A Walk Around Pond Beat, Part 2
This is an introductory part of Beverly Curry’s book to orient the reader about the various families who lived in what was known in the 1900 – 1945 time as the Pond Beat area and community. This southeastern part of today’s arsenal was so-named because the area was a tax and census “beat” (district or precinct area) that was noted as containing many ponds which held water for long periods, sometimes many years, after flooding by the Tennessee River. Some of the ponds even had their water levels rise and fall with the river fluctuations. It was a swampy area that was overgrown and contained many snakes and other types of wildlife, including some alligators. This part of the Curry book represents a “walk” and “conversation” as one might have experienced in the area before Army acquisition. It is derived from the numerous interviews and notes that Beverly made in meetings with a large number of former citizens of the area as she researched data for her book. The events, names, and details of life are things told to Beverly as actual facts and generally confirmed by research into old documents, but there are a few minor additional clarifications inserted by John P. Rankin.
MADISON – The hen house behind the Jacobs house on the north side of the Farley- Triana Road, across from the Horton School, was built with poles and a tin roof. It was important to Zera Jacobs when she lived over there, because she trades both chickens and eggs to the rolling store when it comes around. She trades them for salt, pepper, and sugar, and, if she has any credit coming after that, she gets some candy for the children. Most of the food she serves her family she has grown herself, and she cans and preserves vegetables and fruit for the winter. The house she lives in now is similar to the one she lived in on the land she traded to her brother Booker Jacobs.
Zera and Dock Jacobs don’t have a refrigerator. They take their milk down to the spring to keep it cool. Some people lower it in buckets down in the well. Once in a while, Zera and Dock make a treat for the family. Dock brings ice from town and they get out the washtub and put in the milk from their cow, ice, salt, and then more ice, and make the ice cream.
Not many people raise turkeys, but Dock does. At Thanksgiving and Christmas time, he loads his wagon and sells them downtown. His son Alva stays with the wagon while the turkeys are delivered. Afterward, Alva is taken to the town square to a place that has good hamburgers. As the Jacobs are “colored people,” they go in a different door to the restaurant than the white people do. A partition keeps the colored people away from the white people.
Young Alva Jacobs always enjoys going to town on the wagon. Another time he gets to go to town is when cotton is taken to the gin. Bates Gin is over in Mullins Flat, but most black people take their cotton downtown to the gin. The black families all got together to start the gin, and many families have certificates (shares) in it. The gin is on Brown Street.
Sometimes there is excitement right in the neighborhood. Once people could hear shooting and commotion coming from the woods on Kirby Cartwright’s property. Cartwright, a white man, doesn’t live in Pond Beat. He has a store downtown adjoining Terry’s department store, but he has parcels of land here and there, in Pond Beat and Mullins Flat.
The place where the shooting was coming from is in the woods north of the Farley Triana Road, not far from the back of the house that Booker owns now. The woods go to the creek that separates Pond Beat from Mullins Flat. The police were in the woods breaking up somebody’s still. That isn’t the only still that is in the woods along the creek. Some of the boys have fun once in a while figuring out how to relieve a friend or relative of a bit of moonshine.
The younger children create their own entertainment. They roll a car tire or make a flip (slingshot) and shoot at birds and cans. Sometimes they make Johnny walkers (stilts). Alva Jacobs and his brothers have been making a cart. Its wheels are tin cans. They have a straight shaft. The axels are made of wood and tin cans on either side. A cord is tied on each axel near the front wheels. The cord goes from the axel to each side of a straight stick that is attached to a shaft and used to steer.
Here to the west of Zera’s house is Horton School. The children in the two-room Horton School are sitting at shared desks studying. The attention of one girl is held by the pictures of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington that adorn the front wall. Each schoolroom has an iron pot belly stove. Willie Joiner says that in the winter when it’s really cold, her parents (Percy and Ellen) and other parents take wood, cut in about one-foot lengths, to Horton School to help keep the heat.
Juliabelle Gunn Toney calls time for recess, but she stays in the room to help two slower readers. Henry Torrence goes outside with the children. The children are playing stickball. Two students take their turn at drawing water from a nearby well. Some students will stay after school to take their turn at keeping the classrooms clean. Looking up at the school again, I notice small windows, one on each side of the front entrance, that illuminate the cloakrooms. A little boy, who must be standing on tip-toes, peers out.
