Our Kentucky Dad's Dream

By Tomy Galbreath

A book of early-to-mid 20th century poetry and essays from Clinton County, Kentucky.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tomy Galbreath
• Release date: Jun 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223817406

Tomy Galbreath

Each poem in this book tells a story of the experiences of Bill Chambers, also known as Poet Bill. You will learn what life was like for country folk in the South in the early-to-mid 1900s. Poet Bill may have been considered strange by the people in and around his community of Albany, Kentucky. They judged him harshly for his peculiar habit of writing late at night in graveyards, under bridges, on mountain tops, and even on top of the town courthouse! People of all ages will enjoy Bill's quaint way of telling a story in verse, while learning about southern living.

Book preview

Acknowledgments

Fifty-five years after the author’s death, the idea of a book became a reality during a phone conversation between the author’s daughter, Elsie, and his niece, Tomy Jo. If not for this, the book may never have been completed.

The family of Bill Chambers is grateful for Tomy Jo's hard work and determination to complete a book of which Bill and the family would be proud. Credit must be given to Elsie for gathering and sorting the poetry. She helped in any way she could to make her dad’s dream come true.

Thanks to Brian, Elsie’s son, for his support and advice.  Marilyn Collins is credited for her artistry in drawing the picture of the Chambers home at Huntersville, Kentucky. We also want to thank Christine Williams and Tiffany Galbreath for their help with proofreading.

About the Author

Bill Chambers was a man with a dream and a passion for writing poetry and songs. His dream to publish a book of his writings became a reality fifty-five years after his death.

He was well known in southern and central Kentucky, as his poetry was published regularly in local newspapers. His songs were used in business advertisements.

He served his country during World War I and continued his writing during this time.

Bill Chambers wrote poems and songs to bring joy, peace, and satisfaction to readers of his verse. To do this, he wrote in ways that would entertain and inspire readers of any age.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Introduction

A True Story of The Life of Bill Chambers from Huntersville, Kentucky

World War I Poems And Song Lyrics

Vote to Kill That Old Cackle

Vote for America’s Freedom

Battlefields of Europe

Peace at Any Price

The Spirit of America

My Darling Dear with Eyes So Blue

Cheer Up, Cheer Up, My Little Darling

The Girl That Can’t Be Beat

My Lisa Jane

Little Darling, I’ll Return to You

War Song for U.S.A. We Yankee Boys Will Be There Soon to Take  You on the Fly

War Song for U.S.A. We’re After Hitler Now

I Don’t Like Army Life

Fight to Protect Our Liberty

Listen For the Liberty Bell

Introduction to Precious Memories of the Past

Precious Memories of the Past

WHEN OUR HONEY SAID GOOD-BYE

The Little Chair

A Patch Upon the Seat

Loaded with Moonshine All the Way

The Runaway Team

I’m On the Mountain-Top

The Dapple Gray

PAINS AND HEARTACHES

And I Wish I Was a Little Bitty Boy

Peace And Joy When I’s A Boy

The Old Sow and Pigs

Mr. Walter Brown

Letters of Long Ago

Sally Ann

The Pretty Girls of Old Chanute

I’m Dreaming on the Seashore Now

To a Departed Friend

My Darling in the Valley

My First School Days in 1939

A Farmer Boy

Hard Work on the Farm

The Western Warehouse

Introduction to the Poem -The Lonely Graveyard

The Lonely Graveyard

The Moon

Grandmother and Her Old Stone Pipe

The Wayne Davidson Graveyard

Agee Ridge

Introduction to the River Raisin

The River Raisin

My Cabin on the Mountain

Introduction: I Thought I’s Living Hard

I Thought I’s Living Hard

The Babbling Brook

Introduction to Cartwright

The Cartwright Hills

The Church Bell of Cartwright Rings

I Signed My Name and Flew the Coop

The Freight Train

Mother’s Knee

The Plain Truth is Stated Here Without Exaggeration

When Sickness Hits a Family, it Puts a Change Upon Them All

A Visit to The Doctor in 1922

The Wandering Girl at Twenty-One

We’re Proud of the Clinton County High

The Teachers Meeting at Pulaski High School

Washing Compound

The Old School Ground at Chanute, Tennessee, Pickett County

The Four Flowers of My Heart

The Fertile Farm

The Wide Ford of Spring Creek

I Paid Them Off with Wrinkled Bills

Keeping Promises

Confession of a Teacher

Mr. John O. Dicken Has Passed Away

The Obey Bridge Between the Hills

The Pine-Clad Hills of Piney Grove

Tennessee Polytechnic Institute

Thinking of the Future

The Difference Between Today and Yesterday in Albany, Kentucky

Time Has Swiftly Passed Somehow and We Are  Nearing Our Fifties Now

Why Be Old at Fifty?

