I haven’t done all that well at getting all the pics added to this blog, but at least I finally managed to make them accessible.

Aunt Dot’s Old Family Photos This one has the whole pages scanned in.

Separated Photos And this one has quite a few of those as separate photos

Aunt Dot’s Old Family Photos This one has the whole pages scanned in.

Separated Photos And this one has quite a few of those as separate photos

After just a little:

Maybe cleaned a little too much.  Still, it is not changed too much.

Fast forward to this Christmas.
One of my presents this year was from Glenn, who managed to unearth the copy we both remembered from the dining room buffet, where odds and ends always seemed to gravitate in our household. That is where the telephone was. Which probably explains why the back cover of The Forgotten War seems to have been used as a scratchpad/address book. Otherwise, it is in surprisingly good condition for a 1950s paperback.
The Author was J.R. Yates, which would seem to be Uncle John, and it is actually a collection of essays. For anyone who is interested, I’ll take a stab at getting it on here. Eventually.

Here is an excerpt from the title section:

THE FORGOTTEN WAR

By J. R. YATES

On a recent visit to Cuba, and upon entering the Harbor at Havana I passed over the place where on February 15, 1898, the U. S. Battleship Maine sank and took down with it the lives of 266 officers and sailors More than 55 years ago on a Sunday morning the people of the United States were astounded to read in the morning papers a report carried under glowing headlines by every daily paper in the United States. “‘The Maine Sunk ”

The consternation with which it was received by the American people can be compared to that which they received on another Sunday, December 7, 1941 The report of the assault up- on cur naval base and facilities at Pearl Harbor.

The story of this disaster and the succeeding events which led up to a declaration of war with Spain the following April have been told many times. and it would perhaps be point- less to refer to it now were it not for two facts.

First, well over half a century has elapsed since the disaster occurred and as the years mount up fewer and f ewer people are aware, or even interested, in these events And they are becoming continually dimmer in our recollection as those who participated ln them pass from the field of World actlvltles.

The elapsed time since the sinking of the Main will be more clearly in mind when it is realized that of the entire membership of the present Senate, 40 had not been born February 15 1898, and 21 more of the members were in pre-school age (Under 6 years ) Only 18 of our present members had reached an age where they have any recollection of the war events of that date, and only two members of this body served in the Spanish-American War Further indicative of the passing of the years is the fact that of the 294,- 000 that fought through the Spanish -American War, Including the Philippine Insurrection, and the Boxer rebellion, there was only 74,881 of us left Aprll 1, 1953 We veterans are checking out at tie rate of 7000 per year. A little more than one-fifth are living today, and of course, as we grow older the death rate will be accelerated.

And the other reason why I feel justified in asking more of your time while I recount some of the facts and conditions surrounding the Spanlsh-American War is that so many of our citizens have a great misconception of that war and of its magnitude and are prone to dwarf the conflict in comparison with other wars in which we have been, and are engaged.

Immediately after the sinking of the “Maine” a board of inquiry was matlgated by the American Government, and a similar one by the Government of Spain for the purpose of determining the cause of the explosion which sank the battleship.

(Any oddities of punctuation, capitalization, and spelling should be excused as my unfamiliarity with a bit of technology that allows a scanned page to be translated to editable text.  Some of the ways it reads text are howlingly funny, but that it actually works is pretty amazing.)

Oh, and the white-haired gentleman was quite the dashing young soldier.

I know a place. A cave. Not fine with dripping crystal; rustic, rather.

It is not deep, although narrow paths and holes and halls of it riddle the ridge.

Instead, its claim to my regard, or yours, lies in its openness.

The limestone hill spreads wide and offers you itself in the person of one stone room

the size of a country church (unsteepled, plain, but rising high).

The neighbors dance there–square and buck–on the smooth uneven floor,

and take their rest on benches around rough walls, fanned by the cool breath of the earth

while they talk, admire and tap to tunes.

In the heat outside, grasshoppers and cicadas beat dry grass and the light bends the brush on the creekbank. A fine view as any stained glass.

