Dad writes about Robert McBride Poag in Wayne County

After Robert Mcbride Poag returned to Wayne County, Tn. with his Chickasaw bride, Esther Burgess, they produced 12 children, including William Jasper Poag born in 1845 and married Fanny Staggs in 1865. William Jasper and Fanny produced 5 boys and three girls; Gus, Frank (Benjamen Franklin, my grandfather), Bill, Bob, Emily, Esther and Lizzie. ORAL TRADITION: It is said that Fanny Staggs was a tiny lady with an Irish temper, and that William Jasper was something of a rascal. On one of his birthdays, Fanny set up a surprise party for William Jasper. William Jasper became angry, when he saw all the horses, buggies and wagons in his yard, so he ran the guests off in a none too polite manner. This incensed Fanny, so she threw his clothes out into the yard. ------------------------------------------------------------------- My grandfather, Frank (Benjamen Franklin Poag) married Sally Nutt, who was half indian. Oral tradition has it that she was Cherokee, but uncle Grady Nutt told me it was Chickasaw. Lizzie Poag, Frank's sister married Bill Morrow in Lawrence County. She and Maw Poag (Sally) would have passed for sisters, if not twins. ------------------------------------------------------------------- BELOW IS A PICTURE OF FRANK IN THE MIDDLE BETWEEN HIS FOUR BROTHERS

Reverend Fred Harper Feb 1964

[This is a letter that my grandfather (the late Reverend Fred R. Harper) wrote to my mother. I have not edited his letter but am typing it exactly as he wrote it except I used an asterisk to indicate an underline because my keyboard shortcut quit working.]

My dear little Sue-Nell-i-Kin:

Surely enjoyed your newsy letter. Just hope that Dixie cup, comes through with a nice big sum. Better still may they put you on a royalty basis that will give you an income from here on out. I am so sorry that the baby bottle company didn't pay you for your idea. Your mother paid me a big, big compliment. She said that you took those "dreamy" ideas after me. When I was pastor at Cainsville, I wrote the Air Base of Toledo, Ohio, suggesting that planes, or satellites could be powered by sunlight by putting "solar" batteries on the wing. They replied that it would not be powerfull enough to lift a bomber. I saw the pictures of the moon satellite and noted that they had put solar powered wings on it that folded out to cath the sun light after it had gotten out of the earth's atmosphere. As the technique improves for catching the electrical power of sunlight, solar planes will go to Mars, etc. Also at the same time I wrote them about painting a balloon with aluminum and anchoring it say 150 feet high so that I could get television signals from St. Joseph and Kansas City. They replied that it would not work, because of storms blowing it down. Since then some man has patented the idea, and has the outfit on the market. Also the government is using the same idea in Telstar and other communications satellites.

As to the picture, I had thought of an oil painting but if you had rather paint in water colors that would be o.k. I used to paint a little but I used either oils or charcoal. I never could do too well with water colors. It is a little difficult for me to paint in colors because I have a little color blindness. Since the colors usually have names on them and I have a colored picture to go by I *might* get by. I had rather risk your eyes and your painting ability than mine. As to the size, I will leave that up to you. Any size from 16 X 20 up. You can paint it on canvas, cardboard, hard board, plywood, etc. or whatever is easiest for you. I am enclosing $5.00 to buy your materials. When the picture is done I will send you another $5.00.

I am sending you two pictures. You can enlarge and paint either one you had rather. The river is Big Sandy that runs right down the side of my 40 acres. The other is a scene right on the 40.- whichever picture is the easiest for you to paint.

I wish that I had a nice colored picture of the Sabal Palms on the Florida land. If I had one, I would give you another job.

Tell old man Ward hello for me. Hope that he is selling cars by the "jillions," and rolling in green backs by the fist fulls. Kiss and squeeze all the kids for me. While you are at it, blow me a barrel of kisses.

Your Dad

{On the back of the last page, mom's mother, Jesse Clark Harper wrote too:}

Dear Suenell, Since your pa is writing, I will drop you a few lines. We probably won't go to Joan's before the 2nd week in March. Any way when we do go we will be careful. When school is out why not plan to come and stay a week. Ward could get a long with out you that long. Could he not? Do you remember how to teach school after being out so long?

