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Day-Day's Dream

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Chapter One

I was born on April 23, 1924, in Smith County, Mississippi, on a rural route between Mt. Olive and Mize. My parents, Mollie Robinson Byrd and Artha James Byrd, made our home right in the middle of Sullivan's Hollow. My father walked to our mailbox in the rain, took pneumonia, and died when I was two years old and my sister, Bertha Byrd (Lewis), was nine days old. I can't even remember my father. My mother was left with a great responsibility to rear us and support us, and she did a good job. She continued working in the fields to help us survive. My daddy had bought a Model T car before he died. Grandpaw, Orlando "Jack" Byrd, my dad's father, came to our house and put a lock on the car so that we couldn't use it. Grandpaw had given my daddy two mules to farm the land, but he tried to take them back when Daddy died. My mama wouldn't allow him to take the mules, though. That was our only way to travel, by mule and wagon. It was a constant struggle between Grandpaw and Mama. He wouldn't have much to do with Mama after my daddy died.

Aunt Cammye's Desk

My very first day of school, at the approximate age of six, was at New Haven in Smith County, located between Mize and Mt. Olive. This was a block building, and it still stands today. The first day of school, and all week for that matter, I would not go into my own classroom! Instead, I would sneak in my Aunt Cammye Byrd's classroom and hide under her desk. My own teacher would come looking for me and take me back where I was supposed to be. Finally, my mother took me out of school. She enrolled me again the following year at Taylorsville School after we moved to the area. That's where I spent all twelve years of school until I graduated from high school in 1943.

Cotton Pickin' and Cucumber Stings

Several years after my daddy died, my mama married my stepdad, Charlie Wood, who knew only farming as a way to make a living. My mother sold the house that my daddy had built when they first married to her father-in-law, Grandpaw Byrd. When I was about six or eight years old, my mother used the money to purchase a very small and very old house and eighty acres from her mother, my grandmaw, Elizabeth "Betty" Robinson. We moved from Mt. Olive to Taylorsville, about two miles north, after her husband, my grandpaw, D. N. "Dan" Robinson died. Grandmaw couldn't afford to finish paying off their loan, and the bank was going to repossess the land and sell it for the balance due. My mama didn't want to lose the land that had been her father's, so our whole family had to work hard in the fields earn an income. I can remember chopping cotton and picking cotton as a youngster. I never could quite get a hundred pounds a day, but I sure tried hard! We grew acres of cucumbers and had to pick them every day in the early morning. The dew would always make our hands, arms, and legs sting terribly. We took the cucumbers into town to a pickling vat. This extra money helped greatly to meet our needs.

The house had only one room with a fireplace. There was no heat in the other rooms. A larger hall separated the kitchen and fireplace room from the bedrooms. I can remember looking up in bed and seeing daylight. Snow would sift through the cracks in the roof and land on our quilts and covers. On July 4, 1930, our baby brother, Jimmy Harold Wood, was born in this house.

Tight Wadded

I also remember working for my mother's aunt, Mollie Sullivan Robinson (my mother was named after her). My sister Bertha, my stepsister Bernice, and I chopped cotton for her because mama said she was loaded with money. She had no children and had a car when no one else did. When we finished the day's work, Aunt Mollie only gave each one of us a quarter! I guess that's why she was so rich: she didn't want to pay us much. Needless to say, my mother never let us help her again. We worked in the fields barefoot, and the hot sand would almost blister our feet. We carried water to the fields and buried it in a hole in the ground so it would stay cool enough to drink. We had only two horses and hand tools, no real farming equipment. We had only a horse and a wagon for transportation.

Proverbs 15:27 (NIV)

27 The greedy bring ruin to their households, but the one who hates bribes will live.

Let Us Go to the House of the Lord

My mother always saw to it that she took us kids to church and Sunday school on Sundays. I have one sister, Bertha Leeda Byrd (Lewis), one half brother, Jimmy Harold Wood, and one stepsister, Bernice Wood (Gibson). We had no car, so we took a shortcut over plowed fields and through the woods to get to church, about two miles away—rain or shine. We carried our shoes in our hands along with a wet rag. When we got near the church, we sat down, washed our feet with the wet rag, and put our shoes on. We went to Fellowship Baptist Church near Taylorsville. I was baptized in a small creek that runs through Mize when I gave my life to God and joined Zion Hill Baptist Church, where my father and baby sister are buried. All my ancestors on my dad's side are also buried there.

Acts 2:38 (NIV)

38 Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."

