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Delbert Gray (Updated)
Delbert Gray (Updated)
Hard Way
By
Delbert Gray
BOOK TITLE
www.jimarrington.com
Delbert Gray
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EARLY YEARS
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Coming Up the Hard Way
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CHAPTER ONE
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Coming Up the Hard Way
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CHAPTER ONE
Dad being mad threw them back at him saying, “I don’t want the
money, I want the dipper.” Then Dad and Mom went back to the
house. Dad looked back and saw one of the men go back and
pick up something out of the plum thicket. The next day, Dad
went back to see what they might have done with the dipper.
Following the path, he found aluminum shavings where they had
cut the dipper up. This really upset Dad, he sent word by another
person that knew the two to never to come by the path through
our yard again. And that he would shoot them if they did. We
never saw them again.
At the end of the crop year we moved from the Swamp to
a farm known as part of the Holden farm. This was about three
miles north of Center Star, which was the opposite direction of
the Swamp. Dad again was a sharecropping on this farm. This
was my second year in school and I still had to walk three miles
each way to school. The road that I had to walk on was a lot
better than the Swamp; however, we lived out a little lane about
an eighth of a mile that didn’t have any Chirt on it. Also, the
main road had a lot of red clay that made it muddy and slippery
when it rained.
I don’t remember a lot of unusual things happening
during the year we lived here except two things. There was a
branch or small creek near. There was a waterfall that had about
a seven feet drop. At the top, you cold walk out about one third
of the way to fish below in the waterfall; since the water was
about six or seven feet deep, I decided to see if I could catch any
fish. Boy was I surprised, as soon as my bait went in hole of the
water, my line tightened up with a tug and I brought out a large
green Perch. This continued until I had caught about a dozen
about the same size. It was more than enough for a good meal.
During that year, I had returned several times having good
results each time.
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seriously hurt. When I got there, since the old car was a
convertible; it had turned over and thrown all of them out of the
vehicle down the hill. Some of them were thrown about fifty feet
down the steep hill; most of them were just bruised and
scratched up, but one of them had some broke ribs. The comical
fact came when one of them said to the driver as they were
pretty much intoxicated, “you said I bet we would make the
next hill in high gear” and we did. After looking at that old car
that had wrecked, I realized it was a model that I hadn’t saw
before. It was an Erskine that had wooden spokes. And a lot was
broken out.
Soon after this, we moved to a farm known as the
Thigpen place. This was about seven miles west from where we
were living. This cause me to change schools since the bus I was
riding didn’t come by where we had moved to. I would now be
going to school at Greenhill Alabama. The farm we moved to
had more crop land of about eighty acres, also we had a nicer
and larger house. We had closer neighbors and they were very
good neighbors.
I remember that after we moved, that I was twelve years
old and that Dad had bought me a bicycle. I didn’t know how to
ride it. There was a chirt road near the house, so I decided to go
there to learn how to ride it. It was slightly down hill so I was
going to get on it and coast down the hill. The problem was it
had some pretty deep water ditches. The first time I started off I
got over balanced and down in the ditch I went, with a few
scratches from the briars on the bank. After several trips I
managed to stay in the road, finally learning to ride as I should.
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The problem was you had to be careful not let your legs
get caught by the posts. My cousin knew this but he didn’t tell
me. The cousin pulled his legs up so as not to hit the post. The
horse was going in a gallop. So not knowing this I didn’t get my
legs up in time. The post almost dragged me off the horse but I
managed to stay on barely stopping on the hips of the horse. No
more would I climb on the horse with him.
One day I was retuning on my bicycle from visiting my
cousins. About one mile from home was a long hill going down
a steep incline. Near the end was a sharp curve. Starting down
the hill, my chain came off my bicycle. There was a web wire
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fence on the outside of the curve going down the hill. This really
scared me because I was going to fast to jump off and I had no
brakes since a car could only turn this curve doing about thirty
miles per hour. I’m sure I was doing about this as I entered this
curve. Luckily I made it okay, but it took about three hundred
feet dragging my feet on the ground to get stopped. I put the
chain back on and rode home.
