Memories of Roy Jones #1

I’m Roy Jones. I’m recording this on September 28, 1995.  The purpose is to have some record of the changes that I have seen in my lifetime in our living styles.  I have really lived in two worlds – the world before World War II and the world after.  I often think how interesting it would have been if some of the family members had left some type of autobiography to show how they lived. The family tree is good but it is pretty dull.  The real stories are in the life they lived.

As a preface, I was born at the right time in history and in the right place.  I have seen so many changes and inventions – many of them coming after the age 21.  I am now 79.  I married the best wife in the world and I don’t think I could’ve married a better woman who could have suited me as Ruth has.  I have wonderful children – every one.  I think if I had to pick when and where I was born, I would pick the same. I had the best neighbors, best friends, the best co-workers – even casual acquaintances through my work.  All of this adds up to what I think is a very happy life.

I was blessed to live in the period I lived in and witnessed the many changes in a community like Reynolds and Taylor County.  My daddy’s folks always lived in Reynolds and my mama’s people lived near Butler, so this has always been my home.  There were wonderful stories told.  These stories were told thousands of times because it was before we had radio and TV.

First, a description of Reynolds. This is during my early childhood during the 1920’s.  Most of the buildings were two-story, brick buildings built all close together without a firewall or anything between them.  This proved to be a bad thing later on.  On the west side of the block of buildings was a tin shelter that extended all over the sidewalk.  It must’ve been 100 to 150 feet long.  That’s for people to get under when the weather got bad.

Reynolds Baptist Church

Saturday was the big day.  All of the black people came to town on that day from the farms and they just crowded the sidewalks.  An unusual thing across the south side was a park that I believe was donated by Mr. Coleman, one of the first settlers of the area, that comprised of must be four acres of land.  He gave it to be used as a park and for the establishment of churches.   On the southwest side of the park was a Baptist church.  At that time it was a nice, white wooden church. On the northeast corner of the park was the Methodist church.  It was and is an impressive building that was built right after World War II. In the center was a bandstand.  On Sunday afternoon the local performers would get up and give a concert.  It was torn down, much to my chagrin, because I thought it made a perfect setting for a park.

All streets and sidewalks were dirt.  All of the stores, or most of them, were in the bottom of the two story buildings. Upstairs housed the dentist and lawyers offices.  Right in the middle of the block was a hotel called the Big Oak Hotel. There used to be a big oak that stood by the sidewalk right in front of it and it had a balcony extended over the sidewalk.  I was always sorry that I didn’t ever go up there and watch the people but I never did.

The telephone office was also located on the second floor of a building about center on the west side of the business block.  The funny thing was that we always had a telephone extended out in the country and there were always jokes about the party lines.  I think we paid two dollars a month and we had five parties on our line.  When you rang the operator, we called her Central you would tell her who you wanted, not the number.  We did have a phone book but nobody went to the trouble of looking up the number.  A lot of times she could look out the window and see the person you were calling on the sidewalk.  She would call them and get them into the drug store to talk to you.  At one time we had three or four doctors.  Most of them were located in the back of the drug store, which made it convenient.

Most things were bought on credit.  The farmers depended on cotton and sold it once a year.  They had no income except that one day when they would sell their cotton.   One story that shows the extent of credit, that may be true and may not be true, involves the Barrow Brothers.  They operated a hardware store.  There were not such things as fresh vegetables to sell, but each store would sell cheese, crackers, flourpoints and small tools. The Barrow Brothers operated in a two story building on the southwest corner of the business block. One of them one day told the other that he had sold a saddle but couldn’t; remember who he had sold it to and couldn’t find a record of having charged it.  They thought of it a long time and decided to put “one saddle” on the top of each of the statements.  When the farmers came in to pay their statement in the fall, the one who didn’t object would be the one who had bought the saddle.  In the fall when the farmers paid up, nobody objected.  Every one of them paid the cost of the saddle.