Suenell, I wish I could do the many things you seem to be able to do. It would help to keep my mind occupied. I have been reading and crocheting. I have quit trying to keep house. I do a little cooking and dish washing. Georgia is after Opal & also to go out there and bring us. I don't know about it yet.

love,
Mom

Ward Poag - Why I got into the Car Business

WHY I GOT IN THE CAR BUSINESS


When people ask me, why I got in the car business, I usually tell
them, "Because I spent just enough time on the farm, to find out I
didn't want to work for a living!"

In that statement there is more truth than poetry. But, as a matter of
fact I did spend my early years and most of my summer "vacations" on
farms, so
far out in the boondocks of Middle Tennessee, we'd have had
to wait til Tuesday night to get the Grand Ol' Opry Saturday
night broadcast. That is, if we'd 've had a radio!
This was in the late '20s and early '30s, during the Great
Depression. There were three farms. Two were located in Center,
Tennessee. Center was a crossroads community in Lawrence County, where
my mother and father taught in a two
room schoolhouse. In addition to the schoolhouse, there was a general
store and a grist mill, where they turned corn into cornmeal.
The other farm was three miles from Hohenwald on state
route 20 in Lewis County, Tennessee.

IT WAS HARD WORK
Those farms were 19th century vintage. Plowing, planting, sowing,
and reaping were done with horses mules, or by hand. For instance,
"chopping cotton" was using a hoe to dig weeds out of the cotton rows,
and corn was handpicked and shucked. Potatoes were dug out of the
ground by hand.
The worst job, by far, was "breaking new ground". This
was clearing and plowing up land, which had never been farmed before,
and the problem was tree stumps and roots.
A big tree was a bitch! To get the stump out, we had to cut all
the roots, and use long poles as pry bars, under the stump, then hook
up a pair of horses and mules with trace
chains and try to pull it out. Most of the time that worked, but not
always. Sometimes, the stump had to be burned out, and that could take
several weeks or months. And, sometimes
the stump was left in the ground to be plowed around. But, that was
just the beginning of the problem.
We'd hook up a horse or mule to a hand plow, and use them to break
ground. A big problem was using the reins to control the animal, and
that was usually a full time job
with a mule. At the same time, we had to grip both handles of the plow
to steer it in a straight line.
A bigger problem on newground was the roots, some of which, were
several inches thick, and we had no way to get them out of the ground.
It would take at least a year for them to rot out, and until they did,
they constituted a major hazard.
When we started to break newground, we might have an idea where
the roots were, and try to avoid them, but that didn't always work
out. Once in a while, you'd be turning a furrow, and the plow blade
would hit a root, and jerk the plow out of your hands, and one of the
handles would stab you in the belly and tickle your backbone. To say
the least, it was a breathtaking experience.
If you want to learn how to "cuss", I'd recommend plowing
newground with a balky mule. If you don't know any
curse words, you'll make some up!

Water came from a well or cistern. If you wanted to take a bath,
it was the creek, if you had one nearby, or a wash tub.

Light was provided by coal oil (kerosene) lamps. Cooking was on a
wood stove. Heat was provided by a pot bellied wood stove or
fireplace. One of my chores was to chop kindling for the stoves.
The women made some clothes from flour sacks. They made their own
soap from lye, "hawgfat" (lard), and ashes in a
great big ol' iron kettle.

The houses were "four rooms and a path". The path was to
a standard two-hole outhouse, equipped with a Sears Roebuck
catalogue. No. We didn't use the catalogue pages for toilet
paper. The pages were too thin and slick. What we used the catalogue
for was for wishing. You could thumb through the pages and pick out
items you'd like to have sometime or other.

Our main contact with the outside world was a day old
newspaper from Nashville. I know of only one radio anywhere close to
any of the three farms. The only time I saw it was in 1936, when my
cousin and I walked a mile or so up a dirt road to listen to the Joe
Louis - Jim Braddock fight. I was nine years old at the time.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is, that I saw enough of farm
life's toil, trouble and drudgery to develop
a healthy aversion to routine jobs and hard physical labor !
Farm life was a redundant routine of laborious toil. There was an
old saw about it in those days: "Man works from
sun to sun, and woman's work is never done."
The reason farm people "went to bed with the chickens" was, they
were so damned tired, they needed all the rest they could get.