Introduction to ‘I Once Was Young but Now I’m Old’

I Once Was Young but Now I’m Old

My Neighborhood of Long Ago in and around the E.M.  Davidson Farm East of Maupin Church House

Three Boys Thumbing a Ride

Slow Down and Be Careful

No Wonder

The Drunken Driver

The Wreck

The Good Driver

It’s February, Nineteen Hundred Fifty-Three Albany, Kentucky

Living Alone

Long Years Ago

A Lonely Life

Could it Ever Be?

Mr. Jake Malone and Chambers Bill

Snowy Winter Weather

Spring Around the Corner

Answer to Poem Spring Around the Corner

Another Sunday Morn

Christmas is Coming, Oh Whoop-De-Do

The Spirit of Christmas

Christmas Day 1938

Dear Santa Claus

Our Good Santa Claus Is a Funny Old Man

Christmas Cheer for Children Dear

It’s Christmas Time in Albany

Christmas Day of Fifty-Nine

Fifty-Nine, Sixty, and Sixty-One

My Jersey Cow

My Birthday

My Grandma Says

The Dry Spell In 1953

Raleigh Cigarettes

Raleigh Brand Cigarettes

Slick Lowhorn Thanks General Staff and Doctors    at War Memorial Hospital

Doctor Hay Knows What’s Best

Bobbed Hair

The Large Oak Tree at Chanute, Tennessee

My First School Days at Chanute, Tennessee

Maupin Chapel and Churchyard

In The Neighborhood of Speck

I Can’t Agree

The Old Man’s Gift

I’ll Buy Your Stuff, and I’ll Buy It All

Opposition

Shall We Press Down Upon the Brow of Our  Children a Crown of Thorns?

Old Perspiration Will Not Kill

Are We Better Off?

Introduction to the Cries of Little Children Drowning in Mighty Ohio

Cries of Children Drowning in Mighty Ohio

Let Me Live in the Country

My Little Country Home

I’m Living in the Country

The Log Cabin Appeals to Me

Yes, I Do

The Beaty Schoolhouse

My Worries

My Do-Ra-Me

Coffee’s Too High

Go in Debt

I Can’t Forget the Price

I Love the Town of Albany Clinton County, Kentucky

Our Hometown Albany, Kentucky

Why Albany Will Grow

How Albany Will Grow Bill Chambers (Poet Bill) April 26, 1956

Where and When Albany Will Stop Growing

Is Life Worth the Living

When The Rain Falls to Wet My Grave

Lord Let Me Live to Write a Song

Believe It or Not

Earthly Riches

A Great Gift from God

The Old-Fashioned Homestead with the Old-Fashioned Couple

The Church People Then and Now

Fifty Years Ago

Oh, I Wonder, yes, I Wonder

The Narrow Way

The Power of God and the Strength of Man

I Hope That I May Never Dream Such Dreams as That Again

When Pain Awakes Us from Our Slumber

I’ll Meet You in the Morning

Will Our Life Be a Failure?

Undertaker Stay Away

Through the Valley of Death We All Must Pass

When I Get Ready to Die

The Soul Has Gone Away

When I’ve Gone on Across the Way

Bring My Flowers While I’m Living

Weep Not O’er Me on My Funeral Day

Springtime in Old Kentucky

Way Down in Tennessee

The Tennessee Belle

Dog Gone Those Dog Gone Blues

In the Cotton Fields of Texas

In The Hills of Old Kentucky, There is Home Sweet Home for Me

We’ll Never, Never Part

My Girl in the West

Oh, Daddy Dear, If You Were Here

My Carry Bell Lee

My Truelove

Little Darling

Merrick-National is the Name of the  Firm I Represent

My Blue-Eyed Jane in Georgia

Dear Nellie

Farewell, My Mary Anna

My Sixteen Southern Belle

Caney Branch Church-House and Graveyard

The Deep Southland

My Texas Belle

The River of Rolling in Kentucky

There’s a Little Country Graveyard with its Tombstones Very Low

Sacred to the Memory of Vera Little

When We Get Old

The Groundhog

That Moonshine Still in the Furnace Had Stayed

There’s No Time Now to Fool about There’s Only Time to Pray

The Old Church-House on the Locust Grove Hill

And I’ll Tell You More About It By and By

Oh! How I Hate to Leave You Weeping, As I Close My Eyes in Death

The Lonely Churchyard

My Departed True Love

Our Lord Will Call Someday

Lord We Come to Thee for Mercy

Final Thoughts

Introduction

For as long as I can remember, my dad possessed a deep affection for writing poetry. He wrote of real experiences, his faith, people, and places. His poetry was published in the local newspaper called The New Era, which was later changed to The Clinton County News. People from the area, surrounding counties, and states looked forward to reading Dad’s poems each week. Many faithful readers told him they were making scrapbooks of his poetry from the newspapers.

