Yep, another one:
TOM NELMS FARM, PART II
By Wilton Strickland
On the dirt road where we lived in 1941, '42 and '43 was a small, red
clay hill. I think not only I, a boy of only 6 to 9 then, but the entire
family dreaded having to travel this part of the dirt road from our house
out the paved road when it was wet. The hill seemed quite steep to a little
boy - it was especially "steep" and long after a little rain or snow. Deep
ruts of slippery, red clay made this part of the road especially hard to
navigate, even for the most skillful and experienced driver. My brother,
Carson, 15 to 17, was usually our driver. (Though Daddy had cars and drove
during the teens and '20's, I never saw him drive. Carson or W. B. (William
Berry, Jr.) was always our "family" driver while I was a child.) Carson
would try to give the little Ford a good "running start" before getting to
the worst of the red mud and try to make it over the crest, slipping and
sliding (sometimes violently) from one side to the other without going into
the ditch. The trick was to have just the right momentum to make it over
the hill without having to apply so much power to cause the rear wheels to
spin excessively, sending the car out of control.
Daddy always occupied the right, front seat and would sit way up on the
edge of his seat, leaning forward, and holding onto the lower, under-edge of
the instrument panel ("dashboard") as if to "lighten" the load and urge the
car forward as we negotiated the red hill. I don't know if it were a result
of Carson's skillful driving, our good luck, Daddy's expert pull on the
dashboard or our strong thoughts on the matter that got us over the red
hill, but of the many times slipping and sliding from one side to the other,
I remember going into the ditch only once. Daddy or Carson got a neighbor
with a pair of mules to pull the car back onto the road.
(On a Sunday afternoon in 1995, I took Mama for a short ride along the
road that used to give us such trouble. The black Mercedes glided smoothly
& quietly up the slight incline. I said to Mama, "You feel that - 'you
notice that - do you feel anything?"
She replied, "No, I didn't feel a thing."
By then, we had crested the slight incline, and I stopped, eased back
down the "hill" and tried it again. Again, we glided smoothly and quietly
up the hill. Again, I asked Mama if she noticed anything; again, her reply
was negative. Finally, I said to her, "That's the point - we hardly
notice anything, now. Isn't it amazing the difference 50 or more years can
make?" Then I asked if she could remember that same hill on the family's
'37 Ford during or after some rainy weather in 1942/43?
"Oh, my", she replied, "I certainly do!"
The "hill" under the Mercedes was almost nonexistent - hardly any hill
at all. The crest had been graded down and pulled into the valleys to each
side of it. We rolled easily, solidly and securely on asphalt pavement,
with hardly a sound nor quiver from the vehicle and the road, quite a change
from the same ride on the little Ford so many years before.
Whenever we forget to be thankful for improvements to our transportation
system and too many other things in our lives that we take for granted, we
should remember the "red hills" that have often impeded our way but have now
been transformed by somebody's ingenuity, hard work, persistence and
perseverance into "hardly any hill at all.")
During much of this time during World War II, certain foodstuffs and
fuel were rationed. To supplement fuel for the car, Daddy and Carson often
bought five gallons of gasoline and mixed two or three gallons of kerosene
with it. We went down the road trailing a vortex of smoke.
I made and flew many kites during our three years on this farm. I used
dog fennel stalks for the kite frames, which were held together with cotton
string (tobacco twine - cotton string used to attach leaves of tobacco to
sticks to facilitate hanging in the curing barn). String around the
perimeter of the crossed sticks completed the kite frame. The kites were
covered with newspaper held in place with paste I made with flour and water.
I used strips of old cloth for the tails and, of course, tobacco twine as
the string.
I also worked on several "civil engineering" projects in a small
stream, "the Branch," in the woods not far from the house, where I spent a
lot of time playing, building dams or diverting the stream. A major lesson
here was that leaves and sticks with wet, squishy mud and too much sand do
not make good dams. I also carved a lot of boats and cars of pine and pine
bark; also made many small boats with paddle wheels powered by rubber bands
cut from discarded car tire inner tubes.
I also played a lot with a baseball that I made by wrapping tobacco
twine tightly around a small rubber ball I found somewhere - probably a jack
rock (jacks) ball. To put a "first clas
