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AL-79 Poor H. E. B
W. W. Skelton, R. V. Waldrep Red Bay, Alabama. Editorial Department
I'LL BE AN OLD MAN TOMORRW
"I believe in letting your boys do what they want to. If you put them in something they don't like they won't learn as fast and never will do any good. I let my boys do what they wanted to. I give them that Cook Correspondence Course in Chicago--I give it to Alvin and Earl; J. W., he picked up what he knew from them."
Mr. Skelton really believes what he is thinking and saying; but, as a matter of fact, his boys just grew; as he didn't have a word or take a drop of authority. He might have done something for the boys if he had wanted to, but it never occurred to him to do anything.
Mr. Skelton is one of these scrawny, little, thin, leather[l]y guys, looking as if he has been fried crisp and brittle like bacon--good bacon. He is a talker; quite intelligent and fluent, too. He was talking about himself, and the things he had done, and the boys he had trained. The correspondence course he was telling about was in electricity. The boys received little motors, diagrams of the ignition of cars, and diagrams of house-wiring.
"The boys are all healthy. Roy eats the most; J. W. never did eat anything much. But Roy, he could eat more than anybody I ever saw. For breakfast, I never do want more'n two fried eggs, three biscuits, some bacon, and some coffee. When supper comes I like nothing more than cornbread and milk. That's all I ever eat, and I reckon I'm healthy." He stood there small and scrawny, and tough as a string of rawhide. His hands, one horribly mutilated, were gnarled, bony, and stiff to the shake. His neck came out of his shirt as lean as his wrist, and as tough.
"Whiskey won't hurt a fellow, I reckon. I was raised in a house
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where we kept a jug under the head of the bed, and I have always kept one under my bed. It ain't done me no harm, and I'll be an old man tomorrow!" His shriveled face creased in a grin, and he said happily: "I'll be 67. You know, you're an old man when you git to be 65. I'll be 67 tomorrow.
"I come in at night from the sawmill so tired I can't hardly wiggle, and I take me a little drink, and then I eat me a hearty supper, and I go to bed. I sleep good. Then, when I get up, I take me another drink, eat me a good breakfast, and I feel good all day. I ain't no drunkard, and it's all right if I ain't a drunkard."
He laughed: "I said I went directly to bed, but I don't. I set up and read, sometimes to 11 o'clock, and I always git up at four. I reckon if a feller gits out of bed at four all his life, he just tumbles and tosses if he don't git up every time at four. I allus get up at four, no matter when I go to bed." He reads western magazines, and has been doing it all his life. His wife reads to him, when he is too tired.
He was happy as he began to remember his early days. He would talk all day about that, anybody could see; for his voice took on strength and vitality like that of a young man. "About that whiskey", he went on, "I had it on and off with that preacher down in Jacksonville, in Calhoun County!" He paused to rock his memory with glee, as he was asked whether he had ever made any speeches about prohibition.
"No, I didn't make no speeches; I was working in those days, contracting and sawmilling. But we won that time; we beat in the election. I'd come in from work and write articles in the paper to the preachers." The memory made the old man happy, and his fried-bacon body seemed to sing like taut rawhide twitted by a breeze. "They preached me to hell, and I'd answer 'em every time, and get the best of it, too. We won that time."
He stopped for a question, and said no, it wasn't when they voted in prohibition; "It was around 1905 or somewhere,and we won it."
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He drifted about in his memories without prodding. He skipped the years, bounced along happily, glad to be heard; for he is usually a solitary figure on the streets there in Red Bay. Rarely do people talk to him and take interest in his affairs. How he talked ....
"I didn't marry until I was up in the thirties. I never did settle down to then, and I didn't drink as much after I got married, but when I was sawmilling all over Mississippi and Alabama, I was something! I spent money! I spent every dollar I made, and I made $150 a day sometimes. We'd go to Birmingham every Saturday. We'd go out to Red Light. That town! Was there women? —-the damdest town ever I was in! It was tough! It was over there past that old L. and N. Depot that we was." "No, there wasn't no 26th Street then. The tough place was Red Light, we called it."