We had a neighbor that lived on a farm on the backside
of our farm. On e spring, his cattle had gotten out and had got
into young corn that dad had planted. At this time, the corn was
about knee high. They had eaten and damaged it a lot. Dad drove
the cattle back to the neighbor’s house. Do told our neighbors to
repair his pasture fence so they wouldn’t get out anymore into
his corn. The man had a little dog that acted like it might bite my
Dad. The man hollered at the dog. “Come back here, did he bite
you?”, Dad said, “no, if he had, I would have cut his head off.”
What Dad didn’t know was that this was what the man had
named the dog.
One school day I asked Dad if I could come stay over
after school was out to see a basketball game that night at
Lexington School. Several other boys and I played softball on
the field at school until close to the time for the game. I knew
that some parents of the children that had transferred from
Greenhill would go back by Center Hill and I could ride with
them to Center Hill and walk the two miles from there to my
house. What I didn’t know was it would be the darkest night that
I had ever seen. If when they let me out, I hadn’t seen the road
from their lights to get started on the road, I really would have
been in trouble. It was so dark you couldn’t see your hands out
in front of you. The only way you could stay in the road was to
hold your arms out in order to feel the bushes near the ditch lines
on either side of the road. The ditches were not very deep so you
didn’t have to worry about stepping in a large ditch. It was about
two miles to our house. The only way I would know when I was
getting close to home was there was a sharp curve before getting
to the house and I kept getting in the ditch on the right until the
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curve straighten out. I was from there about 150 yards to our
house. There was no ditch in front of our house. I stayed in the
left ditch line until it ran out. I knew then I had come to where
our house sits. I turned left and walked not seeing the house until
my knees struck the front porch. Boy was I thrilled to know
through the dark I had finally gotten home. I made sure that after
this, I had some kind of light with me at night.
During the time I attended the Greenhill School, a group
of students wanted to start a bluegrass band. Three of the boy’s
last names were parker. Two were brothers, the other was their
cousin. Another’s last name was Clemons and then there was
me. One of the Parkers played a mandolin, the other two played
guitars. The Clemons played the fiddle and I played the bass. We
played at chapel programs at the Greenhill School. We
continued to practice for about one year. We then got a program
on the radio station at Florence, Alabama. The program was for
thirty minutes on Saturdays.
One Saturday, as we were on our way to the station, Mr.
Clemons was driving the car we were riding in. The car was an
A model. It had cross springs. At a street, we had to make a
sharp right turn. As we turned, the springs shifted catching the
front wheels so that he couldn’t straighten the wheel up causing
the car to jump the curb going in the edge of the field. Some of
us were hit by musical instruments in the back of our heads, but
although it shook us up, none of us were hurt.
We were very careful from then on when we went on our way to
the station. We played on this station until we were finishing
high school.
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talked him to get him over to the side of the road, so he wouldn’t
get run over. I couldn’t get him to let me carry him home, so I
left him there. When I came back that afternoon, he was gone. I
never saw or heard of him again. The girl that later became my
wife was Patsy Cummins. She had one sister named Marie and
brothers’s Hoyt, Roy, Johnny and Prince Jr. and Tommy.
Patsy and I continued to go together until the last of
August 1949. We had planned to get married several months
later: About a week before September. Her family were going to
MO to pick cotton. She said she had rather go ahead and marry
before they left. I don’t think she wanted to go to MO and pick
cotton. We then set the date of September 9th, 1949 to be
married. At that time if you didn’t want to wait several days for
blood test and marriage licenses, you could go to Mississippi and
get married on the same day. I had a close friend that him and
his girlfriend were going to Iuka to get married, so we went with
them and married at the same time.
The funny thing was that there were several magistrates,
with each on of them wanting to perform the ceremony. They
finally agreed on which one to do the honors. At this time, this
was a common thing because most couples were not able to have
a fancy wedding. We came home and lived with her parents Mr.
and Mrs. Prince Cummins. We lived with them for several
months until we found a house to rent. During this time, I helped
Mr. Cummins and his sons make billets from hickory timber
used to make handles to go in hammers. We would cut the
timber into logs and haul them to tan open shed. This shed had a
tin roof on it and tin on all sides but the front was open.
