The other evening
we visited in the home of Mr. and Mrs.
Jim Martin of Ropesville. In
their spacious living room, while
their two grandchildren played and
laughed, we talked of the other days
and times that were pungent with
emotions when the stream of life
boiled and budded, when we were much
younger than we are now.
There were
sunshine, clouds and rain; there were
poverty and hunger, the snows of
other winters and the broiling sun of
other summers.
Jim Martin is a
native of Tennessee. With his
parents, Mr. and Mrs. Willey Martin,
he came to Texas in 1919. They
came to help gather the cotton crop
in the river bottom of Paris, Texas.
It was here they learned about
malaria -- the entire family except
Jim came down with chills and fever.
They had to get out of the river
bottoms, away from the fever infested
mosquito, so they moved to Paris.
They remained there for four years
when Jim heard talk of the high
plains of Texas. It was in the
fall of 1923 that he road the train
into Ropes.
"There wasn’t
much there then," explained Jim.
"The man that was to meet me was
not in town yet, so I walked about
the village. J.R. Evans had a
grocery store and Jim Williams had a
service station just down the highway
from where the Texaco station now
stands. There was but one or
two other buildings." It
was not until 1924 that the town
started to build.
Jim wrote his
parents about the South Plains and
the next mail brought him a letter
which said they were coming.
"I had to do
some moving around,” said Jim,
“but I got a place about four
miles north of Ropes, at one time
owned by Bert Jay. It was not
but a few days before my folks
arrived. They had leased a
immigrant car from the railroad and
loaded the household goods and
livestock in to it, and before we
realized it the car was at Meadow
where we unloaded."
"The place we
had secured had to be cleared and put
into cultivation. We put in
that winter getting the scrubby
mesquite off it, then we broke it.
In the spring we again broke it and
planted it.
"Fortune did
not smile on us that year. We
gathered and sold exactly $11.00
worth of cotton and our feed crop was
a failure. So, we went into
1925 broke, but we did manage to get
our crop in the ground. It was
one of those seasonable years you
have heard about. The cotton
and the feed flourished -- we had a
bale of cotton to the acre on the
stalk, then came the freeze in early
October. The cotton crop was a
complete loss. Again we had to
turn to our cows and chickens for a
living, but we made it over."
"Nineteen
hundred and twenty-six was another
seasonable year. The crops were
as good as we had ever seen. We
were badly in need of money. We
decided to sell the crop in the field.
Bernard Evans offered us a $1000.00
for what we had and we took it."
"That was on
Thanksgiving Day, November 24th.
On the afternoon of that day came the
sandstorm that no one living here
will ever forget. The crop was
a complete loss, or nearly so.
What was not blow out on the ground
was full of sand in the boll."
"Bernard
rigged up a squirrel cage like
contraption that would hold several
pounds of cotton. He gave us
nine dollars a bale to scoop up the
cotton, put it in the huge cage and
whirl the sand from it. We got
a few bales that way, and the cotton
sold for nine cents a pound."
"The next
year was anything but seasonable, but
this country is full of surprises.
Even though we did not get our cotton
in the ground until the last of June,
we had a late frost and had a good
crop."
We ask Jim about
the depression years.
Jim smiled and
said, " We had our depression
before we came to Texas. In
Tennessee, our life was one long
depression. During the lean
years, we had our milk, eggs, and
meat; and that was more than we ever
had before coming to this state."
"I want to
tell you that in those days poor
people in Tennessee were looked on as
trash and treated as you would treat
a dog. Although we owned our
own farm, we were ragged and hungry.
Our farm home consisted of a log
cabin with a lean-to, where our
parents slept and a loft where we
kids slept. There was no
stairway, but each night we climbed a
ladder to sleep on pallets. We
had one cow and her milk wasn’t
so rich. Each day my mother
would churn the milk and skim off the
butter -- there wasn’t much of
it -- and then she would cook a pan
of corn bread. Cutting the
slices open, she then would smear it
with a little of the butter, and that
was our breakfast."
"I remember I
plowed all day for my uncle, and when
night came, all the supper I had was
a piece of cornbread and a small
glass of milk. And, when I say
I plowed, I walked between the
handles of a turning plow, pulled by
two mules, and held the plow in the
ground. If you have never
followed a turning plow; if you
have never drove horses or mules to
such an implement, you can’t
even guess how tired a man can get.