Poet Bill, as he became known, talked of publishing a book of his poems and lyrics. However, in 1968, his life was cut short so very suddenly, and the book he talked of so often seemed to never become a reality. His writings sat idle in suitcases for over fifty years until a family member offered to help publish a book. The poetry was brought out of the suitcases, and we found ourselves on a very enjoyable journey to make Dad’s wishes come true.

—Elsie Chambers Woodworth, Daughter

I have become acquainted with my uncle, Mr. Bill Chambers, through his printed word while preparing his writings for this book. He writes of the reality of his life and the world around him as he sees it. He makes his experiences come alive as each poem tells a story.

Elsie and I have worked together on this book for the past three years. We are excited to have made Poet Bill’s dream of publishing a book come true, even if it is fifty-three years later. We hope you enjoy Our Kentucky Dad’s Dream.

—Tomy Jo Shipley Galbreath

A True Story of The Life of Bill Chambers from Huntersville, Kentucky

February 16, 1953

Bill Chambers was born April 1, 1894, at Chanute, Pickett County, Tennessee, in a rude log cabin with a leaky roof. That cabin was built of yellow poplar logs that had been neatly hewn and well notched with what the old timers called a broad ax.

We had one large room, no partitions, and in the back of the room, we had the old-fashioned corded beds with the little trundle beds under the same. At night, the trundle beds were pulled out in the middle of the room, the quilts turned down, the pillows placed, and we children were put to bed.

In the front of the room, we had a table on one side of the fireplace, and a cook stove on the other side with its stovepipe elbowed into the chimney above the arch rock. Our chimney was built of soft sand-rock, and the fireplace was at least seven feet wide. The jams served as a grindstone to sharpen the case knife that sliced that old ham, shoulder, and middling meat, when we had it, like nobody’s business.

The loft of our cabin was made of five-foot boards laid loose on joists made of long poplar poles six or seven inches in diameter that reached across the room. Each end was placed into a hole that had been sawed out in the log wall.

The floor consisted of rough, thick plank nailed to large oak logs that they called sleepers. The cracks between the planks were wide enough for a knife or fork to fall through and go into a cellar about eight feet deep.

For our lights at night, we had the little brass lamps with the string wick coming out the top. When you lit the wick, the smoke went all over the room, up through the loft, and out through the roof into the open.

We had the old oven and lid where we baked our sweet potatoes and pones of bread three inches thick. In winter, when the weather was so cold and stove wood ran short, Grandmother would call for the hooks. Then she’d rake out large coals of fire on the hearthstones and place the oven on the coals, and pretty soon, it was hot. Next, she’d split the larger sweet potatoes and fill that oven full. Then, with the hooks, she’d place the lid upon the oven and cover it with hot embers and large coals of fire. Pretty soon, the best sweet potatoes you ever tasted were taken out of that old oven.

In 1900, I was six years old. My folks taught me the alphabet. They called it my ABCs, and they also taught me to count from 1 to 100, and then I had to learn the rest. So, one day, Mother called me into the house and said, Bill, I am going to have you start your school tomorrow, and I just wanted to tell you this: if you get a whipping at school, you’ll get one when you come home. If you fail to tell me about getting a whipping at school, when I do hear about it, I’ll cut the blood out of you. I knew she would make her words come true, for I’d seen her work on the other boys older than I.

The next morning, I got up early. I washed my hands, face, neck, ears, and lastly, my feet. I combed my hair and ate a few bites of breakfast before taking my primmer in one hand and a little willow basket in the other. The basket contained bread in hoecake form, a bowl of mashed Irish potatoes, and two roasting ears for my dinner. I hurried away to the old Chanute School House.

When I got there, I found a man by the name of Lee Harmon, who was my teacher. He had black hair, wore a black mustache, chewed Heel Tap Tobacco, and spurted the ambeer (tobacco juice) through his teeth away out in the middle of the floor. It wasn’t very long until I learned to read, write, spell, and figure a little, and then I had it made. The longer I went to school, the more I liked it.

In 1905, Grandmother became sick. They wrote for her son to come to see her, and when he came, he asked her to go and live with him, which she did. She never returned. As I understand it, today, she sleeps on top of a little gravel-covered hill away out in the mountains of East Tennessee.

While these years passed, the roof on our cabin became weather-beaten. High winds would blow off a board here and there, and that board was never replaced. The sills somehow got down on the ground and began to rot, which caused the corners of the cabin to give way and get out of shape. Then we realized we would have to build or move out and go somewhere else.

In 1907, my people moved to Clinton County, Kentucky, about one mile east of Static, Tennessee, just across the