Yep, another one:
TOM NELMS FARM, PART III
By Wilton Strickland
In 1941, '42 and '43, two women, Miss Cherry Rose and her sister, Mrs.
Kennedy, lived about a quarter of a mile up the dirt road from us. The
women kept ice, soft drinks and some candies for sale on their back porch.
Joyce and I often walked there to purchase 2 or 3 cents worth of ice and
sometimes splurged and bought a nickel's worth of ice and six Pepsis. Ice
was a penny per pound; Pepsis were six for a quarter. Miss Cherry would tie
a hemp string ("binder twine") around the ice to provide a way to hold it.
We would rush home with the ice dripping profusely all the way. Those
Pepsis and the tea Mama cooled with that ice are some of the finest
refreshments I've ever tasted. It was also about this time that we
occasionally began to have Cool Aid, sold as a dry powder in flat, paper
packets and was hard to dissolve completely in water.
At about this same time, we also began to sometimes purchase margarine,
artificial butter, made from vegetable oils. It was packaged white with a
small capsule of coloring included separately. After opening the package,
we mixed the coloring into it to make it look like butter. Later, it was
packaged in a plastic bag with the coloring in a small capsule attached to
the inside of the bag. We'd break the capsule to release the coloring and
knead the bag to mix it.
We also occasionally purchased a loaf of bread. It was not sliced,
though, and our knives were not sharp enough or not the right type for
slicing bread. Our sandwiches were somewhat ragged.
We children walked the mile or so to the paved road to catch the school bus.
Some days were cold, snowy or rainy, of course, but we still had to make the
walk. We had no raincoats or umbrellas and waterproof footwear - we just
got wet and muddy, and there was no place to wait for the school bus out of
the weather. Some of these walks in the snow and cold rain were really
tough, I thought then. Joyce and I often made the same walk to get the mail
at the paved road.
One of my classmates in the third grade during this time was a real
bully. He was a year older and a little bigger than most of us in the
class. He did not do very well academically. He may have thought he could
make up for his shortcomings by intimidating the rest of us boys. I was a
little younger and a little smaller than most of the boys in my class, and
he seemed to especially enjoy taunting and teasing me - that's the way it
seemed to me, anyway. During every recess, he would push and hit us, and
often shuffle his feet through our marble games on the ground. (By the way,
I never had any marbles of my own other than two or three that I may have
found somewhere; 'always played with borrowed ones.)
All of us other boys had endured his bullying for too long, until one
day just as the bell was ringing to signal an end to recess, he pushed me
and hit me hard on the shoulder. I had never hit back before, but suddenly,
I had had enough. I swung with my right fist as hard as I could, intending
to hit him on the shoulder. An instant before my blow landed, though, he
turned, and my fist caught him in the back. He fell to the ground gasping
for breath. For a few seconds, I thought, "I have killed Jesse!" He was
finally able to catch a breath and slowly recovered. That was the end of
Jesse's bullying, though. He became a good friend until he moved away a few
years later or fell behind as I moved up in grades.
One school day in 1943, also in the third grade, we suddenly heard a
large (well, I thought it was large then) aircraft flying nearby. All of us
children ran to the windows to see what possibly wondrous sight was making
so much noise so low above our quiet little town. Lo and behold! There was
a shiny, new, un-painted B-17 circling low and loud, "cutting circles" in
the sky! I had read about them and had seen pictures of them in magazines,
but suddenly, there was one for real, the throaty and powerful sound of its
engines giving me cold chill bumps and making the hair on my arms stand up!
We could even see the pilot waving! The sight of that B-17 kindled within
me a desire for adventure and excellence that still persists.
Later, I learned that the pilot was Atlee Gulley, whose father ran the
local hardware store. Atlee had graduated from our high school less than
two years before and could not have been more than 19. They had just picked
up the brand new aircraft at the Savannah, GA, factory and were en route to
the war in Europe, via New York, Greenland and England.
(About 20 years later, my B-52 crew and I flew a B-52G very low over
the school and town in the same manner as the B-17. After each pass, I'd
think, "How's that, Atlee? Or "Take that, Atlee!"
On the last pass, we made a low sweep from east to west and on out the
highway where I grew up and Mama still lived 2 miles west of town. As we
passed over my home, we jockeyed the throttles and wagged the wings a bit.
A few days later, I was visiting Mama during the Christmas holidays and
asked her if she saw me come over a few days earlier. She replied, "Well, I
did hear some big airplane come over, but I didn't know who it was."
My brother-in-law told me that he was at a nearby store when a big
airplane came over really low. A few minutes later, a man came running in
the store exclaiming that a huge airplane had been trying to land in the
road and had nearly run him off the road into a ditch.
I have hoped that our low passes with the very large bomber gave the
children in my former school some portion of the thrill that Atlee's B-17
had given me. If the sight of our B-52 inspired just one child as the B-17
had me, the cost of our "little side trip" was taxpayer money
well-invested.)
In about 2005, I visited Atlee one afternoon in his home in our little
town and asked him if he had witnessed my low passes in the B-52 in 1963 or
'64 and wondered what he thought about it.
"Impressive, very impressive, indeed!" he replied.
_______________________________________
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