The Cross Roads: A Love Story

By Peggy Phillips King

This is a story about the memories of an only child growing up on a South Georgia cotton and peanut farm during the Depression and World War II years. Cross Roads kinfolk and cousins were Peggys playmates. She speaks about the hardships of picking cotton, stacking peanuts, running a cucumber growing enterprise, and making ends meet with the help of moonshining. It was a long trip to town by horse or mule, so many farmers had small stores for providing the necessary staples and a place for farmers, kinfolk, and farm hands to meet and socialize. Peggy writes about the nature of the school systems, marriage disappointments and successes, raising four children and helping with eight grandchildren. Rural living in hard times brought happy occasions with barbeques, church socials, picnics, dances, movies and constant changes in sweethearts as part of growing up. She lets you in on her personal outlook on Southern living in the days of segregation and the changes to the new order of today. Now she is a leader for family and high school reunions.

This book puts us back in focus on historical events that was a part of shaping our lives. This book is so "from the heart". It helps us understand our past and how one fleeting moment can change our whole life. There is no love to compare to a Mother's love, so deeply expressed in this book. It brings back a lot of memories out of the dark recesses of the mind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 3, 2004
• ISBN: 9781481771443

Peggy Phillips King

Peggy Phillips King was born in 1930 in Colquitt, Georgia. Upon completion of high school in Colquitt, she attended Georgia State Womans College in Valdosta, Georgia. She is the mother of four children. She has eight grandchildren and one great grandchild. Peggy has lived in various sections of the country, always returning to her home state. In 1994 she retired from a florist business that she owned and operated in Colquitt. In 1997 she began assembling material needed to write the story of her life at the Cross Roads. This is her second publication. Her first publication “A Phillips Family History” was published in 1984. She enjoys most the time spent with her husband, her children and grandchildren. At the present time, Peggy resides in Bainbridge, Georgia with her husband, Steven King.

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Map Of The Cross Roads

Principal Characters

Chapter 1

The Beginning

Chapter 2

Grammer School Years

Chapter 3

High School Years

Chapter 4

College Days

Chapter 5

My Marriage To Bob

Chapter 6

The Birth Of Debra

Chapter 7

Living With Divorce

Chapter 8

My Marriage To John

Chapter 9

The Middle Years

Chapter 10

Life After John

Chapter 11

The Last Years

Epilogue

The Cross Roads

By Peggy Phillips King

About The Author

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Everyone has a story to tell. This is my story, dedicated to all of my children, especially my son, David, who made me promise to write this account to the best of my knowledge and my memory. Without the encouragement and help of my husband, Steven King, this book might never have been published. I apologize in advance for any mistakes that I might have made in my story. I am indeed an amateur. This work then is a labor of love.

MAP OF THE CROSS ROADS

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PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

Flossie Phillips: My Mother. Hoke Phillips: My Father.

Othermama: My paternal grandmother, Mabel Lee Sanders Phillips.

Cousins: Lewellyn, Bryant, Laverne, Catherine, Eleanor, Jeannine, Helen, Milton, Jackie, Bob, Jean, Carroll, and Wayne.

Aunts: Vassie, Veralu, Belle, Mary Lou, and Louwealthie.

Uncles: W. M., Cecil, Clint, Albert, and Carl.

Miller County High School: Class of 1947.

Georgia State Womans College, Valdosta, Georgia: freshman and sophomore classmates, 1947-48-49.

Emory Junior College at Valdosta: students, 1947-48-49.

Bob Wilson: My first husband.

John Powell: My second husband.

Max Mims: My third husband.

Steven King: My fourth husband.

Eunice Floyd Dillon: A friend.

Diana Fasano: A friend.

My Children: Debra, Stephen, David and Lauren.

CHAPTER 1

THE BEGINNING

The Cross Roads was God’s country, according to my daddy. It was not just a junction of two roads crossing each other, but a real place to me. The location of the Cross Roads is not on any maps and may not be really important to many folks, but to me it was the greatest place on this earth. If I stop for a minute and close my eyes, I can see the open fields with farm hands plowing in the rich dark soil that was our farm. I can see the tall green stalks of corn in the early spring time. I can see the cotton fields that looked like fields of snow when the cotton was in full bloom. I can smell the peanuts when it was harvesting time. I can see the dirt roads, the honeysuckle vines and the blackberry bushes growing along on the side of the roads, the tall pine trees and the huge old oak trees. I can see all of the things that contributed to the peaceful serenity that I experienced growing up at the Cross Roads. The Cross Roads is located seven miles from Colquitt, in Miller County, in the state of Georgia. I was born in the wee hours of the morning on August 13, 1930 at the Cross Roads, during the time of the great depression.

