Yep, another one already.
TOM NELMS FARM, PART I
By Wilton Strickland
In January 1941, we moved again; this time to the Tom Nelms farm about
three miles from Nashville, NC, and we children changed schools to
Nashville
Elementary/High School, where I would graduate with high honors 11½ years
later. The house had no electricity, but it had had carbide (acetylene)
lights at some time before we occupied it. Some of the tubing and parts of
the fixtures were still in place. Near the rear of the house was a small
building that had been the carbide plant for making the acetylene by the
interaction of water and calcium carbide, a small amount of which was still
there. We used kerosene lamps - an Aladdin lamp in the living room, where
I
did my homework, and a smaller, all-glass lamp in the rest of the house and
moved from room-to-room as needed.
For heat, we had a wood-fired heater in the living room and a
wood-fired stove in the kitchen. In the cold, unheated bedrooms, we just
added more quilts as needed for warmth in bed.
One spring day, my first grade class walked several blocks to Myers
Theater in the center of town to see a movie. I had never seen a movie
before, and when the steam locomotive rushed toward me "out" of the screen
at the beginning of "Movietone News," I was startled and started crying.
The teacher, Miss Lee, took me outside to sit in a big, long, black Buick
or
Cadillac with two very kind, "refined" ladies, one of whom was Mrs. Myers,
theater owner.
We did not have a car at this time, but a nice black man, Sherman
Mitchell, one of our neighbors, did have one, a '28 Model A Ford. On a
Saturday in late spring of '41, Daddy hired "Uncle Sherman" to take him to
the Sand Hills, near Sanford, NC, to get a load of peaches. I rode with
them and sat in the back seat of the small two-door sedan squeezed in
between baskets of the sweet-smelling and sweet-tasting peaches, of which I
ate several before we got home.
One Sunday in early June, we rode in the back of a '37 Ford pickup truck
owned by our landowner's son, Jim Nelms, to attend Mama's family (the Basco
Lewis family) reunion. The six of us still at home (Mama, Daddy, my
brothers, Carson and W. B., my sister, Joyce, and I) crowded into the small
cargo bed using our wooden dining chairs as seats and a couple of quilts to
help shield us from the wind on the 40-mile trip.
In July, at 7, I started "trucking" tobacco - driving the mules pulling
small trucks of tobacco from the fields to the curing barns. I would climb
up on a fence to put a bridle on the mule; then I would lead the mule up
beside a table or bench and climb up on the bench to put the harness on
him.
Once, about this time, the mule backed up while I was behind him hitching
the harness (single tree) to the truck and stepped on my bare foot. I
could
not get him to move with the usual commands; I finally had to hit him in
the
rear with a fist as hard as I could. 'Hurt me more than the mule, I'm
sure,
but he finally stepped off my foot.
I was also expected and required to help with other farm chores and
labors. These included but were not limited to: transplanting tobacco,
chopping tobacco and cotton to clear away grass and weeds, suckering
tobacco
(removing suckers and top from each plant), dropping "soda" (sodium nitrite
fertilizer) by each corn plant by hand, picking cotton, pulling dry corn
from each plant by hand and carrying stove wood into the house in late
afternoon. Whenever I would have a tendency to feel "sick" during such
chores, Daddy would admonish me with his usual, "Don't you get sick on me
now, Boy, we don't have time for a funeral."
In early autumn of '41, my brother, Lewis, who had been in the Navy
nearly a year, sent Daddy $300 to buy a car. (Fifty-five years later, he
told me he had won the money playing poker.) The Ford dealer in Rocky
Mount, brought a '37 Ford out to the farm for Daddy to consider. I rode
back to Rocky Mount with Daddy and the dealer while they finalized the
deal.
As we were crossing the Tar River Bridge into Rocky Mount, I asked the
dealer if he knew how many bricks it took to finish the large, tall chimney
at the coal-fired power plant beside the bridge. He replied that he had no
idea. "It took only one to finish it," I responded. He and Daddy were
quite surprised. We all had a big laugh.
