All God's Dangers (38 page)

Well, the white folks' schools done started and runned along several weeks, maybe months; it'd just be left to the nigger to set still and wait on the white folks' orders. We was always left to wonder whether we would have any schools or not. White folks' schools runnin; the nigger children was at home. White man could go up there and hire the colored children from their parents if they wanted to, nothin said. Take em off over there on their plantations, work em: poor fellows, at home, cut loose from their books. White man come up there cotton choppin time, in May, nigger chaps already at home sittin down, couldn't go to school, the school was closed down on em, white man walk up there and call for em to work—better let em work for him; don't, they'll get mad with you, and it'll hurt you one way or the other. That chap got to come out of that house, big enough to work, and get in that white man's field, and white folks' schools runnin right along. Takin advantage of the colored race, keepin em by the throat. Them same conditions was in effect durin of my comin along and durin of the raisin up of my children.

So we started to supplement what money the government give us for teachers and we even sent some people to visit the government and ask for more help than what we was gettin. Well, the governmerit
promised to increase us, but the money still comin through white folks' hands and it helped them more than it helped we who needed it. White schools was runnin on part of the colored schools' money.

We'd hold meetins and we knowed what we had to do: we just had to supplement our school money to a greater extent if we cared to carry our schools on. Well, there was so many patrons disable—and there's some false-hearted folks amongst every race of folk God got on this earth. My children could have had a good education even under supplement if some of my own color had abided by their race. But the colored man had been mistreated back so far until he just learnt to mistreat hisself. Tell you what they done.

We had a school meetin at a small church one night down on Sitimachas Creek and the head ones of the school organization had taxed us all up ten dollars apiece and every patron family was supposed to bring that money in there at that time. I was a big man, you might say, you could say it that way and some of em did, but I was dutiful to my duties. I walked in there that night to school meetin and put down my ten dollars; carried that money to the front table and laid it down. The most of em come up—some of em carried up as low as a quarter—most of em come up with less than five dollars. Now some of em couldn't give more—that quarter took more out of em, in a way, than that ten dollars took out of me. But there was others there that could have afforded to give more than I gived, or as much, but they shied from their duty. One man come up, old man, my neighbor in past days, old Uncle George Fox and old Aunt Mercy, Uncle George's wife; nine years close to me on the Bannister place and there wasn't a clump of earth between my and their children. They got along like peas in a pod. Uncle George Fox got up—he'd been my closest neighbor for nine years, old man, had grandchildren, had great-grandchildren, and he was tryin to do right by his people—Uncle George Fox got up that night in that school meetin, poor old fellow, old man, put down six dollars. And the next nearest to that was a little less.

Fellow by the name of Israel Fry, he was one of the head officials in the plan, supplementin money, gettin ready to try and start up our school—we wanted to get up and cut lumber and build a schoolhouse. I was haulin lumber at that time for the Graham-Pike Lumber Company and I asked Mr. Ed Pike about bein off and he told me, “Nate, take off what time you need for your affairs but
come straight back to your job as soon as you are finished.” And above that ten dollars I laid down I went and helped saw logs to go to the sawmill—several days' labor cuttin logs in the woods. Goin to use that lumber to build a new schoolhouse, that was the idea. But there was some rascals on that ship and they proved themselves to me. Cut them logs out there ready to haul and I vanished away back on my job. Next news I heard, one of the head officials come up to my house and told me, “Say, Shaw, Israel Fry got hurt; load of logs turned over with him and butchered him up bad.”

I rode for Israel Fry to get a doctor; had to ride to more than one doctor to find one that wasn't too busy to look at him, then had to change doctors when they found out how tore up he was. I done it with a smile until I learnt the truth about the situation. One of the school patrons by the name of Eph Todd come to me; I was back on my job, haulin lumber regular every day. He found me drivin a load somewhere and he said, “Shaw, you know Israel Fry done let out a whole lot of that lumber over yonder and he's squandered that money—” the money we had put down on the table at the school meetin, that was in Fry's hands, and he loaned it out to some colored people, squandered it. And there was a white man by the name of Johnny Reeve, went over in the woods there and Fry let him have a whole lot of that schoolhouse lumber, let him have it someway, I never did learn what for. Just as sure as you born to die, Fry lost all that money and gived out the lumber.

