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This Week's Story

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GUARDIAN OF THE FISH

© 1999 James D. Pearce

            Before they cleared the dirt road toward the Winton highway, the Whippet coughed and quit.

            Cap'n Fred, a good carpenter and a fair farmer, wasn't much on automobiles.  He got out, raised the hood and studied the engine for a few minutes.

            "Boweaver, there ain't no way I can make this thing run.  I'm going to have to walk to the highway and get some help," he said, looking at the big ice chest in the back of the Whippet where a rear seat had been in better days.

            "I'm 'fraid of what'll happen, with all the rascals living in the woods 'round here."

            In a flash of bravado, Boweaver said: "Go on, daddy.  I'll stay with the fish."

            The old man looked at the boy.  "OK.  I won't be long.  You guard the fish."

            Boweaver, trying hard to force himself to be brave, watched his father disappear around the curve in the dirt road.  He sat down on the Whippet's running-board and began to day-dream.  Then he moved to the front seat, grasped the steering wheel and pretended to be driving down the road. He began to sing a few lines of "Big Rock Candy Mountain," the only song he'd ever heard Cap'n Fred attempt to sing.

            That's when he saw the crowd of "rascals" – big fellows, all of them – coming his way.  Quaking inside, he stiffened outside.

            "What have you got in the car, boy?" asked a big one, sticking his face through the open window.

            "Oh," said Boweaver, struggling to be casual, "just some good fresh fish."

            "Well, what are you sitting here in the middle of the road for?"

            "The car won't run and my daddy's gone for a mechanic."

            "Well, you know, boy, some good fresh fish is just what I've been wanting," said another of the unwelcome visitors.  "How much you gettin' for 'em?"  He winked at his companions.

            The friendly manner put Boweaver at ease, and he began to feel that he might be able to make a business deal for his father in his absence.

            "Well," he said, "you look at 'em and see what you like, and I expect we can do some business."  He handed out a perch, a rock and a herring for consideration.

            "Well, boy, these fish feel a little bit ripe, but they still do look right nice.  I think we'll just buy the whole lot of your fish."  He turned to one of his buddies.  "Go get some of them baskets to put these fish in.  We're going to make a deal with this young fellow."

            When the baskets arrived, the rascals took all the fish from the ice chest.

            "Boy, you just wait right here.  Just as soon as we take these fish home, we'll be right back with your money."

            Boweaver watched them leave, then got out and walked around the Whippet and sat down again on the running-board.  He was feeling fairly proud when Fred and the service-station man came up the road.

            The mechanic looked under the hood and fiddled around some.  Then he told Cap'n Fred to get in the Whippet and turn on the ignition.  He took the hand-crank and gave it a vicious spin.  The Whippet purred.

            Fred looked around and saw the empty ice chest.

            "Hey, Boweaver!  Where's the fish?"

            Boweaver, barely containing his pride, told his father about the deal he had made to sell all the fish.

            "They said if I'd wait right here, they'd be right back with the cash."

            Fred looked at Boweaver kind of funny.  Then he looked at the mechanic.  The mechanic looked at the engine, purring under the open hood.

            Fred turned off the ignition and went to sit on the running-board beside Boweaver.  The mechanic sat down on the road and leaned against the front wheel.

            They waited a little while, and then Fred stood up and said he figured they might as well go on home.

~

(Cap'n Fred's 1928 Willys Whippet was a great car, but it wasn't built to run forever without a little tinkering now and then. In the middle 1930s, just before the Whippet died completely, times were hard and Fred couldn't find any carpentry work, so he came up with the idea of peddling fresh fish through the countryside. He took the back seat out of the Whippet and installed a large icebox in its place. Around 3 or 4 a.m. on late-spring and early summer mornings, he went to the Ahoskie Ice and Coal Co. and bought a whole lot of ice at five pounds for a penny. Then he went down to the huge fishery at Colerain Beach to meet the morning rowboats when they shoveled their catch onto the dock under the big sheds. He used a wheelbarrow to transport the fish from the sheds to the Whippet's icebox, and for me the rest of the day was just one grand tour of the back roads of Hertford and Bertie counties ~ on those no-school days when he would take me along. ~ Jim Pearce.)

