The Long Dusty Road

By Lynn Cooper

William Crawford was digging in the same dirt as his ancestors before him. They had spent their lives scratching a living out of this poor cotton farm in West Tennessee to provide for those of their own. He was a loving husband and father and cared deeply for his wife, Mary, and their three boys. A message came to their door one day that brought the news of a tragic loss while at the same time placing before them a decision that would change their lives forever. It was a message of life and death and one that brought both sorrow and joy to their home. The story weaves itself through times of great struggle and, with it, the despair that entered into their lives.

The family is thrown into turmoil when William passes through a near-death experience that sent him into a long and deep valley of depression. In the months to follow, he would become distant from his family and walk the fields, begging God to take his life. It shows forth the grit and determination of three young boys as they take on the responsibilities normally reserved for the head of the family. In their father's absence, the farm itself was suffering along with those that depended on it for their very survival. If Crawford farm was to be saved, they alone must do it.

The story is set in the south in the year 1952. It tells of the difficulties of hand-to-mouth living and of the families that endured desperate times to stay on the soil that they loved. The reader is carried to another time and place where people treated one another with respect and neighbor helped neighbor. In the end, victory comes shining through the dark clouds of discouragement and the family stands united in the light of God's love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685170899

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The Long Dusty Road

Alton Lynn Cooper

ISBN 978-1-68517-088-2 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68517-089-9 (digital)

Copyright © 2022 by Alton Lynn Cooper

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Preface

Epilogue

About the Author

Books by Alton Lynn Cooper

Preface

Igive thanks first of all to God for filling my mind with stories to be told that are written in a way to bring honor and glory to His Holy name. This is the eleventh book that He has given me, and the next tale is already finding its way into my heart. I want to thank my precious wife, Dolly, who has been with me on this journey. She has been a co-laborer and a helpmeet sent from God Himself in these endeavors. Without her dedicated help and God's leading in both our lives, these stories would not exist. I have found writing to be a labor of love that requires dedication and many long hours at the laptop while calling on God for direction.

The Long Dusty Road is written as fiction but brings many of my childhood memories onto its pages. I was the son of a poor cotton farmer in West Tennessee. Our family was poor when it came to this world's goods, but we were rich in love for one another. I thank God for my sweet father and mother who loved me and my four brothers and provided us with a home, food for our stomachs, and labored to assure that we received the education that neither of them was blessed with growing up. In the time of their childhood, many children were kept at home to work the farm and help support their families' struggle for survival. Before I was born, they passed through the Great Depression, lost everything in the floodwaters, and were burned out of their home. They were fighters that stood against the storms that came their way, not giving in to their circumstances but working together to rise above them. They taught us to be honest and to show respect for those around us. My father had a saying, Son, if you owe a man a penny, pay the man his penny. He would also tell us, When a man gives you a fair day's pay, you return to him a fair day's work. One of his most powerful sayings that have guided my life through these years was Son, do right! Our parents were morally good people that shaped our attitudes toward life while developing our character along the way.

I thank them with all my heart for my being. I also thank my eldest brother, James Glen Cooper. He was the firstborn and witnessed Mama and Daddy's deepest struggles. I questioned him for hours concerning their early days and those stories have also woven themselves throughout these writings. My brother Lester Marion Cooper also lent some of his own memories to these pages, and I thank him for his sharing. I have included many of my own recollections as well and pray that both God and those who have contributed to this work will be satisfied with its rendering. The golden days of long ago were times of innocence and caring for one another. How I long for their return. I thank God that our lives are filled with sweet moments of times gone by.

This book has brought back memories of hard times but also the good that came along with them. It has also given us the realization that when we know Jesus Christ as our Saviour, He will carry us through whatever comes against us and bring us out victorious on the other side.

The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: The Lord make His face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: the Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. God bless you as you come with me on this journey that will take us down a pathway of memories born long ago in a different place and a different time.