My dad and the black man that worked on our farm went out into the night to get a doctor for my mama. Doctors were seldom reserved ahead of time. In fact, Mama did not see a doctor during the nine months of her pregnancy. Most births were attended by a mid-wife. There was not a hospital near by. It was just luck that my daddy and his black friend would find a doctor in Colquitt, Dr. E. B. Baughn, who would come out to our house on that hot August night. It would be some 50 years later that an old black man would seek me out. He said to me, You are Mr. Hoke Phillips’ daughter. Your name is Peggy Joanne Phillips and you were born on August 13, 1930. I was with your daddy when we went to fetch the doctor for your mama the night you were born. The man’s name was Cal Reddick. He explained to me that he never forgot that date because he had such devotion for my mama and daddy. He told me that he had lots of good memories of the days when he worked with my daddy on the farm. In that few minutes that we talked, I felt there was a special bond between us. It was about a year later, after our meeting that I learned that Cal Reddick had died.

Mama had a very hard labor and fainted when I was actually born. My dad’s mother was there as always when she could be of help to her family. My grandparents on my maternal side were deceased before I was born. The secondgrandchild on my paternal side of the family was Lewellyn and she called our grandmother Othermama. That name stayed with my grandmother and was used by her many grandchildren. Her step-grandchildren from Aunt Ona’s family called her Sugar Mama. Of course, to me, she was just my Othermama and I was her special grandchild. I suppose all of her grandchildren had that same feeling. I can’t remember her favoring one more than the other except for me. She bathed me till I was a year old and assured my mama that I was not going to die. Mama had a hard time taking care of a tiny baby. With some women it just comes naturally, but not so with my mama. She would cry when I was sleeping, afraid that I would not wake up.

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Peggy and her Dad

Daddy was so excited that morning; he went out to tell all the neighbors that his baby girl was born. Most of the neighbors were our kinfolks. My cousin, Bryant, who was ten years old at the time, remembers stopping by that morning to see me. He was on his the way to the cotton gin in Colquitt, carrying a bale of cotton in the wagon with his daddy, Uncle Arthur. (Uncle Arthur was not actually my uncle; he was my dad’s first cousin. It was because of his age that I called him Uncle Arthur. Children were taught that special people deserved to be given titles of respect. Uncle Arthur was one of those special people in my life). On the weekend after my birth, my daddy hosted a Bar-B-Q dinner under the big oak tree in front of our house. All of the neighbors and relatives came from miles around to welcome my arrival. My mama would tell me later that it was a really bad day for her. It was so hot and she was hardly able to get out of bed. Bar-B-Q dinners were popular then for celebrations.

My mama was 16 years old and my daddy was 18 when they married. They lived with Othermama. My dad’s youngest brother, W.M., my great grandmother, Grandma Matt and Sara, a grandchild, also lived in the house with Othermama. Sara was the child of my dad’s oldest brother, Cecil. Sara’s mother died shortly after Sara was born. It was Othermama who would take care of her. When Sara was only a few months old she had infantile paralysis. There was no treatment for this crippling disease at that time and Sara would remain a cripple all of her life. Grandma Matt had to have her little toddy, as they called a shot of whiskey, before she could go to sleep at night. So she would have her little toddy and off to bed she would go stepping high, as though she was climbing stairs. She always wanted my mama to read to her because she never had any kind of education. Grandma Matt would follow Mama with a book even when Mama went to the outhouse. Outhouses, as they were called then, were small buildings located behind the big or main house that were used for toilets. There was a built in bench in the outhouse with two or three round holes cut in the top of the bench that you sat on when nature called. There was no electricity, no running water; only a deep well in the front yard where the water was pulled up in a bucket. To me it would have seemed like an awful time to be living, without any of the modern day conveniences, but not to them. They got along just fine and had a wonderful life.

It was a full house, my grandmother’s house, and that pleased her. She loved life, her family and people. She was always cooking big dinners and anyone that might stop by her house was invited to join in the meal. She was a good cook. I can especially remember her pineapple cake and her watermelon rind preserves. She taught my mama how to cook and to sew. Clothes were hand made. The women crocheted, tatted, and embroidered. Othermama made rugs by crocheting old silk stockings. She was always ready for a party. There were many square dances, syrup candy pullings, and box suppers held in her house. My granddad died many years before I was born, but my grandmother never gave up her zest for living. She was a one man woman. She never married again. She found joy in doing for others and I never felt that she was sad unless there was a problem with one of her children or grandchildren. She always had a maid to help her with the housework and caring for the children.

