this dialogue of Rapers—John grew up to lead a somewhat troubled yet productive life. I met him during my senior year at the University of Chicago in 1946. He, a newly arrived Assistant Professor of Botany, became my mentor in science. As his first graduate student, I worked with him on the sex life of Achlya—that little water mold Kenneth mentioned—then, later, on a wood-rotting mushroom called Schizophyllum with 20,000 sexes. We spent the rest of our scientific lives together trying to figure out who could mate with whom and how.

  John, being very red headed, preferred the name Red. While his siblings always called him John, I succumbed to his preference. Red not only taught me to love the fungi and the many quirks of their various life styles, he also taught me the meaning of love between man and woman. Alas, when we met, he was married. Nonetheless and shockingly, we fell in love and, after three traumatic years, resolved our dilemma in marriage to each other soon after his divorce.