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Country road near Parkers Ferry
at Winton, 2001

in the early '30s, all the back roads in Hertford
and Bertie looked like this

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This Week's Verse

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On a summery day
in the month of May
a burly bum came hiking
down a shady lane
through the sugar cane
he was looking for his liking.
As he roamed along
he sang a song
of a land of milk and honey,
where a bum can stay
for many a day
and he won't need any money

There's a lake of gin
we can all jump in
and the handouts grow in bunches,
in the new-mown hay
we can sleep all day
and the bars all have free lunches,
where the mail train stops
and there ain't no cops
and the folks are tender-hearted,
where you never change your socks
and you never throw rocks
and your hair is never parted.

Oh, a farmer and his son,
they were on the run
to the hayfield they were bounding.
Said the bum to the son,
why don't you come
to that big rock candy mountain?
So the very next day
they hiked away,
the mileposts they were counting,
but they never arrived
at the lemonade tide
on the big rock candy mountain.

Oh the buzzin' of the bees
in the cigarette trees
near the soda water fountain,
at the lemonade springs
where the bluebird sings
on the big rock candy mountain.

(1930. "Haywire Mac" McClintock)

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This Week's Definition

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MERCHANT, n.

One engaged in a commercial pursuit. A commercial pursuit
is one in which the thing pursued is a dollar.

(Ambrose Bierce)

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This Week's Recollections

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IN THE TOBACCO PATCH

Didn't get to pick much cotton in Hertford County ...... I did, however, do my fair share in the tobacco patch there. Went from driving "trucks" pulled by a mule (at about 8 years old) to priming (pulling the leaves from the stalk) about the time I was in high school. Went from dawn to dark and sometimes beyond.

Most mornings in the field you were wet to the bone after about 10 minutes. You dried out when the sun came out and the dew dried off the leaves. I think I disliked that most of all. It had to be a pretty hard rain to stop the crew, so some days you were wet all day.

We also grew peanuts and corn. This was back when they still stacked peanuts around a pole to dry and picked them with a stationary picker.

Corn picking was done by hand and thrown into a trailer for transport to the corn crib. I remember when we got our first mechanical picker. One row picked at a time ...... and dropped into a trailer pulled behind the machine. The whole ear ~ corn, cob, and shuck ~ was dropped into the trailer. If you wanted it shelled it was still done by hand. Machinery has come a long way since then.

John Taylor, Anthony, TX.

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REFLECTIONS AND ECHOES

My grandfather, John Lupton, was a preacher based in Columbia NC, and the only member of his family to attend college. One of his classmates was Roscoe Fleming. When my dad was born he was given the first name Ottis, with the middle name Roscoe. John did not survive typhoid fever and died when he was only 29. Later in his own life, in the 1970s, my father returned to the Columbia area and was asked to say a few words and lead a prayer in the small community church the family had attended there. When the services were over, an ancient little man stepped forward and took my dad's hand in his own. He stared long and hard into my father's face, kneading my dad's fingers as he tried to collect himself before he spoke.

"Today," he said at length, "I heard John Lupton speak again." He shook his tired old head and turned to leave. "It's been so long," he remarked softly. "So long ago ...... "

That would have been an accurate statement. Young Pastor Lupton was buried in Columbia in 1909.

The links we have with the past are so very tenuous. They feel as strong and warm and permanent as a parent's comforting arms, and there seems to be no need to examine them for knowledge. "Who was that relative of Dad's who was in the Civil War and told him those stories about it? Can't remember? No need. Dad knows all that stuff ...... " But, suddenly, Dad's gone, and all "that stuff" is gone with him ...... him and Mom ......

Alzheimer's took Dad, finally, in his 80s, a few years ago. It was awful and dreadful, and I'm sure there may be a long line in heaven to ask God the reason for such a lingering, horrendous disease. There was, however, one strange, probably significant amelioration in my father's case.