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Othermama and Peggy

There was an elderly black couple that lived in one of the sharecropper’s houses on the farm. Jim and Eldora Grant were their names. They did any work that my grandmother wanted done around her house. I grew up with them and felt that they were a part of our family. I loved them and I knew that they loved me. Eldora was the typical black nanny of that time. She could cook, sew, and pick cotton better than most of the other hands on the farm. On Saturday nights, Eldora and Jim would have a party; just the two of them and a bottle of whiskey, sitting on the front porch of their little house. We could hear them laughing and talking. I always wondered what they were saying that could be so funny.

The old store stood directly in front of Othermama’s house, across the dirt road, which was later known as Phillipsburg Road. My dad decided that he and my mama needed a house of their own when Mama became pregnant with me. Othermama gave my dad the old store. My dad did most of the remodeling himself and made the old store building into a very livable house. I was born in the old store. My granddad had built the store building or commissary as it was called at that time, many years before when landowners had staple supplies available for the sharecroppers and day laborers (sometimes referred to as hands) that worked on the farm. After my granddad died the building became the old store, a building large enough to be used for square dances and other social functions. My granddad had his own sawmill. The store and the other buildings on the land were built from the pine trees that grew on the land. There were many houses on his land for the sharecroppers to live in and a house where my paternal great grandmother, Sara, lived. These houses were called gun shot houses, in that, you could see straight through the house, from the front door to the back door. They consisted usually of two rooms and a front porch.

My granddaddy Ashley owned many acres of land, most of which he inherited from his parents and grandparents and from his first wife’s parents. When he married my grandmother Mabel Lee, his second wife, they lived in Damascus. He owned and operated a mercantile store in Damascus and was overseer of his farmland. He and my grandmother lived in Damascus until the time of his death. My dad and all of his brothers and sisters were born in Damascus.

The children were Maude and Ona, (children by my granddad’s first wife) Vashti, Essye, Cecil, Ethel, Hoke (my Dad), Martine, and William Martine (called W.M.). Damascus was a thriving town during those years. After my granddad died, my grandmother sold the store and the house in Damascus. She had a new house built on the farm because the original farmhouse had burned a few years before. She moved with her family back to the Cross Roads and to the farm. My grandmother was not a businesswoman and unfortunately most of my granddad’s estate was lost. With the help of her daughter Essye and a very good lawyer, she managed to save the farmland and the house at the Cross Roads.

The land was divided among her five surviving children and one stepchild, with the understanding that she was to live in the farmhouse till the time of her death. Each child would pay her $25 per year. I can’t imagine how she could live on such a small amount of money. At that time, it really wasn’t that small and she also received a monthly pension check. As a small child I did not realize the terrible hardships that came with the depression years of the 1930’s. I always felt that we were rich. We always had plenty of food to eat and Mama made me such pretty clothes. I had a little red tricycle that I liked to ride around the old store. Santa always brought me a doll at Christmas time. I had so many relatives that lived around me and I knew they loved me. I felt safe and I was never lonely. I could run across the road to Othermama’s house and feel that I was so important. After all I was the child of Hoke and Flossie Phillips and that meant I was special. I can’t explain why I felt like this, maybe most children feel this way if they are loved.

My dad had a car most of the time and we went to the movies so often they would say that I grew up in the theater. Mama would give me a dose of paregoric to make me sleep when I was too young to watch the movie. She only had to take me out of the theater one time and that was because she changed my diaper in her lap. I did not like that. She said I really cried and cried. Maybe I was afraid she would let me fall from her lap; who knows what babies think. Mama said she was too young to realize that babies should not go to movies. My mama was 20 years old when I was born, after being married for four years. It was not easy for her to become pregnant. She would become pregnant two more times after I was born but did not carry the babies to term. I was old enough to remember the last time she was pregnant and we almost lost her as well as the little boy that she was carrying. It was on the front porch at Othermama’s house that I saw my dad crying in Othermama’s arms. I did not understand why he was crying, I just knew that my mama was in the hospital in Blakely and that I missed her very much.

It was not always easy being an only child. People would say that I was spoiled and I am sure that was true, but not in a bad way. All I knew was that my mom and dad would always love me and take care of me. I didn’t think that meant being spoiled. I always felt that it would have been great to have brothers and sisters. I know that I did miss out on some things by being alone. I promised myself, God willing, that when I was grown and married, I would have more than one child. I had cousins, so many to play with and we were always together but it just wasn’t the same. I always knew when playtime was over, that I would be the child to go home alone. And naturally, they loved their brothers and sisters more than they loved me.

