CHAPTER 27- PART 3
Uncle Billy was late, but just as dark was creeping over; we heard the familiar rattle of his wagon and the rhythm of sixteen horse-shoes beating a tattoo on the new frozen ground. The wind had turned into the north before sundown and was blowing a strong gale. The four blacks came prancing up to the hitching post where Uncle Billy securely tied one horse of the lead team.
Mother lighted the lamp and Uncle Billy warmed his hands over the cook stove as he told of the wind blowing down a tree across the road. He and Mr. Shelby had to chop it up so they could move it to get by.
Taking his purse from his pocket, he hesitated, and then said, “Tora,” to mother, “just roll down the blind, can’t be too careful. A tramp slept in my barn last night and I felt I was being followed coming through the woods. I am pretty sure I saw a man jump behind a tree. I lashed the beasts into a run. Let’s get this money counted so I can get on before it gets any darker.”
I can see Uncle Billy yet as he stood there nervously biting off a chew from the twist of tobacco, he took from his hip pocket. To me he looked like the pictures on our Sabbath school cards of the old patriarchs.
I said, “Father, Uncle Billy looks like Moses.” Father said, “Yes, but you don’t see any tobacco juice at the corners of Moses’ mouth.” Father never failed to point out the uncouthness of the tobacco chewing habit, as our church condemned the use of tobacco. “Put away all filthiness,” some believed, included tobacco. Uncle Billy and a very few others chewed or smoked. They were not put out of the church but were just thought of as not complete “overcomers” and in a lower spiritual stratum.
Mother rolled the blind down by untying a string and letting the blind unroll. Uncle Billy then counted out the money. Most of it was paper money which impressed me. Mother took it into the sitting room and laid it carefully between the leaves of the huge family Bible that was always on our center table. She felt this to be a safe place as we had a small Bible and Ellis and I had our school testaments to read. The large one was only used to record marriages, birth and deaths and to give a reverent atmosphere to the home.
After Uncle Billy was gone, father and mother counted all their small change and found they were lacking three cents. I remember this because Ellis contributed his large penny about the size of a half dollar. I contributed my two-cent piece. We cherished these and it was a real sacrifice to give them up. They had been given to us by a pack peddler who always stayed overnight with us when he walked through our community, perhaps twice a year.
Father and mother never turned a pack peddler or anyone else who was walking away when they asked to spend the night. They never charged anyone for staying, so the peddlers usually gave us children some little trinket or maybe a handkerchief for Ellis and a hair ribbon for me. Mother gave each of us a drawer in the Singer sewing machine for our personal possessions and they weren’t crowded; therefore, one item was keenly missed.
At supper the six-mile trip to Peebles where the money lender lived, was discussed. We children would have liked to go along as we had never been further than Tranquility within our memory. This peaceful little village was comprised of our church and parsonage, Blair’s’, (formerly Wilson’s) store, Wright’s blacksmith shop, Dr. Gaston’s house and tiny office in one corner of his yard and a few other houses, the Jonas Elmore’s, the Walkers, Alfred Blair’s, Frank Blair’s, Ralph McCreight’s, the Sanford McCullough’s and the old Wilson stone house. All these and a couple of others were nestled among the hills on either side of the covered bridge that spanned George’s Creek near the store. Some were along the pike, others back a bit and reached by lanes. There were no streets. This village and the four miles between there and our house were our world. We stayed with Aunt Lou the rare times father and mother went to any more distant place.
Some comment was made about the tramp in Uncle Billy’s barn and Uncle Billy thinking someone was following him. Father said, ‘Uncle Billy was full of imagination, for if he saw anyone it was likely some hunter out looking for a quail or rabbit as dusk was a good time to get them and the hunter probable disappeared behind a tree so Uncle Billy wouldn’t stop and tell him a war story.”
We liked staying with Aunt Lou for she would tell us extra stories just to keep us out of mischief. She didn’t get mad at us easily not even the time we discouraged her widower beau from staying to supper. We were afraid she would be angry this time for she was always happy to impress anyone with her salt-rising bread and she had turned out a perfect batch just before he came. On the rare occasions when her bread came out flat, she was always low in spirits; then we had to be really careful.
We got outside under the open window and in imitation of a rooster Ellis crowed “Shu-ma-ker’s go-on-ne.” I followed up in imitation of a turkey gobbler. “I doubt it, I doubt it, I doubt it.” Pretty soon he got up and left. She looked at us crossly, but later she said to mother, “I guess he took the hint,” and she seemed amused.
But the time we rubbed elderberry juice on our faces and came screaming to the door she almost fainted; then when she saw what we had done she really got mad and blistered us good. After that we knew the kind of things that brought something more than stories.
