10/27/2000

Remembering a Bygone Era

Those of you who grew up in the 1930s know that life was totally different then, a mere seventy years ago. Andy Wofford wrote to me about growing up in a rural southern town in the '30s. He writes about it in such a colorful way, I feel like I'm settin' and rockin' on his front porch for real. Do you remember what life in the '20s or '30s was like? Please write to me about it!

The Rural South in the 1930s
By Andy Wofford

Dateline: 1930s in Post Ridge, a town along the Mississippi Delta

Post Ridge was a sleepy, delta cotton town 'bout 10 miles from the Mississippi River. Sometime during the thirty's the highway department put up a road sign. It was a small two line sign. "Post Ridge / Pop 54." I never did know where the post was, and of course in delta land there's not a ridge for miles and miles. Lots of swamps but no ridges. Post Ridge was a plantation town. Seems like most everybody had a place out in the country, but lived in town. I now call myself a "child of the depression." But we never knew bout it, cept sometimes we heard the old folks talking about cotton for 4 cent a pound. I musta been bout 20 before I knew I was a "child of the depression," when I was up North and began to see the "real live Republicans."

And speaking of Republicans. Everybody in Post Ridge that voted, voted a straight Democratic ticket, except nobody ever voted for Mr. Huey Long. He wanted to give all the po folks 40 acres and a mule. The folks in Post Ridge were afraid it would come out of their land and their mules. Anyway we had gravel roads and dirt sidewalks. After the Kingfish was shot we got a day off from school and the next year we got blacktop roads but no sidewalks.

There were few laws. Cattle, dogs, cats, chickens and children roamed free. You had to drive pretty careful or you'd run over somebody's milk cow. My Daddy said he could always tell when a cow was going to cross the road by the way it switched its tail, but I never did figure it out. The street lights went out at 9 or 10 so you had to be careful walking home or you'd run into a cow or worse step in its cow-flop. Except for the winter we were always barefoot so stepping in a cow flop or chicken dodo wasn't what we were liked to do. I suppose today with all the chickens raised by Mr. Perdue and Mr. Thurston people don't have that problem anymore. Probably most people today never even saw any live chickens.

Saturday was a big day. All the field hands were off and came to town to shop or whatever. Most all came in wagons, but they dressed up. On Saturday we must have had over a 1,000 people so you know the town was filled up. There were bout 6 or 7 general stores, sometimes owned by the plantation owners.

There was a railroad running through town. A passenger train went east in the morning and came back thru that evening. We got mail off the train, but I never saw any passengers to or from Post Ridge. So bout 1935 a two-car diesel train replaced the steam train. It was a funny looking thing and we called it the "doodle bug." However, we still had a freight train that came thru town. It had a handsome steam engine that burned oil instead of coal. I thought the engineer must be bout the smartest feller there was. He liked us kids and would blow steam at us if we got too close to the cowcatcher.

I learned something from that train, too. Folks said if you killed a snake its tail would twitch till sunset. Well just before the train came thru we killed a snake and tied it to the rail. Boy that tail didn't twitch after the train ran over it. So I knew I couldn't believe everything somebody said.

Our school had all the grades in one building, cept we didn't have kindergarten. Must have been bout 60 kids in the whole school. Bout half came on school buses. We had two. One went north from town and the other south. They were trucks with homemade bodies for the kids to ride in. The one that went north was painted blue so we called it the "Yankee Blue Heaven." We called the one that went south "Dixie Bell." There were usually less than ten students in each class. In grammar school each teacher had two grades. One had study period while the other had class. Course we always listened to the other class if it was interesting, and made good grades the next year. So you might say we spent two years in each grade, but never failed!

If you misbehaved you got sent out the room or to the principal's office. Sometime you even got a spanking. But we never told our folks at home, cause then we'd get another one. I got sent out the room a lot. But if I heard the principal coming down the hall I'd leave or hide until he was gone. My older brother Rob got sent out just once, and wouldn't you know it, the principal caught him. He got a good talking to and the principal ended up by asking him, "Why aren't you good like your little brother?"

Everybody called one another by their first name. If it was a grown-up it was Mr. or Mss, like Mr. Ralph or Mss Lilly. I don't think there was a better place in all the world to grow up in. And the grown-ups, they all loved all the kids. Yes sir. Post Ridge was a most wonderful place!

Links

Life in the 1930s

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