Just up the hill from our house was the house where Uncle Arthur and Aunt Mary Lou lived with their children, Laverne, Hazel and Bryant. Uncle Arthur’s mama, Aunt Anna, lived with them also. Aunt Anna was Othermama’s sister. Their house was a log house. It was an original log house and many years old. It was so much fun to visit in their house. Laverne, the oldest, (she was thirteen years older than me) was so sweet and pretty. She was one of my favorite cousins. She was my first Sunday school teacher at Macedonia Free Will Baptist Church. She would give us little cards with bible stories printed on them and yellow candy that we called banana sticks. Aunt Mary Lou was my first grade school teacher at Harmony Grammar School and of course she looked after me. She would even allow me to take my paper dolls to school and play with them under her desk. The other children knew better than to bother me and my paper dolls. I made all B’s on my first report card and I was afraid my mama would spank me because I did not make A’s.

I always thought my mama was so strict and I never wanted to do anything that might make her mad. I can only remember her actually spanking me three times. I don’t remember what I had done wrong that day, but we were walking down the side walk on Main Street in Colquitt and she spanked me. The second spanking occurred when the black maid accused me of pushing my cousin, Martine, down while we were playing at Uncle Cecil’s house. Aunt Veralu had given me a ring to wear that Jackie (her daughter) had outgrown and I was instructed never to take it off without my mama’s permission. I took it off to show it to my cousins, Jeannine and Helen, while we were in the outhouse. The ring went someplace. Well, you can imagine where and I was not about to try and retrieve it. The loss of that ring resulted in my third spanking. I did not ever want my mama to be upset with me. I always wanted to be near her and doing things to please her. My dad and my grandmother were just the opposite of strict. I learned early on that if I cried a little I’d get my way with them.

The old store has many memories for me. I can visualize the layout of the rooms. There were two bedrooms on one side and a wide hall down the middle. The hall was also used as a living room. I had a cream colored walker-stroller. I could push myself down the hall in the walker before I actually learned to walk alone. Another bedroom was on the other side of the hall. The kitchen and the eating area went across the length of the house on the back. There was a fireplace in the middle bedroom where I slept with Mama. The wood stove in the kitchen kept the kitchen warm in the wintertime. There was a water shelf across one part of the back wall in the kitchen area. On the water shelf there were buckets of water and a big dipper with a long handle to drink from and a wash basin for washing our hands. In the winter time, Mama would put water in the wash basin, set the basin on the fire place hearth so that the water would be warm for our baths that night. Our water came from a deep well in the front yard. The water was drawn up in a bucket using a rope and a pulley. Sometimes a squirrel or a snake would fall into the well and we would have to wait a few days before we could use the water. We would have to visit a neighbor’s well during that time.

There was a Christmas that I remember so well. Aunt Vassie, Mama’s youngest sister, came to visit us. She and Mama sang Christmas songs to Jean (Aunt Vassie’s daughter) and me while rocking us to sleep in the old wooden rocking chairs in front of the fireplace on Christmas Eve. My Uncle W.M. would come over early on Christmas morning to wake us up to see if Santa had been to see us. All of my grandmother’s family would gather at her house for Christmas dinner. She always had a Christmas tree with presents under it for everyone. There would be Uncle W.M, Uncle Cecil’s family, Aunt Ethel’s family, Aunt Essye and Uncle Grover. I loved to hear them laugh and talk and I loved to play with all of my cousins. Once the grownups decided to go to a square dance on Christmas night and Othermama kept all of the children. I cried all of the time they were gone. Othermama rocked and rocked me but I still cried till Mama and Daddy came home. I just remember thinking they were never going to come home, I don’t know why.

Othermama had a player piano in her living room. The piano played music from a roll that fit into a cabinet at the top of the piano. My cousins and I could play music by using the piano roll, without actually playing the piano keys. Sometimes Gene Phillips would come to see us and he would play the piano. Gene was Uncle Arthur’s brother that lived in Jacksonville, Florida. We thought he was the greatest piano player in the world. He played the piano by ear, which meant he had never taken any lessons but he could play any tune. We would all gather around the piano to listen to him play. Mama could play church songs on the piano. She learned to play while attending a church singing school.

In the summer time we slept under mosquito netting (a loosely woven material similar to cheese cloth) as a protection from the mosquitoes. The gnats were bad also and children would always have sore eyes. Mama used citronella around my eyes and I hated the smell of it but it did keep the gnats away. There were three big oak trees located around the houses. One tree was in our front yard. One was across the road in front of Othermama’s house and the other tree stood in front of the big barn. There was always a shade to play in under the oak trees. One day I was walking around the roots of one of the trees and met a black snake, which was crawling along the roots. We had lots of snakes that came into the yard and I was so afraid of them. I learned early on that you needed to watch where you stepped. The road in front of the houses was a dirt road at that time. It would later be paved and those beautiful oak trees would have to be cut down.

