About W.R. Smith

EARLY YEARS

I was born in this little town of about 500-people (three grocery stores and a post office/dry goods store) in a farming community about 29 miles north of Memphis, Tennessee. Highways were virtually unknown and rail was also the predominant mode for distant travels and the movement of goods. Most main roads were gravel, but many were dirt with ample mud holes. It was not unusual to see a farmer using his mules to pull an automobile from a mud hole.My mother was a homemaker and my father was a dirt farmer, who specialized in the raising of sweet potatoes. My father was completely non-mechanically minded. By the time I was old enough to understand what was going on, the great depression was in full swing. One day, I remember my father saying that he had seen a silver dollar and it looked as big as a wagon wheel.Cotton was 10-cents per pound and farm labor was 50 cents per day, if it could be found. Hoboes, asleep and awake, lined the tops of railway boxcars and frequently knocked on local doors offering to do any sort of work for food. Being on the farm, we had plenty to eat but little else. For a Red Cross project, I once sewed petticoats from flour sacks to be given to needy women. Gingham Girl flour was very popular; women could make dresses from the printed cloth.Electricity had not reached the small towns, and kerosene lamps and lanterns were the basic sources of light. The better homes were heated with coal burning fireplaces and the stores by coal or oil burning potbelly stoves. Buggies and wagons were quite prevalent, but T-model Fords were much in use by then. Most farmers raised and cured their own pork. Homes had a “kitchen clock” on the mantle of the living room. Most houses had 10-foot ceilings, transoms over the doors and none were insulated. Feather beds and hearth warmed bricks for the feet were the norm at bedtime in the winter. Fresh and canned garden vegetables, cornbread, homemade biscuits, dairy products, salt-cured pork, and redeye gravy were staple items of the diet. The better homes had a “parlor” containing the family’s best furniture. These were immaculate, kept locked, and used only by guests. Edison cylinder phonographs and stereoscopic viewers were marks of the better homes. “Jada” (Ja-da, Ja-da, jada jada jing jing jing) and “The Preacher and the Bear” were songs of the day.My grandfather, a merchant, farmer, and one time mayor of the town, was so thrifty that he retained in a large wooden hopper, the year’s wood ashes from the cook stove. This he leached with water to obtain lye for making hominy from shelled corn or soap from stale hog lard. Farm work was by hand, mules, plows, and hoes. Tractors were unheard of. The hand-dug wells averaged 60-feet deep and were lined with brick walls. Cisterns were also popular. Well diggers cleaned the wells and restored the brick work at the bottom year-round. At that depth, the temp was a steady 55 degrees F and it was only when the well digger reached the surface in winter that he really became cold. Thus the expression, “As cold as a well digger’s butt in January.” The main entertainment on Sunday was sitting on the front porch watching people walk or ride by in their buggies or on horses, and wondering if someone was coming by for a visit-very few phones to let one know what to expect.Often, people went to watch the afternoon passenger train arrive to see who was boarding the train from visits in other towns or was returning home. News came only by letters, newspapers and word of mouth. A bench outside one of the stores had a built-in checker board that was always in use. Only one store in town could afford a telephone and a typewriter. It was said that the local blacksmith could make anything as long as it was curved. He carved the hooves of horses, shod them, and then checked the grit size of cornmeal from his grist mill with the same unwashed hands. The town barber was also a shoe cobbler and sharpened reel-type, push lawn mowers. Ice boxes were common; only one home in town had a refrigerator. My dad once had several ice routes and I delivered ice during the summer months. Some of the places I went to in the river bottoms could not possibly have been on a map. We were probably the only people they saw from the outside world in days.The first broadcast radio in town was a battery operated thing with headphones and about five tuning knobs. I used to con traveling salesmen out of a nickel to watch me climb its antenna pole, a guyed steel pipe about 30-feet high and within sight of “downtown.” With my homemade crystal radio, I was able to receive a Memphis broadcast station 29-miles away. Not knowing why, I had to pour water on the ground rod each night to get good reception. Probably a little added salt would have avoided the need. Ghost stories were so frightening they made me afraid to reach from under the cover to lay my headphones aside!