"IT AIN'T LIKE WORK"
After I'd been in the business of selling cars and trucks for a
while, someone asked me how I liked the car business, and I told
them, "It ain't like work. I love it!"
Most people, who are good at selling cars and trucks, feel the same
way.

Jim Shade was a plant supervisor before I hired him as a salesman
for Don Jacobs Oldsmobile, in Lexington, Kentucky.
This was in 1971, and after he'd been selling cars for several months,
he was offered a job which would pay him $18,000 a year, when the
average was $10,000.
When Jim refused the job, man who offered the job asked
Jim, "Do you mean you'd rather sell cars than be a plant manager for
me?"
Jim replied, "I like it so much, that if they didn't pay me, I'd
pay them to let me do it!"
That just about sums it up. The car business is fun for
people who are good at it. It is a job which is never routine. You
know what you are going to do every day, but what you don't know is
how it's going to turn out. You don't
know what new and interesting people you're going to meet. And, you
don't know what interesting or challenging situation will arise.
Primarily the car business is interesting and entertaining,
because it is a people business, and you never
really know what they are going to do, or how they will act
and react. You meet all kinds of people, fom all walks of life, and no
two people behave in exactly the same manner. So, there is a challenge
every time you deal with or meet new people, especially prospective
buyers.

The challenge is to help them do something they want to do - buy a
car or truck - but are reluctant to do for any one of several reasons.
If you love dealing with people, and can sell, you would love the
automobile business.

Sue Poag, Phoenix Arizona ca. 1935 cont'd

In the following post, mom wrote of what she could remember of being five years old in Phoenix. - Karen


Two ladies from church decided they would buy a pair of shoes for me. We spent hours looking for shoes. Later they told my mom it took forever to find a pair of shoes narrow enough for me. Mom said she didn't know I had narrow feet until then.

They had an x-ray machine at the shoe store. I can remember looking down into the machine at the bones in my feet.

I was persuaded to dress up like a bride and Bobby Rainwater like a groom and we pulled a red wagon full of gifts into a bridal shower.

Mom had my long hair permed with an electric machine that burned my scalp and I remember these women stood around me fanning me with paper fans.

I saw a Shirley Temple movie at the theater.

Joan was born.

Georgia and Opal had a steady stream of beaus although Mr. Sterling Hedgepath always told me he was going to wait on me to grow up and he took me for a ride in the side-car on his motorcycle.

Ward Poag - 1927 The Good ol' Days

When I started pestering mom and dad to write down their memories of childhood it was because I was soon going to be a mother and I wanted my children to feel connected to my parents. In other words, I wanted them to write about what it was like living in the 30s and 40s; what day to day life was like for a child. I feel very blessed because both my parents complied with my wishes to some extent. The following is one of the first things dad wrote after I started bugging him to write his childhood memoirs.-Karen



"THE GOOD OL' DAYS?"
by Ward Poag

You say you want to know about the "Good ol' days", of living in the hills and "hollers" in the '30s and '40s! Those "good ol' days" are gone, and I don't know whether to lament their passing, or to celebrate my escape from a life of back-breaking, man-killing toil and trouble, but there is mourning for the passing of a way of life, which made us proud and fiercely independent.

There seems to be some perverse side of human nature which makes us want to remember the past with loving fondness and disregard the down side. Maybe it's an innate desire to return to a simpler, less complex existence. Or,perhaps it's a desire to escape the pressures of today's peripetatic society. Whatever the reason, there is a nostalgic desire in most of us to view antiquity through rose colored glasses.

I'll try to show you the good and bad of my "good ol' days".

IN THE BEGINNING

In 1927, some monumental events took place. Charles Lindberg flew the Atlantic in a non-stop flight from the New York to Paris, Babe Ruth hit his record setting 60 homeruns, and Al Jolson starred in the first talking
movie, the "Jazz Singer".