Sometimes the winters were very cold. One Thanksgiving Day, it was so cold, but my mama, Othermama, Sara and I had to walk up the hill to Uncle Arthur’s house for our Thanksgiving dinner. At the time, I wondered why we couldn’t just stay at home. Mama explained to me that families were supposed to be together on Thanksgiving Day. All of the holidays were important to us and I looked forward to each one. A holiday usually meant that something good would happen to me. One Easter Sunday, I woke up to find a white rabbit in the house. Daddy had gotten the rabbit for me. He turned out to be a mean rabbit and Daddy took him into the woods and let him go free.

Although my parents had been taking me to the movie theater since I was first born, the first movie that I can actually remember seeing was "Phantom of the Opera" starring Lon Chaney. I was about five years old when my daddy bought a red Roadster, a small car with a rumble seat. The first night that we had the car, we loaded up: Laverne, Hazel, Bryant, W.M., Mama, Daddy and I. We went to a theater in Bainbridge to see that particular movie. I remember that it was a scary movie and it made me have night mares. The red Roadster was a sporty little car and I liked it. It seems that we had that car for a very short time. Mama was thinking we could not afford it and it turned out that she was right.

There was a black family that lived on our farm for a few years. Frog Johnson and his wife, LuLu and their many children, lived in a small tenant house that stood in one of the fields. They never had enough to eat. One of their children, Clara Jane, would slip into our house and steal pieces of corn bread and fried chicken from the pie safe. Doors were never locked. Mama knew it was Clara Jane but she did not tell Clara Jane’s Daddy. He would have beaten her with a belt. One of the older daughters, Nora, worked for Aunt Belle, the wife of my daddy’s brother, Uncle Cecil. Nora helped to look after their children and did house work. She was mean to me. I did not like to go to play with Uncle Cecil’s children while she was working there. If any of the children got hurt she would say that it was my fault. Once my cousin, Martine fell down and skinned his knee. Nora said that I pushed him down. I did not even touch him. The other children knew that he accidentally fell down while we were all running around the yard but they were afraid to tell the truth and my mama spanked me.

I was not allowed to play with the Johnson children. I think because they were so much older than me or it could have been that white children just did not play with black children. At any rate, I had a very confusing experience when I was four or five years old. It was late in the afternoon and I had gone outside to sit on our front porch to eat a piece of chocolate pie that Mama had given me. One of the black boys motioned for me to come to the barn. This boy was about fifteen years old. I did not know that I needed to be afraid of him. He said he wanted to show me something inside the barn. I ran down to the barn and went inside. He opened the zipper on his pants and exposed himself as he pulled me up close to his body. At that very moment, my mama called me and he let me go. I ran back to the house as fast as I could. I never did tell my mama or my daddy about the incident. I was afraid my mama would punish me for going into the barn. I did tell my cousins, Jeannine and Helen, and we just laughed about it. We were too young to see the danger. This same black boy, a few years later, raped a white girl that lived a few miles from our house. The black boy was killed while trying to escape from the sheriff. When my daddy came home to tell Mama the news, then I was scared. Even then I did not tell my parents about the incident that had happened to me. I just was relieved that I would not have to worry about him bothering me ever again.

The blacks would get drunk on Saturday night and have all kinds of brawls. We could hear them and I hated the noise. It was very early one Sunday morning when Frog came knocking on our door, waking up my mama and daddy. There had been a fight and one of his sons had his stomach cut open with a knife. Daddy took him to a doctor. The doctor just pushed everything back inside his stomach and sewed him up. Daddy watched the so-called operation and was very surprised that the black man lived.

One spring, the family had gathered at Othermama’s house, and it rained. When the rain cleared up all of the children went outside to play. I knew I was not allowed to go barefoot outside of the house, especially after a rain, but when the other children took their shoes off, so did I. We waded in a mud puddle in front of the house. Of course when Mama saw me she came out and made me get out of the water and put my shoes back on.