Eph Todd told me, “He let Mr. Johnny Reeve, white man, have some of that lumber. And Leroy Roberts went down there and got some of it.”

I said, “Do what?”

My money tied up in it. My labor cuttin logs—I had done more than anybody, backin my part of what I was taxed to do; takin time off my job to cut logs; ridin around the country fetchin doctors for Fry and him hurt haulin that lumber off to a white man or maybe for hisself. I got hot as the devil. Told Eph, “Well, I'm goin to break up some of that. I can't pay my money for school affairs and they doin with it thataway. I'm goin over there and get me some of that lumber and haul it away from there.”

Next day it was drizzlin rain, drove my mules over there—had a good pair of mules, that Mary and Dela, they was just about the same size, biggest pair of mules ever I owned. Drove em on a scale one day and weighed that pair of mules together: weighed
twenty-two hundred and sixty pounds together, over eleven hundred pounds apiece. I always knowed what I had—that first pair of mules, I aint goin to tell the weights of em, they was smaller mules, but I aint never owned a mule that if I hitched her up to a wagon and she couldn't move it, she'd die tryin, if I just held her there and kept a prankin with her, she'd pull every time I called to pull—I hitched Mary and Dela to my wagon and drove em over to the school house site one Thursday mornin and all the heavy lumber was gone. Wasn't nothin there but some foundation blocks and two-by-fours, two-by-sixes. They had bought that property from a white man by the name of Tom Meade to build a schoolhouse on, but they runned away with the money and the lumber too. Done away with it before they done anything else. Some of em didn't pay no money hardly and they weren't there helpin cut them logs. I put my ten dollars down free as water. And all they showed was their faces. Malcolm Todd gived less than six dollars and that was a man, at that time, if he'd a gived twice that it wouldn't a hurt him. Old Uncle George Fox, oldest man at the meetin, put six dollars down. And I put ten down, what they asked for, then slipped behind my back sellin the lumber and doin away with the money that was supposed to go for our children's benefit.

I was lackin a dollar and seventy-five cents of gettin that ten dollars back, too. I drove that pair of mules over there and I loaded whatever lumber I could find. I didn't want to get over a thousand feet and strain-halt my mules, I just wanted to take enough to make back that ten dollars. Loaded that lumber on my wagon—two-by-fours, all two-by-fours—pulled it out on home about two miles and set it down in my yard. Saturday mornin I reloaded that cut lumber and pulled it into the planin mill at Apafalya. Mr. Ed Pike was there. I said, “Mr. Ed, I got a load of two-by-fours here. Would you buy it?”

He said, “Yeah, I'll buy all the lumber you can bring me. If you haulin my lumber I'll take it and if you haulin for somebody else I'll take it.”

He walked around the wagon, asked me—they had reached a point of trustin me to where they wouldn't count my lumber when I'd drive it in there less'n I insisted on it. Just, “How much you got, Nate?” “So-many and so-many, such-and-such a length”—one-by-twelves, one-by-tens, one-by-fours, one-by-eights—“got on so-many and so-many of em.” I learnt what it took to make—I aint got no
education but I learnt by practice what it took to make a thousand feet of all grades.

So I told Mr. Ed Pike what I had on my wagon that morning and he figured out the price—eight dollars and a quarter. Walked right in the back to the office part and he gived me a check. I carried it on to the bank and cashed it. Aint nobody said nothin to me about it this mornin and that was the year of '23.

Didn't nobody talk about buildin no schoolhouse after that. We moved the school then to a church over there called Little Bethany. Had to supplement it right along. I made a set of benches for that school, schoolhouse benches, long benches, took em on my wagon and carried em up there. They didn't need em all so I brought one of em back to my house and set it under a ten by ten hip-roofed shelter to the north side of my well.

All of my children learnt a little somethin: my two girls in Chattanooga got a lot out of school. But I had some hard-headed boys: Eugene, that's my boy in Ohio, my fourth son, and Calvin, my oldest boy over here in Tuskegee, and Vernon—them's three of my boys; my other children all got more out of school than they did. My youngest daughter got the most of all and my oldest daughter got a little better than most. That was one of the sweetest young ones—

1923, I got what the boll weevil let me have—six bales. Boll weevil et up the best part of my crop. Didn't use no poison at that time, just pickin up squares. All you could do was keep them boll weevils from hatchin out and goin back up on that cotton. Couldn't kill em.

