Kindle Edition
Amazon
Ramblin Scribe
Category:
Memoir
Publisher: A Different Drummer Publishing
ISBN-10: 0979922216
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 136
Copyright: July 17, 2016
ISBN-13: 9780979922213
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
Eight Miles of Muddy Road looks back at the struggles of a sharecropping family to survive in very rural Georgia in the 1940's and 1950's.
Sylvia grew up in very rural Georgia in the 1940's and 1950's. Her father sharecropped in her early years, as well as worked for sawmills, hosiery and cotton mills. She believes the strong support of her large extended family enabled all to survive and eventually thrive as the country pulled out of the Great Depression of the 1930's.
Excerpt
Daddy Was a Sharecropper
Mother said Daddy worked for a quarter a day when they first got married. Of course, he was only fifteen years old, but he was big for his age and did a man's work. He did odd jobs and day labor for local farmers and small businesses through the CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corps. President Roosevelt and Congress had set up this government bureau to help the men who were unemployed so that they could support their families. This was during the depression and most men were glad for a job of any kind, paying anything.
They lived with Mamaw & Papaw, who had raised Daddy, for a year or so after they married. While they were courting, she said they had their picture taken by someone with a camera at a church singing but Daddy stuck the picture in his pocket before it was dry and it was ruined. He was afraid Mamaw and Papaw would see it. She didn't know why he was so afraid of their finding out about their courtship and plans for marriage until afterward. Daddy had told her that he was seventeen, her age.
Having always lived far back in the country, she was very backward. She was the oldest of, at that time, eight children, six girls and two boys. Grandma bore four other children after Mother left home. Three girls and a boy, but the boy didn't live. My oldest sister and I are older than our three youngest aunts. This intrigued us as children, though in fact it is not too uncommon.
We, too, lived deep in the country until I was about twelve years old, except for a stint in a cotton mill village in Alabama. We walked the red dirt roads up to Aunt Bertha's house, and to Mamaw's, or to the neighbors. The nearest paved road was US Highway 78, or The Bankhead, main route going west out of Atlanta to Birmingham. It ran through Temple, the nearest country town, about eight miles away, and Bremen, a few miles further. With Heflin and Oxford in Alabama, they were the only two towns I ever visited until I was about twelve and we went to Atlanta to visit Daddy’s sister,Aunt Margaret.
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