It was about midnight that night when I woke up crying. One foot was itching so much that I could not stop scratching. After trying lots of ointments and creams with no relief, Mama and Daddy, in desperation, poured full strength iodine on my foot. It blistered my foot and I screamed so loud that Othermama woke up and came running over to our house. She was very upset with Mama and Daddy for pouring the iodine on my foot. She soaked my foot in cold water to try and relieve the burning. We did not get any sleep that night. The next morning Daddy took me to see Dr. Cheshire in Damascus. He said that I had a Bach worm in my foot. It entered my foot through a break in the skin while I was wading in the muddy water. The only way to kill the worm was to burn it with acid. The treatment was a slow process and it was very painful. Daddy would have to hold me in his lap and I would scream. By the end of the summer it had traveled all over my foot. I could not walk so I had to spend most of the time sliding on the floor, except when Daddy carried me in his arms. One day when I was scheduled for a treatment, Daddy took me up to Pickron’s store at the Cross Roads and bought me a pair of blue denim overalls. I tried not to cry because I was so proud of my overalls. I loved Dr. Cheshire. He was so sweet to me and he always had a piece of candy for me. Needless to say, I never went wading in a pond of muddy water again. I was such a small child that Dr. Cheshire told Mama and Daddy to give me cod liver oil, thinking it would increase my appetite. He advised them to give me Ovaltine to drink. They tried everything that they could think of but I would remain tiny and skinny.

Daddy and I would go to Damascus on Sunday mornings to meet the train coming in from Atlanta. The train coming into town was a big event and all the folks would gather at the depot to meet the train before going to church. Daddy would buy a Sunday copy of the Atlanta Constitution Newspaper. I liked for Mama to read me the comic strips. Going to Damascus was like going home to my daddy and I always felt a strong connection to this town.

Ed Norris was killed in the year, 1935, by a black man. Ed was the husband of Ethel, my Daddy’s sister. Grover Jones, the husband of Daddy’s sister, Essye, was the sheriff of Mitchell County and they lived in Camilla. He had deputized Uncle Ed on that January night and they went out to arrest the black man. The black man resisted and struck Uncle Ed on the head with a black jack. Uncle Ed was killed instantly. The black man was sentenced and condemned to die in the electric chair in Reidsville. The day of his electrocution, my dad was a witness. Daddy said it was horrible to watch someone die in this manner and he could smell the burning of human flesh. It was a smell that would stay with him for a long time.

Aunt Ethel and Uncle Ed had three children, Lewellyn, Gloria and Ed, Junior. Lewellyn, Gloria and I collected movie star pictures. We cut them out of movie magazines or we would send a postcard to the movie star, and receive a picture. We would trade or swap pictures when we got together. One Christmas Day we were gathered at Othermama’s house, the children were in the bedroom playing and the gown-ups were in the living room or in the kitchen. We had our pictures spread out on the bed and we were working out our trades or swaps. For some reason, Uncle Cecil, thought we were fussing. He came rushing into the bedroom, grabbed up our pictures and threw all of them in the fire that was burning in the fireplace. We were really upset and crying. Everybody was mad at Uncle Cecil, grown-ups and children alike. He and Aunt Belle had six children: Jeannine, Helen, Milton, Martine, Wayne, and Don.

Uncle Cecil was nicknamed the judge. He actually performed a wedding ceremony for a black couple. He wrote out a paper saying they were married and I suppose they never knew any thing different. He owned a small country store and we were always going up to his store. It was about a mile from our house at the Cross Roads. He stocked staple goods: rat cheese, pickled pigs feet, drinks and etc.—Othermama helped him in the store. To begin with, Othermama helped out when he was away on business but soon it became a full time job for her. That meant she was never at home anymore and I missed her so much. She enjoyed working in the store. She liked being with people and the store became a kind of social gathering place.

One morning, Mama, Daddy and I, were at the store. Uncle Cecil came walking in with a pistol. It went off, barely missing my feet. He said he had pulled the trigger accidentally and did not know that the pistol was loaded. It really scared all of us and I was lucky I came out without being hit by a bullet from the pistol. The bullet went into the wooden floor near my feet. Another incident happened at the store that made me wonder why we would go there so often. It seemed we were jinxed in that store. It was a freezing cold day and Mama sat me on a box in front of the potbellied stove. There was a roaring fire in the stove. She was peeling an orange for me and did not realize how close she was standing to the stove. Her dress caught on fire and she was all a blaze, running out of the store screaming. My daddy grabbed her and beat out the fire with his hands.

Othermama’s house had lightning rods on top of the roof. The lightning rods were supposed to protect the house from getting struck by lightning. That meant when a storm came up we all had to go to her house. The children had to get under the dining room table. Of course that was fun for us. Late one night, it was storming and Uncle Cecil did not have a car to take his family to Othermama’s house. He walked about a mile in the storm, from his house to our house, to wake up Daddy. Daddy had a car at that time. They drove back to Uncle Cecil’s house to get his family and bring them to Othermama’s house. As I grew older, I decided I’d rather risk staying in our house than getting out in a storm to go to Othermama’s house.

