A Rambling Account of My Life in Ocee
I was named after the doctor who delivered me into the world. The doctor came to our house and waited for some time, since I was born at 11:30 p.m. After I was safely delivered into the world, he was escorted to the bedroom, where he spent the remainder of the night. If you had a medical need in the 20's and 30's, the doctor would come to your house oftentimes to take care of family needs, and if darkness overcame the light, he would spend the night and await the dawning of the new day. My first day in the world was May 24, 1930. I was born the third of six children.
We had a landlord called Mr. Homer Shirley. We were sharecroppers. Mr. Homer supplied the livestock (mules), equipment and half the fertilizer and seed. We supplied other half of the fertilizer and seed. When the harvest came in--cotton, corn, etc., the landlord received half and our family received half.
Dad always saw that we had a good garden, a good milk cow, and at least one hog to kill when the weather got cold. I can see him now, with his 22 rifles, ready to get the hog ready to slaughter. After killing the hog, Dad would hang it up on a wooden rack and begin cutting it up in parts. Those parts would be salted and placed in a large meat box where the meat would “cure out.” Mother also used certain parts to grind up into sausage, which she canned. This is what the seven of us would have for breakfast. Oh, was it good!
Needless to say, our dependency on our garden, milk cow and pork supply was ver evident in those days of the early 30's.
The farmhouse in which we resided was our landlord’s father’s original home. It was an interesting place with 16 out-buildings. Included in these buildings were two barns (one for the cow and one for the mules). A smokehouse for storing meat , a corn crib, a utility shed and numerous other building for storage. Included in the 16 buildings was an outhouse.
One Sunday, we boys grew tired of playing hide and seek, so I came up with the idea that we would go and push the outhouse over. We succeeded in doing so; however, I didn’t think of the fact that we had kinfolks visiting that Sunday. After Dad finished with me, I never entertained that idea again.
I thoroughly enjoyed living in the old home place, however, things were going to make a drastic change. Our neigh
bor’s pigs got out of their pen and visited our cotton patch and rooted up part of our cotton plants. This was not good because cotton was our money crop. So, Dad told Mr. Homer about the problem and he proceeded to visit the neighbor and asked him to put up his hogs. Later, as we were coming by his home with the mules and wagon, hauling wood for the winter, our neighbor, who was reenforced by a few drinks of moonshine liquor, came out and stopped us and threatened to whip Dad. This unnerved my Dad so that he informed us that we were moving back across the woods into another of Mr. Homer’s houses. Dad said he couldn’t live near someone causing trouble.
This upset me because I was now into high school, and I would have to walk over two miles in order to meet the bus. Dad promised to buy me a rifle if I would move, and I agreed.
Our new farmhouse was so much smaller then the “home place” was. Also, there was no electricity, so we had to study by lamplight. Grandma always chose to live with us, so we had to let her have the back bedroom and also a small room she had for her kitchen at the rear of our kitchen. Don’t ask me how 8 people lived in this small farmhouse, but you do what you have to do.
I didn’t mind so much the long walk to the bus and back, but since we sold our ‘27 Model T to my Uncle, if I wanted to go anywhere I had to walk to the main road and back home oftentimes after night time. I learned to walk by the swamp and over the Long Indian Bridge, with one eye on the road and the other eye looking back over my shoulder for security reasons.
There were no paved roads around Ocee, in fact, the nearest paved road was entering Alpharetta.
Ocee School went through seven grades. The sixth and seventh grades were in one room and some of us had to sit double in a school desk. This worked out pretty well, since our principal, Mr. Burgess, was also the teacher of those two grades. We did have a problem on one occasion, when one of the girls sitting double got excited in class and fell out onto the floor. Mr. Burgess sure didn’t like the class getting out of hand, and scolded the student for her error.
After the seventh grade, Ocee school children went to Milton High School for the eighth grade and graduated after the eleventh grade. Roswell students attended Milton since there wasn’t a senior high school there at that time. Mr. Adams, the high school principal, taught the eleventh grade arithmetic, and again we had to sit double in school desks designed for one person. I sat with Milton Lane of Roswell, and I’m glad he was easy to get along with. Although due to his size, he had to have over half of the seat.