And, a less momentous event occured on Robert E. Lee's birthday in a
small town nestled in the hills of rural Middle Tennessee. That event was momentous to my family and me, for I was born in Hohenwald, Tennessee on January 19, 1927!

If I could take you back in time to Middle Tennessee farm country of the 1930s, you easily believe we had gone back another 100 years or so.

With few exceptions, people in Lewis and Lawrence Counties of the '30s livedmuch the same as their ancestors in the 1800s. The only twentieth century technology in the 1930s were present primarily in the towns of Hohenwald and Lawrenceburg. These were some paved streets, electricity, some indoor plumbing, a few cars and trucks, with even fewer telephones. Out of town,only the main highways were paved and there were power and telephone poles and wires, although few farms along the way had electricity, and I don't believe any of the farms had phones. I do remember one at a general store a couple of miles down the road from Paw Poag's farm. Otherwise people lived much the same as their ancestors had a century before.

The READERS COMPANION states that, in the 1930s agriculture moved from
the horse age into the machine age, with tractors, combines, milkers, pickers and other modern technology. That might be true for other parts of the country, but not for the Middle Tennessee I knew. Farming in that area was still in the "animal" age, and the land was so worn out, "You would have had a hard time growin' rocks! It was "hardscrabble" land.

For 100 years after the Civil War, the South was the poorest part of the nation, and our part of Middle Tennessee was poorest of all.

To aggrevate the farmer's plight, the post WWI deflation caused the the price of farm products to drop much lower than prices for other goods and services. And, things had been almighty hard for farmers since 1920. The coming of the Great Depression changed very little for the folks with whom I grew up. "Steak was a dime a pound, but nobody had a dime!"

This was the world into which I was born. Hohenwald is "right smack dab" in the middle of the "hills an' hollers" of Middle Tennessee, about 70 miles southeast of Nashville. It originated as a German/Swiss settlement, and its name means "high forest" in German.

I spent most of my pre-school years and most of my summer vacations in one of the following places: Paw Poag's farm in Lewis county; Aunt Delphia's home in Hohenwald; Aunt Lizzie's farm at Center, Tennessee; Pat and Mike Murphy's farm in Center, or with Momma and Daddy Daniel in Franklin, Tennessee.

This living "from pillar to post" in the early days was the result of economics. Both Mom and Dad's families were poor. Daddy Daniel worked for a lumber company and Paw Poag was a bootlegger and farmer. Neither could contribute much to my parent's future, so Mom and Dad "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps" and somehow managed to get Teaching Certificates at Middle Tennessee State Teacher's College, now Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro.

While doing that, they couldn't take care of me, so they took advantage of the one thing their families could do for them; take care of me. So, I was sent to live with various parts of both families, until we moved to Nashville in 1931 or '32. Even then, Momma and Daddy both had to work, so I until I was 15 years old I spent my summer vacations from school at one of those places, And, that is how I learned about life on the farm.

LIFE IN THE "BOONDOCKS"

"Boondocks" means backwoods rustic country. And, The places I mentioned
above were mostly, "So far out out in the boondocks, we'd 've had to wait til Tuesday night to git th' Grand Ol' Opry". That is; if we'd 've had a radio! Incidentally, those who didn't like the Opry dubbed it the "Grand Ol' Uproar".

We didn't live in log cabins, although I do remember visiting some of our Poag relatives in Wayne County that lived in log house that had a "dog-trot.
The dog-trot was a breezeway between the two sections of the house. There was a stone chimney on each side of the house. One side of the house was the kitchen and dining area with a Ben Franklin wood-burning range, a fireplace with a big wooden dining table and cane-bottomed chairs.

The other side was the living quarters furnished like other farm houses in which I lived from time to time.

Most farm houses were wood frame with four to five rooms and a tin roof.
There was little or no insulation in the walls or roof, and that old tin roof was hellfire hot in the summer and icy cold in the winter. That old saw about a nervous cat on a hot tin roof is a fable. No cat in his right mind will go anywhere near a hot tin roof.

One good thing about the tin roof was its soporific effect during rainfall. The steady drum of rain drops on a tin roof was better than a sleeping pill.