Mama never missed going to church on Sunday. I remember Daddy going with us most of the time when I was very small. I would put my head in his lap and go to sleep. The big wooden benches would get a bit hard after awhile. There was a preaching service once a month and Sunday School every Sunday. Daddy was brought up to go to church and he attended regularly during my growing up years. He was a member of the Harmony Methodist Church. My grandmother always went to church and took her children with her. Daddy believed the teachings of the Bible but he said he just did not like preachers. They were always begging for money. About two months before his death, he asked for a preacher to come and visit him. He confessed his sins and asked to be forgiven. The preacher told us that my dad was very sincere at that time.

Homecoming Day was in May at Macedonia Church. There was dinner on the ground—actually fence wire was stretched between trees and dinner was placed on tablecloths covering the wire. The children sat on the ground under the wire tables to eat. There would be lots of people to come and they would bring so much food. Mama would bake a cake, fry chicken and make potato salad. The church was an active part of the community. People came on wagons, buggies, and a few had cars. There would be a sermon in the morning, followed by lunch, and an afternoon of singing in the church.

The church was never locked. Jeannine, Helen and I would slip in and play the piano until we would think we heard strange noises. Then we would scramble to get outside. There would always be a Christmas program with a Christmas tree and gifts. One year I sang, "Santa Claus is Coming To Town". I guess I was too young to be nervous singing a solo. Singing was so much a part of my life. My dad liked to sing. He would be working out in the fields and I could hear him singing. Some of the songs that I remember him singing were: "She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain When She Comes, When It’s Lamp Lighting Time in the Valley’, and "Girl of My Dreams". My mama would sing mostly church songs while she was working in the kitchen. I would sit in the swing on our front porch, swinging and singing. It seemed that singing meant you were happy.

Sometimes we would walk through the lane to go to the Cross Roads from our house. The lane had a split rail fence on each side. It was wide enough for a wagon to go through. There were blackberry bushes growing on the fence. We would pick the berries for a pie but we always had to watch out for snakes. They liked to hide in the bushes. Our land was on one side of the lane and the land on the other side belonged to Uncle Vasil. He was my daddy’s first cousin. He was married to Aunt Louwealthie and they had two daughters, Eleanor and Catherine. I liked to visit their house. Aunt Louwealthie and Mama had a very close relationship, and I felt that I was special to Aunt Louwealthie. Eleanor, Catherine and I liked playing paper dolls. Their big cat was always sleeping in one of the large wooden rocking chairs on the front porch. Catherine and I had an encounter with a rather large snake one morning on the way to the outhouse in their backyard. She insisted that we remain standing perfectly still until the snake crawled away. My first instinct whenever I saw a snake was to run like mad.

All of the young men in the ‘30s had such a hard time making enough money just to get by, especially if they had a family to support. It was not until I was 13 years old that I would come to know what really went on during those years. Mama and Daddy did a very good job of protecting me from the realities of that time. My grandmother divided the land that she owned equally between her children. Each child received 70 acres of land. W.M. sold his share to my dad and this included my grandmother’s house, with the understanding that she would live in the house until she died. Uncle Cecil bought Aunt Ethel’s share and Aunt Ona bought Aunt Essye’s share for her son, Lamar. Farming has always been a risky business, more so then than now, because of the modern techniques and equipment that are available today. The farm work was done mostly by field laborers. The weather had to cooperate. If it did not, that meant a bad year for farmers. My daddy would walk the floor, praying for it to rain or praying for it to stop raining. The main money crops grown on our farm were corn, cotton and peanuts.

Most of the men at the Cross Roads became involved in the making and selling of moon shine whiskey. My cousin, Catherine would say, Most of the Phillips men made moonshine during the depression. It is a known fact that farmers in North and South Georgia were very good at staying one step ahead of the revenue agents and making moonshine for themselves and others was just a way of life. If they were caught, it meant serving jail time. It was called boot leg whiskey, meaning the illegal making and selling of an alcoholic beverage. It was not uncommon during those years known as the prohibition era. It was a quick way to make an extra dollar.