Yancy Horton Sr. donated the land for the school. His granddaughter, Pearl, Yancy Jr.’s daughter, says it was built in 1919, the year she was born. Building the school came about because the people of Pond Beat take advantage of opportunities that will help them get ahead in the world. They heard about Julius Rosenwald. Julius Rosenwald, the son of a German- Jewish immigrant who had reached the peak of his business career as president of Sears, Roebuck & Company, had begun what could be called his second career as a philanthropist. He knew that only 20 percent of the black children were enrolled in school in Alabama (as compared to 60 percent of the white children), and “in all the South there was not a single standard 8th grade rural Negro public school” nor any formal high school” (Dalin 1998:38). Rosenwald was invited to the Tuskeegee Institute in Alabama by Booker T. Washington. They developed a plan to make matching grants available to rural communities for education (Rohr 2001). Yancy Horton gave his land for the school, and he and other members of the community cleared the land and gave their labor to build it. This was the match for the Rosenwald grant.
In Mullins Flat, Adolphus Love gave the land for a school, and the people of the community gave their labor, thus, a grant was obtained and a Rosenwald School was built in Mullins Flat. It is called Silver Hill School. Altogether, six Rosenwald schools were built for rural black children in Madison County.
Horton School has a baseball club. Most people can’t afford baseball uniforms for their children; the players wear whatever they have. Sometimes the children play a team from Talucah, across the river (near where Somerville is). They take the ferry across the river. The ferry is a rowboat, so only three or four people can come across at a time. It costs 25 cents to ride across. Zera’s son Alva likes the picnics that are held at the Horton School. The school is like a community center. Programs are held at the school as well as at Cedar Grove Church. There are box suppers and little carnivals. Alva always enjoys those. There is always singing and programs at Christmas time.
Of course, Alva likes Christmas time for a number of reasons. He smiles when he thinks of the peppermint sticks that he gets at Christmas, because they are big around, and he takes a hammer and cracks a bit off at a time. He doesn’t get numerous gifts, but there is always something — a rubber ball, a cap pistol, oranges, nuts and lots of fruit.
Everybody in the community helps each other. Neighbors watch and help with each other’s children. When people get their work done, they help others with theirs. They visit their sick friends and neighbors to help with chores and take food. However, the black people do generally keep to themselves. There is less opportunity for problems that way. Yancy Horton is a pillar of the Pond Beat Community. His land goes from here along the Farley-Triana Road (Buxton) by the school, down the east side of the road (McAlpine) that goes south toward the river. He has another, smaller, parcel closer to the river.
Yancy has a big, colonial style house with a porch around the front, one side, and the back. It has six rooms and a dining room. The house is wood, but the steps leading up to it are brick. When they enter the house, they walk into a hallway. Three of the rooms are bedrooms, each with a closet. A fourth room is kept for entertaining. The floors are hardwood, except in the kitchen and dining room. They have linoleum on the floor, which is more practical. Three cement steps go up to the back porch. The back door opens into the kitchen; from it the dining room is entered. Oil lamps light the house.
To get water for the house, they crank the wooden handle of the pump. A pipe from the well runs out to provide water for the barnyard. Sometimes the men work at night. Yancy has a gas light up on a post, and a Delco light in the yard, lighting the way from the house to the barn. The lamp is like the one an automobile has. Yancy uses the Delco battery system for running equipment, and when he does, you can hear the “pat-pat-pat-pat” sound of the motor. It runs on gasoline and has a big flywheel inside. It has to be cranked to start it, and once in a while the oil has to be changed to maintain it.
In the barnyard Yancy Horton has a big tank of gasoline and a pump. Yancy and Frank Jacobs fill up their tractors here instead of buying gas at the store. Frank and Addie Jacobs are Yancy Horton’s neighbors. They live in a big house to the east of the Hortons. They built a brick house after their former house burned. The Jacobs’ property and Horton’s is divided by a dirt road. Addie’s sister Zera lives on property to the north of hers, and Addie’s brother Ernest has a small piece of land to the south of Addie. (To be continued)
