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| Reynolds High School |
About two blocks from the business section was our
school. Reynolds High School. It was an
impressive, big building with two stories.
It was used for 6th, 7th and 8th grades
after they combined the high school with the one in Butler in the 1960’s. It has since been torn down.
Now Butler is nine miles west of Reynolds. Of course there was a dirt road to it. It is the county seat of the county. There was always a lot of jealousy between
Reynolds and Butler. Being the county
seat, Butler had a few more people – they naturally get more than Reynolds and
Reynolds was always jealous of that. We
fought for years to keep our schools running.
It was not unusual for the graduating classes to have 12 or 15
students. When I graduated in 1923, I
think we had 21 or 22. They bragged
about how big the class was. They kept
the school because they knew it would be the center of the community. After the high school left, all we had were
the churches to hold the community together.
That’s really what has happened since the schools combined in the
1960’s.
There were a few old homes but not many that I know of that
were built before the Civil War. I
always say the Woman’s Clubhouse was the oldest home in Reynolds. There were a lot of nice homes like the
Papphousing house that was built right across the street from the Clubhouse.
There are several scattered around the town.
Back then most houses were built as close to the business block that you
can get. I guess that would be natural
because to be away from town meant that you would have to walk or go in a
buggy. Reynolds was so isolated that it developed
its own culture. Fort Valley is 15 miles
to the east but you would have to cross the Flint River and swamp. To get to Fort Valley, you would have to
drive to Roberta about 14 miles north but you would have to cross a river to
get to Roberta. To go to Macon you would go
through Roberta. Mr. Neisler, a
prominent businessman, built a private bridge across the river and would charge
50 cents to cross. When you came back,
you would have to pay another 50 cents.
Montezuma and Oglethorpe were about 20 and 22 miles south of
Reynolds but to get there was all dirt roads.
So that left only Butler - which was a good drive for a horse to make it
there and back in a day’s time. The best
way to get out of Reynolds was the trains.
There were four trains that came to Reynolds. Two came early, one going toward Columbus and
about 30 minutes lataer the one from Columbus to Macon would come through. That would be repeated at about 2:00 or 3:00
in the afternoon.
As I mentioned, we had developed a good culture within our
town. Mr. Joiner, the school principal
for 50 years, was one of the reasons for that.
He came from Kentucky and many of us owe a lot to him. He believed in
the old way – he taught in the classroom but would occasionally walk the
hallways. Any student having to wait in
the halls when Mr. Joiner walked by would get the beating of his life. He had a janitor named Uncle Henry. Every Monday morning Uncle Henry would go across
the patch of woods and come back with an armful of switches. I don’t know how Mr. Joiner got to the switches
so quick. The worst feeling in the world was when the teacher sent you to stand
in the hall. Every door that cracked you
would think Mr. Joiner was coming. You
had about a 5% to 10% chance of him coming because he was teaching. But if he did come there was a 100% chance
you would get the beating of your life.
We would be sitting in the classrooms and would hear the licks out in
the hall. There is a certain amount of
sadism in all of us – some would whisper, “Pour in on Mr. Joiner, pour it on!” We wouldn’t know who was getting the
whipping. My wife had taught in three
other schools. She said at the other schools, over 50% of the time spent in
faculty meetings were covering disciplinary problems. She was surprised that in Reynolds,
discipline never came up in a single meeting.
We didn’t run out when it was time for lunch. Mr. Joiner had his own rules. He stood in the middle of the hall and we
would march out by the drum beat. If it
wasn’t raining, we would sit on the steps on the south side of the building and
eat lunch. If it was raining, we would
eat in our classroom. The town people
went home for lunch. Most of us had
light bread – you couldn’t buy it sliced back then. It was the worst job in the world to cut soft
bread – the slices wouldn’t be the same width.
The majority would bring a biscuit and meat or biscuit and peanut
butter. Some of the sacks would be
greasy because they would bring side meat of fatback for their lunch.
I’m getting off the subject but I do remember in the third
or fourth grade our teacher said a student needed to be isolated. She said she wasn’t going to name him but for
all the boys to take a good bath and the best soap to use was Lifebuoy. We didn’t know what isolated meant. Some that lived in town said they would look
in the dictionary when they went home for lunch. They came back and told us what it
meant. The funny thing is that it was a
good percent of the girls and boys were from the country and I don’t remember
being bothered by body odor the whole time I was in school. I can name more people now that have body
odor than did back then when we didn’t have indoor bathrooms.
I also remember in the third grade when the teacher said
there would never be another war. I remember feeling that I was born at the
wrong time because there wouldn’t be any excitement. Our teacher had said the war to end all wars
had been fought. She called in the World
War. No one dreamed there would be World
War II.
All of my children took music from Mrs. Pendergrast, who
taught for many years. She was a good teacher – one of the best. The extent of our culture is shown in the
fact that her son, John Pendergrast, sang opera in New York for years. I remember him coming to the chapels in the
auditorium. He could hold a note for so
long that some of the students were snickering.
When we got back to our rooms the teacher was not too pleased. We all blamed it on the Potterville boys but
I suspect that it was some of us too. We
had never heard anyone hold a note so long.
We also had the Newsome family orchestra that, to me, was as
good as any big name orchestras. I think they could have competed with Glen
Miller or any of them. It wasn’t composed
completely of Reynolds people. It
included little Fred Peed and Doc Tante from Butler that I remember. They played for dances all around and could
play any kind of music you wanted.
The black community had their own way to show off their
musical talent. Southwest of Reynolds there
were a lot of farm owners that were black.
Every Saturday, when a lot of blacks were in town, an orchestra would come
to town. The band was led by a man named Johnny Salem and was much like the
Florida A&M band. He would go
through all kinds of gyrations in front of the band with his stick. All of them
would cut up and sound in rhythm. In the
back were little boys. All they would have were tubs and pans and sticks of
wood but they had a perfect rhythm. I
used to beg Daddy to take me to town on Saturday afternoon and hoped to see
them. The streets would be filled and
all of a sudden someone would holler, “Johnny Salem and his band are coming to
town!” You could hear them in the distance. It sounded like thunder to start with from
the west side. They would come up the
main street and go to the railroad, whirl around, and go to the other section
of town. Everybody would park and watch
them.
There were other cultural events like spelling bees. What always fascinated me was that not always
the smartest person was the best speller. The
spelling bees involved all the towns around and we took a lot of pride in
them. Jim Brewer, who had one of the
barber shops, was a good speller and was captain of the Crowell team. Mr. Joiner was giving out the words. The first word the Crowell team had to spell
was “habit.” You would spell by
syllables. The first Crowell participant
said “ h a b hab, i t it. The next word
to Mr. Jim was rabbit. He said, “r a b
rab i t it. It was hard for him to live
down that he was the captain of the team and wasn’t able to spell rabbit.
---to be continued.
Recordings from Roy Jones.
Transcribed by his daughter, Harriet Jones Geesey.
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