In the group home, before he lost his ability to speak forever, my dad could still pray. Most of his speech had become maimed gobbledygook toward the end, but he insisted on grace before meals. He insisted on LEADING grace. And when he prayed it was not by rote. Each prayer was a new creation: purposeful, well-considered and articulate, right to the end. But ask him anything on the heels of his "amen," and there would be the blank stare and the incomprehensible ramblings again. They were amazing and moving, those prayers of his, totally defiant of logic and of the disease. So when I'm finally able to ask the Lord to explain it all, because of my dad's prayers, perhaps I'll ask only softly ......

I have three audio tapes. Three times in my life I had enough presence of mind to record my mother and father as they reminisced about their younger days in North Carolina. Some of "that stuff" they remembered so we never had to. "That stuff" we siblings had heard over and over and thought we would never forget!

I had only a vague idea of the narratives' worth at the time, but now, of course, they are priceless jewels. Each of my three children has a copy of them, and they'll be available to my grandchildren and their children, too. Some of "that stuff" still survives in the distinctive and ebuillent voice of my father on those tapes. For a little while I can return to the warm assurances and power of that wonderful link to my past. And the long, long silences when the words finally stop can be expunged by the next tape, replayed and nearly memorized, over and again. How precious they are.

I can only hope your readers realize the wealth of words and images you are providing, and that they, too, may decide to capture a voice and even a video of their own while there's still time.

For today, you see, I have it on good authority that I have heard John Lupton speak again.

Ron Lupton, Colorado

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This Week's Mailbox

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To the Poor Town News ~ Where did you get that picture (in The Poor Town News No. 37)? ...... Where did I get all that hair? ...... I never knew we looked that young. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since we worked for F. Roy Johnson. Enjoy reading your articles ...... Keep up the good work. ~ Joe Dickerson, Northeast NC

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To the Poor Town News ~ Just a note to say that I have enjoyed reading The Poor Town News. I've been working on a book about race and identity, and a good bit of the book is about North Carolina. Your work helps me keep in touch. Regards, again, to Gary (Pearce), who may have an easier time remembering me than did you. When I was a reporter for The Raleigh Times, I was a colossal pain in the (backside) of Jim Hunt and, I'm afraid, of some decent folk, too. Take care, be well. ~ Prof. Paul Krause, Department of History, University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC, Canada.

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To the Poor Town News ~ (No. 37 Poor Town News) was one of the best yet. I loved that poem and the story about Joe Dickerson ...... (as well as) the pictures. Keep 'em coming. ~ Fred Phelps, North Florida.

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To the Poor Town News ~ Mr. Pearce: Thank you very much for getting in touch with us. I have forwarded your request (for use of a photo) to Martha Elmore of Joyner Library's Special Collections Department ~ http://www.lib.ecu.edu/SpclColl/Index.html ~ and she will reply soon. I do not think your request will be a problem. As assistant editor of ECU's Digital History Exhibits, I am happy to see people exploring and enjoying our work, and I am always glad to learn of other on-line resources that make history readily available to the world (especially the history of Eastern North Carolina). As a resident of Poor Town (small world, eh?), I am completely thrilled to see such fine work devoted to the history of my home! You might remember my Uncle Les and Aunt Icie Mitchell ~ their house on the Early Station road, just past the feed store, is really falling down now, but the last time I rode by it was still standing. My granddad was Theo Mitchell of the Fire Dept. and the M System store in Ahoskie; my dad is Tommy. My grandmother, Hazel Brett, is originally a Spivey from Lasker; she's a few years older than you, so you may not remember her (you may, however, remember her little brother Thomas). I live ...... near the Bonners Bridge/Hwy. 11 intersection. I made the unofficial Poor Town news last summer, right about the time Big Daddy's opened, when (another driver) backed into my car on the highway in front of the store (what a way to make news). Thank you again for contacting us. Let me invite you to come to Joyner Library sometime to see our Special Collections, our North Carolina Collection ~ http://www.lib.ecu.edu/NCCollPCC/ncchome.htm ~ and the rest of our vast resources. We soon will be presenting on-line an exhibit devoted to the events of December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor. Work has already started, and we plan to have it ready for display by Dec. 7 of this year. ~ Noel Mitchell, Asst. Ed., Eastern North Carolina Digital History Exhibits, ECU.

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