A Bicycle Not Built for Two

We had a wood-burning cook stove in our house, but no electricity and no refrigerator. I can remember when we first got electricity! We would hang a long cord in the center of the rooms and put a lightbulb on the end of it. It was great, as studying by a kerosene lamp was not easy! I picked cotton with my sister Bertha to buy our first bicycle from one of our uncles. It was a very tall man's used bike with a crossbar. We had to put it by a fence or something tall to be able to get on it and give ourselves a shove to get started. Then we could only pedal it when the pedals came around to the top and our feet could reach them. We would get on that bike and pedal to town (about two miles one way) at noon to get a block of ice to put in the old icebox. What a treat a glass of iced tea was when we came in from the hot fields for dinner! Sometimes we would have to bury the block of ice in a pile of sawdust to keep it from melting. On Saturdays, we kids would get to walk to town and maybe go to a movie, get an ice cream cone, or buy a "dope," which was a cold bottled drink. We could only go to town if the chickens had laid enough eggs for us to take to the grocery store and sell.

More than Just Water for Our Stepdad

All my mother's brothers' family members were also farmers. When I was maybe ten years old, my uncles would pay my sisters and me money for babysitting their children on a pallet under a shade tree while their wives worked out in the fields. We made just enough to get ourselves a permanent hair wave—one a year. We babysat the whole summer. We would take big jugs of water from the well at our house to the field and bury them in a hole we had dug in the ground to keep it cool. My sister and I each had to carry a quart jar of water, morning and evening, walking barefoot across the hot, plowed fields to our stepdaddy, who rested under a shade tree. There he molested both of us, as we had to go one at a time with the water. My sister and I both told our mother, but he lied about doing it.

Psalm 27:5–6 (NIV)

5 For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his sacred tent and set me high upon a rock. 6 Then my head will be exalted above the enemies who surround me; at his sacred tent I will sacrifice with shouts of joy; I will sing and make music to the Lord.

Dinner Bell and Wedding Bell!

At this house in Taylorsville, Grandmaw Byrd had mounted a huge plantation bell on a tall post with a rope tied to the handle. At dinnertime, she would have me pull the rope and ring the bell for all the workers to come to dinner. It was also used when there was a death or emergency to notify the neighborhood that something was wrong. The bell currently stands today at my new home on Sharon Road. It has become a tradition in our family weddings to use the bell to signify the beginning of the ceremony. My daughter, Patsy, first used it in her wedding in 1966. My granddaughter, Shari, used it in her wedding in 1986. My grandson, John Howard, also used it in his wedding in 1994. The tradition carried on to the next generation with my first great-grandson, Brent. He used it in his wedding in 2011.

Genesis 2:24 (NIV)

24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Working for Fun!

Grandpaw Byrd raised watermelons and cantaloupes. He took them to Jackson, Mississippi, to sell them on the streets and house to house. I helped pick the melons, and we kids would carry them to a big pile in the fields. Grandpaw would come along with a horse and slide, pick up the piles, and carry them to the big truck to load out. The slide was a wooden platform made of wooden boards or two-by-fours. It would slide on the ground with no wheels at all. We loved to ride the slides to the next pile of melons!

We grew most of our food in our garden and had fruit trees. We would dry peaches and apples by cutting them in small slices and placing them on a white sheet on top of the barn's tin roof, where the sun would dry them. They made delicious pies and fried tarts! I remember watching closely for the rain. If it looked like it was going to rain, we had to climb onto the barn roof and get the fruit back in the house!

Since we had no bathrooms in the house, there was an outhouse that stood by itself and was used for a bathroom. Our folks would set huge barrels or drums in the down spouts at the eaves of the house and catch rain water for us kids to bathe.

All our clothes were washed under a big shade tree in wash tubs of water drawn out of the well where we also got our drinking water. My mama made soap from hog fat and lye boiled in a big black wash pot with a fire under it. This black pot was always used for the clothes that were most soiled. We boiled the clothes in the lye soap and took them out to a stump called a battling block, where a wooden paddle was used to clean them. They were rinsed in the wash tubs and hung on a clothesline or fence to dry. We had two black irons that were very heavy. We had to put them in the fireplace facing two hot logs or on top of our cooking stove for them to get hot enough to use.

On Saturdays, our yards were all cleaned off (there was no grass left). We would sweep the yards clean with a broom we had made by putting branches of dogwood limbs together so we had a clean yard for any Sunday company.

Saturday was also a scrub day. Our floors were just planks. We used a scrub mop made out of a thick piece of wood with a handle on it. The wood had many holes bored in it, which were filled with corn shucks. We wet the floors with water and lye soap and pushed the mop over the floors to clean them.