Jimmy watched from his perch at the top of the small hill across from the garden area near the farmhouse. As he gazed off into the distance, a large billowing cloud of dust announced a potential visitor coming their way. His father was busy laboring in the lower cotton field, preparing the ground for the spring planting season. His two older brothers were off in another area of their family's farm, clearing stumps to make way for future corn and hay fields. Jimmy lived here with his father and mother, William and Mary Crawford, and his brothers, Lee and Robert. There were also two family dogs named Big Red and Tag-a-Long. The second dog had shown up one morning unexpectedly and had become a regular member of the family. Lee gave him the name Tag-a-Long after watching him follow Big Red wherever he went. Big Red was a bloodhound with long floppy ears, and Tag-a-Long was a mixed breed with curly brown hair and big feet. Jimmy laughed when he saw them running together and thought that they made quite a dashing pair.

Jimmy had recently turned seven years old and was given the responsibility of staying close to the house, helping his mother by carrying in the firewood, drawing water from the well, and the task he hated most, weeding the family garden. Lee was fifteen, and his brother Robert would be twelve next month. They received the harder work assignments of helping their father clear land, planting crops, keeping the cotton chopped in the growing season, and then picking at the end of summer. Crawford farm, as it was called, had been his father's childhood home, as well as his father before him. The one-hundred-twenty-acre farm was located in West Tennessee near the small southern town of Shelton and ran along a winding country road that gave off plenty of dust whenever someone passed their way. The house stood on pilings that left a crawl space underneath with front and back porches, outbuildings, including a barn, chicken coop, smokehouse, and, of course, the outhouse. Near the back porch, there was a root cellar where the potatoes, onions, apples, carrots, and beets were stored. William's grandfather had dug the cellar in a bank behind the house when he was a young man. Inside the house, there was the large family kitchen with Mama's woodstove, a common room that some would refer to as a living room, two bedrooms, and an upstairs attic area. The house had electricity but no running water. There was a large warm morning woodstove located in the common room that provided heat on colder winter days. It was old, well-lived in, but comfortable for the most part. His mother and father slept in the common room while Lee used the small bedroom, leaving Robert and Jimmy to share the larger room.

Jimmy had learned in his young life that it was a constant struggle for his father to scratch out a living from the ground while fighting the weather that always seemed to send too much rain or not enough. His parents never discussed financial matters with him and his brothers, but he could see the strain on their faces that let him know living was hard. He had watched his father in his dust-covered overalls come in out of the field in his old felt hat, crusted in sweat around the brim, many times in the past. A lane ran from behind the house down past the barnyard next to the woods to the cotton fields beyond. This time of year, his father would disappear down the lane early in the morning and then, after a long day, return just before sundown. His mother would pack a small lunch for his father and brothers, saving them the need of coming back to the house from the distant fields during the middle of a long workday.

He watched as the car slowed and turned into their drive making its way toward the house. The wind today was in their direction causing the dust to blow across the yard past him, coating everything in its path. A stout-built man got out of the car and walked toward the porch carrying a black case in his hand. Jimmy could see that he was wearing a dark suit which let him know that this visit surely meant business of some kind. From his perch on the hill, he heard the knock on the screen door and then his mother's voice as she spoke to the man. After a short conversation, he opened the case and pulled out an envelope, handing it to her. Jimmy couldn't hear their voices clearly from where he was but watched as his mother read the paper in her hand and then began to weep. The man placed a hand on her shoulder and spoke two words that Jimmy did hear that indicated his sorrow in bringing bad news. The man turned and went off the porch toward his car as his mother opened the screen door and disappeared back inside. He wanted to run to the house to check on her and hopefully find out what the news was from the letter. He knew, however, that his mother would wait until their father was in from the fields that night and then share the letter with him privately. His parents believed that children shouldn't have to carry the weight of adulthood until their time was ready. They had told him and his brothers to enjoy their youth and the hopes and dreams that come with it. One of his mother's favorite sayings was Run, play, and laugh while you can. Life's serious times will come soon enough. His father had just turned forty-one, and his mother was thirty-six years old. They had married young and had matured quickly when William's father passed away, leaving him the responsibility of the family farm and the burdens that followed. They had suffered through numerous crop failures and low cotton prices that kept them in debt to the local bank and struggling to make ends meet. All his father's farmer friends were in the same situation and always looked to the future for better days. Even at his young age, Jimmy wondered from time to time what kept all of them on these farms from generation to generation. He would come to realize, in later years, that it was the love of the land and hard work that filled a longing inside to provide for themselves and their loved ones.