We would cut the logs into about sixteen inch
blocks and then with a mall and chisel split them into sticks
large enough to make ha handle for a hammer. We would on a
good week, make three or four thousand billets. It usually takes
about two days to cut and haul enough timber to work five days
making the billets. At this time (of 1949) a thousand billets
would bring forty dollars a thousand. I remember this was in the
fall and winter, part time. One morning we went to cut some
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timber. The ground had snow and frozen rain on it. One of Mr.
Cummins sons laid the ax down and it was on a hill side and it
slid all the way to the bottom of the hill. This is the only time we
tired to cut timber in this kind of weather.
I guess by the time you’ve read this far about my life,
you have decided, I’m a very humorous person. I guess I get
some of this from my father. I remember one morning when I
was about ten years old. I came into the living room where dad
was listening to Lum and Abner. There was tears streaming
down his cheeks with laughter. I asked him what was so funny.
He said, “Abner had gotten up that morning. Abner came in the
living room where Lum was, all bent over. Lum said, “what’s
wrong with you?” Abner answered, “Lord I don’t know, I can’t
straighten up, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to see the sunrise
and set again”. Lum got up to check on him to see what was
wrong. He found that Abner had put his long handle underwear
on backwards. He had the arms on his legs and the legs on his
arms with the straddle on his neck. Lum helped him get it right.
So this I guess is the reason I like a little humor. I think
we should be happy and enjoy life although we go through a lot
of trouble in life, but there is also a lot of good times.
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At this time our little girl name Oleta Marie was six
months old. When she had gotten over the bronchial trouble, she
would play and not want to go to sleep. When we would turn the
lamp off she would cry and scream until we turned it back on.
Then she would start playing as if it was daylight. Sometimes
around twelve or one o’clock, she would get drowsy and go to
sleep.
The problem was I was having to get up at 4:30 to get
ready to go to work and wasn’t getting enough sleep. After two
or three nights of this, I had to do something to break her from
this habit. I was aggravated and I had never scolded her. She had
a thick cloth diaper on, so I spanked her lightly one time and
said to her in a harsh voice, “hush”. After sobbing a while, she
hushed and went to sleep. We never heard a peep out of her
when we turned the lights out after this. My mother-in-law said
she was too young to be corrected. I told her if she knew to cry
for the light, she also knew not to cry for it when she was
corrected. At this time, she for her age learned fast.
Her little legs grew strong and I would stand her in my
hands by her feet. She would stand with her arms spread for
balance. I would keep my left hand out behind her in case she
would lose her balance. I never once had to catch her. She
continued to grow and before she was a year old she was
walking and going all over the house.
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I’ll tell you more about my little girl later, but first I
want to tell you about an adventure I had one morning as I was
going to work. I rode to work with Mr. Earl Butler and several
other riders. It was winter time and in 1951 was worse than
usual. We were about halfway to Waynesboro when the 1940
Ford of Mr. Butler’s started freezing up. Mr. Butler couldn’t
believe it. He said his radiator only held two gallons and he had
one gallon of antifreeze in it and it shouldn’t freeze. He put a
sack over it and let it run idle for a while. It thawed out and with
the sack left over it, we made it to work. What we didn’t realize
was that it was twenty degrees below zero and it was the coldest
place in the United States according to the U.S. weather report.
To my knowledge, it has never been this cold here again. Also, I
believe a couple of years later, we had the largest snow that I
have ever seen. I measured it and it was seventeen inches. I
couldn’t move my car, the snow would push up over the front of
my car when I tried to move it. I’m glad we haven’t had another
one like that again.
Back to my little girl, “Oleta”. After she begin walking,
my wife had items on end tables and shelves and there’s where
Oleta wanted to get her little hands on them. Some of the items
were made of glass and we were afraid she would break them
and cut her hands. After the first or second time she had gotten
in them I begin to spank her hands and tell her this was a no-no.
I did this two or three times and she would go the other way.
From then on all I had to say was no-no & she got the message.
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Thanks,
Delbert Gray
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