Ruskin Cave, with its natural auditorium 350 feet long, 80 feet wide and 40 feet high provided a most interesting feature for the school.
—William O. Batts

Ruskin Cave College Preparatory School opened in 1904, and took its name from the cave that provided the school’s auditorium. The founder, the Rev. R.E. Smith, deliberately limited the enrollment to 200 and mandated military training. Unlike many schools at the time, the school was officially coeducational. The school’s educational emphasis was on musical education, both instrumental and vocal, but classes also included literature and religion. (1) Many faculty left during World War I to serve in the military, and the school had to close in 1918.

[Miners and moonshiners: Historic industrial uses of Tennessee cavesMidcontinental Journal of Archaeology, Fall 2001 by Douglas, Joseph]

The locations and shapes of caves varied, so only a few were easily accessible and had enough level space to meet the needs of even small-scale industry. Still, there are some examples of this use in the state. In Fentress County, William York, father of World War I hero Alvin York, used a cave on his property to house his blacksmith shop, though the business never really prospered (Crocker 1979). A more significant example, albeit short-lived, came from Ruskin Cave in Dickson County. Ruskin Cave was the site of industrial activity even before the Ruskin Cooperative Association, a socialist commune founded by Julius Wayland, bought the property for its new home in 1896. The cave had been known since the early 19^sup th^ century, when it was called the Great Cave, a reference to its spacious size. In 1877 Bud Norris and Thomas Rodgers formed a partnership, bought the cave, and erected a grist mill there. A newspaper account from 1886, in addition to stating the cave was a local attraction and used for dances, also noted that “[n]ear the mouth of the cave is standing a grist mill, which is run by a stream of water proceeding down the bluff from the cave” (Anonymous 1886:n.p.). The settlement that grew up around the cave became known as Cave Mills.

After the Ruskin Cooperative Association bought the cave and surrounding lands, members of the community began to intensively use the cave, both in traditional domestic patterns, such as for food storage and an icehouse, and as an industrial space. The scale of the domestic usage was larger than most other known examples in Tennessee. The community stored so much meat in the cave that the inhabitants built rail tracks in the cave to facilitate transport. As for industrial use, the cave stream continued to power the grist mill, but the community also set up a small commercial cannery in the cave, This was part of a surge of industrial activity at the village, which like the cave was now called Ruskin. The Association developed a remarkable and paradoxical entrepreneurial spirit, with enterprises including a wide range of factories, shops, and mills.

Nobody makes jam cake. That’s what I would really wish for my birthday cake. Mamaw used to make them. She had a little heart-shaped pan that she would use to make one just for me, uniced. Other people asked for coconut or chocolate, but every year I asked for Jam Cake.

She used jam with seeds.  It came from jars that were stored in the potato house with its rough-sawn shelves and wavy dirt floor.  The blackberries were the little, wild ones that grew all over the farm, worth it if you would fight the briars and the chiggers to get them.  The cake is warm with spices.  Summer and Fall in one.

My Aunt Harriet was born in Dickson, TN, or thereabouts, in 1925, or thereabouts. She spent only a few years of her life with running water or indoor plumbing, and probably spent even less of her life in anything like decent health. Rheumatic fever, scarlet fever, heart conditions, diabetes, the list was about endless. Doctors, even good ones, predicted an early demise for her to her kin, but she made it to eighty, in spite of them.

She grew up kind of wild, from what I had always been told, including two miscarriages before she was eighteen (or married). At eighteen she got saved and as far back as I can remember she was a Missionary Baptist. If you have ever been to a Missionary Baptist church you have gone back in time at least fifty years. It is about as country (read: hick) a denomination as you might run across this side of a Oneness Penecostal or Church of God of Prophecy. It doesn’t matter where they are, either. Big city or small town. You could go to one on the upper east side in Manhattan and the people would still be dressed in polyester, holding big hymnals, and singing “When we all get to Heaven” as off key as is humanly possible. They were a perfect fit for my Aunt.