Jimmy turned back to the garden where the young plants were just starting to emerge from their sleep in the rich, warm soil. The garden was a large fenced area that provided most of their food with the exception of the eggs, milk, and meat that came from his mother's chickens and the pigs and cows on the farm. In the fall, his father and his brother Lee would kill the hogs, dress them out, and then salt down the meat before hanging it in the smokehouse for curing. Mama would always stay in the house during this time, not wanting to see the hogs killed after feeding them all year. There were three breeding sows that kept the hog pen stocked through the years. One of the sows would occasionally root her way under the fence and out of the pen. William had put ring after ring in her snout, but she kept on rooting anyway. Sometimes she would get into one of the cornfields and run between the rows requiring, Jimmy and his brothers to chase her down. When the early morning dew was on the corn leaves, they would grab at the pursuer's bare arms and leave them covered with red welts from the frenzied chase through the field. Their father had often threatened to send the sow to her place in the smokehouse but had always relented when the memory of the last chase faded away.

The garden supplied all their vegetables, which included tomatoes, beans, okra, potatoes, squash, carrots, and, of course, watermelons and cantaloupes. The farm also had a stand of fruit trees in the orchard behind the barn. In season, they enjoyed apples, pears, and sweet plums and then the jams and jellies that his mother made each year. Near the orchard, there were four large mulberry trees that provided their sweet fruit in season. Jimmy and his brother Robert would go to the woods beyond the sand ditch in the fall and fill buckets with walnut and hickory nuts. He knew that his family didn't have much money, but they always had good food and plenty of it. His mother was a good cook and had the food on the table when the family came together for their meals. He especially liked her cornbread and biscuits and occasionally a cake or sweet desert.

Hey, Squirt, whatcha doing? Jimmy turned to see his brother Lee leaning on the garden fence post while wiping the sweat from his face with a large red handkerchief. His brother was square built and muscular from the years of working with his father on the farm. Being the oldest, he got most of the heavy jobs and worked alongside their father during plowing, planting, and harvesting seasons. He was tall for his age with dark curly hair and a strong chiseled face. Jimmy hoped that he could grow up as strong and handsome as his brother. But for now, he was short, a little on the skinny side, and slightly bowlegged. His curly hair was sandy brown and had a mind of its own.

I'm chasing down weeds here. And then I have to fill Mama's wood box or we might not get supper tonight. What are you doing out of the field? Are all the stumps gone already?

Nope! I came back to the house to fill up our water jugs. It's hot and getting hotter for this time of year. Need plenty of water to stay in the game. Jimmy paused for a moment and then blurted out, Letter came for Mama. Wasn't good news. Made her cry. He saw the troubled look come over his brother's face as he turned and made his way toward the house.

William Crawford stopped the horses and sat down under the large oak tree in the middle of the field. His body ached; and the pain in his chest was becoming a regular part of life, especially on these long, hot, dusty days. They really needed some soft spring rains to settle the ground for the planting season. He knew that this year's crops had to be good ones or the farm that he had known all his life could become the property of the bank in town. He just needed three good years to turn things around and not always be in the position of borrowing money to put in the crops. Seed costs seemed to increase every year, and then the price per pound of cotton often would drop as the harvest came in. He wasn't the only one struggling. He belonged to the farmer's co-op in town and heard the same stories from many of his friends throughout the neighboring farms. He had just passed forty years old but felt much older. He was careful not to complain around his wife, Mary. He knew she had enough care and was carrying her own load. His hands were calloused and rough, and his skin was well tanned from the sun. He was a powerfully built man which came from all the hard work, handling the old plow, and keeping the horses on task. His oldest son,