Across the street from the Barrows was also a two story building that sold everything.  It sold clothes in addition to groceries.  In the back of Goddard’s store was his undertaking establishment.  Later on you could buy your baby food in the front and have your funeral in the back.  They eventually moved out and built a nice funeral home.

One of the first businesses was the Ford Dealer, Mr. Crawford.  He couldn’t read or write but was still a good businessman.  The story is that Clyde Hill, the druggist, went to try a new car.  Mr. Hill was a type of “desperado” when it came to driving.  They went across the railroad tracks and Mr. Hill started going too fast.  Mr. Crawford reached down to the floorboard and got the instructions.  He said, “This instruction book says here you have to stay between the ditches.”

The gins were dependent on cotton.  At that time we had two gins that were located not over two blocks from the business section.   We had an ice house located in one of the gins. The only time we could get ice was on Friday when they would bring it from Macon.  The jail stood right across the railroad that bisects the town going east and west.  The jail couldn’t have been over 12 or 15 feet square and stood out in the hot sun, 75 or 80 feet from any building or shade tree.  I think it had one window at the top and it had a heavy door with a chain through it.  I would be an awful place to be – hot or cold weather.

I mentioned we had three or four doctors.  Medicine back then was pretty primitive. This is a story told about Tom Sanders.  Mr. Sanders was 28 years old and became constipated.  He had never been to a doctor.  He went to Dr. Mangham and told him the problem.  Back then all they knew to do was to give an enema. Dr. Mangham told him to lie on the table on his stomach.  As the doctor began his procedure, Tom Sanders jumped up and yelled, “Be careful there doc – you almost stuck something up my ass!”

You develop a town like Reynolds in strange patterns.  About a block from the main section was a big storm pit.  I guess it was contagious but a lot of people would head to the storm pit when a cloud came up or looked anyway threatening.   One Sunday afternoon we went for a ride and there had been a shower about thirty minutes before.  We came by the storm pit and they were marching out and all were looking around to see where it was.  It had been gone for 30 minutes or more.

The stores sold most of the same thing except we had two or three meat markets.  They didn’t have deliveries like they do now.  The manager of the meat market would find cows and butcher them and bring them and sell them during the weekend.  It was anything but sanitary or humane.  We had a few cows, mostly dairy cows.  Daddy sold one grown cow and the meat market manager came out to kill the cow.  Daddy was gone.  The man came to the door to see if we had a shotgun because they were having trouble killing the cow.  That’s about as bad as you can get.  But we only had meat on the weekend.  There was no such thing as fresh vegetables, so the big seller was cheese.

Across the railroad track was the black section.  We called it the bottom.  Most of the houses were similar that have two or three rooms.  Everything was built out of wood.  There were three brick homes in Reynolds. One owned by Dr. Bryan, the other was owned by Charlie Neisler, who owned the gin and warehouse where they stored the cotton.  The third one was built out of some kind of stone by Mr. Ricks, who also operated and gin and warehouse.  Most of them that operated a gin and warehouse were considered the top men in a town like Reynolds.

The other houses were built out of wood. Most were painted and looked attractive.  Of course, at that time we didn’t have modern grass for lawns – there wasn’t any way to cut it.  So we swept the yards once a week on a Friday afternoon.  There is really nothing prettier to see a yard has clean as it can be and showing the print of the broom.  The broom came from sassafras bushes that had a lot of branches at the top and made perfect broom.  Some of them used cane brooms but that was a slow and tedious process.

A lot of people within a block of the business section had milk cows.  I particularly remember Mr. Flowers that taught school.  He lived in what is now the Crawley house.  On a Halloween he had gone off and somebody got his milk cow.  He hunted for him the whole weekend but couldn’t find him.  On Monday when they opened the school, they found the milk cow upstairs in Mr. Flower’s classroom. Mr. Flowers was old and they liked to play jokes on him.  How they got the cow upstairs and how they got the cow down, I don’t know.

 …. to be continued.

 1995-1996 recordings from Roy Jones.  Transcribed by his daughter, Harriet Jones Geesey.