Graham

By Cet Johnson

This book is about learning and seeing my family's wealth that my grandad and his children struggled to hold on to, but in the end, most of the family ended up with none of. And the events and problems that they went through. Grandad had ten girls and three boys and over 1,300 acres of farmland in the state of Alabama in a town named Graham.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781637105351

Book preview

The Farmwork Activity Page

As I grew up and when I was on the farm, I witnessed people and machinery in operation, but I would like to direct my attention to some of the family and a particular piece of machinery that Granddad had that separated the straw from the grain, such as wheat, oats rye, and so on, This machine was invented around or about 1914 in the World War I era, and my granddad used it often, and I was told by my first cousin Willie that still lives today and talked to me about it at great length. He said he and my brother Willmar operated this threshing machine often together.

Management and the Spring Water Tree

I will begin my story of telling you some of my life stories and experiences of the things I witnessed. When I was about four years old, I saw many people harvesting and working the land for my granddad.

One particle event I witnessed was one day, early morning, I was at granddad’s house with my mother. She had went there to work that day and taking my younger sister and I along to stay with Grandmother so that she could watch us but, I know that my mother was working down through a wooded area near the little Tallapoosa River in the sand bottoms, I have been there before, so I slipped away from Grandmother.

And I started to walk past the big barn up by the blacksmith shop with the syrup mill area on my left, a very narrow road, and as I walked, the trees got bigger, the banks got taller, and the sky of daylight disappeared too. It was just about dark, but I kept walking in the middle of the road, hoping that no snake or animal would jump out of the forest and kill me, but as I began to reach the end of the forest to the beginning of the sand bottom, my legs were so weak, but as the light got lighter, I regained myself.

And what I saw were many men and women black and white working in groups, very organized, working under the supervision of my grandfather. One of the workers saw me telling my mother that he has seen me, came my way. He took me by my hand and took me over to a trunk of a tree that had a spring pool of water. The water was so clear and cool. I was so glad and satisfied. After that, my mother came and took me back to Grandmother. The point is Granddad had very good management skills.

The little Tallapoosa River

The House

Granddad’s house had four big bedrooms. From the driveway side, an entry with an L-shaped hallway, dining room with ten to twelve chairs, a table with a large china hutch full of very good china, a large kitchen, and in that kitchen was a big wood stove, old block-of-ice-type ice box, one upright icebox electric, an old table with eight chairs, a big china hut, a sink with one large bowl that had one cold water faucet, a fireplace in each bed room, with double windows on each side of the two front bedrooms and one set of double windows in the two bedrooms near the kitchen and the dining room, one large hallway that extended from the dining room up to the front of the house with chaise longue, tables, and pictures on the walls and with access to all bedrooms inside. The house had ten-foot ceiling, except the driveway entry hallway and dining room.

A porch that extended from the kitchen door at the side of the house to the driveway side of the house, L-shaped, with a swing chair for two, rocking chairs, bench chairs, flowers pots sitting and hanging, twelve-inch rectangle supports from the ceiling extended to the floor, double door size cement steps, one in front of the house and one going out from the kitchen toward the well. One cold-water faucet at the edge of the porch near cement steps. The house had a big roof cover with shingles and the porch was covered with tin, brick-shape design with siding, and its foundation was four to five feet from the ground to the floor of the house.

When going out from the kitchen steps, about twenty feet away was the well with a full cover top, full cover inside with a wooden rope and bucket. The well also had a pump, a large cement water tub, and if you walk about twenty-five more feet, it was the smokehouse to the left, the wood house connected to the right, and behind the wood house was a newly built no-plumbing toilet. Another nonplumbing old toilet was set up near the chicken house that was near the blacksmith shop. Also, there were many big oak trees in front and around the house area.

Old house site. Only the chimney stands today and a fireplace on each side. Each bedroom had a fireplace.

The Surroundings of the House

In the back of the left side of the house, about three hundred feet away, was a big barn with a milking area that had two cement stalls, that had an area where a person could stand below the cows and install the milk machines on the cows’ teats to milk the cows, and when the milking was completed with the two cows, then the milker would pull a rope to let the cows pass through back to the corral. The milk dairy had an inside holding area plus a large outside corral, and in this barn also was a grinding machine that I used to see my uncles connect to the old tractor that had a round pulley, and they would install a big flat belt from it and install it to the grinding machine that also had the same type of pulley to make the machine ground the different type of seeds.

The same area in back of the corral was a big log barn with a place upstairs for hay, and downstairs was different stalls for cows that would be close to giving birth or getting them ready for the market are fatting up meat to eat for food, and behind this barn was a large open pasture that was circled and sloped downhill to a very big open pasture area next to the east side of the Tallapoosa River. See, the Tallapoosa River travelled like a horse shoe around my granddad’s property and some other property owners’ land.

The driveway from the front side of the house went out by a third big barn that had a harvesting machine and places to hold the product for the market. And as you travel slightly downhill to the mailbox at the main dirt road that travels all the way to the horseshoe bend, or when turning right, it would take you out of the area, but about a quarter of a mile, my uncle lived on the left side of the road. He had his own farm connected to my granddad’s property. And as you travel onward, you would reach the main dirt road for traveling outside the area, but the property was still owned by people in the family. When turning left about five hundred feet on the right, my dad and mom owned about fifty acres, and they had built a house upon a small hilltop. And as you travel a distance, my auntie Ivy and Mabel Boyd and her husband owned about fifty acres of land connected to my dad and mom’s property. And east of these two properties was connected to my uncle Nathan’s property. He owned about a hundred acres. But as you travel farther, the road would take you to the paved main road.

Pictures of Uncle’s farm

The second house built in the area in the 1930s. My dad and mom, Johnnie and Myrtle.

There were many changes over the years. Other people even used it as a church once.

People in the Area

When you travel on the dirt road and just before the pave road on the lefthand side, there was a family name—Mr. Clife Nose. Him and his wife had four boys named Cecil, Wallace, Jerry, and Roy. They were a family that kept nice cars, and Mr. Nose was the justice of peace in this area. Then if you turn right, you would travel toward Graham, but about one mile on the lefthand side of the paved road lived Mr. and Mrs. Charley and Molley