It was not for eight hours, but from
the time the sun rose until the
sunset, and as long as it was light
enough to work."
"There was
some work in Tennessee, but wages
were so low you could not live on
them. Many a time I have worked
for fifty cents a day, my brother
Arzie for forty cents and my father
for seventy five cents. We had
to do it to keep body and soul
together. Our farm, as was most
other farms, was poor land. The
corn was stunted and the ears of corn
were nub bines."
"I guess you
can begin to see the depression."
"There was
seemingly quite a difference in the
way people lived and thought in
Tennessee to what they did in Texas."
"Even though
the Civil War was over,"
explained Jim, "there was still
those that considered themselves
aristocrats That made it hard
on us. We had to fight our way
through. And, at school it was
bad and we received poor treatment.
The teacher seemed to be lined with
those “who have” and there
was no justice for the poor child.
I remember that a man from the north
came to our house one winter and gave
me a fur cap. It was one that I
could pull down over my ears and I
was proud of it. The first day
I wore it to school, some of the kids
stole it and destroyed it. The
teacher didn’t even offer to do
anything about it, he just shrugged
his shoulders."
"And speaking
of schools, the one we attended was a
little one room affair, and the
session lasted but three months and
that was in the dead of winter.
We had no shoes to wear, so we
trudged through the snow barefooted."
Jim explained on
recent trips back to Tennessee, he
found things much improved.
There were many factories and what
people depended on farming are now
using fertilizer, something never
heard of in his day, and the land was
producing good crops.
"In those
day," continued Jim, " the
Ku Klux Klan was active in Tennessee.
The white sheeted riders were often
out at night. I remember a
uncle of mine. They were not
looking for him, but had gone to his
house looking for a boy who had been
staying there."
"My uncle
woke up to find the hooded men,
reached for his gun and they shot him
through the arm. He lay there
all that night and all the next day
before they could get a doctor to
him, as this happened out in the
mountains. However, they did
manage to save the arm. If he
had not reached for his gun, they
would not have bothered him."
"I remember
we lived in the mountains for a
while, then we moved to the valley.
It was rough in the mountains, and I
mean rough. The people living
there were a law unto themselves.
Strangers didn’t just come in
and get away."
"I remember
one time the government sent in a man
to grease the cattle against ticks.
That was before they learn to dip
them. He was received into one
of the homes and treated courteously,
but that night four men came to the
house, carried him into the woods,
stripped off his clothes and greased
him with tick eradicator, and told
him to get! And, he got!"
"We learned,
after we moved down into the valley,
that there were ten whiskey stills
ringing our place, and that they were
using water from our spring. I
never saw a still in operation.
However, there was this about it,
moon shine was the only way these
people had of making a living.
When the government sent in Revenue
men, they were striking at the thing
that was feeding most of the mountain
families. These people didn’t
intend to have their families suffer,
and as a result, many government men
were killed."
Mrs. Martin
interrupted here to tell of an
incident that happened in Texas, down
in Comanche County.
"There was an
old man who help to make whiskey all
the time and finally they caught him.
On the way to jail, he preached, sang
religious songs, and prayed for the
men who were taking him in.
They held him overnight and decided
he was too pious to make liquor, so
they turned him loose. He
immediately went back and started
helping to furnish the community with
corn whiskey."
Then Jim told
another story of the mountains:
"Two men who
had sent their families by train to
Virginia and they came through by
wagon bringing the household goods.
One night they camped in the
mountains, and while they were eating
supper four men came out of the bush,
each carrying a long barrel rifle."
"These men
questioned the travelers, who
explained they were moving to
Tennessee and that they were not in
the least bit interested in what
other people did. One of the
four produced a jug and all took a
drink except one of the travelers.
He refused, explaining, “It’s
against my religion to drink whiskey.”
The four discussed this among
themselves, then evidently decided it
was alright, as they rode away.
However, for a moment, the lives of
the two were in danger, as it was
considered an insult not to take a
drink when you were asked."
"These two
families lived as neighbors for
several years."