Floors were wood without benefit of rugs or carpeting. The cooking was done on a cast iron wood-burning Ben Franklin range. It set up off the floor on four iron claws. The cooking surface had four burners covered by an iron lid, which could be removed with a portable iron handle that fit into a slot on the lids. The oven covered the front of the stove, below the burners.
Behind and above the cooking surface was a cowl topped off by two
"warmer" ovens called "biscuit warmers". They were about fifteen inches
wide, ten to twelve inches deep and about eight to ten inches high. They
were for warming or keeping food warm. On one side of the stove was the
firebox, where wood was fed into the fire. Behind the stove was a stove pipe
with a damper to control the burn. You might think that cooking on that
primative apperatus would be quite difficult, but I gotta tell you the food
cooked on those old stoves was a joy to behold. Some of the best food I ever
laid a tongue on, came off those stoves. Maw Poag, Momma Daniel, Aunt
Delphia and Aunt Lizzie were Master Chefs of the Country Cuisine!

With the exception of sugar, flour, salt, pepper and a few other spices,
the food was homegrown in their garden or fields. The country cuisine was
more than just cornbread and beans. There was corn, bacon, ham, eggs,
tomatoes, watermelon, lima beans, potatoes, biscuits, green beans, pinto
beans, navy beans, black-eyed peas, green peas, onions, pancakes, chicken,
wild blackberries, nuts, jams, jellies, preserves and some of the best
cakes, and pies you could ever hope to eat!

In the summer time, the veggies were mostly fresh out the field or garden.
To prepare for the winter season the women canned all kinds of goodies from
green beans to jellies, jams and preserves.

The farm days started at sunrise. The "young'uns" would stoke the fire in
the fireplace and fill the woodbox with kindling for the stove. The fire in
the fireplace was "banked" each night, so the fire wouldn't have to be
started from scratch every day. When you banked a fire, you let it burn down
to some red hot embers, then covered them with a light sprinkling of ashes
to keep the fire from burning out.

The man of the house went out to feed the stock (cows, and hogs) and let the
horses and or mules out to pasture. Some body had to feed the chickens and
collect eggs, while the woman of the house cooked breakfast.

When you sat down in a cane-bottomed chair to eat, there was little or no
conversation. Eating was a mighty serious business. And, you could fill your
plate as full as you liked, but you had to eat everything on your plate.

When breakfast was over, everybody had their chores to do. The man would
head for the fields, while the women cleaned up the breakfast mess and
started cooking dinner. Dinner was the noon time meal. The evening meal was
supper.

The young'uns chopped kindling, worked in the garden, hoed corn or cotton
and whatever else they were assigned to do.

Phoenix, Arizona 1935 Sue Poag

We moved to Phoenix when I was 5. I started to school. Wes was supposed to walk with me, but I could never keep up with him and usually ended up walking alone. My first grade teacher was great and encouraging. She told me I was a good artist. I believed her. She told me I was a good reader so I read everything I could find.

One day Mom took me over to the church to take a nap in the basement. It was cooler there. She asked me if I had a baby sister which name did I like better, Dorothy or JoAnn. I said Joann.

We had a sleeping porch in Phoenix. Dad rigged up a big fan and somehow fixed a pump to pump water over some porous substance he had in front of the fan. It really created cooler air on that porch.

We had a Chinaberry tree in the front yard with comfortable big limbs. I had a spot on that tree where I lounged with my book.

My first memory of depression was there, lying on the couch and wondering how the other children could go out and play if they felt like I did and I thought everyone felt like I did.

Ward Poag-1932 Letters to Daddy

As I mentioned before, Daddy was in Texas recovering from TB. Every day or so Momma would get a letter from him. She'd read parts of the letter to me, and then write him back. Strangely enough, after she got through writing the letter, she'd ask me if I wanted to write something to him. I always said yes even though I hadn't yet learned to read or write. I'd put my chicken scratchings on a piece of paper and then read what I'd written to Momma and she'd smile like she was proud of what I'd written.

I never did tell Momma I couldn't read or write. You'd think she'd have known, her being a school teacher and all.

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.