Sue Poag Mullins, South Carolina ca. 1941

There was an old mansion with a brick wall around it. I would climb over the wall and look at the once glorious formal gardens, sometimes visiting the garden. The people knew I was there but we never spoke.

We had gardenias all around our house. They perfumed the June nights. We had pecan trees that stood next to the long drive or alley beside our house. We had bushels of pecans.

Mother took in boarders to supplement our income. So Easter came to help her with house work. We all fell in love with Easter and she could get us to do anything to please her.

There was a rock wall beside the pecan trees. One day she sat on the rock wall and told Gene and I she was nothing but an old n______. We said, "You are not! You are beautiful and we love you."

She replied, "I aint even got me no pecans."

Gene climbed those trees like a monkey and shook the limbs. We picked up enough pecans to fill a big grocery bag for her.

Sometimes in the afternoon, mom and Easter sat down to iced tea. I could hear them laugh. Mom didn't do a lot in the church, she really didn't have friends. I think Easter was her friend. When Easter got married and quit work, Mom somehow found for her a pair of silk stockings (almost impossible in 1941). She also got her a mixing bowl. I remember how pleased Easter was with the silk hose and how sad we were to see her go.

The library was right across the street. They let me have seven books a week. Mom had a very small bulb in the hallway. I would put my pillow at the foot of the bed and read by that little hall light. I read seven books every week, books like the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew.

In October that year, I turned eleven years old. On December 7, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and we were at war. My dad would bring soldiers home to dinner. Mom never knew how many people she would have at the table.

Sugar, coffee, meat and gasoline were rationed. She mixed saccharine and sugar in the tea. She was really good at making ends meet.

Ward Poag 1932 Nashville, Tennessee Running Away

I will never forget this. When we lived on Boscobel Street in Nashville, I was a five year old having trouble having his way with his Momma.

Being a tough and smart kid, I figured out a way to handle her. I told her I was going to run away from home.

She seemed to think that was just fine. She packed a little suitcase and put a couple of sandwiches in a paper bag, then handed me the suitcase and paper bag and marched me out the front door, out to the gate, and pushed me out onto the sidewalk. She said, "I'm sorry you don't like living here anymore, but if you have to go, now's the time to do it. I don't know where you're going to sleep, come dark."

"I hope you find some nice people you like who will like you and take good care of you. Goodbye."

While she was saying those things, she was trying to head me down the street to God only knows where.

I wasn't scared, I was terrified. I started crying like a stuck hog. And right then, my feet grew roots in that sidewalk. Momma couldn't have drug me off of that spot with a team of wild horses.

Suddenly I realized I wasn't in that big a hurry to leave after all. I begged. I cried. I pleaded. I thought she would never change her mind. Finally she relented and agreed to let me stay, if I promised never to mention running away from home again. And, Karen, that is a promise I've kept to this day.

A New Family Story June 2006

I went to Cincinnati back in late spring ostensibly to help Suzanne get ready for her big move out west. In truth, I felt a fluttery sort of panic at the thought of not seeing her before she drove her wagon west and even though I had every good intention to help her pack things, I really did little more than chat and visit.

One afternoon I went with Suzanne to the Apple store where she worked. I was going to hang out at the Apple store for a short period and then go see "The DaVinci Code" while waiting for her to get off work. As we entered the mall, one of Suzanne's workmates happened to be leaving and Suzanne stopped to introduce me to her.

She said hello to the girl and then turned to indicate me and said, "This is my sister Suzanne...." The co-worker sort of did a restrained double-take and said, "Both your names are Suzanne?"

If I had been a quick thinker I would have answered yes but I was laughing too hard anyway.

Sue Poag - Mullins, South Carolina ca. 1940

Georgia and Opal left home and went to Columbia, S.C., to school and work. They met their future husbands there. Joe and Grady were in the Army.

That was where one of the Rockefellers fell for my beautiful sister, Georgia, but Grady was his commanding officer, he put a stop to that.

In Mullins, the first time I walked down into the little town, the black people got off of the sidewalk so I imitated them and stood off in the grass as they did until a man told me to go on. Only black people did that.

I was nine or ten years old. I had an infected tooth so my mom told me to go to the dentist. I walked down five or six blocks then down a side street and up a flight of stairs to see the dentist. He pulled the tooth. I didn't question going to the dentist alone at this age. I was doing lots of errands for my mom like grocery shopping, etc. Fanchon asked me how I liked the dentist and I told her he was good so she went to him. He made a pass at her and she got mad at me.

Opal bought me a pair of riding boots and Georgia gave me a pair of jodphurs. So I was in hog heaven. They would sometimes rope off a small street and let the children skate. I was cool in my jodphurs and boots, skating.

Ward Poag-1932 Center, Tennessee

The Poags have always exhibited a strong determination to do and have things their own way and the first time I exhibited that characteristic, I discovered the hard way that Momma was equally strong minded.

I wasn't old enough to go to school, but Momma would let me go down to the schoolyard and play with the kids at recess. Afterwards, I had to go back to the house. I didn't want to go back, but she would make me.

One day I decided I wasn't going back home. I was going to stay at school so when Momma told me to get going, I said, "No! I'm gonna stay."

When Momma got insistent, I laid down on the ground and started yelling and screaming and kicking my heels. That's when I found out my Momma was a very determined woman. She walked over to a hickory sapling at the edge of the school yard. She broke off a small limb and proceeded to wear my little butt out with it!