The boll weevil come into this country in the teens, between 1910 and 1920. Didn't know about a boll weevil when I was a boy comin up. They blowed in here from the western countries. People was bothered with the boll weevil way out there in the state of Texas and other states out there before we was here. And when the boll weevil hit this country, people was fully ignorant of their ways and what to do for em. Many white employers, when they discovered them boll weevils here, they'd tell their hands out on their plantations—some of em didn't have plantations, had land rented in their possession and put a farmin man out there; he was goin to gain that way by rentin land and puttin a man out there to work it; he goin
to beat the nigger out of enough to more than pay the rent on it. And the white man didn't mind rentin land for a good farmer. That rent weren't enough to hurt him; he'd sub-rent it to the fellow that goin to work it or put him out there on halves. Didn't matter how a nigger workin a crop, if he worked it it's called his until it was picked out and ginned and then it was the white man's crop. Nigger delivered that cotton baled up to the white man—so they'd tell you, come out to the field to tell you or ask you when you'd go to the store, “How's your crop gettin along?” knowin the boll weevil's eatin away as he's talkin. Somebody totin news to him every day bout which of his farmers is pickin up the squares and which ones aint.

“You seen any squares fallin on the ground?”

Sometimes you'd say, “Yes sir, my crop's losin squares.”

He'd tell you what it was. Well, maybe you done found out. He'd tell you, “Pick them squares up off the ground, keep em picked up; boll weevil's in them squares. If you don't, I can't furnish you, if you aint goin to keep them squares up off the ground.”

Boss man worryin bout his farmers heavy in debt, if he ever goin to see that money. Mr. Lemuel Tucker, when I was livin down there on Sitimachas Creek, he come to me, “You better pick them squares up, Nate, or you won't be able to pay me this year.”

Don't he know that I'm goin to fight the boll weevil? But fight him for my benefit. He goin to reap the reward of my labor too, but it aint for him that I'm laborin. All the time it's for myself. Any man under God's sun that's got anything industrious about him, you don't have to make him work—he goin to work. But Tucker didn't trust me to that. If a white man had anything booked against you, well, you could just expect him to ride up and hang around you to see that you worked, especially when the boll weevil come into this country. To a great extent, I was gived about as little trouble about such as that as any man. I didn't sit down and wait till the boss man seed my sorry acts in his field. I worked. I worked.

Me and my children picked up squares sometimes by the bucketsful. They'd go out to the field with little sacks or just anything to hold them squares and when they'd come in they'd have enough squares to fill up two baskets. I was industrious enough to do somethin about the boll weevil without bein driven to it. Picked up them squares and destroyed em, destroyed the weevil eggs. Sometimes, fool around there and see a old weevil himself.

I've gived my children many pennies and nickels for pickin up squares. But fact of the business, pickin up squares and burnin em—it weren't worth nothin. Boll weevil'd eat as much as he pleased. Consequently, they come to find out pickin up them squares weren't worth a dime. It was impossible to get all them squares and the ones you couldn't get was enough to ruin your crop. Say like today your cotton is illuminated with squares; come up a big rain maybe tonight, washin them squares out of the fields. Them boll weevils hatches in the woods, gets up and come right back in the field. You couldn't keep your fields clean—boll weevil schemin to eat your crop faster than you workin to get him out.

My daddy didn't know what a boll weevil was in his day. The boll weevil come in this country after I was grown and married and had three or four children. I was scared of him to an extent. I soon learnt he'd destroy a cotton crop. Yes, all God's dangers aint a white man. When the boll weevil starts in your cotton and go to depositin his eggs in them squares, that's when he'll kill you. Them eggs hatch out there in so many days, up come a young boll weevil. It don't take em but a short period of time to raise up enough out there in your field, in the spring after your cotton gets up—in a few days, one weevil's got a court of young uns hatchin. He goin to stay right in there till he's developed enough to come out of that little square, little pod; taint long, taint long, and when he comes out of there he cuts a little hole to come out. Pull the little leaves that's over that little square, pull em back out the way and get to the natural little pod itself. Pull that pod open and there's a little boll weevil and he don't come out of there till he get developed, and then he do that hole cuttin. Cut a hole and come out of there, little sneakin devil, you look at him—he's a young fellow, looks green colored and sappy. Aint but a few days when he comes out of that square—aint but a few days stayin in there, and when he comes out of there—