Dad bought a ‘27 T-Model Coupe from Mr. Homer and kept it for a short time. Dad got nervous driving the car, and sold it to my Uncle. It was a pretty good car. To crank it, you jacked up the rear wheel and turned the crank located in front of the engine, the spinning rear wheel helped the Magneto Powered car to start. Gas in those days was 19 ½ cents per gallon. One of the main roads from the community of Newtown to Roswell had seven streams in which you had to forge in order to make the trip. It was called 7 Branches Road (minus bridges).
Ocee had a group of men and boys who loved to play a little poker. One Saturday they were caught right near the main store, arrested and taken to jail. On another occasion, a group had to swim the Chattahoochee River in order to escape the law. We had one high school student who was a smart gambler. He won one of the men’s car on Saturday night and was seen driving his first car on Sunday.
The community of Ocee consisted of four main commercial buildings. There were two mercantile stores. They carried basically anything you could want: overalls, shoes, guns, groceries. The gas pump was manual, and the store clerk asked how many gallons you wanted, then he would proceed to pump the gas out of the ground tank to a holding tank at the top of the pump. He did this with a large crank used in a circular motion. This particular store did great business during the World War II, by somehow being able to stock items which were scarce during war time. You were issued gas stamps at the time and a five gallon gas stamp would bring good money. Also, this store bought rabbits and eggs from the people who bartered them for groceries. Most families had “rabbit boxes” which were small wooden boxes with a trap door. The rabbit would enter the box to eat the food placed there, and trip the trap door. A day or two later he would be hanging on a nail on the porch of the store. Selling price?---25 cents.
The other buildings in Ocee were the Cotton Gin and the Court House. The Court House was probably 12 X 30 feet and we had a Justice of Peace and a bailiff who ran the Court in the event people in the community had disagreements? The Court schedule was flexible, depending on the frequency of the disagreements. I forgot there was a fifth building, the Cannery building. Farm families from the community brought their vegetables and meat and canned them there. Incidentally, the Cannery building was renovated years later, and the gift store was named “The Cannery.” This gift store has been relocated to Alpharetta, and is doing well.
Remember my mention of Mr. Homer? His granddaughter, Janis, owns the gift store. If you happen to shop there, remember there’s lots of history behind that name “The Cannery.”
Most of the people in Ocee were sharecropper farmers. Very few people owned their own houses. There was times when you could buy land if you would pay the tax owed on it. Land prices were 100 to 200 dollars per acre, compared to today’s prices of 100 to 200 thousand per acre, if you can find any for sale.
Credit was hard to attain, especially for the farmers, who were hard pressed to support their families, which were usually blessed with several children. This helped the farmers, who taught and expected the children to help tend and harvest the crops.
I begin plowing at the age of 9. We children would come home from school and Mother would meet us at the door, reminding us that Dad was looking for us shortly. We quickly changed from school clothes to work clothed and joined Dad in the field. I learned to pray while working in the field, asking God to bring rain so we could go home for the rest of the day.
The highlight of our week was parching peanuts and listening to the “Grand Ole Opry” on Saturday nights. As the battery grew weaker, Dad only turned the radio on to get the weather and news.
There was only one political party in most people’s mind, and if you voted for any party other than the Democratic party, you were an outcast in the community. This was true years later. On one occasion after I voted and came by the Poll Manager, he saw the Republican ballot in my hand. He exclaimed, "you’re voting Republican. Oh, No!" I felt that neighbor was overstepping his authority trying to tell me how to vote.
There were tragedies at times. My Uncle’s barn was struck by lightning and killed the animals. He really hated to lose “Old Hat,” his favorite work mule. It was as if a member of the family had died.
Late on a Sunday afternoon, my Uncle came by the house and told us that a cave in a tunnel, dug out by some boys in their teens, had caved in on them. He and others had been digging all night to try to save the boys. Three boys died and the funeral was a very sad occasion. One family lost two boys in the cave in.
Thanks for visiting the Old Ocee with me. My rambling of subject matter probably is boring reading for some. I guess days in Ocee years ago were a little similar to the TV programs of several years ago. Were those the good old days? Well, maybe in some respects. However I don’t believe I wish to return to those days, would you?
Authors’ name withheld by request
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