Luke 11:25 (NIV)

25 When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order.

The Jumbo Joint

During our school years, my mother took over a small school supply and hamburger stand called "The Jumbo Joint." It was located at the school. Since we lived two miles north of Taylorsville and had no car, Mother and I would get up early and walk to the store to have it open for the school kids before the bell rang. During lunch and recess, we kids would help Mama in the store by cooking hamburgers and selling school supplies. We sold whatever kids would need, from paper and pencils to snacks. We repeated our walk home every evening after school. On nights when there were ball games or school functions, we kept the store open and then walked the two miles home up a gravel road, rain or shine, in the dark. There were no TVs then, and we didn't even have a radio for a long time. Some Saturday nights the family would walk about a mile to a neighbor's home to listen to their radio. This was a real treat. We listened to Lum and Abner, the news, and comedy shows.

This History of Taylorsville High School

The first Taylorsville School was in an old one room frame building in 1900 and 1901 taught by Professor H.W. Reynolds and Mrs. Mattie McCullen. In 1902 the Board of Trustees saw the necessity of enlarging the building and a two-story wooden structure was built. In that same year came a new superintendent, R.H. Hester.

The next step of development, consolidation, came in 1924, when a commodious one-story brick building with eight large and two small rooms and an auditorium with a seating capacity of almost one thousand was erected. By this time the faculty had increased to twelve and the enrollment to 500 pupils. The consolidation brought the tallyho drawn by horses, later succeeded by the school bus.

Sources say, Coach Lucien Cowen gave Taylorsville School the mascot name of Tartars. There are only two schools known to be Tartars in the US. When Blaine H. Eaton was named coach at Taylorsville in the early 1940's there were no usable uniforms for the team to wear. Coach Eaton went to the State School Department where colleges and other schools sent their old uniforms to find something suitable for the team. The only uniforms left were green and white; thus changing the schools colors from red into green and white, and years later, gold.

In 1934 the Boys Basketball team won Taylorsville their first State Championship. Taylorsville has won a total of 19 State Championships in various sports to date.

Works Progress Adminstration for Mississippi. WPA Historical Research Project; S.V. Pwell, Supervisor. 1936-38.

My Brand New Coat

Sometime in the middle of my school years, my mother was finally able to purchase a used Model A car that helped us get to school and church. Before that we went to church and funerals in a mule wagon.

Most times we had to push the car to get it started! Once while I was pushing it, the pocket of a brand new winter coat that my mother had spent hours making got caught on the door handle, and I was dragged along as the car sped down the road. The pocket was ripped off, and I was freed without injury. It broke my heart about my new coat! Bless my mother's heart, she darned it up, and I made it through the winter wearing it.

Matthew 6:31 (NIV)

31 So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'

On My Own

During my senior year at Taylorsville High School, my girlfriend Joann Weathersby and I worked it out with our teacher so that we could double our subjects and finish our work in the first half of the school year. We then went to Laurel, Mississippi, rented a room, and got jobs at Masonite Corporation, where lumber and paneling boards were made. We worked out in the mill pressing Masonite boards that had been dipped in hot water to make light reflectors. The press bent the boards in order to cover fluorescent tubes. We would remove boards from the press after several minutes with our thick gloves on. Joann and I returned to school at the end of the year. We graduated with the rest of our class and received our diplomas. Please understand that World War II had begun and the women were working the men's jobs while the men were off to war.

After graduation, I went back to work at Masonite. I rented a small house and called my mother to move the family to Laurel. I knew that our whole family could get work at Masonite. She moved them, and she too went to work at Masonite. Mother actually worked there until retiring twenty-five years later. The day she moved in, Mother and I worked so hard to get everything in place and hooked up that we decided to go out to eat. My girlfriend, Joann, and her mother also moved in with us to help with the rent and expenses.

Just as Mother and I had gotten dressed to go eat, John Howard Tanner stopped by to see Joann. John was Joann's cousin. Since she had left the house to go out on a date, John asked Mother and me to go out to eat with him. We went, ate, and visited together. John was home from Taylorsville and was home on a thirty-day leave from the Marine Corps. He had returned home after spending five years in China. I had never seen him before. I was only nineteen years old then, and he was thirty-one. I thought he was so good looking! He was also very charming. He was tall and dark-complexioned, with a slight receding hairline from being in the sun during the war. My mother knew John, as he had gone to school with her brothers. After that first meeting, John returned every evening, and we fell in love before he returned to the marine base in Quantico, Virginia. He asked for an extension of his leave and got it. That gave us more time together. His pet name for me was "Sweetie!"

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Day-Day's Dream by Doris Tanner Ross Copyright © 2013 by Doris Tanner Ross. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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