"In those
“Good ole days”, when I was
growing up in Tennessee, we had many
parties and dances. To go to
these affairs we either road a horse
or a mule. The saddle was
equipped with saddle bags that hung
on each side of the animal. The
usual contents of the bags were a six
shooter in one bag and a bottle of
whiskey in the other. I carried
the whiskey, and I was never drunk a
day in my life!; I carried the six-shooter
but I never had to use it."
During the years,
Jim got the “hot foot”, but
he didn’t head east, he went
west to California.
"On one trip,”
said he, “my son James, and
nephew, Raymond Martin (Raymond
Martin was killed in July, 1957 in a
automobile accident) went to
California and there was no work of
any kind. We were mighty short
on money when we heard there was work
in Oregon gathering cherries, and I
said, “ Boys, if we had the
money, we would go to Oregon."
"James spoke
up and said, "I think I have
almost eight dollars, and Raymond
said, “I think I have almost
eight dollars."
"When we
counted all our money, we found we
had a little over twenty dollars.
It was a long way, but we made it.
At the second place we applied for
work, we were hired. The man
gave us a old garage to live in and
we set up house keeping."
"We were
about broke. I went to buy a
loaf of bread and lacked one penny
having enough to pay for it.
The clerk told me, “Either get
another penny or put the bread back.”
I started to put it back when someone
pitched a penny on the checking
counter. I never did know who
it was."
"It was
rather hard living for a while.
We had to draw on our wages for
groceries and we ate mostly potatoes,
beans and bread. When the crop
was gathered, the two boys had a
hundred dollars a piece and I had two
hundred. The man we worked for
gave us a thirty-five bonus for
staying with him."
"We worked
for several weeks in the community."
"You may
think gathering cherries is a picnic,
but it is not. It is hard work
and a dangerous. We used thirty
foot ladders and believe me, they
were wobbly.
"Another time
when James and I were in Oregon
gathering cherries, one of the
ladders broke with me. I fell
more than thirty feet. When I
came to, I could hear a siren blowing.
A police car arrived ahead of the
ambulance. They rolled me on
the stretcher and carried me to the
county hospital. They carried
me in and it was hours before a
doctor looked at me. He gave me
a cursory examination and he said he
didn’t think I had any broken
bones, then they took me to bed."
"I was so
thirsty, I could see imaginary
fountains of water all about me.
I wanted a drink. All through
the night I howled for water, but no
one came near me. I was in a
ward, and a old man next to me said,
' It ain’t no use, son. I’ve
been here three days and they have
neither given me water or anything to
eat.'
"When the
shifts changed in the morning, a
Spanish nurse came into the ward and
ask, ' You want a drink?' She not
only appeared as a angel, she was one.
She not only brought me water, but
she brought me food."
"After, I had
eaten, I got out of bed and told them
I was leaving and was informed I
couldn’t leave. They would
not give me my clothes. About
that time, my son, James, came in, so
he went back to the pick-up and got
me some clothes. With him
helping me, I left the hospital and
went to another one. There I
got immediate attention. They
set my broken arm and treated me for
cuts and bruises that I had received
in the fall."
During World War
II, Jim and Mrs. Martin went to
California where they got a job in an
airplane factory, and they were
frozen on the job.
"You never
heard tell anything like it,”
Jim said. “I couldn’t
quit, yet on the shift which I
worked, there was absolutly nothing
to do. I was on the swing
shift, what is called the graveyard
shift. When the time came for
us to go on, we marched in, and most
of us were idle for the rest of the
night. There was a man working
on the night shift and he told me:
'I wish I could
get off this job.'
'Working you too
hard?” I asked.
'No sir, Me,
I gambles all day and come out here
to work at night, and I just lay down
and go to sleep. They wake me
up when it is time to leave."
Jim did later
manage to get discharged and they
also let Mrs. Martin go. Jim
then got a job gathering lemons and
Mrs. Martin worked in a packing house.
Jim has gathered
fruit in most of the states where
fruit is grown, but now his days of
wandering are over. He and Mrs.
Martin spend their time at their home
in north Ropesville
where they have a few calves and
chickens. Jim also has several
rent houses, and while he has been
advised by the doctor not to work, he
still does a little, and sometimes
more than he should.