He took off his hat, and the hair was thin and gray, but the scalp was tough and tanned. He pulled his cheap, boy-like, straw hat down on his head again. "I was up from South Mississippi—I was working dovm there in a mill that had 600 men, nearly all niggers, coiinting the ones in the woods. We was cutting pines. I was up in Birmingham, and I got to talking to J. E. Williams from Vina. He's the Goddamdest liar that ever lived! There never was a liar like him. He got to telling me about the timber up here; he told me how many thousand and thousand of feet of timber there was here. I listened, since I was nearly through in South Mississippi; timber was pretty near all cut down there.
"Well, he told me so much about that timber, and I was looking for a good timber country to settle down in, that I brought my family and hauled everything to Vina. There was Alvin, Earl, and Roy in the family then. J. W. was born there in Vina ...
"J. E. Williams is the damndest liar ever I saw ..." He growled in his throat like a little pup, his old eyes looked from the glasses, the black, celluloid rimmed glasses. "I moved."
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He said: "J. E. Williams didn't own a foot of the timber! Yeah, there was a good deal of timber, but he didn't own a foot, and I had ny whole family up here. So I had to get out and buy up a section of timber and go to work. I couldn't do anything else." He paused. "Later on I worked for J. W. Rogers in Vina there."
Now, he launched back to earlier days with the ease that years give; things seemed to be scrambled in his mind: sensations, experiences, hates scattered through many years were all one connected memory—but they all made sense to him. He untied the bundle of experiences without a fumble.
"My father was a sawmill man. I was born in Texas, and raised in Calhoun County. All my people are in Calhoun County. I go back there some. And I'm going back again pretty soon. They're buried out there—my people." His voice was the same in discussing his old home county, but a close attention to the tone brought out the softness of a sentiment; attention to his eyes showed there was a film come over them. And the creases down the lean scrawny jaw moved ever so little. Perhaps his voice was lower, too. "I married my wife when I was in my thirties. She's a Ferguson, from Burleson."
He went back to eerlier days, and he was in Texas. "I helped to run telephone lines in Texas, and when we got that finished, I went back over the same lines and put up the poles and wire for a postal telegraph line. Boy, I was free and easy them days. I had money, but I could take seven hundred dollars to town and to the saloon on Saturdays, and spend it every bit! I could have been a rich man, a millionaire right now ..." He is a scrawny fellow, and would have looked funny in one of those long, slooping limousines—he is a banty-rooster of a man. "I had the money once in pocket. I was working on that telephone line. A fellow in a saloon tried to sell me a house with five acres of land. It was a big house, four rooms, 16 X 16. He wanted to sell the house—out there in Texas—for $45, and I
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had the money, sewed right here." Skelton marked off the place on his thigh where the money had been sewn; be marked it off on cheap, dollar pants, faded with washing. He drew out his sack of tobacco, rolled a smoke with his lean, mutilated hand. "Well, I wasn't thinking about nothing like that, buying land—I wasn't married then and wasn't thinking about settling down. Well, I come back by that saloon and house when I was working on the postal telegraph lines, and that house was worth $4500, and it wasn't more'n a year after that. I was there in July, July the Fourth—it was a legal holiday—and I was in the same saloon, and it was just one year later that same parcel of land and house was $4500! I could have been a rich man, but I'm a pauper...
"That wasn't all. My brothor-in-law—he's in Texas—Ferguson is his name, bought a bunch of land for $1500, and he's got something; he's been offered $15000!"
The regret and chagrin in his voice was real; his tone of voice was as angry as if he had just stumped his toe.
"But I've made money. I didn't know there was going to be a panic or anything. It was that panic and trucks that ruined me. Trucks are like gambling; you think if you spend just one more dollar on a truck you won't have to spend anymore. Trucks was my downfall. I was up there in Belgreen, working that timber. I'm up there now, but it ain't hardly worth a dam, but it's all I can get. It's worked to hell and back.
"I bought a bunch of trucks before the panic. I thought it would be better to have a truck, and then I could come home at night. I bought a truck up here at Russell ville, one Saturday. I bought the best tires I could buy -- them Goodyear—worth $57-50 apiece. Well, sir, I started home, and when I got to Bear Hill, my rear, left tire hit a strip of iron." Skelton measured with his mutilated hand a strip about 1/4 x 1 x 6. "It sliced a hole in the tire, ruining $57.50." He could taste the sound of that money. "Well, I
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