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Catherine and Peggy

When I was not even a year old, my daddy had a whiskey still set up in the woods behind our house. It was the opinion of the family that a close relative gave the sheriff information and the location of the still. The relative said he was going to teach my dad a lesson. The still was raided and my daddy was taken to jail. Uncle Cecil and my dad’s nephew, Lamar, were also operating whiskey stills and were caught. The three of them were taken to Albany for trial. Uncle Cecil and Lamar spent their sentenced jail time in the Albany jail. My dad was sentenced to one year in the Fulton County Federal prison in Atlanta. My Grandmother hired the best lawyer in Colquitt, Peter Zack Geer, Sr., to plead my dad’s case. It seems the judge decided to make an example of my dad’s case, and the sentence was carried out. That prison was closed in the 70’s because the conditions were so deplorable. I know that must have been the worst year of my dad’s life but he never discussed it with me. Mama and I slept at Othermama’s house that year. My mama was pregnant with her second child when my dad was taken away and had a miscarriage while we were visiting Aunt Veralu in Tampa, Florida. I’m sure the stress was too much for her. At the time, she would have been 21 years old and my Dad would have been 23 years old. We were able to visit my daddy once during the year he was in the prison. The trip would have been a long and expensive trip. Gene Phillips owned a car and he took Othermama, Mama, and me to Atlanta for that visit. Othermama paid for the gasoline to go into the car for the trip.

Uncle Vasil and Uncle Arthur were also making and selling illegal whiskey. They had stills set up in Baker County on the farm of my great granddaddy, Newton Sanders. The day that their stills were to be raided, they received a tip and were able to outrun the sheriff. There was an account of their escape escapade written up in the town newspaper, The Miller County Liberal. Uncle Carl was caught at a later time and spent three years in prison in Tallahassee, Florida.

When I was thirteen years old, I was visiting Aunt Veralu and in a conversation she happened to mention, The year your dad was in Jail. I questioned her immediately. She thought that I had already been told and was so sorry that she was the one to tell me. I asked my mama about it later and she told me the truth. She said it was wrong to do anything against the law but she defended my daddy. She said the others were just as guilty, but most of the blame was shifted to him and his sentence was unjust.

Mama and I often rode the coal burning train to Florida to visit Aunt Veralu and Aunt Vassie. The little black cinders from the coal would get in our hair and on our clothes. We made the trip so often; the conductor would remember me and play with me. I liked the way he would call out all aboard. One of the trips was to Cedar Key, and the return trip was so long by train that we had to spend the night in a Jacksonville hotel to make a connection back to Colquitt. I think that was my first over-night stay in a hotel. There was one other trip, late at night, when we were catching the train in Tampa. We had to walk a long distance from the depot to board the train and when the conductor came around to collect our tickets, Mama couldn’t find her pocket book. The conductor told her that he would watch me while she ran back to the depot to check the bench that we had been sitting on. The pocket book was on her arm all of the time but she had so many bundles that she missed seeing it. Mama was really upset but I was fine.

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Jackie and Peggy

It was so much fun to visit my aunts and their families in Florida. Aunt Veralu and Uncle Lee had two children, Jacqueline, three years older than me, and Robert, one year older than me. They were Jackie and Buddy to me. Aunt Vassie and Uncle Tom had two children also, Gloria Jean, four years younger than me, and Tommy, seven years younger than me. We had a very close relationship and would spend a lot of time together during our growing up years.

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Buddy, Jackie, Peggy and Jean

Mama’s oldest brother, Albert, had three children: Paschal, Maurice, and Herbert. Uncle Albert and his wife, Idaline, lived a few miles from the Cross Roads in Baker County. Uncle Albert served in the army during World War I. Travel was not easy over dirt roads, so to make the trip worthwhile; Mama and I would go and spend the day with them. Uncle Albert would let me ride one of his mules. Of course he led the mule around while I was sitting on it, but still I thought I was doing something big. He let his children have little goats to keep in the house and raise as pets. Sometimes there would be a little kid goat that needed to be fed with a bottle of milk. My cousins and I would go for a ride in their wagon. Uncle

Albert and Aunt Idaline lost their first child, Leona, when she was just a baby. Uncle Albert drank a lot after her death, but in later years he became a Christian and stopped smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey. He was a good man and of course, I loved him very much. I could sit for hours and listen to him telling family stories from the past. I would hang on to each word. I was so afraid I would miss something that he was saying.

There was also the family of Mama’s younger brother, Carl and his wife, Mamie Lois. They had seven children: Gerald, Marlin, Carl, Jr., Yvonne, Charleen, Danny and Dorothy. It was fun to go and spend the day at their house. Aunt Mamie Lois could always come up with something good to cook for us, even though food was hard to come by. Uncle Carl had a swing for us, made from an old automobile tire that hung from the limb of an oak tree in the front yard. We played lots of games. I remember one in particular, Red Rover, Let the Ball Come Over. I liked to pretend that Dorothy was my baby. She was the youngest of their children and seemed to enjoy me giving her so much attention. Dorothy was born