We soon learned that the car used/burned a lot of oil, and Daddy had to
get the engine , an 85-horse-power, flat-head V-8, rebuilt. After Mama died
in '96, my sister found the receipt for the $150 paid for the repairs in
Daddy's trunk.
The car had no heater, but it was a pleasure to ride rather than walk or
ride a bumpy mule-drawn wagon. Often in freezing rain or snow, Daddy and
Carson would hold candles up to the inside of the windshield to melt ice
off
the outside of it, so they could see the road.
On December 8, as soon as my second grade class had first assembled for
the day, our teacher told us that a classmate had a current event
announcement to make. Swindell Collins went to the front of the class and
announced that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii the day
before. This was probably the first time I heard of Japan, Pearl Harbor or
Hawaii. I had not heard about the attack, because we did not have a radio.
I quickly developed a keen interest in the war. Two of my brothers,
Jerry Linwood and Lewis, were already in the Navy and were soon in the
midst
of the battles. I eagerly awaited each letter from them. I heard news
reports on the radio on rare occasion and read the papers whenever Daddy
would occasionally buy one on Sundays. I became very fond of the comic
strip, "Smilin' Jack," about the exploits of an Army Air Corps pilot. I
also quickly developed an intense hatred and fear of Japanese Premier Tojo,
German Chancellor Hitler and their henchmen. I sometimes had nightmares
about being captured by them.
One day in November of '42, Daddy and I, then about 8, had driven the
mule-drawn wagon the three miles into town to buy groceries. We also had
the molasses jug with us and had it filled in the store from a large wooden
barrel as I watched. It was a gray-green, stoneware jug about 20 inches
tall with a piece of corncob for a stopper. We had to place the jug
carefully in the wagon between bags of groceries to protect it.
(Fifty-three years later, I was visiting Mama one Sunday afternoon not
long before she died in '96. Suddenly, I noticed a green stoneware jug
sitting by a doorway in her home. I picked up the jug and sniffed near the
open top. The unmistakable aroma confirmed that it was our molasses jug!
I
had "forgotten" about it many years before. Mama said she had boiled it in
soapy water several times trying to remove the molasses aroma. I assured
her that it was perfect - the aroma authenticates its use.)
On the trip into town, Daddy had also purchased a newspaper, "The News
and Observer," published in Raleigh. The country had been plunged into
World War II nearly a year before. On the way home, I sat beside Daddy on
a
board laid across the tops of the cargo sides of the wagon to form a seat.
I opened the paper and saw the headline above a photo of five US Navy
sailors, the Sullivan brothers, recently lost at sea when their ship, the
USS Juneau, was sunk by a Japanese submarine. I had heard about the
tragedy
on the radio and had heard adults talking about it. When I saw the
headline, "THEY DIED NOT IN VAIN," I got very excited and said to Daddy,
"Look, they didn't die! It says here, 'THEY DIED NOT'!"
That's when I learned the meaning of "in vain." Daddy explained to me
that they had died, but they had died fighting for their country, for a
good
cause - to keep terrible enemies such as Germany and Japan from taking over
the world; that the brothers who went back into the sinking ship trying to
save their brother went for a good cause - to save a brother - that their
effort was not "in vain."
(Since that day, whenever I have heard or read the words "in vain," I
have thought of the Sullivans and their sacrifice for each other and for
us.
I prayed throughout that terrible conflict of World War II that the
sacrifices of the Sullivans and of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of
others would not be "in vain."
I was deeply saddened a few years later when we "went at it" again in
Korea,
and saddened even more so when we started "at it" again in Vietnam. Too
many died in these conflicts, I'm afraid, in vain, rather than not.
We should never forget conflicts such as The Revolutionary War, the
Civil War, World Wars I & II, Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf - the list
continues even now, when so many have made the ultimate sacrifice "not in
vain," but we should especially never forget those who seemingly died "in
vain" in senseless conflicts when the government had no clear-cut
objective.
The world continues to have despots who think they can impose their
maniacal will on others, causing more brave, young people like the
Sullivans
to die. I continue to hope that their sacrifices someday will truly be
"not
in vain.")
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