They also, at least to me, always seem a little stern and severe. Southern Baptists are big on grace, but I think the Missionary Baptists focus more on holiness and personal piety. You always felt like you had been appraised by my Aunt and found lacking, but she would pray for you anyhow. This may have been my guilty conscience as much as her demeanor, but in any case it was how I perceived her.

This is one reason why this poem is so startling for me, because it is so gracious and tender-hearted and is so different from what was often her temperament. I remember seeing the title and thinking I was in for a spiritual horror show with lots of fire and brimstone- but she surprised me. She wrote a lot, more poems than anything else, and even at her funeral the preacher read one of her old poems. My Dad said she was the brightest of the eight kids, her literary and analytical skills standing out all the more against the rustic background of her backwoods life. In any case, this is my personal favorite of her poems, very simple and spiritual, but clearly drawing from the hard-won battles of life that might have been lost without the help of neighbors. This poem relates the recognition of the need to both give and receive mercy from these neighbors and friends that are such a part of a rural person’s life. 

                                           THE ERRING ONE

Think gently of the Erring One,

O’ let us not forget,

However darkly stained by sin,

He is our brother yet.

Heir of the same inheritence,

Child of the same God.

He hath but stumbled in the path,

We have in weakness trod.

Speak gently to the Erring One,

We may yet lead him back,

With holy words and tones of love,

From misery’s stony track.

Forget not, brother, you have sinned,

And sinful yet may be.

Deal gently with the Erring heart,

As God has dealt with thee. 

I don’t know it you can tell here, but if you look close at the original you can see that that enamel pan in his hand is just full of berries.  Blackberries used to grow all along the side of the road next to the house as well as along the fence rows.  Come to think of it, if you weren’t watching where you were going, it was pretty easy to wind up either stuck in a blackberry thicket or in the middle of a briar patch.

At least if you were in there with the blackberries, there was a sweet reward in exchange for the scratches–and the chiggers.

I remember this old bell being around the neck of Old Bessie, which is what I remember her being called. She was the milk cow who faithfully furnished the family with milk and it’s by-products for many years. She pastured in a field across the road from the farmhouse, free to wander leisurely and nibble on grass and wild flowers as she slowly ambled along. It was always hoped that she would NOT find any of the early spring wild onions that grew here and there, which would taint the flavor of the milk. Each evening Mamaw, as I called my Grandmother, would go to the field across the road , carrying along a milk pail and a stool. She would “call her in” for milking. You could tell where she was by the sound of the bell tinkling as she walked. Mamaw would allow any of the kids who were around, and interested, to go with her to round up Old Bessie. I went with her many, many times, and watched as turned that stool up under the old cow, placed the bucket under her full bag, and started pulling on her teats to extract the milk. It took strength and knowledge of just how to “make it work” to get the milk out, and even though she allowed me to try, I rarely ever got more than a few drops at the most. She, however, was an expert and made that milk sing as it hit the sides of that galvanized bucket. I can still hear it in the memory of my mind, and can even smell that sweet, identifiable odor of warm milk. We would walk back across the road to the house, leaving a relieved Old Bessie to continue with her life of field wandering, Mamaw carrying  the bucket of fresh milk and me following along right beside her. Part, if not all, of that milk would later be used as fresh cream, or churned to make rich, creamy butter for use in cooking and at the dinner table.

That old cow bell remains in my plastic box, stored in a Ziplock bag, but now it also has a copy of this, so once I am gone from this world, and someone sorts through my “stuff”,  hopefully, it won’t be discarded. I would feel honored if one of my children, or grandchildren, would hang on to this old relic of my past. Marie, July, 2007

This really good picture of Aunt Harriet and Uncle Jim was taken, I believe, in front of their little house near where we lived over by the Fairgrounds. That’s how I remember it–little–even compared to our house, and it was pretty small.

Their place couldn’t have been much more than a quarter of a mile from us. Mama dumped me on Aunt Harriet every now and then when she “needed” to go somewhere. I think they were still there when we moved in ’56.

—-Barbara