All of a sudden I decided I was tired of playing with those other younguns after all.

Momma was a great motivator.

Sue Poag Timmonsville South Carolina 1930s

Don't remember too much about this town but remember the little boy who said he loved me in front of the whole class. I was so embarassed.

Had a nice teacher there. Georgia got a job at the dime store. I would take my pennies to her and whe would fill up a very small bag full of gum drops for me. I still like gum drops!

I read "Gone With the Wind."

Ward Poag-Center, Tennessee

From what I've been told, Mamma and Daddy got married in 1925 or '26. After I was born, Aunt Delphia accompanied us to Murfreesboro where all three of them got two year teaching certificates at Middle Tennessee State Teacher's College, now Middle Tennessee State University.

The last time Daddy and I went to Hohenwald, he pointed out a house, where he bought a teaching job from a Lawrence County politician for $25. The job was in Center, Tennessee, where he and Momma taught both sides of a two room schoolhouse.

My earliest recollections in life are of Center, a cross-roads community out in the boonies. There was the two room schoolhouse, a general store and a grist mill for grinding corn into meal or wheat into flour.

The cross-roads was located where one chert-paved road dead ended onto another. Chert is a mixture of clay and a flint-like quartz rock. The rock shards are mighty sharp and chews up car tires like they are going out of style. But nobody cared. There was not a single car or truck in the community. Everybody traveled by foot, horse, mule, wagon or buggy.

As I mentioned, Mamma and Daddy taught both sides of the two room schoolhouse but then Daddy came down with tuberculosis. He was sent to a sanatorium in San Antonio, Texas. He stayed there for more than a year.

I don't remember the time Daddy was there. My first memories are of Momma and me living with Uncle Mike and Aunt Pat Murphy on a farm just up the road from the schoolhouse. I don't know whether they were blood kin, but I do know everybody was treated like family.

Uncle Mike was a Republican in an area where most people thought of a Republican as a mean "sumbitch" dressed in a stovepipe hat and long black coat that went chasing little kids around with a stick. Uncle Mike was not like that. He was a jolly Irishman who loved life, people and a good joke.

I loved Aunt Pat's cooking. She conjured up some of the best cakes and pies I ever laid a tongue on. And like most three or four year olds, I wanted the pie or cake before the meal, but Uncle Mike convinced me I didn't want to do that because that was the way Democrats ate. And if the Democrats ate like that, it was bound to be wrong.

Sue Poag Story Lamar SC 1938

We moved there in 1938 so I was still 8. There was a girl in my class named Doris. My teacher kept me after school to write two spelling words I missed - like 100 times or something. When I finished, Doris was waiting for me in the school yard. She said, "Mrs. Grumley is a mean ole' devil for keeping you after school, isn't she?"

I knew I couldn't say someone was a devil, so I didn't respond. She kept on asking the same question and after a while I agreed. The next day, she told the teacher that I had said she (the teacher) was a 'mean ole' devil'.

One day at Doris' house she unscrewed the light bulb that hung down low in their kitchen, put her little brother in his high chair under the electric outlet, put a spoon in his yhand, stood in front of him raising her hands in the air trying to get him to imitate her and electrocute himself.

At a picnic, my mother said Doris' mother says Doris is such a big help to her. You could be a bigger help. How could I explain to her about the attempted murder?

One day Doris wrote a love note to a boy in my class who would bring me pomegranetes and arrowheads and signed my name to it. That day, I hit her in the head with my books as hard as I could.

She's either in prison now or CEO of Toys R Us.

Georgia, Gene and Joan had typhoid fever there. It was a terrible time. People frequently died if they had typhoid. Praise the Good Lord, they made it through. That was Lamar.

Childhood Musings by Ward Poag

Benjamin Franklin Poag, "Paw Poag", married Sally Nutt and moved to Lewis County from Upper 48 Creek in Wayne County. His move was motivated by a desire to get away from his brothers. Two of them followed him. One of them had a farm next to Paw Poag's on Highway 20 just outside Hohenwald on the "Columbia Highway."

In his lifetime, Frank Poag was a farmer, moonshiner, whiskey runner, and during WWII, he worked as a laborer. He and Maw Poag had three children. Our daddy was one of them (Russell Hobson Poag). Delphia, Eddie Whittenburg's mom, was another. Another sister, Effie, died of Scarlett fever. After Effie died, maw Poag had a nervous breakdown and never quite got over it.

My cousin, Eddie Whittenburg says Paw Poag had a second-grade education but he was a well-read and intelligent person. When I was about 5, Paw Poag told me, "The first two days I went to school it was alright. But on the third day, the creek was up and I never went back."

He learned to read and write someplace. He got Nashville newspapers every day that the mail came and I know he read the bible and other books around the house.

A Childhood Story by Sue Poag

Williamsville, MO., I was in 3rd grade. (Circa 1938)

We could take a quart of home canned vegetables to school to pay for our lunches for a week. We had lots of snow there. We spent recesses on a sled!! Genivieve Ferguson was one of my friends. At her house in an out building, she had a huge pile of oats. She was saving the box tops for some premium.

Heard she is organist at the church now.

One summer we were going to Aunt Effie's. They put me in the middle of the front seat behind the gear shift as usual so I complained. Dad made me get out of the car. I was about 8 years old. I didn't care. I sat on the porch swing and made plans for my week alone. I knew I could get in one of the windows. We had credit at the grocery store and I was going to listen to the radio, eat grapes and read books. My dad and all came back to get me and I was disappointed.